to ask the MN hive mind what might make Islamist attacks less common?

[randomname27]

There are thousands of intelligent people on Mumsnet. MI5 don't recruit here for nothing. I need your help.

I know that if there were easy answers, they'd have been come up with already.

1. I need to know more about the Saudi Arabia connection. Why do we keep selling them arms? Is there a direct connection between our political relationship with that regime, and the Islamists running round killing random people? Would it make any difference if we extracted ourselves from being friendly with the Saudis? (I've picked up that the Saudi regime are "baddies" but am ready to be robustly corrected).

2. Is there anything we can do in terms of licensing mosques, imams, imam training, so that Islamists just can't come and preach/ teach here? Are the Islamists already the equivalent of some dodgy heretical vaguely-related-to-Christian sect that would be shut down pronto if the mainstream Muslims had the power to do so (I guess, like a really theologically-out-there CofE vicar could be defrocked)?

3. Is there anything that can be done about what happens when people voice concerns to the police (like with the Manchester loser), that will impede those on their way to Islamism without being a civil liberties shit storm? Like, if someone's mosque AND their family AND their employers AND their friends, or some combination of those different groups, have all expressed concerns, then it's time for some serious brainwashing until they become buddhists (I'm joking. I have no idea what should be done. That's why I've asked AIBU for help).

(MN regular, penis beaker, korean granny, blah blah, name changed because I don't normally do politics on here and would rather keep it separate from my normal bleatings)

" it's not radicalisation of Islam that's going on, but Islamification of radicalisation."

I'd be interested in that article, hefzi. That's something I've been wondering about that.

OP there's a good Spectator article about Deobandism from a few years ago - something like "Who runs our mosques", I think: it talks through the UK situation very clearly, from memory.

Can everyone blaming the attacks on intervention in ME please remember that Sweden did suffer the same kind of attacks? Or does that not fit your narrative of self-flagellation? Those islamic terrorist pigs are led by hatred of our way of life, and use our own internal discord about ingerence to get apologists.

@WalkingOnleg0
I don't get how we can ban one version of Islam. I mean, then people following it will just say "oh no, we don't do THAT, we are actually {insert acceptable name} Islam types", but go on preaching Jihad behind closed doors.
If we could do that, we'd have done it, right? (I wish we could, too)

What is the connection between us and Saudi (like I said, I've got that they are "baddies") and terrorists? @Hefzi said it was a red herring, so I want to know why it isn't, now! (or why it is)

so created the Muslim Council of Britain, it privileged Deobandism through this move, ensuring it continued to dominate

Interesting....Good post Hefzi.

I have read that the MCB have been against modernization in Islam in the UK. Surely we should be supporting modernization and progression?

@Hefzi

www.spectator.co.uk/2014/06/who-runs-our-mosques/

got it.

That's really really eye opening.

poster Ontopofthesunset Sun 04-Jun-17 17:20:18

^^ yes yes, not sure though when many dc are subjected to hours and hours of religious indoctrination at home - how we can over come that in school but its vital we teach suffrage, liberal values in primary schools, that we are all equal, men - women, all faiths..no one is better than another....gay people have rights and so on.

According to a database of British Islam, however, only two out of 1,700 mosques in Britain follow modernist interpretations of the Koran

It's not the article I was thinking of, but the long read in the Guardian from April this year has "who are the new jihadis?" by Roy where he discusses this idea.

Where's a small child when I need someone to show me how to link on a phone ?

And Ofa agreed: people have agency. I personally find it very patronising as an argument - it's from a similar school of thought as people can't help their criminality because they had bad upbringing, completely overlooking the silent majority who have managed not to become jihadis despite eg family members being killed in US bombing on family compounds etc. There are a lot of innocent victims in foreign policy - why aren't there more bombers etc if that idea is the explanation?

OK, where I've got to so far is:

• We did it wrong in our foreign policy
• No, we may have done wrong in our foreign policy, but Islamists hate us anyway
• It makes no odds, look at the other European countries that haven't had adventures in the Middle East and still get Islamist attacks

and then locally, I'm hearing

• kill all faith schools

(and I'm still there going - what??? Surely make an exception for the CofE, that's the established religion of the State here!!!!)

• and the practical thing of checking up on people hiring vans
• it's Deobandism that's the very conservative kind of Islam prevalent in the UK (maybe getting more representation of other kinds of Islam on the Muslim Council of Great Britain or whatever would help?) Presumably France has a similar problem, and that's where the banning the burkha stuff is coming out?

@Hefzi

www.theguardian.com/news/2017/apr/13/who-are-the-new-jihadis

Cool - will read that later :D

Deport anyone who travelling to be trained by iris and the whole of their family. Aim is family pressure will stop this.

Yep, the MCB oppose it in general because they are also fundamentalists (not in the pejorative sense, just that they're sort of back to basics - like if evangelical Christians were the spokesmen for Christianity: there wouldn't be eg gay marriage) - but there's not yet the same tradition of modernism in Islamic religious thought as there is in either Christianity or Judaism.

But I don't think it's up for outsiders to dictate what the faithful of any religion should do/think/believe

@londonrach I thought of that earlier. And then thought of how that's completely innocent little brothers and sisters being deported. And where do we deport British citizens TO?!

(where's all our penal colonies when we need them? NB this was intended as a joke).

And these are the relatively liberal mosques, insofar as they allow women on the premises. Around a quarter of mosques in the UK do not. (What, I wonder, would our reaction be if a network of men-only churches were to spring up in Britain?)
surely we would be up in arms - marches outside - protests - pressure to stop it???? and the feeling that we as a country have taken a gigantic leap backwards??

@Hefzi so we're just kind of stuck, like the USA is stuck with the bible belt?

(I'm really enjoying talking with you about this - thank you so much for your time)

The largest single group — the one which arguably gives Islam in Britain much of its character — is the Deobandi. It controls around 45 per cent of Britain’s mosques and nearly all the UK-based training of Islamic scholars. What most Deobandi scholars have in common is a conservative interpretation of Islamic law: television and music for the purposes of entertainment, for example, are frowned upon if not banned. Women are advised not to emerge from their homes any more than is necessary

Women followers are advised that it is necessary to cover their faces in ‘normal’ situations and that it is generally impermissible for them to travel a distance of more than 48 miles unless accompanied by a male relative (even if the purpose is to attend a religious gathering).

^^ wow. I wont copy and paste more but wow.

OfaFrenchmind2, I think you've missed something important.

Regardless of to what degree attacks in Europe are or aren't in punishment for action in the Middle East, the second Iraq war created the conditions which hatched and fed Daesh.

It created a power vacuum, which was a danger even before the occupation and the de-Ba'athification program were so badly handled. It was completely predictable that something radical was going to emerge to fill the vacuum, even if it wasn't predictable exactly what.

Even if it's painful to recognise this, if we pretend it didn't happen we're at risk of repeating our mistakes.

But I don't think it's up for outsiders to dictate what the faithful of any religion should do/think/believe

^^ perhaps but we should be supporting liberal values that this country is world leader in, not to our detriment and we should be giving those who want to follow more progressive types of Islam more protection and support.

Faith schools is a bit of a red herring imo: what people really mean are Islamic schools. I went to CofE school - we weren't taught creationism, violence or the hatred for other faiths: not least because the majority of students were neither CofE nor ostensibly Christian.

More problematic than faith schools are "Sunday Schools" - madrassas after school or on weekends where elderly religious leaders, often from the subcontinent, ostensibly teach children eg Qu'ranic recitation but in more than one case have been implicated in teaching ideology likely to cause flags to raise. And that's aside from the corporal punishment (and, in several successful prosecutions, csa)

But how can you ban anyone learning about their religion?

Doesn't France have secular education? Doesn't seem to have protected them very well.

@BeyondDespairandRepair

so maybe the more liberal forms of Islam could be the ones that get the ear of our politicians, policy makers etc? not just the MCB conservative types? That would work for me - it'd be a really strong way of saying "your conservative form of Islam is contributing to making Islamism possible. Therefore we will give priority to the kinds of Muslims who've done the equivalent of have a Reformation. Feel free to join us at the policy table once you've started to catch up".

We do nothing about Wahhibism, the extreme version of Islam that Saudi Arabia promotes, and is the version Sharia Courts use in the UK. Governments have also had a long history of consulting with Muslim groups dominated by wahhibists.

The Government should be promoting the importance of secular space, and consulting with moderate Muslims, and not accepting judgements of Sharia Courts as official mediators in law.

"what people really mean are Islamic schools"

Thanks, but when I typed faith schools, I meant faith schools.