A plan to radicalise Muslims

Ajmal Masroor responds to Ruth Kelly's six-point plan for preventing violent extremism and winning hearts and minds.

Communities minister Ruth Kelly has announced a six-point plan to deal with extremism and radicalisation among young Muslims. Here is my 12-point plan that is guaranteed to turn young Muslims into radicals.

1. Associate extremism with Islam and terrorism with Muslims.

The best way to destroy people's confidence is to continuously connect them and their faith with violence and fanaticism. They will feel victimised and under attack. When they feel that there is a conspiracy against them they will become more extreme and some may resort to terrorism.

2. Interfere with the way mosques are run.

Send consultants and civil servants to help draw up plans to ensure that the mosques are used for rituals and secular activities only. Train the management on how to ban debates and discussions and only allow such debates and discussions that support a particular agenda. Any dissent must be quelled and quickly labelled as extremist - especially those who criticise the government's foreign policies. Make sure all the mosques are run by government-friendly people. And just for good measure recruit members of the committee to be informers - the eyes and ears of the secret services.

3. Tell imams what to say.

Invest in a new generation of imams who are not politicised and who focus on a secular notion of spirituality. Imams who speak good English to give standardised sermons and lessons from syllabuses and literature which has been vetted by the Whitehall experts. Promote scholars and academics who are not loyal to their faith and are willing to exchange their faith teachings for titles, fame and fortune.

4. Set up and fund rival Muslim groups.

Let the Muslim community compete for attention. Let there be an internal fight for control and influence. Keep the Muslim community divided. Send threats to those groups who do not toe the line with disengagement and no funds. Pretend to be friends with one, while condemning the other and vice versa. Since young Muslims are normally not part of the hierarchy, do not bother talking to them.

5. Raid Muslim family houses.

Use anti-terror laws to raid Muslim family houses in as many cities as possible. Make sure you carry out such raids openly and publicly with maximum number of police and marked vehicles. Discreetly alert the media just before the raid so that it can be headline news the next day.

6. Arrest and detain more young Muslims.

Arrest and detain young Muslims who are Asian or Arab looking, who wear a beard and foreign clothes, hang around a mosque or have recently become more religious. They are the potential terrorists. Go through their mobile phones, computers, contact lists, text messages and emails. Copy all the information, call friends or family members of the detainee and threaten them with arrest unless they co-operate. There are 28 days to frame the detainee. If the detainee is intelligent and of good value, offer him positions or incentives to be an informer for the secret services.

7. Boast about the success in Iraq and send more troops to consolidate it.

The invasion of Iraq was to give Iraqis the taste of freedom and democracy. It is not your fault that the Iraqis have chosen to kill themselves. They have given shelter to al-Qaida, become part of a terrorist network and now carry out suicide attacks against the troops from the coalition of the willing. The only way to deal with terrorists is to eliminate them. A few innocent lives may be lost in the process but it is a worthwhile price Iraqis have to pay for democracy.

8. Kill more Afghans and blame the Taliban for it.

Afghans are producing drugs that are destroying young people in the western world. Even Islam does not sanction production of narcotics. They are responsible for Bin Laden and al-Qaida. They are responsible for 9/11 attacks in the USA and July 7 bombings in London. They are backward, ill-educated and most importantly they are not willing to modernise themselves. The Taliban are hiding in Afghanistan. They must be flushed out. There is no choice but to send more troops and destroy those people who wish to take the world back to the dark ages. The task is simple: kill them wherever you find them, and if the precise intelligence is lacking about their whereabouts destroy the whole village. What is loss of few Afghan lives compared to one eliminated Taliban?

9. Threaten Tehran with economic sanctions for its nuclear ambitions but supply Israel with the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction.

The western world needs a good nuclear deterrent against rogue states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria. They pose a threat now and even though they do not have any nuclear weapons they have the intention of acquiring them and then using them on the western countries and Israel. The strategy must be to make sure that no Muslim country ever acquires nuclear weapons. If they even show that intention threaten them with bombs that would take their countries back to dark ages.

10. Ignore the plight of the Palestinians but condemn the Palestinian people even when Israel carries out aggression against the Palestinians.

Our position is very clear: Israel can never do anything wrong. They are a democratic country and whatever they do we will support them. On the other hand, Palestinians do not even have a country or a leadership; we do not know who to talk to; they prefer violence and do not know the language of peace. How can we talk to a people who are so uncivilised that they carry out suicide bombing killing themselves and killing everyone around them? There could never be peace with people who do not recognise Israel's right to exist, after all it is God's Promised Land for the Jewish people. To deny that is to deny God.

11. Support, aid and abet the illegitimate despots of the Middle East and the Muslim world.

Supply them with arms worth billions of pounds so that they can remain in power. Encourage them to lock up political opponents, especially if they happen to be practising Muslims. Promise them aid and favours if they join in with "war on terror" and use this to subjugate their people and dismantle civil institutions including the media. Teach them how to torture prisoners safely. Institute sanctions against the people if they exercise their freewill to vote for anyone but the despots. Stay silent when these despots bequeath the thrones to their sons.

12. Guantanamo prison is to make the world a safer place

Abduct young Muslims from anywhere in the world then throw them in Guantanamo prison. Let them rot there. They have no rights. They are illegal combatants or terrorists.

Comment:

Some interesting views by Masroor