The confessional media format really becomes deluded. At least Zia sardars ‘desperately seeking..’ was a thoroughly good laugh and adventure through the Ummah.

One problem is that the daft, mistakes and misapprehensions are rendered into text, and those ‘harmed’ dont have the same facility to answer back and clarify and defend their dignity.

However I am at a total loss as to why state funds have been provided to expand this mosque.

I am tempted to take a concept from economics: Regulatory Capture. Imagine a body is set up to regulate or control Group X. Who has the strongest motive to control that body? The leaders of Group X. Sooner or later they will likely succeed, because no one else cares so much.

I don’t see why matters should be any different just because Group X are radical Islamists. The critical question is how much attention the people at the top pay attention to this body, and how much they know about it.

Given the size of the government, the usual answer is not much. I hope those at the top are paying more attention now, but a captured organisation is not easily recaptured.

Otherwise very close. However do not throw the baby out with the bathwater: Occupation, Imperialism, economic and cultural.

“This decade would be the decade to bring forth change within the Islamic world.”

I agree with her. However, I do think that people are seeing the internal war between Muslims and their faith as being a problem with the religion itself. I hate that! The religion is NOT the problem, the inaccuracies within some testaments are, and of course, people’s own interpretations and actions of those accounts are the problem.

I will read this book after I finish The Infidel (which I’ll do a extensive review about on Barficulture’s Review board cuz I don’t have a Blog )

I perhaps should have stated that i would like to focus on Europe, as this has been the centre of all of the recent developments that have shaped the modern world.

I’m unsure exactly what to look at the moment. I’m interested actually in the ideas of Locke and the social contract theory, and its impact upon modern liberal democracy.

I’ve just been told our commission structute has been changed for the worse…terrible.

“i am planning on starting my dissertation, and i am looking at doing something related to enlightenment ideas.”

What about investigating to what extent particular enlightenment ideals penetrated certain part of the Islamic world in say, the first quarter of the nineteenth century?

I still think it adds little to the wider debate – I don’t think it tells us much we didn’t already know. As Kaashif at Peace Bruv has written, even Ed’s account of events in the early 1990s is highly dramatised – he was actually a very small player in those days – in those days you could get close to Bakri just by giving him a lift to his Edmonton home! From my recollection, Ed was besotted with Bakri, and as soon as Bakri went, so did Ed.

I think that is an exaggeration. It may be a personal account and have a few inaccuracies as you say, but that doesn’t mean it cannot shed light on what happened in the past, and provide some sort of light as to why we’re here now. Even Yahya Birt accepts that.

He could have written the ‘definitive account’ of British Muslim radicalism but was probably not in any position to or didn’t want to stretch that far out.

I also wouldn’t agree that HuT should be banned. But let’s put it this way – most of the people actively trying to sling mud at Ed Hussain aren’t doing much to tackle radicalism themselves. So… how shall I put this… why should others take their criticisms seriously?

The only criticisms I can take seriously are those by Zia Sardar and Yahya.

http://peacebruv.blogspot.com/2007/06/ed-islamist-husain-not.html

I would agree with you about the debate surrounding Muslims and the issues of integration. Actually the catholic example is interesting, as catholics, along with Muslims are quite active in Community Organising.

The thing i will say is that it isn’t always the case the more integrated a people is the less chance there is of violence and problems occuring.

As an example, the Jews of Germany were deemed to integrated within German culture according to the likes of Wagner and co. In fact, the expulsion of Jews was about expunging German society of this alien influence. Bosnia is another example.

Northern Ireland is one example, however i feel this is more a politcal probelm resulting from British Occupation. Perhaps if the catholics and protestants did not have this dimension the conflict may not have played itself out as it sadly has done over the last century.

‘Saqib – you’re probably right about the state of schools, but that doesn’t mean that its therefore ok for parents to want to get their kids into faith schools simply because state ones are so poor.’

I find this a strange attitude Puffy, as surely if we are to take the state out of our lives and hold parents to account for the upbringing of their children, then surely they need choices to decide what works best for their children? The other point to consider is that many children, i think maybe upto 100,000 actually receive this form of tuition, are we to say this must also be not allowed?

The other thing is if parents are worried about the state of schools then surely this would be the MAIN reason to act, no?

I appreciated your post by the way.

Mahbub is arrogantly refusing to accept any credible criticism of his book or viewpoint – he seems to allege that all criticism if driven by ‘Islamism’ or by moderates with family connections to ‘Islamists’.

There are some major errors in the book – I am not sure whether these are intentional or accidental – I know they are errors because I was with HT during the same period Mahbub was – for example there is the claim that HT never spoke out against Saddam Hussain. His suggestion that he parted company with HT for ideological reasons is also not true – it was more to do with his close personal relationship with Omar Bakri [he left when Bakri was kicked out], pressure from his father and other personal reasons which I don’t want to mention.

I don’t think Mahbub’s account adds anything about the Islamic ’scene’ in the UK. This is not surprising as he has not been part of it for over a decade. By his own admission, in the mid-1990s he ended his association with HT, before briefly moving on to associate with MB linked groups like ISB. He was never a ‘jihadi’ and never a ‘terrorist’, even though some in the media have described him as a former ‘jihadi’.

The book is no more than his personal story, albeit riddled with factual inaccuracies. As such, it adds little to the wider debate about radicalisation, etc, etc.

The exams went well thankyou, i do however have to repeat one in the summer but that should be okay. i am planning on starting my dissertation, and i am looking at doing something related to enlightenment ideas. Perhaps you may have some pointers?

As for Qutb, yes he did go to America. He wasn’t an Islamic scholar, rather a thinker who was a reformer, socially that is. Qutb divides opinion within the Muslim world, as people and indeed scholars believe him to have been the father of the trend in Muslim societies in calling for the overthrow of governments and rulers. I believe this is a valid claim.

I would say however, that he did manage to think through the nature of what islam is in terms of its philosophy of life, and this i found, along with other people, to be actually quite inspiring.

Justforfun

Is it a LIFO or FIfO principle he works on?

Remind me to ask him one day.

Justforfun