I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

What Lies Behind Donald Trump's Approach to China and Pakistan?

On Wednesday 7th November I was in Brussels for a European Foundation for South Asian Studies conference on the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor. I spoke on the issue of Trump's approach to China and Pakistan, making the argument that Pakistan has burnt its bridges with America, which pushes it deeper into the embrace of China.

You can get an overview of the full range of speakers on the EFSAS website here. A video recording of my talk can be seen below.

My slides on Trump and Pakistan follow, and an audio recording can be heard on Soundcloud.
Download Stott presentation 07 11 2018

Critiquing The UN: On Terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan's Strategic Interests

On September 18 I spoke at a side meeting at the 39th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva, for the think tank European Foundation for South Asian Studies.

The title of the event "Preventing and Combating Growing Terrorism in South Asia" reflects ongoing concerns, but also critiqued thoroughly the 2018 UN OHCHR report on Kashmir by Prince Hussain of Jordan, and the curious language it uses towards jihadist groups.

The gist of my argument was that Pakistan has long utilised jihadist actors in Kashmir, and to fail to recognise this, and to categorise this as a proxy war, is a significant oversight. Equally a difference between India and those who also claim territory in Kashmir - the Chinese and Pakistanis - is that it is far easier to collect and develop critical information in India, than it is from its neighbours. Neither will ever be victims of lawfare.

On the panel I was joined by Junaid Qureshi of EFSAS and Mr Jason Wiseman, Special Advisor to the Committee on Terrorism in the EU Parliament. Joining us remotely was Dr Dorothee Vandamme of the University of Louvain. Links to their presentations are here and here. You can hear my talk on Soundcloud, and see a video of my presentation on the EFSAS video channel. Finally Indian media coverage of the panel can be seen here:

For the slides I used, download the file below.

Download Stott presentation 18 09 2018

A Review of Al-Qaeda 2.0: A Critical Reader by Donald Holbrook (ed.)

Critical Studies on Terrorism has published my review of Al-Qaeda 2.0, which is largely a compilation of Ayman al-Zawahiri's writings in the post Bin Laden era. It shows the religosity of al-Zawahiri's world view, and the depth of the historical sweep from which he, and indeed Al-Qaeda, view the world.

The first 50 people to do so, can download a free pdf copy here. I think after that, you will need access to an academic library.

What Terrorism Costs France

Tucked away in the 'In Brief' section of the Daily Telegraph's sports pages, you could easily miss one of the saddest items of the day:

"The threat of terrorist attacks in France means no World Cup matches will be broadcast on big screens in public spaces, the government said yesterday."

When the barbarians are inside the gates, we lose the freedom to even socialise together. A desperately sad decision to see.

Brendan Cox, Survivors Against Terror and the Manchester Bombing

The 22nd May was a year to the day since the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22, mostly young people and children, were killed.

To coincide with events held in Manchester, the Survivors Against Terror group (SAT) issued an open letter in the Observer of 20th May (scroll down here), calling for five distinct positions to be adopted against terrorism. This received considerable media coverage, see for example that from the BBC. The main figure in SAT is Brendan Cox. Whilst he resigned from positions in two charities linked to continuing his wife’s work in February, his work on countering terrorism was not mentioned at the time. Even when he has been publicly labelled a sex pest, it is perhaps rather difficult to condemn him when he is standing with fellow victims of terrorism. That of course is precisely the type of thing he will have calculated into his thinking, as he seeks to return to public life.

The SAT intervention has a five point programme it seeks support for:

• Please keep your focus on honouring the memory of those who have been killed. Terrorists often attack partly to gain notoriety. We should deny them it; their names don't deserve to be remembered.

• Give to appeals to help the victims of attacks and demand government provide the high quality services that survivors need.

• Ask media and social media organisations to do far more to take on and shut down those driving hate.

• Support our emergency and security services to do their job. If you know something or suspect something, tell them.

• Take on hatred wherever you find it. Very few of us will ever meet a terrorist, but lots of us will experience those driving hatred. Hatred is the sea that terrorists need to swim in, if we take on that hatred, we dry up that sea.

It would be interesting to know who wrote this, or developed the draft. Points 1, 2 and 4 are so anodyne as to be agreeable by virtually anyone, not least those who have suffered bereavement in terrorist incidents. Points 3 and 5 are more contentious, and open up a potential agenda – restricting social media, and acting against ‘hate’ that is more debateable, and entirely in keeping with political agendas from global elites and their little helpers.

Social Media and Terrorism?

Terrorism long predates social media – the IRA campaign, or that of the various loyalist groups from 1969-98, hardly needed it, even if the technology had existed. Historically, explanations for terrorism have considered concepts such as injustice, poverty, bad foreign policy, or the nature of, and trends within, ideologies and belief systems, serving to radicalise individuals and groups. Social networks are also important – you are more likely to join a terrorist group, if friends are doing so. That is why some towns, like Portsmouth, appear to have had Islamic versions of First World War ‘Pals Regiments’ going off to Syria. Cox and co ignore all of this. Instead the problem is the media and social media, and the wide, perhaps all too wide concept of ‘hate’.

There is little evidence social media played any role in the Manchester bombing.

The bomber, Salman Abedi, was a supporter of Islamic State, and a Mancunian of Libyan heritage. His father, Ramadan Abedi, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organisation the British government helped to overthrow Gadaffi. Salman Abedi had long moved in Islamist circles in Greater Manchester, and fought in Libya in 2011 in its Civil War. His brother Ismail Abedi is currently in custody in Libya, fighting extradition to the UK.

But - there is nothing here from SAT or Brendan Cox on foreign policy, immigration or religion. Is it a good idea to be allowing members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group to settle in Manchester? Why did the British government seemingly support the overthrow of Colonel Gadaffi, then work with him against the Islamists, then change course again, to support regime change? What does Theresa May, either the Home Secretary or Prime Minister in much of this period, have to say? There is nothing from SAT on breaking up friendship groups of extremists - in the months before the attack, Abedi twice visited a convicted terrorist in prison. Should we be allowing young men convicted of supporting terrorism to hang out in jail with impressionable young men from the streets?

Taking on 'hatred', requires a definition of hatred that is agreed upon by a majority of the populace. How likely is that? Whilst elite level groups and government departments can readily agree (debating terminology is one of the things they do) such a consensus is unlikely to emerge from where it is needed - the bottom up. And where does any definition of ‘hate’ sit with the concept of free speech?

What Next?

The deployment of victims of terrorism to promote the idea that social media is in some way a ‘cause’ of terrorism is now underway. At the same time, there seems to have been a low level purge on Twitter of ‘extremist’ voices, most prominently of Tommy Robinson. In due course, that is likely to be extended to You Tube, and Nigel Farage has made the accusation that algorithms are being used to censor conservative comment on Facebook.
That, combined with loose accusations of ‘extremism’ or ‘hate’ is likely to be at the centre of the work of groups like Hope not Hate, and it seems, Survivors Against Terrorism, going forward. It avoids asking hard questions about foreign policy, immigration policy and (almost certainly) it avoids asking hard questions about trends within contemporary Sunni Islam. Consider all those politicians and news readers talking about ‘Daesh’ or ‘so-called Islamic State’ to see how readily euphemism can predominate. It risks conflating those involved with violence, with those who are not. And it will almost certainly serve as one of the fronts in the conflicts over politics we will see over the next 18 months.

Do you trust Brendan Cox to define what constitutes ‘hate’?

Anti-Semitism: Where the Labour Left and Right Agree?

One of the things the Labour right and Corbynistas agree on, is a sort of non-aggression pact concerning Islamic anti-Semitism.

Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters can hardly turn round and say "actually left anti-Semitism exists, but it is probably less directly threatening to Jews across Europe than Islamist violence, which has killed 11 Jews in France in 12 years." Those on the right of the Labour party, just as likely to be dependent on Islamic votes for office, are equally unlikely to spend too much time correcting debates. Consider little Jim McMahon in Oldham West and Royton, pictured fourth from right, below:

The Commons debate on anti-Semitism in the Labour party mentioned Islamophobia almost as many times (3) as any reference to Islamist anti-Semitism (4). On the Labour benches only John Mann seemed capable of grasping the nettle, despite cases such as Aysegul Gurbuz, and a series of similar scandals up and down the country in the past few years. More will break in the coming weeks.

In the long run, this pact is unsustainable. The truth will always out. It may take a shattering event, perhaps the mass murder of British Jews aspired to by some jihadists coming to fruition, but it will end. Across the channel in France, where those murders are already happening, there is also the drip, drip, drip of low level, continuous intimidation. Tucked away in Monday's press coverage of a manifesto condemning the intimidation of French Jews by Islamists, was this line:

"Ten per cent of the Jewish citizens of the Paris region.... have recently been forced to move because they were no longer secure in certain council estates. This is a quiet ethnic cleansing." (Adam Sage, The Times, 23/04/18).

What is remarkable about the British response to this ethnic cleaning, is that senior figures in the British Jewish community, apparently wish to cover it up. Last Friday, Rabbi Lord Sacks, on Thought for the Day, insisted that contemporary anti-Semitism can be explained by the global rise of the far left and far right. He did not mention Islamism, Islamists or jihadists. In an ending that would be comic if it were not so serious, he even managed to drag out the line that for evil triumph, all that is neccesary is for good men to do nothing.

Precisely the charge that can be levelled against himself, and for that matter, much of the Labour party....

Hafiz Saeed: A Series of Curious Developments

Yesterday I had a short article published about the developments surrounding Hafiz Saeed, a prominent Pakistani jihadist, currently trying to enter politics in the Islamic Republic.

You can view the piece, on the European Foundation for South Asian studies website, here.

A Brief History of Jihadism: The British South Asian Nexus

A few weeks ago I was asked to write a short piece by SOAS University of London, for the section of the Guardian website they use to promote the university's work and some of its ideas and thinkers.

This is my contribution, A Brief History of Jihadism: The British South Asian Nexus.

Updated: 30 May 2018

I believe the Guardian take down sponsored content after a set period, and have done so in this case. Below is what they did publish.
Download A brief history of jihadism_ the British south Asian nexus _ SOAS Roots _ The Guardian 25 10 2017

Duties and Responsibilities in Counter-Terrorism

Several newspapers and news sites have covered the release, in Pakistan, of a US-Canadian couple, Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle. They had been kidnapped in Afghanistan in October 2012, and had three children whilst being held by the Haqqani Network.

Significant in this is the tone of the US government statement. This certainly seems to refer to other Americans (and other westerners?) in a similar predicament, but also that the US government has pretty clearly expectations of Pakistan to address this.

It may be too early to talk of a 'Trump Doctrine' but at least part of what we see forming is a desire for other countries to take on duties and responsibilities, with no doubt some behind the scenes encouragment from either carrot or stick. There is little doubt here, that Pakistan was held responsible either for the kidnapping itself, or its continuation.

The times they are a changing?

On Douglas Murray: How We Got to Where We Are, Yet Never Wanted to Be

“The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam” – Douglas Murray (Bloomsbury: London, £18.99).

One of the publishing successes of 2017 has been Douglas Murray’s examination of the changes we see occurring all around us. There are two reasons for this – Murray is a considered, thoughtful writer with a much greater degree of empathy than he is given credit for. The second is the terrible events at the Manchester Arena on the 22 May. Murray’s explanation of how we reached the stage where our children are being blown up at pop concerts, was surprisingly commissioned by and shown on the BBC. That eloquence, and dismay at the mistakes the political class has made, characterises this book.

It has several overlapping themes. Central is Europe’s contemporary lack of confidence in itself, its history, its beliefs and practice. This has conjoined with an era of large scale immigration, often of people with little or no intention of becoming anything like the citizens of the nations they have moved to. Murray roots his work in a sound statistical basis, and the position that historically governments have tended to both lie to their populations about immigration, usually by underestimating demographic change, and then subsequently to do little to address concerns. Instead curious games are played out. Examples vary from the serious – that so few illegal migrants are ever deported - to the surreal. Consider the Office for National Statistics listing Mohammed and Muhammad separately in their annual lists of children’s names until “this was immaterial because the name in all its variants had indeed become the most popular boy’s name in England and Wales. At which point the official line changed to ‘And so what?” (p.313)

Murray explains how academic sleight of hand has been necessary to provide an evidence base that immigration is inherently an economic good, despite the awkward reality that an insurance based welfare system open to all, is unlikely to prosper if significant numbers of people can take out who are yet to pay in. The chameleon like nature of political leaders emerges repeatedly – in one decade it is racist to expect migrants to speak the language of their host country, in another it becomes essential. Sometimes assimilation is promoted, at other times the retention of migrant cultures, with concessions to practices, like sharia law, which appear incompatible with existing structures and rights. Confused? Everybody is.
That immigration may undermine, not strengthen liberal values was something Britain had warning of first, via the Rushdie affair in 1989, an event Murray considers “a crash course in the rules of Islam” (p.131). If so, the response of successive British governments has become distinctly un-British – to play down freedom of speech and the rights of the individual, and to increasingly assert the group rights of multi-culturalism. Those worst affected by this are often minority communities themselves “ordinary Muslims suddenly had a branch of religious representation inserted between them and their political representatives” (p.132) often via groups like the Muslim Council of Britain, dominated by the British end of Pakistan’s main clerical party, the Jamaat-e-Islami. As Murray concludes “No one had prepared for the possibility that those arriving might only not become integrated but might bring many social and religious views with them” (p.152).

If this book were simply a critique of blunders made, it would risk polemic. Murray avoids this, in part through his considered style, in part through interviews with those coming to places like Lampedusa, a transit island between north Africa and Sicily, and Lesbos, one of the Greek Islands closest to Turkey. Most want to go to Germany, although Sweden and the UK are also popular destinations. In 2015 “around 400,000 migrants moved through Hungary’s territory alone. Fewer than twenty of them stopped to claim asylum in Hungary” (p. 81). Whilst empathetic about the conditions many are fleeing, Murray is never naïve. He reminds us that the father of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose dead body washed up on the Turkish coast, dominating newspaper headlines in September 2015, took the regrettable decision to leave behind a paid job in a safe country, Turkey, to try to sail for a new life in Europe. Whilst his death provoked emotional political outpourings in Europe and North America, in Muslim majority countries there was little or no interest. Western guilt, absorbed from the top down in our societies, be it about colonialism, race or the holocaust, ensured entirely different responses.

What to do about all this? Even if we wanted to solve the problems of Eritrea, to take just one source of mass migration, where would we begin? The response of the EU was to give six billion Euros to Turkey to prevent its use as a transit point for migrants, thus ensuring Europe’s taxpayers (you and me) pay for the crisis. A chapter on terrorism, violence and sexual assaults by migrants is entitled ‘Learning to Live With It’, the view of terrorism forever associated with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. A theme Murray returns to time after time is the deceit, we might at times say self-deceit, of our ruling elites. Mrs Merkel for example, was able to declare multi-culturalism a failure in Germany in 2010, then to decide it could work in 2015. Perhaps we need to hold these leaders to account a little more?

A deeper, philosophical question, is the issue of what replaces Christianity in our post-Christian societies? What provides us with a foundation and the moorings needed in times of stormy weather? Here Murray suggests the countries of eastern Europe may have a better basis from which to survive, than those in the west. They at least, seem set to avoid the wave of jihadist attacks that has so shaken France, Belgium, Germany and Britain. As for here, even our architecture seems to be in decline “In London the great building to commemorate the turn of the millennium wasn’t even a structure built to last, but a vast empty tent” (p.263).

There are omissions. Margaret Thatcher, who believed Islam could be used as a bulwark against Communism and was consequently indulgent of some of its most extreme manifestations, is not mentioned once. Murray’s own flirtation with a secular god that failed, neo-Conservatism, is similarly overlooked. In discussing the greatest living French novelist, Michel Houellebecq and his work Submission, Murray misses perhaps the obvious comparison – just as Solzhenitsyn chronicled the disasters of the Soviet era, so Houellebecq’s fiction chronicles the disasters of an increasingly Islamised France. There are few better than Murray though in placing these events in their political, historical and philosophical contexts. If this is a book that ends pessimistically, it is because we have much to be worried about.

Terrorism In Britain and Its Relationship to Pakistan

On 19 September I spoke at a side meeting to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, organised by the European Foundation for South Asian Studies.

You can read my paper "Terrorism in Pakistan and the Role of Pakistani Diaspora in the UK" (membership required) on the Academia.edu site here, and this is the video of my talk, which lasta around 17 minutes.

The Left's Jewish Problem: A Review

The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism by Dave Rich (London: Biteback Publishing, 2016, 292 pages, no illustrations, £12.99, ISBN 978 1785 901 201, paperback)

A contentious issue during the Corbyn revolution has been the relationship between the Labour left and the Jewish community. Historically this is an aberration, as the British left was long considered a welcoming place for Jews, whether practising or secular. Of the main parties, Labour was perhaps the most explicitly pro-Israel until at least the 1960s, whilst at one point the Communist Party of Great Britain had an estimated 10% of its membership of Jewish heritage (p.6) How then do we get to a situation where Jewish Chronicle (04/05/16) poll data suggests only 8.5% of British Jews are likely to vote Labour, and where the party has conducted three inquiries into alleged anti-Semitism almost in succession?

Dave Rich is arguably better placed than anyone within the Jewish community to analyse this dislocation. Deputy Director of Communications at the Community Security Trust, the primary organisation established to provide security advice and protection to British Jews and their property, Rich was completing a PhD on left wing anti-Zionism from the 1960s-1980s as Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party. His historical knowledge ensures that as well as seeking to explain contemporary political controversies, there is plenty here for the political train spotter and fan of socialist esoterica. That the Young Liberals considered themselves part of the new left (p.42), that George Galloway was a member of the British Anti-Zionist Organisation (BAZO) or that Israel produced an anti-Zionist communist party, Matzpen, that significantly influenced British Trotskyists (p.101) is easily forgotten.

Rich situates the formation of Israel in a distinct background – that it was created by Jews within Europe’s left tradition. Zionists had to fight a traditional colonial power - Britain - in an insurgency to establish their state. This is a book which works hard to bring in overlooked and perhaps inconvenient historical facts – in 1944 Labour supported transferring Arabs out of Palestine to make way for Jews (p.5) and the Soviet bloc’s initial support for Israel came via both rhetoric at the United Nations and arms shipments to fight Arab forces (p.2-3).
Public criticism of Israel on the left seems to have begun not in 1948 with what Palestinians designate the nakba, but with Israel’s greatest military triumph – the Six-Day War against Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The noun ‘Palestinian’ did not appear in New Left Review before 1967 (p.24). Rich observes the seismic change that was commencing on the left as identity politics began to meet, match and in time supplant socio-economic concerns. His categorisation of the new left in class terms is particularly valuable:
… the new Left effectively represented a new social class, rooted in intellectual and cultural professions, populated by public sector workers, and whose political agenda would come to be dominated by identity and iconoclasm (p.8).

From the new left is seen to come the view Zionism is racist and Israel a remnant of western imperialism (p.11). Organisations such as the International Marxist Group began to conceive of revolution spreading from the third world inwards, and Tony Cliff’s International Socialists declared Israeli workers could not be revolutionary. Zionism is an issue where definitions really do determine debate, and Rich gets his in early with regards to Israel, arguing that criticisms of the state may become anti-Semitic when they “use language and ideas that draw on older anti-Semitic myths about Jews” (p.xxii). This was a problem for both the new left and orthodox communists, as by 1967-8 the much-admired revolutionaries of the FLN in Algeria were adopting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and the USSR returned to one of its periodic bouts of anti-Semitism (p.20-1). Interaction between Matzpen, the new left and Palestinian exiles in the UK seems to have run aground though on more concrete problems, which Rich perhaps sums up adroitly:
….. is it a conflict between two competing national movements, both with a legitimate claim to the same piece of land; or is it a case of coloniser and colonised, with all the right on one side and all the wrong on the other? (p.104)

In 1975 the UN General Assembly declared Zionism to be a form of racism (a position it rescinded in 1991). Rich gained access to the National Union of Students archives, and there is much here on how the UNGA resolution led to attempts to ‘no platform’ both Zionists and Jewish Societies (JSOCs) on campus. Here the left divided, with the Broad Left and Communists generally opposed, the Trotskyists for (p.129-131). In this controversy, we again see the centrality of identity politics, and its ability to produce division and stalemate. In the 1970s JSOCs had responded to criticism by using the language of democratic rights and free speech. By the 1980s they too had adopted that of identity politics, comparing themselves to “every other minority group” (p.137-8). To deny Jewish students their right to organise on campus would be deeply problematic. But to anti-Zionists, if Jewish students use that political space to exercise a Zionist identity, they are propagating racism. Student unions are yet to square that circle.

Chapter five “The New Alliance: Islamists and the Left” critiques the relationship between exiled Islamists, usually but not always from Muslim Brotherhood backgrounds, and both the revolutionary and Labour left. Jeremy Corbyn has been central to these alliances. Whilst they did not stop the Iraq war nor bring freedom to Palestine, they have changed the composition of the left in Britain (p.162) paving the way for Corbyn’s eventual victory. However, for these relationships to prosper, the left has had to turn a blind eye to political attitudes it would usually reject, and actively opposes, when articulated by the far right. In what is the strongest section of the book, Rich cites examples in the fields of human rights, suicide attacks and racism.
The Hamas Charter cites anti-Semitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact, whilst believing the United Nations was created by the Zionists (p.176). The British left is inexorably sucked into this nonsense via its affiliations with Islamic actors in the Middle East and here. In 2003 the Cairo anti-war conference, which brought together regional activists with anti-war figures such as Corbyn and John Rees, adopted the position the Iraq war was “part of the Zionist plan” (p.189). Socialists chanting ‘We are Hezbollah’ at Stop the War’s 2006 protests against the Israel-Hezbollah conflict either did not know, or did not care, Hasan Nasrallah has called for all Jews to go to Israel, so they can best be killed in one place (p.178).

Labour’s recent anti-Semitism controversy has involved former Mayors in London, Bradford and Blackburn, plus councillors in Luton, Nottingham, Burnley, Newport and Renfrewshire (p.197-8). Rich’s book goes a long way in explaining how we got there. It ends with the hope that the left and British Jews can again have a positive relationship. The re-admittance of Momentum’s Jackie Walker to Labour demonstrates how tricky this will be. Rich traces her ‘analysis’ that the Jews financed the slave trade, to a 1991 book by the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan. Identity politics has brought the left more problems than answers.

Dr Paul Stott, 14 December 2016.

Some Recent Talks, An Article and Video Clips

Last month I spent some time in Geneva, speaking at a side-event to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Organised by the think tank European Foundation for South Asian Studies, 'Terrorism in South Asia' brought together four scholars and a healthy audience to discuss events, primarily in Pakistan and Kashmir, and their impact closer to home.

You can hear a recording of my talk here, via Soundcloud. A copy of my paper "Terrorism in Pakistan and the role of Pakistani diaspora in the UK: Challenges?" is on the Academia.edu site, but I think you will need to be a member of the site to download it (it is free).

Whilst in Geneva I did some work with the Indian media. It is fair to see the antipathy between India and Pakistan somewhat colours their approach, but hopefully the gist of my general points emerges here, and here. Some of the EFSAS recordings of the event are also appearing online now, for example here.

Finally I also did a guest lecture in Septemberto a Leicester University summer school for distance learning Criminology students. You can hear an audio recording of my talk on British Jihadism here.

Irene Lancaster v David Irving

The Sunday Times has a feature by Sian Griffiths (p.13) on Manchester University refusing to remove from open display, books by the far-right historian David Irving.

Some universities have already moved Irving's books into closed access areas, or added disclaimers (!) to them. This is reportedly due to a campaign by Dr Irene Lancaster (who I think is a retired academic) and Dr Rowan Williams, who having retired as Archbishop of Canterbury is now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Two comments on this madness. Firstly it is not as new as Sian Griffiths supposes. Way back in January 1993, on my first day as a library assistant at the University of North London's then Kentish Town library site, I was shown the 'under the counter' books. Sadly this was not a collection of red-hot pornography or studies of illicit sexual practices, but a small collection of books by David Irving. Following a campaign by the Anti-Nazi League (the SWP's then anti-fascist front group, now Unite Against Fascism) the university authorities had taken the books off the shelves. I was given a stern lecture by a senior librarian that this was a terrible mistake and undermined both academic freedom and the nature of a university library. That approach stands the test of time - libraries are by definition places where ideas sit, germinate, breathe and, whether you like or or not, fester. If you want them to be places where only nice, cuddly, safe ideas are to be found, go to a children's library.

Why this issue has flared up again now, having first run over twenty years ago, is unclear. My second comment is motivated by the quote from Irene Lancaster which appears in the Sunday Times. "Leaving this literature on the shelving with inadequate labelling poses a physical threat to the Jewish student and staff body and constitutes a deep insult to the lives of all those who were exterminated in the Nazi holocaust". These presumably include members of the Lancaster family, who we are told died at Treblinka.

Several issues emerge here. Firstly books do not attack people. The ideas in them may or may not inspire people to action, and may or may not inspire people to violence. To function, a democracy has to have a marketplace of ideas. Given the historical fact of the holocaust, it is hard to see how Mr Irving comes out top in that marketplace. Why can he not be defeated in argument? Also, how does putting a sticker on one of his books makes any difference at all?

There is another, less comfortable issue which emerges from Dr Lancaster's fear of violence. The neo-Nazi far-right in Britain is weaker today than it has ever been, be it in electoral terms or in street activism. Who then is providing a threat to Jewish students and staff? If Jews are leaving Europe today because of violence, it is not because of people like David Irving, but because of violence from Islamists. And yet (correctly) we do not seek to purge university library's of material from Sayyid Qutb, Osama bin Laden or a succession of Islamist actors who would happily do to Irene Lancaster what the Nazis did to her Grandmother.

Ideas matter. And they matter too much to give in to selective outrage, in the very place where those ideas need to be digested and discussed.

JD Vance on Trump

There is a good interview by Josh Glancy in today's Sunday Times magazine, of the American author J D Vance.

Of particular interest are some of his quotes about Donald Trump.

"My fears thus far have been confirmed..... He understands the problems, but there's no evidence he's actually articulating a way out."

Glancy then paraphrases Vance "He points out that the president gained a lot of trust by telling people things no other politician would say".

There was also this on Trump's support base "They will give him a long leash, and judge him by whether their lives have got better in two to three years".

That seems the right way to judge a politician, certainly from a viewpoint in rust belt America - are you better off, or is the framework there for you to make yourself better off, than at the last election? In pressuring US companies to stay in America rather than decamping to Mexico, and reopening coalmines, Trump, as Vance says, does get it. If Steve Bannon stays in the White House (by no means a certainty) there is the prospect of focus on those issues remaining. If there is another plus point here, it is that whether Trump still articulates things other politicians do not, he will grasp the nettle of issues where western elites have failed. On FGM, his administration is already light years ahead of the UK, as shown here and here.

Vance does not really touch on Trump's approach to security issues. This is much harder to fathom. I have never seen how Shia Iran (the minority trend within Islam) can be viewed as an existential threat to the west. Yet Trump is working with a country which is an existential threat to the west, Saudi Arabia, to isolate Iran and Qatar. There may or may not be method in his madness. We shall see. In the long term the travel ban, should it be fully implemented, probably does make the US more secure, although as it does not include countries Trump is in bed with - Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to name three - it is a string vest.

I am not sure a President in a string vest can be re-elected. But as Vance points out, if people are better off when he stands for re-election than they were previously, he will be judged on that criteria.

Journalistic Solidarity From Shepherd's Bush to Qatar

Yesterday's Evening Standard saw the BBC's World Affairs Editor, John Simpson, complaining about the pressure Qatar is under to close down Al-Jazeera. He wants to see the West supporting the station.

One of Simpson's lines particularly caught my attention:

"It may have been accused of being slanted in favour of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt and elsewhere but it employs talented ex-colleagues of mine from the BBC, and I've always felt its heart is in the right place".

It is a sign of just how lightweight Simpson is, that whilst showing solidarity to his old BBC muckers, he does not actually get the main problem with Al-Jazeera. That is its ability to take in western liberals by saying one thing in its English language programming, and something entirely different in its Arabic material. Consider these findings from one US think tank:

"Aljazeera Arabic, in contrast, has much less freedom to report on regional developments -- including in Qatar -- than the English site. Very little criticism of Doha can be found in Arabic"

or the wave of resignations among its staff because of this subservience to the Qatari royals. More recently Al-Jazeera's racism re-surfaced, for once in English, when it blamed climate change on the Jews.

Either Simpson does not know these things, in which case he is a fool. Or he does know it, and decided it did not matter.

Why Andy Burnham Is Saying Some of The Things He is

Last December I spoke to a conference of the religious literacy organisation Lapido Media, on the influence Islamists have developed on the British left. A chunk of my speech was on the direct influence groups like MEND have on the Labour Party, and Andy Burnham in particular.

You can read the speech here (pdf) and below.

For two background papers on the Islamisation of the left in Britain, please go here.

The text of the speech is below, with Burnham covered at the start, and to the end:

The demise of critical thinking: how Islamist organizations corrupt the academy

by Dr Paul Stott

Perhaps the easiest place for Islamists to gain and then project influence is with and via the political left, and in those sections of society where the left’s ideals predominate. Those who have read my two articles last month on the Lapido website, and in the past maybe saw Nick Cohen’s What’s Left, or Dave Rich’s excellent recent work on anti-Semitism in the Labour party, will be aware of these relationships.

It needs to be stressed though that this is not simply about the far left or even the left of the Labour party. MP and former Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham’s recent opposition to the Government’s Prevent strategy was not rooted, as it could have been, in a consideration of whether it is wise for the Government to be challenging its citizens’ legally held and legally practised political beliefs. Burnham did not seem to be stressing the importance of developing critical thinking in young people, the need to teach people how to think rather than what to think. Instead,at a Labour conference fringe event organized by the Islamist group Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND),he ran with a series of Islamist tropes: that Prevent demonises Muslims; that it stigmatizes the Muslim community; that Prevent has no community support; and that only through working with the community can any problems be addressed.

Those views are now virtually hegemonic in academia, and in trades unions such as the National Union of Teachers (NUT), or the University and College Union (UCU).

A civil liberties critique of Prevent is barely made. The ‘Islamophobia’ argument predominates, even though Home Office figures at 31 December 2015 recorded that of 143 people in jail for terrorist offences in Great Britain, 139 affirmed themselves to be Muslim. Some figure, when Muslims are usually considered to be between five and ten per cent of our population.

There are Islamic organizations trying to shape how we think about terrorism in this country, how we respond to people fighting in Syria, or those who support jihadist groups. And they have been doing this for some time. The Muslim Council of Britain for example were lobbying the Metropolitan Police on this in the late 1990s.

They thrive on error and a lack of knowledge in the population at large. I want to take people back to the 7/7 attacks. They were followed, you may remember, by the publication of a suicide video of Mohammed Siddique Khan, the acknowledged leader of the plot. On 1 September 2005, the BBC placed a transcript of Khan’s video on their website, where it remains. The BBC transcript is headed ‘London bomber: text in full.’ Unfortunately this is not actually the case: Khan’s religious salutations as the video commences are not translated from the original
Arabic – an unsatisfactory omission.

The words the BBC leaves out of its translation are ‘Praise be to Allah, blessings and prayers upon his Prophet’. As you can see, the BBC certainly had some way to go in that period in terms of religious literacy.
Lines 20-34, are perhaps the best known. Here Khan is at his most political: ‘Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world.’ Although they are not mentioned by name, it is clear this is a reference to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

And there for many people, analysis ends. In discussing 7/7, Khan’s condemnation of British foreign policy was to be central to the response of the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, the anti-war movement, the revolutionary left and a series of activists and institutions in British Muslim life. Muslim Weekly; Salma Yaqoob of the Respect Party and Stop the War Coalition (STWC); Moazzam Begg of CAGE all managed to quote Khan’s words in explanations condemning British foreign policy.

From 2008 the Cordoba Foundation, the Muslim Brotherhood’s think tank in Britain, began to take a lead in influencing opinion in this area. A round-robin letter was organized by the Ikhwaan’s Anas Altikriti, in which signatories agreed that the ‘misguided few’ who turn to terrorism do not do so because they are driven by the writings of Sayyid Qutb– the MB’s foremost thinker – or because they are disenfranchized, but because of their anger at Western foreign policy.

The responses I cite ignore the religious ideals also expressed by Khan. This centres not just on the salutations left out by the BBC, but the words preceding his discussion of foreign policy: ‘Our religion is Islam – obedience to the one true God Allah, and following the footsteps of the final Prophet and messenger Muhammad… This is how our ethical stances are dictated.’ He is structuring his actions in terms of his faith.

When I read those words in my lecture at the 2011 Critical Terrorism Studies conference at Strathclyde
University, I looked up to see one well-known Terrorism Studies academic walk out. I am glad to see you all still here.

Since 2010 a series of Islamist organizations, nearly all related to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) have funded research conducted by academics into counter-terrorism and issues pertaining to the Middle East and British Islam. Usually this involves funding those at Spinwatch – a collective of left-leaning researchers based in England and Scotland – with sums of money, and several months later a report written by academics pops up. Some £52,000 has changed hands this way in the past six years. The most recent donation of £12,000 was from MEND. They sponsored the fringe meeting at which Andy Burnham condemned Prevent.

We have also seen Islam Expo as one of the sponsors of a major 2015 conference on terrorism at Bath University: ‘Understanding Conflict: Research, ideas and responses to security threats’, which was jointly funded by the taxpayer through the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Islam Expo and the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. Perhaps not unusually in these circles, although billed as a conference studying terrorism, more than a quarter of the papers, and nearly half the advertised sessions, were about Islamophobia.

Why is a Muslim Brotherhood-related group such as Islam Expo sponsoring an academic conference attended by socialist academics and the leaders of the Stop the War Coalition? Lorenzo Vidino writes in The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, that: ‘The Brothers do not advocate isolation from mainstream society. To the contrary, they urge Muslims to actively participate in it, but only in so far as such engagement is necessary to change it in an Islamic fashion (Vidino 2011 p.11).’

These are not the people Louise Casey is worried about, ostracized from society. They want to be at the centre of events, but from an ideology that seeks to rival liberal democracy. The methodology of the Western Brothers is traced to the Islamist ideologue Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s 1990 statement, Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase, which envisaged the group’s representatives developing positive relationships with leading tiers in Western societies. From this position the Brothers would seek to play a central role in administering Muslim community life in public bodies, achieving hegemony in those communities, whilst at the same time professing the Islamist position on geopolitical issues.

Some of my fellow academics, perhaps distracted by ready funding, seem unable to grasp this. Labour’s Andy Burnham MP, last seen critiquing the Prevent strategy at a MEND event at the Labour conference, does not understand it either. But those in the media, and indeed all walks of life who seek to develop a degree of religious literacy can and I believe should try much harder to understand.

Sun Tzu On Sweden's 'Feminist' Government and Iran

Ever since I read reports of the Swedish government's trade delegation to Tehran, a thought had been rattling around in my head. Who had analysed this already?

It was of course Sun Tzu, in The Art of War. There he wrote: "to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

Any 'resistance' on the part of Sweden's government, any concept of solidarity towards those who may have been resisting the Islamic republic in Iran, or elsewhere, has been broken. Islam means submission. Sun Tzu would be in no doubt - so hegemonic are the arguments of the world's second largest faith, Sweden's 'feminist' government has submitted, without fighting.

Battle of Ideas: Quoted in the New Statesman

The current issue of the New Statesman, features a page by editor Jason Cowley. reflecting on the US election, Nigel Farage and our shifting political times.

Having read my first article for Lapido media on the Islamisation of the Labour Party, Cowley phoned me for a chat, and he makes use of several of my quotes in the section sub-headed 'Battle of Ideas'.

Two Articles on the Islamisation of the Left and the Labour Party

Lapido Media, which serves as the centre for religious literacy in journalism, have published two of my articles on the relationship between the left and Islamic actors.

You can read part one here (which was published last Friday) and part two here. Topics covered include Corbynism, the conduct of figures on the Labour right such as Jim McMahon MP and Keith Vaz MP, segregation, the Muslim Brotherhood and the compromises required by groups like the Stop the War Coalition when working with religious actors.

All being well, a much longer piece on these issues will be published next April.

Education Not Segregation?

Today sees Labour party rallies across the country against the Conservative's declared intention to reintroduce grammar schools. Labour is campaigning under the slogan 'Education not Segregation'.

There is a case for separating children on the basis of ability, indeed some form of streaming has long been the norm within the comprehensive system. It certainly was when I was at school. If Labour want to debate that, all well and good. But today's campaign slogan is utterly disingenuous.

The Labour party does support segregated education - providing it is segregation on the basis of a parent's declared faith. That is what faith schools mean. And there are a lot more faith schools than grammar schools.

Why The Press Coverage Of Undercover Officer 'Kamal'?

On the 16th August Anjem Choudary and Mohammed Rahman were convicted of offences under the Terrorism Act - inciting support for Islamic State.

In the wave of media coverage which followed, the public was informed that the convictions relied in part on the work of an undercover police officer, 'Kamal' who had infiltrated Al-Muhajiroun in Luton, in order to gain information on its members.

It is unusual for the police or the Security Service to admit infiltrating an Islamic organisation in this manner. Whilst the work of Kamal would obviously come out at trial when he gave evidence, here the authorities have clearly gone further, assisting both the BBC and Daily Mirror with media coverage of his work in this, and another case where jihadists from Luton were convicted of plotting to murder a US servicemen in East Anglia.

There could be two reasons why we are hearing of 'Kamal' now:

1. As I understand it, Al-Muhajiroun are unable to organise at mosques in Luton, having been chased away by rival Salafis from the Luton Islamic Centre. This means the police can declare Kamal, without Luton Muslims complaining the police have been spying inside local mosques and Islamic Centres. Indeed press coverage of Kamal's work centres on his monitoring of meetings at a venue hired from local Methodists, not Muslims.

2. The police have had a deserved battering in the press and from the public ever since the revelations about Bob Lambert and the Special Demonstration Squad began. This is a goal back - no one is going to question whether Kamal's work was justified, and it can be wheeled out as part of the case for the defence the next time damaging revelations emerge about the conduct of undercover officers. It is also in the police's armoury when/if the Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing goes badly.

As such, we may not have heard the last of 'Kamal.'

Weariness and Jihadist Terrorism

The law of unintended consequences has rarely played out as harshly.

Such has been the wave of Islamic State and Islamic State inspired violence in Europe this summer, it seems those activists in the 'counter-jihad' movement (sometimes categorised on the left as the 'islamophobia industry') are struggling to keep up.

On 1 August the Gates of Vienna blog wrote:

"It used to be that Vlad and I would get a break of a week or so between major crises. We’d get a chance to catch our breath, have a couple of nights’ sleep, maybe do something else besides jihad-jihad-jihad for a few hours, and be rested and ready to start again when the mujahideen staged another slaughter."

The pace of jihad in Europe, the rhythm and staccato beat, is now one of its distinguishing features. Attacks in Germany, Belgium (yesterday) and France may have little formal connection or structured timetable, but they are received and digested in that manner by an ever weary populace.

Where does this end? Who will tire out and give up first? In Michel Houellebecq's magisterial novel Submission it ends very simply - the media simply ceases reporting such attacks. At an academic dinner party in Paris, with the noise of gunfire and explosions in the distance, lecturers halfheartedly search for information on their smartphones, hoping the trouble will not reach their location "If they thought the networks were going to cover the event... they were kidding themselves. The blackout was complete" (p.48)

Houellebecq is not a complete sage - in one scene French villagers seeking objective news on events in their country are portrayed crowding around a TV tuned to the BBC (p.111). Many, myself included, would trust the BBC far less on religion than the French media. But he is at times prescient. Not least when France takes the first step towards reducing its coverage of terrorism, by declaring it will no longer name or photograph terrorist actors.

A sign of principle? No a sign of tiredness.

Russell Square: The Problem of Public Cynicism

Last night a 60 year old woman was stabbed to death at Russell Square in London, and five others injured. A 19 year old man was arrested at the scene.

Early reports are focusing on the attacker's mental health issues, with terrorism not being ruled out.

Here we meet the authorities greatest PR challenge, and a potential boon for Islamic State whereby they achieve some of their aims, whilst doing little or nothing. The authorities, political elites and religious organisations have spent so long enforcing the view terrorism is nothing to do with Islam, large swathes of the general public no longer believe anything they say after major incidents such as this.

Consider the BBC. It cannot bring itself to refer to Islamic State as, Islamic State. It is the so-called Islamic State. In nearly thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, and despite contestation in the Republic movement over the name, they never once referred to the 'so-called IRA'. Ulster loyalists who felt the Ulster Defence Association did not speak for them, were expected to suffer the indignity of the name's daily usage by the press, whether they liked it or not.

The murder of Father Jaques Hamel could hardly be more religious. A French priest has his throat cut at the alter during communion by two Islamic State supporters crying 'Allah Akhbar'. Yet the immediate response of some of our elites is to say the exact opposite in explanation.

In pubs, cafes and clubs across the country, the masses are now laughing at this. Many people now assume that when they are told an attack is not terror related, it is. They are beginning to see terms such as 'attacker with mental health problems' as a euphemism. That cynicism is unhealthy. It aids some of Islamic State's aims of causing dissension and division. It discredits the other work of the police, security services, media and politicians.

It is ultimately far worse for community relations, and the future of the country, than the truth. Whatever Russell Square is, it should serve as a reminder that this politically correct nonsense has to stop.

After St-Etienne-du-Rouvray: How To Respond To Islamism In Its Varying Stripes?

How best do we respond to jihadist terrorism? In the same way we that we should be responding to every other stripe of Islamism. That is what the murderers of St-Etienne-du-Rouvray are, Islamists, with the jihadis best described as the violent protruding end of a much bigger stick. A stick that seeks to gradually clear and then control space, at all levels in our society.

Respond without fear, and with the utmost confidence in your own life and values.

After the Brussels airport bombing in March, Charlie Hebo published an editorial which emphasised the inherent danger of living in a society which always steps back.

"The first task of the guilty is to blame the innocent. It's an almost perfect inversion of culpability. From the bakery that forbids you to eat what you like, to the woman who forbids you to admit that you are troubled by her veil, we are submerged in guilt for permitting ourselves such thoughts. And that is where and when fear has started its sapping, undermining work. And the way is marked for all that will follow."

I am indebted to Kerensky @Petrograd1917 (probably not his or her's real name) for drawing my attention to the above quote, which I am ashamed to say I missed at the time.

As Terrorism Increases, So Does The Left's Psychosis

I don't think there was a jihadist attack anywhere in Europe yesterday.

I may be mistaken. There will probably be one today or the day after. These are the times we are living in. The most recent attack, in Ansbach in Germany, saw a Syrian Islamic State supporter attempt to bomb a music concert, before detonating his suicide rucksack at a bar.

Once, we were told that such actions were solely related to our foreign policy. But Germany has avoided militarism since 1945. Countries with at times aggressive foreign policies such as France, appear to face the same risk and problems as more benign nations like Belgium. The only common denominator appears to be the nations with significant and increasing minorities of Sunni Muslims see a minority within those communities turn to violence. Nations with much smaller or negligible Islamic minorities - the Baltic States, the Republic of Ireland, the Visegrad nations - appear set to miss the problem of jihadist violence.

All of this has had a peculiar effect on the left. Today the image below popped up on my twitter feed.

Whoever designed, and those who retweet it, deserve to be sued under the trades descriptions act. Germany, which has taken over a million migrants in the past year, has not attacked anyone since the second world war. Although it is sadly now being bombed and treated to axe attacks by some of the very people it has allowed to settle in its midst. Similar points can no doubt be made about other EU nations.

But for many on the left, the point that immigration can bring real problems as well as positives, may never be conceded. The problem has to be 'us' (by which I mean the West in general, or sometimes specific countries within it) and cannot be the 'other' in whom the last century left sees a sort of noble savage, the harbinger of a new society they have been unable to build themselves.

It is not working out very well, is it?

Boris Johnson: More Turkish Rhymes Please

Those of us hoping the British government will eventually take a tough line on Turkish state terrorism and Ankara's sponsorship of terrorism, will allow ourselves a brief surge of expectation at the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary.

It is only two months since Boris won The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition for this little ditty:

There was a young fellow from Ankara
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.

Lets take down the section of the UK embassy in Turkey's website, concerned with assisting Turkey and its application to join the European Union - British voters exercised a veto on that on June 23rd. May I suggest it is now replaced with a poetry corner?

The 'Vulnerable' Terrorists?

The quote below is from a BBC report last week into an NHS doctor from Sheffield who has joined Islamic State in Syria, although it could just as easily be from a score of similar reports in recent years.

"Dr Abuanza is a Palestinian doctor with British citizenship who spent seven years working for the NHS. He is the first practising NHS doctor known to have joined the Islamic State group.
Security minister John Hayes said IS "target vulnerable people".

In what way is a professional man in his mid-late thirties, married with two children and a job for life in Britain's most respected industry, 'vulnerable'? What is this rubbish?

One element with such terminology, is it is the way that well-meaning people in authority have come to talk about ethnic minorities. And only ethnic minorities. We managed to go through thirty years of terrorism in Northern Ireland without a single Conservative or Labour Minister describing IRA or UDA members as 'vulnerable'. I do not think we can explain such curious language as specific to this era. Does anyone imagine if the English Defence League had morphed into a terrorist group regularly murdering Muslims on our streets, MPs would stand up and describe their number as 'vulnerable'?

It is ultimately about politicians - and more generally a liberal elite across core sectors of our society - that cannot quite accept what it sees happening, and so wants to believe some subterfuge or deceit is instead at play.

Opium of the Masses: A Reply to Peter Singer

The current issue of the New Humanist has a short article "Opium of the Masses" where I reply to moral philosopher Peter Singer, and his desire to work with religious groups to achieve social justice.

You can read 'Opium of the Masses' online here, or download it as a pdf below:
Download Stott New Humanist Summer 2016 Vol 131 No 2 pp 14-15.

Why Shami Chakrabarti's Anti-Semitism Inquiry Will Be A Whitewash

Simple electoral mathematics demand it.

Labour can only have an inquiry into anti-Semitism if it scratches the surface.

Its relations with the British Muslim community will not survive a thorough examination of anti-Semitism in towns like Luton or Bradford.

The methodology being used by the Jewish Chronicle in its story about Naz Shah MP, and Guido Fawkes in a series of recent cases to break stories of extremism and racism involving prominent British Muslims, is not revolutionary. It is that Conservative Campaign Headquarters and Hope Not Hate used against UKIP candidates in the 2014 European elections and 2015 UK elections. Trawl through an individuals social media accounts, look for anything which could be considered (or actually is) racist and use it to hit the candidate, hard, via a compliant media. Some of the stories proved to be false and led to embarrassing apologies, others were not, but they got the job done.

Anti-Semitism may or may not be a deep-rooted problem within the left. It is deep-rooted however within British Islam, as Medhi Hasan observed in an important article in the New Statesman in 2013. Whilst the British left is at times determined in drawing a distinction between criticism of Zionism as a political ideology, and criticism of Jews as people, examine the posters and messages on any pro-Palestinian demonstration and you will see this distinction rapidly becomes blurred, especially among politically active British Muslims. If Labour's internal inquiry starts examining attitudes to the issue of anti-Semitism among constituency Labour parties in London, Birmingham, West Yorkshire, East Lancashire and Greater Manchester, things are going to get very messy indeed.

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party can afford to raise that stone, because we know what is crawling underneath. The problem Shami Chakrabarti faces however, is that if she does not raise the stone others, the Jewish Chronicle and Guido Fawkes to take just two examples, will do it instead.

The European Union and Syria's 'Rebels'

My Blogging for Leave contribution today concerns the consistent ability of the EU to make us less safe. The EU is far more than a mere trading bloc, but a political player with a completely unnecessary security role.

Whilst the definitive history of the EU's engagement with Syria's 'rebels' is still to be written, this snippet on their relationship is indicative, with the declaration Brussels should arm those in the field:

"The call by the Syrian National Coalition followed EU's decision earlier this week to let the Syrian arms embargo expire, paving way for individual countries in the 27-member union to send weapons to Assad's outgunned opponents."

Manchester Evening News, 30/05/13.

Many of those guns, wherever they eventually came from, are today pointing not at Assad, but at Brussels, Paris and London.

The EU's Border Force and the Risk of Terrorism

The annual risk analysis by the European Union's border force, Frontex, makes for sober reading. The European Union often does not know who it is letting in, nor who it allows to cross its territory:

"the identification issue concerns the potential threat to internal security. With large numbers of arrivals remaining essentially unclassified for a variety of reasons, there is clearly a risk that persons representing a security threat may be entering the EU." (p.61)

The danger this poses was evidenced last year:

"The Paris attacks in November 2015 clearly demonstrated that irregular migratory flows could be used by terrorists to enter the EU. Two of the terrorists involved in the attacks had previously irregularly entered through Leros and had been registered by the Greek authorities. They presented fraudulent Syrian documents to speed up their registration process." (p.7)

Britain has a degree of protection against such individuals, as we are not part of the Schengen agreement allowing free movement across the EU. However there is nothing to stop British jihadis mingling and liaising with such individuals once they have entered Europe, and all would be able to enter the UK, unquestioned, as soon as they obtain EU citizenship. Indeed Angela Merkel has guaranteed the right to remain to all Syrians, making Syrian documentation, whether genuine or fraudulent, ever more valuable to those with malign intent.

The European Union is making Britain less safe.

A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan?

You might not have seen it debated, and American taxpayers might never have voted for it, but it seems that over the past 13 years, the US government has repeated the Marshall Plan, but in Afghanistan.

It was the Marshall plan which helped to rebuild and reconstruct a battered Europe after WW2. It now emerges that US spending in Afghanistan this century exceeds that spent in Europe from the late 1940s onwards:

"Some $113bn (£79bn) has already been spent by the US government on reconstruction in Afghanistan in 13 years. That's more than the $103bn (in today's money) it spent on helping to rebuild Europe after the Second World War."

So, Afghanistan must be well on its way to enjoying the wealth, stability and prosperity enjoyed by West Germany or the Netherlands, right? Er, not quite.

"For every dollar spent in Afghanistan, at least 29 cents disappears in fraud or wastage, based on figures from the US Commission on War Time Contracting. And even that 29 cents is a conservative estimate".
Both quotes in Jonathan Owen "We have worked with many brave Afghan policemen..but many are no longer there," i, 29/03/2016. The Independent version of the article is online here.

As a result of this, the Americans appointed John Sopko, a former member of the Department of Justice's organised crime force in Cleveland, as Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Since 2012, this organisation estimates it has saved $946 million, and levied dozens of criminal charges.

Whatever the Americans have been doing in Afghanistan since 2001, let no one say it is imperialism. By its very nature, imperialism takes more than it gives - and the Americans have given an enormous amount. Who they have given it to, and whether they had any mandate from their own voters for what is in effect a second Marshall Plan, is another matter entirely.....

Ramzan Kadyrov, the WBA and a Great Boxing Upset

Last night I was able to find an online stream of the WBA Heavyweight title fight from Grozny, where the champion Ruslan Chagaev, an Uzbek now based in Germany, fought Australian Lucas Browne.

To my knowledge, it was the first world class sporting event to be held in Chechnya, certainly in its period as an independent state within Russia. Given where Chechnya was twenty five years ago, that is some achievement. In terms of the fight itself, few gave Browne a prayer. Although Chagaev is clearly past his best at 37, he has always been a class act, and was in his second period as world champion. His only two defeats, to Wladimir Klitschko and Alexander Povetkin. Browne, a former martial artist, was unbeaten, but had never fought anyone in Chagaev's class. Good quality heavyweight sparring is hard to find in Australia, and Browne has actually spent chunks of his career fighting minor opponents at the bottom end of boxing bills here in the UK.

A curious backdrop to the fight was the towering presence of Chechnya's strongman leader, the pugnacious Ramzan Kadyrov. The former head of a pro-Russian militia who has held power in Grozny since 2007, Kadyrov rather looks like he should be in the ring himself (he is pictured above, pre-fight, with Browne). Indeed during the 2014 terrorist attacks on his territory, Kadyrov raced to the scene himself, armed, in order to help put down any insurgency. It is hard to imagine David Cameron or Jeremy Corbyn doing that.
Whilst Kadyrov has broadly ensured Putin's need for stability in the troublesome Muslim south, it has come at a high price. Karima Bennoune's excellent "Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here" has a detailed section on Chechnya - the status of women, and political freedom's generally, have worsened under Kardyrov. Indeed his main trick seems to be repeating that practised by a series of Arab dictators - giving ground to Islamist actors in terms of civil law and broader society, but rigidly excluding their armed factions from political influence.

In terms of the fight itself, Chagaev did the classier work, and should really have stopped Browne in the sixth and eight rounds. Ramzan Kadyrov positioned himself at the ring apron, occasionally slapping the ring floor with excitement, and yelling Chagaev forward. If the most famous stories of politicians and boxing focus on the Rumble in the Jungle and Mobutu Sese Soko, Kadyrov seems to have got considerably closer to the action than his African counterpart. And then, it all went wrong. Browne put Chagaev on the seat of his pants. The chance of a lifetime beckoned, and he threw furious haymakers as a dazed Chagaev got himself stuck on the ropes. The referee, correctly in my view, stopped the flight. Mrs Chagaev, who had now moved almost as close to the ring as Ramzan Kadyrov, struggled to decide whether to keep her hair covered with both hands, or to slap the cameraman who was clearly invading her personal space. Kadyrov made his anger at the referee's decision clear, whilst a thousand Chechens booed.

But it was over. The decision was accepted, and one of boxing's greatest upsets had ensued. That at least will ensure that Grozny earns its footnote in boxing history. Whilst the WBA and other authorities probably need to pass a ruling against allowing politicians untrammeled access to the ring area (Kadyrov's presence could easily have intimidated the officials) all was fair on this occasion, in love and war. Chagaev almost certainly heads back to Germany and retirement, and for Browne some huge pay days await. But not, I suspect, in Chechnya.

Acceptable and Unacceptable Glories

This morning BBC Radio 4's Start the Week was a discussion centering on the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany, and his new work.

What I found remarkable about this was less Al Aswany, or even the panel discussion, but the issues redolent in Tom Sutcliffe's introduction. Sutcliffe stated:

"The greatness of Islamic societies in the past has led Muslims of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious Islamic societies in the future. How can they get past the disappointing compromised and sometimes violent present though? Must an Islamic state necessarily be at odds with modern secular democracy? And can an open pluralistic society come to a working accommodation with a monotheistic faith?"

There is plenty of food for thought here. For Islamists, the gap between theory and reality in Muslim majority societies, and especially in countries which declare themselves Islamic, poses an almost insurmountable challenge. Thus far, the easiest response has been to call for ever more of whatever interpretation of Islam is to hand - hence in part the Islamification of Pakistan under Zia, and later the development of both Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. To my mind it also helps explain the prevalence of conspiracy theories in both Muslim communities here and in Muslim majority nations - if life is not ideal, it cannot be due to the beliefs on which life is predicated, but the wiles of those opposed to the faith. Equally, the extent to which a pluralistic society can accommodate Islam is one of the issues of our age - certainly since the Rushdie affair.

But as so often with the BBC, Sutcliffe accidentally tells us as much about his world, as he does anything else. Just read that first line again:

"The greatness of Islamic societies in the past has led Muslims of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious Islamic societies in the future".

I am not sure many Radio 4 listeners felt uncomfortable hearing those words. Substitute the word British, for Islamic and Muslims, and then see how it reads. You could equally do that with the words German, American or French, to similar effect.

"The greatness of British societies in the past has led Britons of all kinds to dream about and plan for equally glorious British societies in the future".

But Sutcliffe, and I suspect many Radio 4 listeners, would feel distinctly uncomfortable if a politician were talking of the glories of Britain's past forming the basis to establish a glorious future. The liberal aversion to Donald Trump talking about the United States in such terms, is marked.

Why then is liberal opinion tolerant of such a vision for Islamic societies?

Significantly, references to glorious Islamic societies of the future tend not to predominate in the discourse of contemporary British Muslim representative organisations. You can certainly find it though in recent decades - old Islamic Foundation pamphlets are a good source for it - and it is certainly present in the current rhetoric of the Islamic State. For now though, we tend to hear much more from the Muslim Council of Britain about pluralism, democracy and accommodation.

Am I the only person who considers that deep down in Tom Sutcliffe's words is a recognition, by his focus on 'glorious Islamic societies in the future' that we don't really buy all this talk of accommodation and pluralism, but, as with many others, he is much too polite to say so?

Human Rights Tied In Knots

How terrified some have become of causing offence. So terrified that it even precludes the development of a rational argument.

I have been reading the book "Double Jeopardy: Police Abuse of Women in Pakistan" by Dorothy Q Thomas. This was jointly published in 1992 by Women's Rights Project and Asia Watch, divisions of Human Rights Watch. I apologise for using a somewhat obscure title to make a broader political point, but even if the book itself is hard to pick-up now, the text is available online here.

Following the introduction of Islamic law in 1979 by General Zia, the number of women in prison in Pakistan increased from a mere 70 (!) to over 2000. HRW wants to address this, but its own fear and equivocation of articulating what it ostensibly advocates - universal human rights - prevents it from doing so:

"The Hudood Ordinances criminalize, among other things, adultery, fornication and rape, and prescribe punishments for these offenses that include stoning to death, public flogging and amputation. Human Rights Watch has no opposition to Islamic law per se and does not object to laws founded on religion, provided that human rights are respected and the principle of equality before the law is upheld. However, the Hudood laws, as written and applied, clearly conflict with these rights and principles. Not only do they prescribe punishments that are cruel and inhuman under international law, but they clearly discriminate on the basis of gender."

It is worth noting, this is a 'human rights' organisation writing 23 years ago. After an additional two decades of agitation from religious organisations and apologists, and migration from Muslim majority countries to the west, the fence sitting and obsessive desire to avoid causing offence is considerably worse.

Looking at the Human Rights Watch website today, the main article on its home page is a call to illicit financial donations before 2015 closes. Its financial appeal is accompanied by this mission statement:

"Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice."

If so, HRW needs to grow a pair and develop some critique of religiously based legal systems. Sharia seems as good a place as any to start. Until it does, why should anyone donate money to those practising such determined obfuscation?

"We're Not Political, We're Only Doing Our Jobs"

Following their role in the 1984-5 miners strike, demonstrators took to mocking police officers with the sarcastic song "We're not political, we're only doing our jobs" whenever a group of uniformed police officers appeared anywhere in significant numbers.

In 2015, it seems little has changed. Flicking through the current issue of the Docklands and East London Advertiser, there is a small report on a demonstration held outside East London Mosque on 11 December, following Friday prayers. Its purpose was to condemn US Presidential challenger Donald Trump, who responded to the San Bernadino terrorist attack by calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration to the United States.

An important centre for the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami (who are accused of massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Bangladesh Independence War of 1971) East London Mosque can certainly rally political leaders to its doorstep - local Labour Mayor John Biggs joined the protest. Among the others, the Advertiser reports:

"The protesters included United East End umbrella organisation of anti-racist groups, trades unions, faith leaders and Met Police Det Sgt Phil Langworthy".

According to the Met Police website, Det Sgt Langworthy is part of the police's Senior Leadership Team in Tower Hamlets, where he is in command of Criminal Investigation. And it seems, going to political demonstrations outside mosques?

Altogether now "We're not political, we're only doing our jobs".

The Dangers of Relying on Faith Leaders

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has today issued a report on the importance of knowledge in tackling honour crimes, female genital mutilation and forced marriage.

What is significant in the report is that it indicates some thirty years worth of policies and approaches towards minority communities in Britain may be flawed. Top-down multi-culturalism rather depends on the big white chief speaking to a big brown (or black) chief. Yet this is precisely what may need to be avoided in combating the types of crimes listed above.

"Overall, we found that the need to speak with the right people to build intelligence, and the risk to victims of speaking with the wrong people, was not always well understood by police officers and staff. The right people are not necessarily faith and community leaders, who may sometimes be the very
people promoting or supporting harmful practices in the name of honour."

The full pdf of the report is here. This is the HMIC press release on the report itself. Finally there is a broader University of Bristol report on these issues, by Marianne Hester et al, here.

Islamism: The Need to Talk About 'It'

The Algerian feminist Karima Bennoune has written of the importance of talking about 'it'. That when we talk about Islamic fundamentalism, that is what we need to talk about.

So often debate and discussion rapidly moves away - backwards to the invasion of Iraq, or sideways into talk of 'Islamophobia,' Donald Trump or the government's Prevent strategy. A core response by some to the Paris attacks by Islamic State was not to talk about 'it,' but to complain that victims of the group's attacks in Lebanon the day before did not receive the same publicity as those in France. What could be a debate about 'it' instead becomes one where the core focus is the perceived racism of the western press.

I characterise this as the 'pivot' response. Those who are uncomfortable with accepting Islamist actors may be bad news, or do bad things, quickly move onto discussing the issues they are comfortable with. This is frequently seen in some responses to particular terrorist attacks - a one sentence or one paragraph condemnation of the bombing or massacre, then a much lengthier dissemination on what the author concerned really wants to discuss. Here's examples from the Stop the War Coalition after 7/7, (scroll down in the link) and more recently the Australian National Imams Council (pdf here) - merely two of many.

This month I have a short letter 'Brush Strokes' in the Winter 2015 New Humanist, critiquing this tendency. We do have to talk about 'it'. If there is a problem, you need to analyse the problem, not solely focus on deficiencies in the responses to 'it'. Whether those responses are correct, flawed or indifferent, the problem itself is the primary issue. Below is the text of my letter:

It was great to receive the New Humanist and read its clear, unequivocal support for the Bangladeshi bloggers targeted by religious extremists. What is disappointing is the unsigned piece on David Cameron’s Birmingham speech (“Age of Extremes”, Autumn 2015). This says nothing of the Islamic extremism which has been an issue in the UK since calls for Salman Rushdie’s murder.

The author complains of Cameron’s “tendency to tar all Muslims with the same brush”, thus switching debate away from problems of ideology and belief, to actual or perceived discrimination. Here, New Humanist risks unintentionally feeding into Islamist narratives, where the problem is never Islam or Islamism, but how everybody else responds to it. If only the Prime Minister said nothing, if only the Daily Mail could adopt the discourse of the Guardian. Everything would be alright, wouldn’t it?

Dr Paul Stott, via email

Salma Yaqoob, Labour and De-Selecting MPs

Speaking to people on the left in recent weeks, there is certainly some appetite among Corbynistas to de-select right wing Labour MPs, who it is feared will never by loyal to Jeremy Corbyn as leader. For Corbyn to develop and implement a clear programme, then put it to the electorate in 2020, such people have to go.

But who will they be replaced by? An interesting example of who is waiting in the wings comes from Birmingham, where there are reports the former Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob is being lined up for a Labour seat. The incumbent at Birmingham Hall Green, Roger Godsiff, is having none of it. Although Godsiff fought off Yaqoob when she stood for Respect in 2010, she was a strong second on that occasion. The demographic changes in the constituency since surely suggest that if he were de-selected, and stood against Yaqoob as an independent or for any of the other parties, he would lose. Birmingham Hall Green Constituency Labour Party could have a very big decision to take.

Interestingly this story broke whilst Yaqoob was out of the country, addressing the annual conference of the Australian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Australian Islamic Mission. Among the speakers was a fellow Brit in the shape of Anas al-Tikriti, who runs the Cordoba Foundation, the Muslim Brotherhood's think tank in the UK. Al-Tikriti is a fixture at the Ikhwan's Finsbury Park Mosque, where the MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn holds constituency surgeries.

I am sure that Ms Yaqoob and Dr Al-Tikriti had much to discuss. But not at the Islamic Mission's lunch - that was, of course, segregated.

Our New Weapon Against Islamic State? Marketing Gobbledygook

This evening's Evening Standard has a bizarre one page feature on Sven Hughes, a former military psy-ops expert, who now runs a marketing and PR firm called Verbalisation.

Verbilisation has had some degree of profile due to its work with the anti-extremism think tank Quilliam. Here we hit the first problem. Given the degree of paranoia about and hatred for Qulliam from many Muslim representative groups, any PR company worth its salt would tell Quilliam to steer clear of Verbalisation, a company which Chris Blackwell's Standard piece claims is 'staffed largely by 'ex-military personnel'.

The second problem with Verbalisation is that someone seems to have decided the best weapon against IS is management gobbledygook. Check this out from Sven Hughes:

"the marketing industry has become quite lazy. Verbalisation is a step towards solving that. We have very rigorous methodology for decoding called RAID or Rapid Audience Insight Diagnostic. It's a 24-parameter, psychological profiling technique which enables us to not only understand what our audience is saying but what they're actually thinking, believing and what will effect their behaviour change."

I am not an automatic basher of Quilliam (unlike some academics) but I do hope they are not paying too much for this bizarre management and PR speak. And if this is the type of thought that is driving 'counter-radicalisation' policies in this country, it does not bode well.

One to Watch: Bilal Abdul Kareem

Bilal Abdul Kareem is an American Salafi Muslim who has developed a niche for himself as a journalist and film maker conducting interviews in the Middle East.

British viewers may have first come across his work when the footage he obtained of a British jihadi in the Katiba al Muhajireen group in Syria, Ibrahim al Mazwagi, was broadcast by Channel 4 news. Depending on which source you read, al Mazwagi was either the first or second Brit to be killed in the Syrian civil war. As well as running his own website, Kareem's work appears on like minded sites, such as that of Islam 21C in this country.

What makes Kareem important is less what he says or does, than his access. This extends to the highest levels within al-Qaeda. Uncomfortably for campaigners who supported him in the UK, since his departure to Jordan Abu Qatada has returned to his role as sage and theologian for al-Qaeda, an organisation somewhat rattled by the rise of ISIS and its 2014 declaration of a caliphate. Who did Qatada turn to, to publicise his views that the actions of ISIS were theologically and theoretically flawed? Bilal Abdul Kareem, in a three part interview published earlier this year.

Now, Kareem appears to have played a central role in the events involving Shukee Begum from Manchester, and her husband Jamal al-Harith. A former Guantanamo Bay inmate who received £1 million compensation from taxpayers, al-Harith subsequently left the north west of England for the Islamic State, where, Shukee Begum later joined him. There she made the shocking discovery that she was in a war zone, and (clearly well advised in terms of PR for her potential return to the UK) found that life in the caliphate was 'not her cup of tea'. Not only did Kareem obtain her interview, but he reportedly played a role in getting her out of the custody of a group of fighters opposed to ISIS, facilitating her release along with the Al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra.

She is now reportedly in what Kareem describes as "the liberated areas of northern Syria" - it is not clear where precisely he is referring to here. However, given his track record, Kareem is more likely to be referring to territory held by the al-Nusra Front. What an interesting address book he must have.....

One In, All In

I have spent a lot of time this summer reading some of the burgeoning literature of feminist critiques of Islamism - writers such as Meredith Tax, Melinda Cooper and Karima Bennoune. My paper to the 2015 Critical Terrorism Studies conference "Feminism or Islamism: Critical Terrorism Studies Develops a Blind Spot" largely covered their interventions.

You might not think much humour emerges in such circles, but it does. Consider Bennoune's 'Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here' and its report of a 2009 protest in Sudan against the flogging of journalist Lubna Hussein for the crime of wearing trousers in public:

"One of the protesters was an older, heavy-set woman from a generation which had known life before such restrictions. Young soldiers came to drag the protesters away and threw them one after another into a truck. When they got to the older woman, they could not lift her, so they told her to go home. Outraged, she hired a taxi to follow the other arrested women to jail."

Karima Bennoune, "Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories From the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism" p.82

Hamza Tzortzis, Segregation and ..... Ashley Madison

Perhaps the most high profile Islamist organisation on UK campuses in recent years has been iERA, the Islamic Education and Research Academy, headed by Hamza Tzortzis. It was iERA who caused the extremely damaging argument about segregation by Muslim students at universities, when, back in 2013 they attempted to segregate men and women onto separate sides of the room during a public meeting at UCL.

In a worrying sign of their attitude, at the time iERA pictured its male rota of speakers on their website, but portrayed the females as faceless hijabs - an indication no doubt, of their role in iERA's vision for our society. Today the same approach applies, with the men on iERA's 'Meet Our Speakers' page featured in all their glory, the women, listed last, recorded only by their names. Welcome to British Islam?

News emerges though, that Hamza Tzortzis may not always be so keen to keep women at a distance. In a sheepish post on his Facebook page, iERA's leader reports that his name, address and bank details appear in the leaks from the Ashley Madison site - a website dedicated to enabling no strings sex for married men and married women seeking an affair. This, we are told is an 'obvious case of fraud' even though he had carried on paying for membership of the site over several months. So busy was Mr Tzortzis doing Allah's work on campus, he neglected to notice his bank statements recorded regular fraudulent payments to a dating site with the by-line 'Life is short. Have an affair.' Easily done!

It is certainly possible however to think that the great man is hedging his bets a little, when he declares:

"My whereabouts and activities, both private and public are traceable and recorded, and there is without any doubt that I have not pursued such immoral acts that the site promotes (this includes permissible acts, for instance the endeavour to find another halal wife [who can also be a non-Muslim] who wanted to be with a married man, which is allowed in Islam)."

With the demise of the News of the World, that familiar staple of our Sunday reading, the tabloid sex scandal, could have become a thing of the past. For reasons of nostalgia, it is comforting to see that conservative religion and its inherent hypocrisy can still provide a chortle or two over our Sunday morning cornflakes. Those iERA tried to separate into different halves of the room at UCL in 2013 will certainly afford themselves a wry smile.
But simply laughing at groups like iERA is not enough - as the Council of Ex-Muslims illustrated in their report 'Evangelising Hate - the Islamic Education and Research Academy' - iERA present some real problems and dangers. Lets laugh at them now, but make sure that they are not the one's laughing tomorrow.

Where Corbyn Gets It Right

I am not a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. My opposition is due to the deep relationships he has developed with Muslim Brotherhood leaders in north London over the past decade, including running constituency surgeries out of the Ikhwan's Finsbury Park Mosque. A Corbyn Labour Party would give Islamists the greatest boost they have had in this country since the invasion of Iraq.

But Corbyn has real strengths. In talking politics, and giving straight answers to straight questions, he has presented a clear alternative to the Tweedledee and Tweedledum candidatures of Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall (who she?). I can't help thinking that inside Andy Burnham there is a normal bloke occasionally struggling to get out. But he was long ago eaten up by the New Labour party machine - its now a little too late to be shouting from inside the belly of the beast.

In his refusal to launch counter-attacks when brickbats are thrown, Jeremy Corbyn has risen above the fray. There is something faintly noble in his words to the latest criticism, this time from Yvette Cooper:

"We’ve used this campaign to put forward policy issues on the economy, the environment, arts policy. We’re the one putting forward ideas, so I don’t do personal, I don’t do reaction, I don’t do abuse. Life is too short and it devalues the political process. I think we should try and enhance the democratic life of this country, not reduce it to that level.”

The wheels could yet come off. Those who wish the Corbyn campaign well would be well advised to get him as far away as possible from the Muslim Brotherhood's Middle East Monitor (MEMO) event in London on 22nd August. To appear on the same panel as the anti-Semitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff is a bit much, even in the left's current Islamist friendly climate.

Such problems aside, Corbyn is the only candidate presenting political ideas, and seeking a constructive debate. For that alone he should win.

British Jihadism: The Detail and the Denial

I am reliably informed that apart from your examiners, nobody ever reads your PhD. In the unlikely circumstances that someone wants to battle through 99, 000+ words on British jihadism, you can download my doctorate via academia.edu here. The abstract below gives an overview of my arguments, approach and some of the detail which I hope makes the thesis unique. 

Since the early 1990s British Islamists have been fighting, killing and dying in a succession of conflicts across the world, beginning with the Bosnian Civil War of 1992-95. A decade later this violence reached the United Kingdom, with a series of deadly attacks on the London transport system in July 2005, the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. 

This thesis provides a historiography of the involvement of Britons in global and domestic jihadist struggles at home and abroad across three decades. It catalogues and records their actions, and bring into a central document the names and affiliations of both British Islamist combatants, and those from jihadist organisations who have settled in this country. The ever increasing number of Britons travelling to the Islamic State does not come as a surprise when the scale of past involvement in such causes is considered. 
This thesis deconstructs the religious objectives intrinsic to these trends, and emphasises that in British Jihadism it is the goal, as much as the message, which is religious. 

The reluctance of British Muslim representative organisations to address early examples of these developments, the ‘denial’ – is analysed herein. The development of a religious terrorism which often targets women and minority groups may have been expected to face critical examination from academics, in particular from within the critical terrorism studies school. Regrettably such rigour is found to be lacking. Indeed it is within the academy that some of the most sustained attempts to deny any religious influences behind contemporary terrorism have been found. Detailed feminist critiques of Islamist practice are deployed to advocate a new approach – one that leads to a critical terrorist studies which critiques not just government responses to terrorism, but terrorist actors also.

 

The Delusions of British Liberalism and Multi-Culturalism

I wrote the small piece below in response to an article on The Guardian website by Emine Samer on 27 July. This reports that the final member of the 'Pompey Lads' believed to be fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, Asad Uzzaman, has been killed. The Guardian, and especially its Comment is Free section, has a tendency to remove my comments, so I thought I would duplicate them here. 

The most telling thing about Emine Samer's article is part of its title - "How the Pompey Lads Fell into the hands of ISIS."

Perhaps the Pompey lads took a rational decision that ISIS broadly met their beliefs, and the caliphate was an ideal worth fighting for?

It is remarkable how readily good liberal journalists can now infantalise people from ethnic minorities in a way we would never see with others. During the conflict in Northern Ireland, did we ever talk of young Catholics in west Belfast 'falling into the hands' of the IRA? Or young unionists who joined loyalist paramilitaries in such terms?

Its the same with the woman and girls who have traveled to live in the Caliphate - they are always 'groomed' or 'lured' . Despite every one of them being over the age of criminal responsibility, we are asked to pretend nobody ever takes a rational decision.

I wonder if the war in Syria, the emergence of the Islamic State and British Islamist support for it actually tells us more about the crisis of liberalism and our staunchest advocates of multi-culturalism, than it does about the state of British Islam. Whatever you want to say about British Muslims, they are certainly not as prone to deluding themselves as our liberal media....

A Reply to the Cage/Academic Statement Condemning Prevent

This is my reply to the joint letter from Cage and a series of academics condemning the government's Prevent strategy and the 2015 Counter-Terrorism Security Act. It takes point by point the elements of the open letter published in the Independent on Friday. 

 

1.The latest addition to the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism framework comes in the form of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (CTS Act). The CTS Act has placed PREVENT on a statutory footing for public bodies to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism by tackling what is claimed to be ‘extremist ideology’. In practice, this will mean that individuals working within statutory organisations must report individuals suspected of being ‘potential terrorists’ to external bodies for ‘de-radicalisation’.

 

Indeed – and they could have added here the somewhat sinister nature of this de-radicalisation. You must it seems change your views, an approach which in a liberal democracy from a government elected by its citizens, is deeply worrying. In a democracy, it ought to be the other way round – the government is informed by the people.

 

2. The way that PREVENT conceptualises ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ is based on the unsubstantiated view that religious ideology is the primary driving factor for terrorism. Academic research suggests that social, economic and political factors, as well as social exclusion, play a more central role in driving political violence than ideology. Indeed, ideology only becomes appealing when social, economic and political grievances give it legitimacy. Therefore, addressing these issues would lessen the appeal of ideology.

 

This is perhaps the weakest part of the statement. Whilst poverty and exclusion may be factors in terrorism, there is little evidence this is the case with Islamist actors. Al-Qaeda for example has always been a predominantly Saudi organisation – the richest, not the poorest country in the Middle East. The Caliph of the Islamic State, al-Baghdadi, reportedly has a PhD in Islamic Sciences, a virtually identical background to the key figure in the foundation of Al-Qaeda – Abdullah Azzam.  British Jihadism is littered with the biographies of graduates and students who have travelled to Bosnia, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to fight, often at the expense of academic and professional careers. I would posit here it is the search for Islamic utopias, to live under sharia, rather than grievance about the removal of tax credits, which matters.

 

3.However, PREVENT remains fixated on ideology as the primary driver of terrorism. Inevitably, this has meant a focus on religious interaction and Islamic symbolism to assess radicalisation. For example, growing a beard, wearing a hijab or mixing with those who believe Islam has a comprehensive political philosophy are key markers used to identify ‘potential’ terrorism. This serves to reinforce a prejudicial worldview that perceives Islam to be a retrograde and oppressive religion that threatens the West. PREVENT reinforces an ‘us’ and ‘them’ view of the world, divides communities, and sows mistrust of Muslims.

 

Here Prevent is given an astonishing degree of power. How many people in the non-Muslim community have heard of Prevent? Around my way, discussion of it tends not to predominate in the local pub or café. With the exception of those professionally involved in the field, or politically active in related matters, Prevent is as well known among non-Muslims as academic studies of Slovenian foreign policy in the late 1990s. Yet we are informed it “divides communities and sows mistrust of Muslims?” 

For this, I am afraid far more blame lies with the fringes of British Islam. Cage – one of the authors of this statement -  spent the early part of the Syrian conflict informing all who would listen that Britain and Britons had nothing to fear from those going to fight Assad. This fiction was maintained even when it became clear most were joining Al-Qaeda’s al-Nusrah front or related jihadis. The murder of Alan Henning – a British aid worker killed for the sole reason he was not a Muslim -  and the blood curdling threats made by British jihadis in Syria on social media to their homeland, did more to ‘divide communities’ and ‘sow distrust’ than Prevent ever could. How do the academics who signed this letter think it looks that more British Muslims fight in jihadist groups in Syria than are members of the UK armed forces?

The joint letter expresses deep concern that Islamic dress is being wrongly associated with terrorism, as part of a mis-directed focus on ideology. On one level, we do not know if such approaches, crass as they may seem, are justified. I would love to see a dataset on how many women, convicted of terrorism in the UK, wear the niqab? I would love to see a dataset on how many men, convicted of terrorism here, have wives who wear the niqab or hijab? I suspect the percentage will be very, very high.

The reality though, as expounded by academics such as Jennifer L Jefferis in “Religion and Political Violence” (2010) is that whilst deeply religious ideology does help us to explain violence,  and why that violence is often so extreme, it paradoxically does not explain why others, with very similar beliefs do not turn to violence.  Ironically Cage, a group of Taliban supporters involved in giving legal assistance to Salafi-Jihadis, provide a classic example of this conundrum. Why is it one group is involved in violence, and the other, is not?

 

4.While much of the PREVENT policy is aimed at those suspected of ‘Islamist extremism’ and far-right activity, there is genuine concern that other groups will also be affected by such policies, such as anti-austerity and environmental campaigners – largely those engaged in political dissent.

 

Back in 2010, West Midlands Police, and others around Prevent, were promoting the idea it had three prongs – animal rights extremism, far-right extremism and what was euphemistically described as ‘Al-Qaeda inspired’ extremism. Anything rather than use the terms Jihad or Islamism. This came back to bite the authorities on the bum when the Syrian jihad started, and Britons involved in ISIS were actually fighting Al-Qaeda. These are the type of awkward facts academics once covered in order to hold those in power to account – not it seems now.

Whilst noting the concerns of the joint letter here, I suspect they are unfounded, and most likely this is a vague attempt to gain unearned support from anti-austerity and environmental campaigners. Attempts at moving Prevent into other orbits have always looked ridiculous – in the summer of 2010 I gave a talk on ‘Animal rights extremism’ to a Prevent conference in Birmingham. The great and the good of the Birmingham Muslim community rubbed their beards in genuine confusion and could be heard asking “who is this guy, and why is he talking about guinea pig farms?’.  Matthew Goodwin spoke, appallingly as it has nothing to do with terrorism, about BNP voting patterns. The whole thing was a nonsense, not least when Home Office figures in 2009 indicated that 92% of the those in prison for terrorism in Britain, affirmed themselves to be Muslim. Interestingly, and awkwardly for those who take the view ideology and belief is irrelevant, all are believed to be Sunni Muslims.

When faced with addressing violent trends within international Sunni Islam, or a few Greens thinking about picketing a BP depot,  even the British ruling class should have the brains to work out which is the greater potential threat. Surely?

 

5.Without due reconsideration of PREVENT’s poor reputation, the police and government have attempted to give the programme a veneer of legitimacy by expressing it in the language of ‘safeguarding’. Not only does this depoliticise the issue of radicalisation, it shifts attention away from grievances that drive individuals towards an ideology that legitimises political violence.

 

Prevent has a poor reputation, as any government programme designed to change people’s beliefs should. But the language of social work is not confined to Prevent – infantilising language dominates discussion about British Muslims. For example, young people in the Muslim community are routinely referred to as ‘vulnerable’ to the wiles of extremist propagandists. This prompted the memorable retort from academic Anthony Richards that Prevent asks us to believe the country is threatened by ‘vulnerable’ people! Young people and especially British women never decide to go to the Islamic State of their own free will – they are instead ‘groomed’ or ‘lured’.

They are certainly being de-politicised, but what concerns me is not simply that grievances may be ignored, but that the academics who signed this letter appear so ignorant that religious utopias clearly matter to some young Britons.

 

6.PREVENT will have a chilling effect on open debate, free speech and political dissent. It will create an environment in which political change can no longer be discussed openly, and will withdraw to unsupervised spaces. Therefore, PREVENT will make us less safe. 

 

Cheeky. Universities have long restricted, censored, blocked and discouraged. The far-right for example, has been denied the possibility to organise on UK campuses for at least forty years. In the last year, to take the example of my former institution the University of East Anglia, these restrictions spread to groups who are non-racist – UKIP and Class War. The Free Speech rankings for UK universities indicate that all is not, currently well.

Yes, Prevent, by extending the de facto ban on the far-right to Islamist speakers could make that worse, but the signatories of this letter make poor libertarians. To test this proposition, ask a few of the Islamists listed how they feel about Salman Rushdie’s rights to free speech and to dissent from the Islamic faith? Ask a few of the academics how they feel about Charlie Hebdo – the word ‘but’ will appear very quickly.

If the rallying call is to discuss ideas openly, count me in. I just don’t believe the signatories of this letter want that. For a minute.

 

7. We believe that PREVENT has failed not only as a strategy but also the very communities it seeks to protect. Instead of blindly attempting to strengthen this project, we call on the government to end its ineffective PREVENT policy and rather adopt an approach that is based on dialogue and openness.  

 

Describing Prevent as ‘failed’ is an easy thing to do – no one has ever been able to develop an indicator or measurement of ‘success’ with such interventions.

It is not immediately clear what an approach of ‘dialogue and openness’ actually means here. Schemes much lauded in the past for taking this approach – for example the Met’s Muslim Contact Unit working in ‘partnership’ with Islamist and Salafist groups -  brought clear gains in terms of real estate and influence for those currents; the gains for broader society were less clear. Indeed the support of such currents for the Syrian jihad suggest they were actually own goals.

 

Dr Paul Stott

12 July 2015. 

Where's Bob? Guess Who Is Missing From the Cage Prevent Letter?

Reading through the list of signatories on Cage's anti-Prevent statement in the Independent, one prominent name is missing. 

Where is Bob Lambert of St Andrews and London Metropolitan universities? A self-styled 'progressive academic' he is a prominent supporter of Islamic causes in London, and many of the academics Lambert has worked with - most notably Basia Spalek and David Miller - have signed up. So have some of the Islamists in Muslim Brotherhood related institutions with which Lambert has long associated - for example Ismail Patel of Friends of Al-Aqsa and Mohammed Kozbar of Finsbury Park Mosque. 

Could it be Bob Lambert was not asked to add his name? And these advocates of free speech and civil liberties feel a little embarrassed at working with a career Special Branch officer, now his work spying on individuals and using them for sex is better known than his role in the Met's Muslim Contact Unit? 

Cage and Prevent Follow-Up

The letter Cage and Prof Richard Jackson were promoting on Wednesday opposing Prevent, has now appeared in the Independent. 

It is actually slightly worse that I expected it to be. After some classic academic hierarchy - Professors to the top - some of the worst names in British Islamism appear. To be lectured on freedom of speech and extremism by Haitham al-Haddad is slightly surreal. Interesting al-Haddad appears here wearing his Fatwa Council Of Europe hat, rather than his controversial role of judge at the Islamic Sharia Council in East London.  You may recall his views on the superiority of men over women in this Channel 4 discussion, with Fatima Manji. Shakeel Begg of the Islamic Centre in Lewisham has been called many things over the years, but a believer in free speech and critical comment he is not.  If these are the people to the fore of a campaign against government policy to restrict freedom of speech in our universities, that campaign is flawed from its beginning. 

Of the academic signatories, several are in receipt of the largesse currently provided by the Muslim Brotherhood and its front groups to select UK academics - Tom Mills, Hilary Aked and David Miller. Unfortunately, those of us academics who earn a slightly more honest crust struggle to have our say on these issues. Whilst Prof Jackson was able to circulate encouragement to sign up to a draft of this letter on the critical terrorism studies list on Wednesday 8 July, my comments in response are still to appear on that list. 

Lets all join hands together and say we support free debate and discussion shall we?