Secret UK government plans designed to win the "hearts and minds" of young Muslims and to dissuade the vulnerable from resorting to terrorism were strongly criticized by community organizations on Sunday.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has assembled a group of senior civil servants from nine government departments to work on a project, code-named Contest, aimed at about 10,000 young Muslims whom officials fear may be sympathetic to al-Qaida.
The project, details of which were revealed on Sunday in Cabinet documents leaked to the Sunday Times, would lead to an intervention in the political and religious practices of Muslim communities.
Under the plan, radical foreign imams would be vetted abroad, and those who refused to "sign up" for the British way of life would be barred from the country. More moderate spiritual leaders in the UK would receive government support.
The government might fund moderate Islamic newspapers and broadcasters. Young Muslim "ambassadors" would be chosen to project an Islam-friendly image of Britain. The government may also seek to amend the Race Relations Act to make religious discrimination a criminal offense.
Muslim leaders criticized the plan on Sunday. The secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Iqbal Sacranie, said: "Taxpayers' money is better spent addressing the root problems that affect the community, such as education, unemployment, equality and political and social inclusion."
Massoud Shadjareh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission called the project outrageous, adding: "This is an attempt to make Muslims more `government friendly' rather than `British friendly' and it is just not going to work. Who will define who is moderate and who is not?"
Ali Shah of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee said the government's diagnosis of the causes of Muslim disillusionment was too insular. "If you go into any mosque, they are not talking about social deprivation, what they are talking about is Iraq and Palestine and the double standards in the way the government has dealt with both issues."
Shah also said the government had exaggerated the number of potential recruits for al-Qaida.
The Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia warned in a new report of growing alienation among young Muslims. Richard Stone, the commission chairman, said the Whitehall solution represented a top- down approach.
"They don't seem to have significant Muslim voices in this discussion -- and that is a problem," he said.
He said excessive emphasis was being placed on Muslim communities.
According to the Sunday Times, the project was prompted by attacks in March on Madrid commuter trains, and the discovery in London of materials for bombs.
The thinking behind the program was outlined by Cabinet Secretary Andrew Turnbull in a letter to departments on April 6.
"The aim is to prevent terrorism by tackling its causes ... to diminish support for terrorists by influencing social and economic issues," he said.
In a note to the Home Office permanent secretary, John Gieve, Turnbull called for a blueprint to win "the hearts and minds" of Muslim youth.
Turnbull wrote: "Al-Qaida and its offshoots provide a dramatic pole of attraction for the most disaffected. The broader task is to address the roots of the problem, which include dis-crimination, disadvantage and exclusion suffered by many Muslim communities."
Officials were given worrisome statistics at an interdepartmental meeting on May 19. The Home Office found that 16 percent of working-age Muslims had never worked or were long-term unemployed, and more than 40 percent had no recognized educational qualification.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver