bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Blame the war not Muslims for integration in the west
10/3/2006 7:30:00 PM GMT
"Look for the telltale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them for ever," Home Secretary John Reid told Muslims in Leyton, East London, warning them to watch their children closely for signs of extremism, remarks that sparked fury among Muslim communities worldwide and in UK in particular.
Mr Reid attributed the spread of violence to Islamic extremism, asking Muslims to do their part in a "battle of values," the Home Office said.
"These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, to kill themselves in order to murder others. Look for the telltale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever. In protecting our families we are protecting our community."
"Victory in this ideological battle - this battle of values - is the only victory that will secure true peace," he stressed.
Ironically enough Mr. Reid’s remarks came shortly after Corporal Donald Payne admitted at a court martial the war crime of inhumanely treating Iraqi civilian detainees. Payne, 35, of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, had been accused of repeatedly banging the head of Baha Mousa, a 26-year-old Iraqi hotel worker, against a wall and floor until Mousa died. Payne, who denied the accusation, called his Iraqi prisoners in the jail in Basra "the choir". He actually invited his friends to hear them shriek with the pain he inflicted upon them. "Corporal Payne enjoyed conducting what he called the choir," Julian Bevan QC told the court martial, which is taking place at Bulford Camp, in Wiltshire. "It was all done very openly."
Mr. Reid’s remarks echoed similar ones made last month by Ruth Kelly, the communities secretary, who called for a "new and honest debate" about race in the UK.
Kelly believes that it is "not racist" to express concerns about immigration and asylum.
"We must not be censored by political correctness," she continued. "And we can't tiptoe around the issues."
Recent years witnessed noticeable deterioration of relations between the British government, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, and many British Muslims. Analysts and political experts attribute that to UK’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and the July 7, 2005 London transit bombings, which killed 52 commuters and four British-bred bombers, and triggered concerns about 'radicalization' within UK's 1.6 million-strong Muslim community.
A set of anti-terror measures adopted by the British government in recent months made Muslims feel unfairly targeted for suspicion.
High-profile anti-terrorist operations in UK, particularly a June raid on a house in east London in which a man was shot, have heightened the strain. And lately UK police arrested seventeen British Muslims in connection with the alleged “terror” plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners in mid-air.
Muslims are being accused of failing to integrate to western and European societies, threatening, as described by senior officials in European governments, the core values and the culture of those societies.
Muslims are capable and have actually been working hard to integrate themselves into Western societies.
But what does integration into "western ways" mean to those officials who accuse Muslims of failing to integrate? The willingness of Muslims living in Europe and American to integrate into those societies has become a stick by which the mainstream media and Western governments beat the Muslim community with but never has this question been answered to the satisfaction of Muslims or non-Muslims alike.
Does integration mean that Muslims forget about their fellow Muslims being killed at the hands of the governments of the societies they’re living in?
Does integration mean that Muslims must abandon their Islamic culture to adopt the West’s?
Iraq war has to some extent fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe and created more enemies for the United States and UK, but it didn't invent fundamentalism; nor did it introduce it into Britain.
"So long as the likes of Corporal Payne can conduct their torture choirs abroad, our racial landscape will be scarred; so long as the likes of Reid are preaching to the racist choir at home, it will never heal,” Gary Younge wrote recently in UK’s The Guardian.
Muslims living in European states are asked to hide their anger over those govenrment’s policies in the Middle East and the involvement of some of them in the killing of fellow Muslims by contributing to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The tolerant, secular, liberal society into which Muslims are being asked to integrate lies somewhere between mythology and a work in progress,” Younge, added. “The responsibility for transforming it into a lived reality lies with all of us.”
source:
http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11830
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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
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