lol.......shes already give sadqah for this!

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:

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."

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.

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.

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.

"irfghan" wrote:

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]

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

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!)

Thankyou Kerri

lol, i shall consider it seriously

please PM me with the details

nice1

Hayder