Corrupting Communities: UK Government
Play Two Sides Of The Same Coin
Posted By Sahib Mustaq Bleher (Flying Imam)
June 28, 2008
Councils up and down the country are given substantial sums
of money by central government to combat "Islamic extremism".
The more Muslims a local council has, the more money it gets,
suggesting that extremism must be something inherent in being
Muslim and therefore increases proportional to their numbers.
Cash-strapped councils will welcome the much needed cash, but of
course they will also need to justify it and produce results. To
show that they are proactive in combatting extremism, we can
expect to see examples of extremism turning up where they never
existed before.
It is not only local authorities who can be expected to engage
in creative accounting. Some of the money (only some, a big junk
is expected to cover the council's "administrative" expenses)
will have to be given to Muslim groups or individuals. These,
too, must prove that they can deliver the goods. What better way
to do so then to denounce rival groups or unpopular individuals
as being extremist?
All this has undertones of Stalinism. Schoolbook history is
misleading about the "collapse" of the Soviet Republics.
Capitalism and Communism have always been two sides of the same
coin and both favour strong central governments. Effectively,
communism was bought out and simply moved West since it is
probably more convenient to bribe people into giving up their
liberties than having to threaten and bully them. Where the
carrot does not work, Western governments also have the stick,
like the right to declare exclusion zones or holding people
without charge, all in the name of fighting terrorism or
extremism.
What both systems need to stay in power, however, is
surveillance. Corrupt governments do not trust their subjects
and need to keep an eye on them. Britain is leading the way in
camera surveillance. Other countries in the ever enlarging
European Union (run like the Soviet Union by unelected
commissioners) lead the way in gathering and retaining computer-processable
information about their citizens, recently complemented by
biometrics. Yet, making sense of information is difficult from a
distance, hence the desire to recruit informers. MI5 have been
given a lot more resources as well to recruit from amongst
Muslims, but the government is probably right in assuming that
individuals would hesitate to join, or cooperate with the Secret
Service, whereas they would quite happily compromise a little if
offered a share in the money for a new community project and
become, unwittingly, citizen informers. This method isn't new
either. Files for East Germany after re-unification showed that
there was a dossier almost on every citizen and almost everybody
was informing on everybody else. It is doubtful that much of
this information was very reliable, and a great deal of it was
probably offered in order to settle old scores, to gain an
advantage or due to holding a grudge. What better way, for
example, to get custody for one's children in a divorce case
than portraying the opposing party as a Muslim extremist likely
to radicalise the children?
One thing seems apparent. The less money a government has to
spend on education, healthcare or basic infrastructure, the more
money it is likely to throw at ways and means to combat any
potential disenchantment with and protest against the level of
services provided. Those who happily agreed to an erosion of
freedom in order to be protected from Islamic extremism will
soon find out that those measures were really intended for them,
not the extremists. There is something seriously wrong with a
political system where a front bencher in parliament such as
David Davis has to resign to draw attention to the overbearing
control exercised by government. And it doesn't matter which
party gains power in an election. As with capitalism and
communism, they too are two sides of the same coin.
EsinIslamis
pleased to present - from February 2012 - its online
discussion and commenting services through Disqus
These services - for
websites and online communities that uses a networked
platform - provides a platform that includes various
features, such as social integration, social
networking, user profiles, spam and moderation tools,
analytics, email notifications, and mobile commenting
*Not
every comment gets published on
EsinIslam
*While trying - usually selective - to publish
quality comments, especially those that serve.
purposes of Da'wah, Education, And Relief to
Humanity,
EsinIslam all rights are reserved not to add
abusive comments and/or comments that may harm
the Muslims and their interests.
*No submission of personal details such as
e-mail addresses is required before adding
comments on
EsinIslam
*Irrelevant and/or incomplete comments do not
get Published on
EsinIslam
The new comment
widget from Disqus is written in JavaScript and is
powered by a back end primarily written in Django
