New anti-terror plans ‘attack’ on British Muslims: Warsi

LONDON: Former cabinet minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has blasted his own party government’s new anti-terror proposals as being an “attack” both on British Muslims and British values. Writing for the Conservative Home website, the baroness, who sits in the House of Lords, said, “authoritarian counter-terrorism strategies have undermined our values, yet not made us feel any safer”.
Baroness Warsi previously clashed with Tory leadership on Muslim issues, openly advocated equality for Muslims but an effective action against extremists within the Muslim communities. Warsi quit the last government in August 2014 after she described its position on the Israel-Gaza conflict as being “morally indefensible”.
“Let’s not legislate for tolerance by being intolerant,” she wrote Thursday claiming that the nation could be poised to “lose a generation of British Muslims to a tormented identity crisis” if we don’t “relentlessly pursue a very British Islam”. Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans against extremism as soon as he took over the government few days back and has announced strict new measures to combat extremism. Civil liberty groups fear that British Muslims will be unfairly targeted.
Warsi said, “This general election delivered a more united government and a more cohesive Conservative party, but a more divided United Kingdom.” She said, “More and more, authoritarian counter-terrorism strategies have undermined our values, yet not made us feel any safer. We’re told that our protection and our freedoms can be secured only by the curtailment of freedom. And the battle of ideas is not fought and won by bigger and better ideas, but by banning, silencing through legislation and securitizing communities.”
Warsi wrote that after leaving the government, she had engaged with Muslim communities up and down the country and they feel that “successive governments have pursued cold war-style policies against them”.
Baroness Warsi said that election results in South Thanet where UKIP Leader Nigel Farage lost — and in Bradford West where George Galloway lost to Naz Shah - made me “deeply proud of our democracy”.
She continued: “A democracy that not only defeats extreme ideas and views through the ballot box, but also allows people with extreme views to contest elections, too. So, yes, let us make clear what we perceive to be unsavoury extreme views – but let us also have the confidence in our own values to advocate them, and let’s not legislate for tolerance by being intolerant. The ultimate defence of freedom is freedom itself, and that’s not something we can take for granted. To quote Ronald Reagan: ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.’”