The Prevent project, aimed mainly at Muslim communities, has justifiably been labelled Provoke. The officials are grappling to stifle the unrest generated by this programme among Muslim communities, through which it hopes to identify people vulnerable to recruitment by Al Qaeda-aligned death-dance groups.
The allegations of spying on Muslims could be true because Prevent is a multi-faceted project that uses many arms of the state including police, local government, teachers and youth workers to help neighbourhoods counter Al Qaeda’s anti-Western message. But then is not the West guilty of radicalising Muslim freedom fighters of Afghanistan and then promoting anti-East bias? Is it not out to destroy those it funded and created to break up the Soviet Union? Need it be considered strange behaviour if Al Qaeda is out to lash out against its former sponsors? Oddly enough, each party now wants the other destroyed.
Some have justifiably objected to the British government’s effort by commenting that ‘there is no point trying something as sensitive as Prevent before you’ve improved community cohesion, because the trust won’t be there’.
Many Muslim families are hesitant to join hands with the authorities for fear of ‘getting a police boot kicked through our door’. However, officials think the Muslims are being unnecessarily defensive and are, hence, fine-tuning the campaign to win the trust of more Muslims and to get communities to share their grass-roots understanding of the threats.
The National Association of Muslim Police, which represents more than 2,000 officers, complained that ‘Prevent has stigmatised Muslims and may have seriously damaged relations between the 1.8 million Muslims and the rest of the British population.’
Since hatred towards Muslims has grown to an illogical level, Prevent is an affront to British values—whatever they might be. It is said that Prevent focuses too much on Islamic extremism and not enough on threats from far right groups who have caused the Muslim communities to live in an atmosphere of siege. Because the British system has not made communities feel part of the British identity, people continue to live parallel lives.
Perhaps the Muslims need to speak up more against the satanic forces bent upon radicalising them. Fifty-two percent of Britons fear Britain stands deeply divided on religious lines; they are particularly worried about Islam compared with other faiths.
Problems and suspicions arise when civil servants trying to boost community relations also use the relationship to discuss a family’s worries about a pro-Al Qaeda son. Prevent Director Debbie Gupta told Royal United Services Institute think tank, “There is great confusion about Prevent’s link to wider efforts to strengthen Muslim communities. Prevent spying is a myth. Prevent is focused on Muslims because that is where Al Qaeda’s focus is. They deploy their distorted version of Islam onto Muslims.”
All sensible Britons fear Prevent and they are not entirely wrong in interpreting it as spying. If you have seen the film Minority Report, you will recall how the authorities loved tracking down people by prying into their lives and arresting them prior to committing alleged crimes. George Orwell’s soul would now be in great distress watching his country turn into the dreaded Big Brother—a concept created in his fictional novel ‘1984’ which he wrote in 1949.
It appears that a universal law will soon be passed that will punish Muslims for merely thinking about their own state of affairs reached through systematic economic subjugation and physical destruction. Hollywood proposes and the American government disposes; the rest of the nations merely queue up for this big business called war; those who stand up to protest are labelled terrorists or rogue states.
Catholics and Protestants have had many shooting matches and bombing sprees in Ireland but nobody blamed Jesus or the Bible. Now consider the case of Muslims: Danish newspapers have repeatedly printed insulting cartoons of the Messenger of God and loads of books have been written against Islam and the Qur’an to further antagonize and radicalize Muslims globally. But why?—most thinking Muslims already know why. Complete submission to His Will is the answer to our problems, as promised by God. After the sad demise of godless Soviet Communism, Islam is the only system left that the satanic forces perceive as a global threat.
Wars profit those who make and sell weapons of mass destruction to both the sides in a conflict. We live in times of global provocation and sponsored instability. Human beings will not sail smoothly in a boat called Global Peace, unless the cowards stop dropping bombs on the innocent from 35,000 feet using drone aircrafts or chasing after genies they released from sealed bottles.
