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U.K. Terror Crackdown May Hold Free Speech Hostage to Security
By Charles Goldsmith and Nick Allen
Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Anjem Choudary says there are plenty of reasons why many of the U.K.'s more than 1.6 million Muslims are angry, starting with Britain's involvement in U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The list is growing longer as police use new powers to arrest suspected Islamic radicals, says Choudary, leader of the Islamist group Al-Ghurabaa, or The Strangers, until it was disbanded in July for glorifying violence.
``The Muslim community, the Muslim youth, is a time bomb waiting to go off,'' he says. ``The government may find it goes off in their face.''
That threat, underscored by the alleged plot last month to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners, has Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government studying new security measures on top of a law banning the glorification of terrorism and the introduction of compulsory identity cards. Critics such as criminal lawyer Gareth Crossman say the moves depart from Britain's traditions of free speech and discriminate against an ethnic minority.
``They alienate the communities you need to have on your side to effectively combat domestic terrorism,'' says Crossman, policy director of Liberty, a London-based civil rights group.
Crossman says he's particularly concerned about making reckless talk a criminal offense, because it's difficult to define and curtails the right to express one's view. ``It's why people are allowed to stand on soap boxes at Hyde Park Corner and spout rubbish,'' he says, referring to London's Speakers' Corner, where eccentrics and activists have gathered for public proclamations since the late 19th century.
Muslim Sailors
Britain may now have as many as 2 million Muslims, after a 2001 census found approximately 1.6 million, making believers in Islam the country's largest religious minority, according to the Web site of the U.K. Foreign Office. That's the third-largest Muslim community in Western Europe behind France and Germany.
In the 18th century, Muslim sailors on British merchant ships, many from Yemen, settled in port cities such as Liverpool and London. The biggest influx came in the 1950s from immigrants, largely from Pakistan, arriving in London and northern textile- making cities such as Bradford and Leeds.
About half of the Muslims now in Britain were born in the U.K., with more than 50 percent of that population under the age of 25, according to the U.K. Foreign Office.
``It has been clear for some time that radicalization is rife within our shores,'' says David Davis, the opposition Conservative Party spokesman on security issues. ``That radicalization poses hideous risks to our citizens.''
London Bombings
Even Muslim leaders who disavow Choudary say they're concerned about Islamic radicals who cite Middle East conflicts as a reason to resort to violence in Britain.
``There has been an element of denial in the Muslim community about the growth of extremism but there has also been denial on the part of the government about how its own foreign policies have contributed to that growth,'' says Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.
There are at least six major terror trials pending before U.K. courts.
The two dozen people arrested last month in connection with the alleged plot to smuggle liquid explosives onto U.S.-bound aircraft included British-born Muslims, U.K. media including the British Broadcasting Corp. reported. Those suspects join the five Muslims awaiting trial for a failed attempt to bomb London transport on July 21, 2005.
In the deadly London subway and bus bombings that killed 52 people two weeks earlier, three of the four suicide bombers lived in the Leeds area of West Yorkshire, born in the U.K. to parents of Pakistani origin, the BBC reported. Police don't discuss the ethnicity, background or religion of suspects, a spokesman for the London-based Metropolitan Police said.
`Deadly and Enduring'
``The threat from terrorism is real, it is here, it is deadly and it is enduring,'' Peter Clarke, deputy Metropolitan Police commissioner in charge of U.K. anti-terror efforts said at a press conference on Aug. 21. ``As we all look for explanations, we cannot afford to be complacent and ignore the reality of what we face.''
To that end, authorities are keeping tabs on ``thousands'' of people in the U.K. who may be directly or indirectly involved in terrorism, Clarke said in a BBC documentary on Sept. 3.
Intelligence officers were aware of about 250 possible suspects at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, in New York and Washington, and the number of ``primary investigative targets'' numbered 800 by last year's London subway and bus bombings, according to a May report by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee.
Pool of Suspects
That widening pool of suspects has led the government to consider reintroducing a proposal to hold terror suspects for a 90-day period without charge, says Jan Kemal, a Home Office spokesman. The government doesn't back calls by the Conservative Party for the introduction of wiretap evidence at trial, partly because it could jeopardize security service operations, he says.
Legislation enacted last year allows police to hold terror suspects for 28 days without charge, from 14 days.
The prospect of new laws and closer monitoring has led to unease in some Muslim communities.
``Some Muslims are becoming isolated,'' says Ali Al-Hadithi, 24, a medical imaging student at Leeds University who condemns the suicide bombers. ``If the terrorists are going to lead this country to overlook its values, the notion that people are innocent until proven guilty, then they have certainly won.''
U.S. Patriot Act
Criticism of security measures in the U.K. echoes debate in the U.S., where President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law six weeks after Sept. 11. Renewed this year, it created a crime of ``domestic terrorism'' including activities that ``appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.''
A program that allowed the National Security Agency to intercept international e-mails and phone calls without a warrant was declared unconstitutional in August by a federal judge in Michigan. The Bush administration said it is appealing.
The alienation of Muslims in Britain is sharper than in the U.S. partly because they have closer ties to Pakistan and tend to be lower on the socio-economic ladder, says Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm and former director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
``There are young men in West Yorkshire that have more in common with Islamabad than London, who are leading almost a dual life,'' says Patrick Mercer, the Conservative Party's spokesman for homeland security.
`Londonistan'
The isolation of Muslims from British society may be reflected by a poll by GfK NOP of U.K. Muslims.
Three out of 10 respondents said they would prefer to live under Sharia, or Islamic law, in Britain, with 20 percent of those between 18 to 24 years old saying they don't plan to vote in any election. Fifty-one percent of that age group says the Sept. 11 attacks were a conspiracy between the U.S. and Israel.
Still, 81 percent of respondents said they ``strongly disagreed'' with the notion that Muslims should keep themselves separate from other Britons. The survey of 1,000 British adult Muslims took place by telephone between March 14 and April 9.
There have been years of official indulgence of radical Islamism, says Melanie Phillips, a London-based writer. Her book ``Londonistan,'' published in June, argues that Britain refused to confront those who advocated violent means to change society.
``Britain turned a blind eye during the 1990s to the fact that it became the principal site for global Islamic terrorism in Europe,'' Phillips says. ``The problem with officialdom in Britain is that it's in danger of defining its criteria of who is a moderate Muslim as someone who doesn't advocate the mass murder of Britons.''
Honor Killings
Phillips says that balancing respect for Islamic identity with the obligations of civil society requires U.K. authorities to confront the Muslim community on issues such as so-called honor killings of women who refuse arranged marriages or have relations with men when unmarried, and imams who demand the introduction of Sharia law. In June the government decided not to propose legislation outlawing forced marriages, partly because of concern such a law could drive the practice underground.
Spurred by victims' rights group, the Metropolitan Police has set up a unit to investigate honor killings. So far, nine of 109 deaths under investigation since March 2003 have been classified as honor-based, says a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police who declined to be identified.
``When people come from other countries, they can leave their belongings behind but they bring their beliefs and culture with them,'' says Diana Nammi, a Kurdish Muslim from Iran who heads the London-based International Campaign Against Honour Killings.
Muslim Police
Her agency has been approached for help this year by 185 women from countries including Iran, Turkey, Syria and Pakistan, she says.
U.K. police forces must also better reflect the Muslim communities, says Ali Dizaei, a chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. ``There are 300 Muslim officers and that's clearly not enough,'' he says. ``There are eight boroughs in London where the ethnic minority population is more than 50 percent.'' The Metropolitan Police force totaled 30,783 officers as of July 31.
Anti-terror authorities face public pressure to successfully prosecute the alleged aircraft plot following recent blunders by police. A Brazilian electrician wrongly suspected of being a suicide bomber was shot dead by police on the London subway two weeks after the July 2005 transport bombings.
Blair
In June, a 23-year-old Muslim man was shot in the shoulder in a police raid on an East London house suspected of concealing chemical explosives. No materials were found.
``If you are not securing convictions, you are eradicating public confidence,'' says Sandra Bell, director of homeland security at London's Royal United Services Institute, a defense research group.
Blair, one of the strongest supporters of Bush's decision to invade Iraq, has sought to deny any link between U.K. terrorism and the government's foreign policy.
``I am amazed at how many people will say, in effect, there is increased terrorism today because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq,'' Blair said in an Aug. 1 speech in Los Angeles. ``They seem to forget entirely that September 11th predated either.''
Responding to public calls to tackle homegrown terrorism, the government has created the new Commission on Integration and Cohesion to examine whether multiculturalism has worked.
Isolation
``In our attempt to avoid imposing a single British identity and culture, have we ended up with some communities living in isolation from each other?'' Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly asked in an Aug. 24 speech in London. ``Our ideas and policies should not be based on special treatment for minority ethnic faith communities.''
Some Muslims say integration hasn't ever been successfully implemented.
``Britain is very mono culture,'' says Humera Khan, a British-born activist who has set up a madrassa, or Islamic school, in north London to promote communication between communities. ``People don't feel reflected in the mainstream, and if you don't have access into the mainstream you splinter off.''
Some younger Muslims say they are merely embracing the faith that some of their elders abandoned when attempting to assimilate.
Embracing the Faith
``First-generation immigrants were working so hard, it distracted them from being a Muslim,'' says Moheen Ahmed, 22, of London, born in Britain to Pakistani parents. ``They were working for money.''
Ahmed, a computer student, doesn't see any contradiction between his western education and his adherence to Islam. ``We go to university and have more time for thinking,'' he says. ``Young Muslims now want to protect our religion and bring others into it.''
That includes radical Islamists such as Choudary.
In the 1990s, he joined with Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, founder of the Islamic pressure group Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. The group, along with its successor Al-Ghurabaa, called for a British Islamic state.
Choudary has been a spokesman for Islamist Britons and has been condemned by mainstream Muslim groups since the law banning groups from endorsing violence and Bakri's exile in Lebanon.
``His views are incendiary,'' Bunglawala at the Muslim Council of Britain says. ``They are designed to antagonize and pit people against one another, specifically to create strife here in the U.K.''
Choudary disagrees, and says there is little Britain can do to contain those who feel pitted against British society from birth.
Seeking a Balance
``People are waking up to the fact that just being born in this country and growing up as a Muslim isn't enough for them,'' he says. ``A practicing Muslim sees himself as a Muslim. If being British means adopting the lifestyle, a Muslim can't do that.''
Blair said last week that he will step down as prime minister within a year. His successors will be left with the problem of weighing prevention of terrorism against civil liberties.
``I don't think it's ever going to balance,'' says Bob Ayers, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based public policy research group. ``It's always going to move back and forth like a pendulum on a clock.'' After the attacks of Sept. 11 and July 7, 2005, ``there were moves to curtail civil liberties for a good cause, the prevention of terrorism,'' he says.
To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Goldsmith in London at cgoldsmith3@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: September 11, 2006 22:28 EDT
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