The new issue of Strategic Insights from the Center for Contemporary Conflict contains an article by Kathleen Meilahn, The Strategic Landscape: Avoiding Future Generations of Violent Extremists:

Psycho-social and political factors play an important role in radicalization. Where Islamist Violent Extremist Organizations (VEO) are concerned, these factors play a significant role in recruitment—versus just theology. However, once recruited, theology becomes the justification for violent actions. In the initial stages of al-Qaeda’s ascendancy, theological values that became politically radicalized were a driving factor motivating the core actors. As al-Qaeda (AQ) and other VEOs aim to increase in size, their recruitment process has become more oriented toward—or broadened to include—political issues, and those foot soldiers who volunteer are often psycho-socially motivated. Yet, in effect, AQ is “engaged in an unprecedented exercise of corrupting, misinterpreting and misrepresenting the word of God to generate support for their political mission.” [PDF]

The nation’s red-topped bastion of impartiality and absolutely-not-xenophobic reporter of immigration and multi-cultural issues, The Sun, accidentally found itself a bedfellow it can’t kick out. Today The Currant Bun ran a story, Grant for Muslim hate bloggers, which I reproduce in full below. I did add the link though - the editors obviously can’t be seen to be aiding and abetting this VILE FILTH!

AN Islamic website which backs suicide bombers got a £35,000 Government grant – a month before the anniversary of the 7/7 attacks.

Muslimyouth.net carries dozens of rants by fanatics on its “support group” site.

One member wrote of suicide missions: “If you can blow dozens of people up at the same time, great, absolutely great.”

And in another vile message a member PRAISED a beheading video of British hostage Ken Bigley.

It said: “I like the beheading videos of the prisoners of war – especially the Daniel Pearl and Ken Bigley one.”

But the Department for Communities and Local Government agreed to fund the group’s film on problems faced by UK Muslims.

A spokesman said: “We can’t prevent violent extremism if we aren’t prepared to talk about the issues.”

VIPs will see the film in London tomorrow, including Cabinet minister Hazel Blears.

Rizwan Hussain, of Muslimyouth. net, said: “We’re conscious of a few people venting anger on our site. If there was a direct threat made we would alert authorities.”

Four suicide bombers killed 52 people in the 2005 7/7 London attacks.

Wonderfully, if you put ‘grant muslim hate bloggers’ into Google it returns The Sun article first. The second hit is none other than Stormfront which, for those who don’t know is the world’s premier white supremacist website. They also ran The Sun article in full, which elicited the usual trite responses [thread here].

I realise I could have chosen a different search string but The Sun and Stormfront really aren’t that far apart ideologically. For example, The Sun’s recent decision to launch a Polish version of the newspaper, and that other right-wing rag The Telegraph’s support for Poland in Euro 2008 (in England’s absence), are such crass examples of anti-immigration xenophobia as to be barely worth comment. A clearer message of exclusion could hardly have been sent to the government and to a public daft enough to lap up this sly, exploitative nonsense. As for Stormfront, I’m sure a quick search would reveal that Poles are actually ‘dirty Slavs’ or some such lazy racist slur.

So what’s the truth of The Sun’s story? Well, MuslimYouth looks pretty benign and with production values like that it’s fairly safe to say it’s not actually as radical and underground as made out. There are indeed forum posts about jihad, etc, but it’s not one-way traffic. See this thread, for example. I wish we could have youth-led debate on such sensitive issues in the national press, but that’s never going to happen. Mind you, one of their sponsors, the Ansar Youth Project is advertising a summer camp on the Isle of Wight. I suppose the island’s inhabitants might have their backs turned during Cowes Week allowing the little jihadists to hone their combat skills, like “sleeping outdoors in tents, cooking meals and taking part in a range of messy and not-so-messy activities”.

Did they receive a grant, and what for? I’m not sure, as I haven’t managed to track down a sensible source yet. Far be it for me to defend New Labour’s policies on anything but it doesn’t sound unreasonable to fund such a project. If anything else crops up on this story I’ll update as appropriate.

[Cross-posted from Complex Terrain Lab]

On Monday 13 May, Dilwar Hussain of the Islamic Foundation led an evening seminar at King’s College London, ‘British Muslims: Identity, Integration and Policy’. Hussain is the well-respected head of the Policy Research Unit and Senior Research Fellow at the foundation, and also serves on the board of the Commission for Racial Equality in the UK. Hussain is the co-author of British Muslims Between Assimilation and Segregation: Historical, Legal and Social Realities (2004) and has also written several op-eds, not least a rebuke to charges of extremism laid at the door of the Islamic Foundation by the BBC Panorama programme in 2005.

Hussain describes the construction of modern British ‘Muslimness’ - encompassing a plurality all too often overlooked - as an ongoing negotiation of inherited identities. First, as the ‘Other’ (black), passing through the continental (Asian), national (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, etc) to the current situation in which many Muslims define their primary identity as religious. He outlined the internal and external drivers of this evolution, the latter including the oil crises and Middle East wars of the 1970s, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the Satanic Verses affair a decade later. Critical events of the 1990s, like the genocide in Bosnia, 9/11 and 7/7 further served to polarise Muslims in opposition to notions of statehood and nationality, preferring instead to identify with their religion and the global ummah. More than ever, the tensions of hyphenated identity are being laid bare.

Read the rest of this article here.

The Toynbee Convector points to a post at qunfuzcreation about the Zanj Rebellion in southern Iraq back in the 9th century:

Working in intolerably humid conditions clearing the salt marshes of southern Mesopotamia, fed on a poor diet of dates and semolina, frequently racially abused, the ‘Zanj’ east African slaves of 9th Century Iraq rose in their hundreds of thousands in a revolt which lasted for 15 years. They conquered large parts of Iraq, Iran and Bahrain, held the city of Basra for a decade, established their own capital, and even minted their own currency.

…

The rebellion was led by Ali ibn Muhammad, a man of mixed Persian and Arab origin, perhaps of African blood too. He claimed to be a descendant of Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, and employed Shii and Khariji ideas and vocabulary. He was credited with magical powers, and spoke in quasi-prophetic terms: “A cloud cast a shadow upon me. Thunder crackled and lightning flashed, and a voice addressed me, saying, ‘Head for Basra.’” He was followed by some of the local workers and peasants and some Beduin as well as by the Zanj.

Guerrilla tactics and ruthless massacre, as well as the sectarian, tribal and class divisions of the Abbasi state, quickly multiplied Zanj victories. Turkic, Slavic, Persian and Arab slaves flocked to the banner of the revolution and to the maroon city of al-Mukhtara, ‘the Chosen’, so that by the end of the rebellion non-Africans outnumbered ethnic Zanj in the revolutionary ranks.

In its final days, the ‘republic of slaves’ had become as divided by sect, class and competing centres of power as its enemies. It should be noted that Ali ibn Muhammad had promised that the liberated slaves would have slaves of their own. With Zanj unity and moral purity destroyed, it was a matter of time until revitalised Abbasi armies put down the revolt. Ali ibn Muhammad’s skewered head was paraded through Baghdad.

The final defeat of the rebellion resulted not in the reintroduction of mass enslavement but in the incorporation of the rebels into central government forces. Slavery persisted, but there would be no further attempts at mass enslavement in the eastern Arab world until a thousand years later, when Omani-controlled Zanzibar sent slave-produced coconuts and spices to European markets.

This forthcoming seminar on Tuesday May 13th 2008 should be of interest to students of Islam, social integration, radicalisation, etc:

Dilwar Hussein, Head of Policy Research Unit at The Islamic Foundation

‘The Integration Debate and Evolving British Muslim Identities’

Time: 5.30-7.00
Location: The Old Committee Room (3c), Strand Campus, King’s College London

Further information here.