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UK anti-extremism drive
Saturday, July 04, 2009
LONDON: US drone attacks and prisoner abuse are undermining efforts by close ally Britain to counter al-Qaeda’s anti-Western message among its Muslim communities, an influential former Islamist ideologue said on Friday.
Maajid Nawaz, director of Britain’s Quilliam Foundation, which calls itself a counter-extremism think tank, said Islamist influence in Britain had reached “a plateau” after a long period of growth born of past government neglect of extremist activity.
The brake on Islamist advances was made possible by a new awareness in Britain of the need to stand up to intolerant ideas among groups espousing purist Islamic rule, he told Reuters. But the possibility of further gains by Islamists remained, due to anger at Western security practices such as attacks by US pilotless “drone” aircraft in Pakistan that have killed many civilians as well as insurgents, he said in an interview. “At the moment we’re on a plateau with Islamism. There’s less coyness in Britain about whether we are being politically correct in dealing with these issues,” he said.
“But drones are really a problem. It’s all about perception and demonstrating we have something to offer the world that is better than this utopian alternative that is presented as just.”
“And if we blur those lines with extraordinary rendition, torture, and the random and wanton destruction of homes and killing of civilians, it makes it much more difficult.”
He added that this was also a problem for popular opinion in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a country with long links to Britain due to its past as a former colonial power.
“For the simple villager who asks, ‘who’s killing my family and who’s defending my family?’ it is vital that we are on the right side of that perception,” Nawaz said.
Rendition is a term for the secret transfer of prisoners by US authorities in Washington’s so-called war on terror. British authorities say al- Qaeda-inspired militants pose the gravest security threat to the country. Four British Muslims blew themselves in London in 2005, killing 52 people, and the police and security services have thwarted other plots.
Nawaz is a critic of Britain’s past tolerance towards high-profile Islamist militants in the 1990s, a period that saw the emergence of a dangerously radical Islamist scene. He has won prominence for his views because he was once a recruiter for Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir who spent four years in an Egyptian prison for membership of that organisation.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
