Tony Blair Consultation with Young Muslims

Sirus —

Salaam

The Prime Minister, the one and only clown.....has called for a meeting with some members of the muslim youth to discuss issues facing them in UK, the governments response, suggestions etc

i dont know why, but ive been selected 😃

basically, in fear of bieng arrested or thrown out, i havnt got much to say!! (or do!)

so any suggestions please...

what do you want to say to the PM? whats important issues that need to be addressed facing the Muslim Youth in UK today?

its this week....i cant giv much details, they wont tell me myself for security reasons!, so please everybody.........

your veiws

8)

Forum

Sirus — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 - 11:53

I dont like the sound of this one, im tellin ya...journalists are cheeky so-and-so's...

[quote]
[size=18]An exercise in mutual denial [/size]

Jonathan Freedland
Friday November 18, 2005
The Guardian

There was a time when an event such as the one the prime minister attended yesterday would have been deemed part of a "masochism strategy". Tony Blair came face to face with 50 young Muslims in a Chapeltown community centre in Leeds, where, it seemed safe to predict, he would be in for a pasting. Surely the room would boil over with anger as they confronted him over some of the sorest parts of his record, from Iraq to the battery of new anti-terror laws.

But that's not quite how it turned out. Five groups of 16- to 25-year-olds sat at round tables debating the meaning of Britishness or the role of religion for a calm, thoughtful three hours. Even when the PM came in, cup of tea in hand, for the last 60 minutes, the mood remained gentle. There was no heckling, no end-the-occupation finger jabbing.
Of course, there was some uncomfortable talk. When Mr Blair perched at table three, where they were discussing extremism, he was told his government had lost Muslim voters. "We all used to be Labour but we're moving away. We're losing confidence and trust in Labour and in you being the prime minister."

Before Mr Blair arrived, the same group had been more direct. "How can you have any faith in a government which lied to justify war?" asked Waseem Naeem, 22, a student. Sonia Kauser, 16, who went on the 2003 anti-war march carrying a placard with the slogan "Access to Diesel, not Axis of Evil", was angry at the new terror laws. "You get all kinds of terrorists, yet the only people they mention are us."

But those remarks were not typical: they took nearly an hour to come and they were not followed up. In a long afternoon of discussion, British foreign policy - so often cited as the greatest single cause of Muslim anger and alienation - barely featured. Mr Blair himself had to tease it out of one group, asking them what they thought might be behind any rise in extremism.

The cynical explanation is obvious: that this was a handpicked, safe audience. "They were not government stooges at all," the PM insisted in an interview with the Guardian immediately afterwards. Local headteachers, along with some community organisations, had been asked to recommend individuals; so had local Labour MPs and the Home Office, which had already done a consultation exercise in the area. That would certainly have filtered out any known troublemakers but, in fairness, the people taking part yesterday were not political hacks.

That leaves a second possibility, one to cheer the government: that Britain's Muslims are not nearly as angry as some have suggested. Perhaps the roiling rage of which 7/7 seemed to offer a glimpse is not there after all. Or there's a last explanation: that what was on show yesterday was an exercise in mutual denial. On the one hand stood a prime minister keen to avoid the notion that the rise in Islamist extremism is the fruit of his own foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan: it suited him not to mention either conflict. And, facing him, was a group of people who would rather not admit that their community might include an extremist, even violent, fringe.

So table three repeated over and over that the radicals formed only a small minority of misguided individuals. The July bombings were scarcely mentioned. Whenever the participants could change the subject - to role models or open days at faith schools - they did. They even resorted to that favourite politician's trick: blame the media. "People get the impression via the media that Islam is extremism," said Sonia. "But Islam is not suicides, not killing, not murder, it's peace." TV and the papers tried to brand all Muslims as terrorists. One solution to the rise of extremism: educational programmes about Islam in primetime.

Mr Blair went along with that a bit. It was true, he said, that the media tended to give a platform only to the "loudest and most extreme" voices. Turning to the press corps, he said: "I'm not blaming you guys, that's just the way it is."

But he didn't let his audience off that lightly. Yes, Muslims were right to be angry that their faith was incorrectly portrayed - but it was also "betrayed" by terrorists who acted in the name of Islam. Later he conceded that these young people were less keen to hear that second part of his message. Was that because they found it easier to blame others than to look inward? "There is something in that: they feel defensive about their religion." But, "given half a bit of leadership", he said, they would face up to the extremist menace in their midst, take it on - and defeat it. Viewed like that, his afternoon in Chapeltown counted as a success: no masochism at all.
[/quote]

[quote]
There was no heckling, no end-the-occupation finger jabbing.
Of course, there was some uncomfortable talk. When Mr Blair perched at table three, where they were discussing extremism, he was told his government had lost Muslim voters. "We all used to be Labour but we're moving away. We're losing confidence and trust in Labour and in you being the prime minister."
[/quote]

what do they think of us? they expect us to be all violent and uppity! and that was me telling his sorry rear.

[quote]
And, facing him, was a group of people who would rather not admit that their community might include an extremist, even violent, fringe.
[/quote]

Lies.......we addressed that issue appropriately. and admitted responsibility for certain things.

[quote]
So table three repeated over and over that the radicals formed only a small minority of misguided individuals. The July bombings were scarcely mentioned. Whenever the participants could change the subject - to role models or open days at faith schools - they did. They even resorted to that favourite politician's trick: blame the media. "People get the impression via the media that Islam is extremism," said Sonia. "But Islam is not suicides, not killing, not murder, it's peace." TV and the papers tried to brand all Muslims as terrorists. One solution to the rise of extremism: educational programmes about Islam in primetime.
[/quote]

that was our table....admittedly the rest of my group (not me!) went off topic...but again, they strecthing the truth again. and i confronted that idea from Sonia - that media is to blame. whislt i think it partly is, i balanced both sides of the arguement - again, ignored! cheeky these reporters i tell ya.

Beast — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 - 11:55

I saw that this morning but decided not to post it up. 😉

He's saying that Blair wanted to tell Muslims to sort themselves out. And he did that yesterday.

Sirus — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 - 11:57

bunch of lies.........Blair was bieng as less controversial as possible...he cant face another onslaught by the people.

another lie by Blair - half the people were carefully selected - a lot were high skool kids or college kids....who i thought knew very little, and i blame them for going off topic....and saying the all too-obvious again and again ('oooh..its generation gap, ooh...language problems, oooh.....media fault..Gerr'off!)

Angel — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 - 18:23

[quote="Darth V-Hayder"][quote="irfghan"]This is the pic in today's Independent.

I suppose this is Waseem Naeem. He has his phone in his hand, fresh from having taken a photo of the Dear Leader.

[img]http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/2075/blairleeds3ho.png[/img][/quote]

LOL.....thats Qamar!!! must have been when he spat on his hands and shook it 😂

wohooo........gotta ring qamar up and get this paper lol[/quote]

lol no wonder he got a huge cheesy smile on his face, he's proly thinkin "big ears dumbo you dont even know you got all my saliva all over your hands" (but that was a very very disgustin thing to do ewww)

oooooo looks like duh boy aint so duh, all famous now are you? just dont forget us all who took you to your fame and fortune life! Proud that one of revival members got to talk and didnt just sit there lookin at Blair's face.

You — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 - 19:29

I have no idea who this qamar is...

But we do notyet know if this was a cynical exercise... afterall we do not know if anything was achieved.

Was it an exercise to show Blair was listening? probably.

Did he actually listen? time will tell.

I have my view, that everyone already knows.

Kerri — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 - 14:00

Hey Hayder

great work! I love how you stick to the important issues that are the hardest to get heard and how you checked out other peoples ideas before you went, not just speak from your own perspective, you could teach TB a thing or two there ...

Just wondering what you are doing on Fri Nov 30th and whether you would be able to come to our open forum in Beeston and grace us with your wisdom there too? Maybe even speak for a few mins at the beginning?

Oh wait a minute, better take my own advice and check out with the rest of the organising team if they have already got enough speakers will send them some links to the BBC and Independant etc so they can be suitably impressed, as I am.

I don't know how you will feel about this but seems you doing good work for all of us, Muslim and non-muslim, who don't agree with what TB is doing in Iraq in our names but without our consent. Thank you

Respect
Kerri

Love the humour too