I did but you were in a hurry, so ok.

“Thank you Seeker for indirectly answering the question that refresh avoided :”

I hadn’t avoided it – can’t say I saw you pose it.

I remember having a debate with HuT on the Pakistani channel about Shabina Begum. The HuT representative said they defended Shabina Begum because they believed in letting people intepret religion in their own way.

Sure, I say, but HuT won’t allow that freedom to other Muslims will they? In their Khalifah Muslim women don’t have a choice but to wear a Jilbaab. How is that religious freedom? As many people have pointed out, the west allows Muslims more freedom to practice their religion than the Middle East does. Why? Because they believe in letting people letting them live their lives how they want.

The likes of HuT sell you a utopia based on intellectually bankrupt and contradictory arguments that are easily destroyed. Most Muslims don’t fall for them. The ones that do want to think they’re reading intellectually sophisticated stuff because they’re desperate for “an intellectual answer” to all their frustrations.

By the way Bayah – I pointed you to a link about Hizb ut Tahrir air-brushing their claims on the internet. On that is a link to their constitution which I’ve saved on here since they took it off their website (right after a debate I had with them on PTV Prime where they invited me to read it funnily enough).

1) When was the last time you sat down with fellow Muslim youth and talked to them how they can channel their anger peacefully?

I do it all the time? I have enough Muslim friends who I talk to about politics with. I run another website (www.barficulture.com/community) where “Muslim youth” talk about whatever interests them every day. Believe it or not mostly they talk about issues that others do – about boyfriends/girlfriends, about dealing with identity crises, about pressure from parents etc.

2. How do you want them to channel that anger Sunny? I would love to hear your guide for the Muslim youth, speak to me, show me better way’s sunny.

Firstly there is a presumption there is a lot of anger, and I think this is slightly misguided. Hey I’m angry at the British govt’s presence in IRaq too, but I don’t see the answer as blowing people up on the tube. The vast majority of British Muslims don’t either. The solution, if you want to make a difference, is political engagement that focuses on dealing with opression for all peoples not just Muslims.

We are presented selective narratives by the likes of the MCB – that Muslims are being opressed in Palestine and Kashmir and other parts of the Middle East but they are totally blameless. What about the funding of terrorist groups in Kashmir? How about accepting the existence of Israel and pushing for Hamas to reognise Israel and push for a two-state solution?

This anger is created by some self-serving people who present their own biased propaganda (like HuT), and I’ve seen it.

Isn’t it a mainstream opinion of the Muslim’s that Foerign Policy is an issue, that Islam has a solution to world Problems?

Foreign policy is an issue for me too. But I don’t see the solution in killing innocent people. Don’t you see it as a problem when a large part of people from your “community” see killing innocent people as a totally legitimate exercise?

If Islam has a solution to the world’s problems, why not lead by example? Blaming the west for the mess that are the Middle Eastern countries is not good enough because those countries are propped up by the very clerics that the MCB and others invite over.

I am taken back by your little knowledge regarding Islam, you might know more but through these type’s of discussion I really hope we can learn from each other’s faith, opinions and so on.

Thanks, but you haven’t answered the question there. If a large enough group of people in any one “community” believed that killing innocent people is legitimate, then we have a right to be worried about them. I don’t think most Muslims in Britain are as stupid as you make out though.

In a recent poll most British Muslims:
1) Did not see Iraq and Afghanistan as primarily to blame for terrorists
2) Said Blair should do more to reign in radical groups
3) Did not believed the MCB represented their views.

And I agree with all three of them. So I’d say I’m more in tune with Muslim opinion than you are my friend.

The education system needs to be reformed to be allowed for a more in-depth understanding of Islam, The Society we live in, the education in our schools and so on.

It’s also down to how the imams teach and what they choose to concentrate on. If they taught more about the humanitarian aspects of Islam then the likes of Hizb ut Tahrir would have less of an impact.

The leaders have no vision, and the youth follow suit. Why are the Muslim Community failing extensively in education? Why are the Muslim’s not working towards building a good society in which they live in.

These are the same questions I ask Bayah. I want people to provide better leadership but we are not getting it. And yet you defend the very “leaders” who are letting Muslims down, which I find bizarre.

Moreover we have the problem in UK of lack of integration of peaceful, introvert pious traditionalists to the violent potential of the political salafi groups.

Seeker honestly believe me Muslims are starting to integrate into the greatness of our society, where we hold our MP’s t account, to join the Police, to fight against Crime. This is a start and with Organisations such as MAB, MCB and MPACUK did is starting to speed up.

Moreover we have the problem in UK of lack of integration of peaceful, introvert pious traditionalists to the violent potential of the political salafi groups. We have a more nuanced approach to solve these various problems.

Sunny: Thanks for answering my question.

If you want to debate answer the questions. You are failing in your “Mission” by acting like our Political Leader’s by ignoring the questions, derailing the topics.

1. When was the last time you sat down with fellow Muslim youth and talked to them how they can channel their anger peacefully?
2. How do you want them to channel that anger Sunny? I would love to hear your guide for the Muslim youth, speak to me, show me better way’s sunny.

Mainstream? Since when did Hizb ut Tahrir become mainstream? By the same scale I guess you would be happy with the National Front and the BNP being included as part of being maintream organisations that should be embraced? Let’s have consistent standards shall we? Isn’t the BNP’s issue’s becoming main stream Sunny? Housing issue’s etc? Isn’t it a mainstream opinion of the Muslim’s that Foerign Policy is an issue, that Islam has a solution to world Problems?

You also ask who is saving us from suicide bombers. Have you read the Qu’ran lately? I’m sure there was a verse in there that says killing one innocent person is like killing humanity. Did it maybe occur to you that not all fellow Muslims are not going to become suicide bombers at any given opportunity, or do you have a low opinion of them? I am taken back by your little knowledge regarding Islam, you might know more but through these type’s of discussion I really hope we can learn from each other’s faith, opinions and so on.

Sunny, If you look at the Mosque’s nowadays they are by people from the area’s such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. If you look at their education system it does not teach what the Quran say’s or even teach the Arabic language. I spent like 6 years of my life sitting in a mosque and just going through the Quran without even understanding it. Why because our Mosque’s follow the cultural practice’s I learnt Urdu more than Arabic itself.

The education system needs to be reformed to be allowed for a more in-depth understanding of Islam, The Society we live in, the education in our schools and so on.

It is working slowly but surely, I like yourself do not sit on the net all day and moan and groan I go to the Mosque talk to the elders of the problem and they listen and if they are forwarding thinking they will go ahead with it. Just like my mosque.

Yes, I do have a low opinion of the Muslim Community, because of what I see in the community I live in. The leaders have no vision, and the youth follow suit. Why are the Muslim Community failing extensively in education? Why are the Muslim’s not working towards building a good society in which they live in. Here is a good article on MPACUK http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/2316/35/ raising the same issues.

I hope you can answer my question, as your posts continue without answering my questions, I am more towards a belief that you have no idea what you want the Muslim Community to do. Maybe we could meet up?

Seeker – Not at all. This isn’t meant to be a forum only for Asians, but a forum where we Asians and non-Asians can discuss issues.

1) Firstly it is internal. I felt a lot of magazines/papers discussing Asian stories had too many vested interests with religious and “community leaders” and hence I wanted somewhere for progressive Asians to discuss and drive the agenda rather than the traditional conservative Asians.

2) I felt not enough dialogue was taking place between Asians and non-Asians and we had the traditional nutjobs with a typical “us and them” mentality writing in the MSM.

3) We don’t seek to represent anyone but our own voices. We don’t censor or control conversation and people are always willing to come here and take apart our arguments (more than we are allowed with “community leaders”.

4) I’m not promoting a false sense of solidarity between Asians. I think Asians have things in common and things not in common, but if I want solidarity it is with everyone, not just my own tribe (however you describe that “tribe”).

>>Arn’t you doing a similar thing by forming ‘Asian forums’?

I think I asked this question myself some time back. I did not get an answer but reading between the lines, esp the posts of people like Jay Singh, I get the impression this blog is meant in part to regain the unity of purpose (against racism) that asian-black groups had in the distant past (80′s).

Thank you Seeker for indirectly answering the question that refresh avoided :
>>However, the problem among the Muslims is that the dogma of unity of Ummah under any circumstances is so strong that Muslims have forgotten the quranic command of ‘do justice even if it is against yourself and family;muslims are afraid to criticize fellow Muslims

Agreed. It would save time because when these people come on here we could point em in the direction of the links…

Aha, but I have tricks up my sleeve Bayah – I’m never just about all talk and no action. Though discussing the issues at hand and creating the space to air them is also important.

Tanvir/Bayah may not feel the HuT is a bit mad but I certainly do, and have explained many times why this is the case.

Maybe it’s time now to compile a dossier on all these things so as to lay out why we think the way we do.

However, I think the majority of Muslim young people in the country do not affiliate themselves with any particular organisation. Most Muslim kids dont even go to the mosque, bar Fridays and there is a huge proportion who dont even do that.

Then there are more open minded Muslims, who will go to talks or debates regardless of which organisation hosts them, going purely on whether the topic for discussion looks interesting and if they have the time. So one week you will go to a HT event another a MCB event, but not really participating in the organisational activities of either.

There is also a huge proportion of Muslims from my findings, who have no particular love for HT, not because they feel they are extremists – because they are not and have actively made the effort to make clear they are not, but more because their purpose does not seem realistic or because Muslims feel there are other issues that are a much bigger priority. HT have tried to respond to this by discussing community issues than go on about the khilafa 24/7.

I think the MCB do serve a purpose, and whichever way their work is skewed it does represent the voice of one section of the Muslim community or other evidently on how well they are organised and how well their events are attended. Of course people who dont like their work are going to bash them, thats just how it is.

Most organisations do seem to me to be making an effort to be addressing community issues its just the international affairs ones are more widely publicized, you’re not going to get the leader of a Muslim organization holding a press conference announcing that next week they will have a parenting course in Leicester are you? But if the government were about to join hands with Bush to invade Syria, and the organization knew that just about every single one of its members and followers were against this…. Then it might just be appropriate to make a comment. Its the international affairs issues are the ones that seem to bring the community together to form a voice and thats where the problem lies for opponents, and somewhat understandably as it is these major world events that incite the few loose cannons in the community to act out of turn.

But, my main question is to Sunny, How can these people especially Muslim go about making these change’s in their communities? Create a blog like Sunny and Moan and groan day in day out about the status of our community or is there another way?

seekeroftruth: Please look more into the topic of anger. Also, your point of working with None Muslims, Yes I agree and you can see that they are working with other organisations.

Mainstream? Since when did Hizb ut Tahrir become mainstream? By the same scale I guess you would be happy with the National Front and the BNP being included as part of being maintream organisations that should be embraced? Let’s have consistent standards shall we?

You also ask who is saving us from suicide bombers. Have you read the Qu’ran lately? I’m sure there was a verse in there that says killing one innocent person is like killing humanity. Did it maybe occur to you that not all fellow Muslims are not going to become suicide bombers at any given opportunity, or do you have a low opinion of them?

And what is this with ANGER which needs to be channeled. I though anger is haram in Islam. Why can’t these people join forces with other well meaning non-muslims who are ready to speak for justice.