So Abu Hamza has been found guilty in a New York court. In the UK we could barely manage to extradite him, let alone try him despite the fact that he had been involved in getting young British Muslims to kill themselves and others and the kidnapping in Yemen that he has now been found guilty of involvement in, resulted in the deaths of several British citizens. Their relatives are askingw hy the UK was unable to act for so many years? Now I like the fact that we have a legal system with a presumption of innocence, and checks and balances and accept that this means that sometimes the guilty will go free. But I wonder if we are getting the balance in the right place. It does seem that we have got to the point where the ECHR gets a rather extreme interpretation in the UK whereas in other European countries, such as France, the government seems unconstrained by it and can deport whatever dubious preachers it deems to be a problem. I honestly don't know the answer, but I do feel we got it very wrong in this case and that there needs to be a way of dealing with the likes of him and his successors in future.
The price of being the good guy is that you have to be the good guy. That means that you do not always get things your way. The US may swagger down the courthouse steps hoisting its gun belt, but it has broken so many laws in its war on terror that it is not even clear anymore which side is worse. For every Abu Hamza found guilty, there are hundreds of innocents in Gitmo.
I think one of the reasons Abu Hamza got away with so much is because historically (before 9/11) we had a very open attitude to the freedom of speech, TPTB just thought he was some nobody ranting about this and that. I'm not sure but i think after 9/11 he kept a lower profile, as in didn't do things that could get him convicted, before 9/11 the UK didn't really see him as much of a threat. Freedom of speech is an important one, it's when what someone says turns into actions that it can cause problems.
"not even clear anymore which side is worse"......well if one side is the world that Al-Queda would like and the other side is the US today, I'd rather take the US with all it's imprefections that theier idea of society. Perhaps you are less certain? Are there aspects of what they are fighting for that you rather like? I can't think what at this point. And lets not abstract this too far.....do you think Abu Hamza should have been extradited, or should we have prosecuted him. Or not. do you think he was not a source of danger. Or do you attribute it all to poor mental health care in the UK as you did over the killing of Lee Rigby?
Being active or having control of Finsbury Park Mosque is very different from carrying out illegal activities.
I'm not sure that there is much difference between a society that is religious-fundamentalist, has no respect for women, thinks it is OK to kill people for ideological reasons and feels it is answerable to no-one but their god, and a society that is religious-fundamentalist, has no respect for women, thinks it is OK to kill people for ideological reasons and feels it is answerable to no-one but their god. The only thing Al-Qaida has not worked out yet is that if you let people drink alcohol and watch scantily clad women, they are much less likely to resist your autocratic rule and think you are nice. As societies go, I'd rather take the European ones anytime. I think the UK should have drop-kicked his ass out of the country as soon as he started preaching extremist ideology at the local Mosque. He is not a UK citizen --his visa could have been pulled easily for creating public disorder and incitement to hate crime. That doesn't treat the underlying problem, but it's always nice to get rid of a pain. I don't intend to go over the killing of Lee Rigby again, but it is perfectly clear that his murder was not the act of sane people. It takes more than a general disenchantment with Western society and listening to some hate preaching to start thinking that hacking someone to death in the street is a good idea. Please keep in mind what I do for a living.
Why do you always, describe the US as a caricature of a the US Christian Right? It's a far more diverse country than that, and the current president doesn't look much like that image. To be honest to say you can't see much between the society that Al-Queda wants and that which the USA has is bizarre. I'm not expecting you to sing the star-spangled banner and demand the right to bear arms, and neither am I, but could we be a bit more reality-based here? Or is it fair for someone to describe the UK based on the views of the average UKIP activist? Because I'm not sure that would fairly represent me, you, or the society we live in.
Look him up, and see what you make of him. As for the mosque, at the time I recall an interview on the radio with one of the elders who was taking back control after he had been evicted. "It will be closed for some time while we clean out the physical filth as well as the spiritual filth". Not my words, his.
We agree. But somehow we have tied ourselves up in knots, this country uniquely in Europe, as far as I know and got to the point where legally we somehow can't deal with this situation in a way that anyone else can understand it. I have no legal knowledge here, but is this something to do with law being made up and having a different impact on a common-law based system that where the system is based on Napoleonic code. This may be completely wrong, but these forums being what they are, you might find someone with many years of academic knowledge appearing in a flash!
With this guy? Probably not, but if you asked me to list the biggest things wrong with the legal system in the western world I doubt 'delays in extradition' would make the top ten. People are flawed. The legal frameworks we put in place are flawed. The people who look for those breaking the legal frameworks are flawed. The people who administer those legal frameworks are flawed. The people who ask for different legal frameworks are flawed. The people who implement new legal frameworks are flawed. If you have a system that's too centralised and controlled by someone in the middle then you have a dictatorship. If you have a system that's too distributed and controlled at the local level you have village elders stoning twelve year old rape victims to death for adultery. We try and strike a happy medium, but you guessed it... it has many flaws. Most of the flaws can be bypassed like freemium game in app purchases. 'Pay to win'... this is one of the biggest flaws. I have my hopes on omnipotent yet benevolent aliens coming to save us from ourselves. It's a pretty slim 'hope' but no other option will fix things.
Why are all Muslims often portrayed as extremists? I guess that I spot the cultural and ideological similarities before the differences. No, but the Daily Mail and the Sun seem to capture the main demographic pretty well. There is of course a difference between what people say and what they do. Most people are not given to extreme acts. When they are, they have a screw loose.
I wasn't comparing the US to Muslim society. You said, or implied that you saw no difference between the US and the other side on "the war on terror" which is the extremists, not Islam. Unless you believe the extremists, who say it isn't. So back to the point. Were you seriously saying you see little difference between US Society and that allowed under the taliban/Al-Queda/etc? Missing the point again. If you can describe the whole of the US as roughly like the nuttiest fundamentalist, wouldn't be just as fair to describe the UK as Like a UKIPer after too many gins at the golf club. If you want to citicise the US do it on specifics. Not on implying their people are all bible bashing simpletons. Because I you know, they're not and hope a massive diversity of viewpoints.
That's a complicated question. Keep in mind that it is US foreign policy that deliberately helped create the Taliban in the first place. There is a certain... ownership there. Same goes for Saddam Hussein's regime, which the CIA levered onto the throne and then supplied with WMD to keep fighting Iran (which, incidentally, the US also supplied with weapons), and before that the Shah of Iran, again helped on the throne by the CIA, who was just as bad as the Ayatollahs who eventually ousted him. But on home soil the US was busy too. The Unabomber? Unwitting subject of unauthorised psychological experiments at Harvard as part of CIA project MKUltra (not kidding here, look it up). We can question how the US can regard the 'liberation' of Iraq as a success when it is now a terrorist funfair, and a decidedly less safe place to live than it was under even Saddam's despotic rule. Taliban Afghanistan, Saddam's Iraq, post-Saddam Iraq, Iran under the Shah; El Salvador, Pinochet's Chile, Guatemala... Are these all examples of the type of society the US strives for? Because it sure did its best to help create them. The US is morally ambiguous to say the least, but we can relate to it, partly because its culture is so close to our own, and partly because our own countries are morally ambiguous too. And at least the US doesn't (generally) talk or act crazy. It has a really good PR team like that. While those Al-Qaida guys just scare us because they do talk and act outright crazy. But don't let the veneer of reasonable sanity and democratic ideology fool you too much, is all I'm saying. Neither should we dismiss terrorists and their extremist supporters as just a bunch of evil maniacs. Know your enemy, and thus you know yourself.
Nexxo, I fear you may not understand the terrorists well enough. Being intimately familiar with the Qur'an in its original language, as well as still knowing enough to translate a bit of the insurgents' claims, they don't just hate the US. They don't just hate Christianity. They hate education, Western Civilization on its entirety, much technology, refusal for all governments and people to submit to their laws, and any particular thing they want to throw in there. If they had their way we would all be herding goats and submissive to Islam. They flat cold want to destroy this world and remake the ashes in their image. I fail to see how the US is equal to that. Not to say we're blameless, because we have done a great deal of things wrong. But we have behind it a wish that all men should be free (in theory) not that all will be slaves. Honestly, they should be profiling more based on nationality and religion. Jihad is a very real thing to Islam, and it should be treated as a declaration of intent to wage war. Generally speaking, terror plots involve Muslims, Middle Eastern nationals, or both. I'm all for adding the Fred Phelps gang to the watch list as well, because hate crimes are certainly a form of terrorism. Normally speaking, a US born and bred individual does not commit these crimes (although it has happened in the past) but either a naturalized citizen or a person here on a visa. If we see a clear pattern to the attacks, then why not try to deal with the issue intelligently? If you practice Islam, you are commanded by your holy book to go out and behead Christians (and that's at the end, and therefore most important according to supercession criticism) and I see that as behavior that can be construed as antagonistic to this country and her interests. Christianity is not the law of the land, but a whole hell of a lot live here. (Don't worry, they hate atheists more.) I really can't stress enough what kind of threat they present to anything that isn't as radicalized as they are. A person who is a Muslim is worth just as much as any other human being, but their religion is known for being bloodthirsty and violent today here and now. Don't you think that bears extra scrutiny?
Sorry but what has any of that got to do with illegal activity ? Are you suggesting we should lock people up for running Mosques, or is it just when they make the place dirty ?
You also have centuries of genocide (your Native American ancestors say hi), slavery (my Afro-Caribbean ancestors say hi) a history of racial segregation lasting into the 1960's, and are the country that went absolutely mental on the geopolitical stage after one terrorist attack on 9/11. The US also wants to flat out recreate all governments of the world in their capitalist philosophical image. YMMV. As for Islam, the Old Testament is no better (sorry) and neither is the US Bible Belt any more enlightened than, say, Saudi Arabia. Just because there was a last moment addendum with a decidedly more mellow viewpoint called the New Testament does not gloss over the fact that there are still Americans out there who strongly believe in the Old stuff and act on it, from abortion clinic shootings to fervent opposition to schools teaching the theory of evolution, just like there are extremist Muslims who endorse killing infidels and oppose education, and quite mellow ones who just want to go about their lives in peace. And just don't take Americans' right to bear arms away... for a peaceful, civilised society you guys love your guns. Meanwhile how's that national health care coming along? If anything fits the Christian ideal... I also don't see that much ideological difference between the Catholic Church actively lobbying against comdom use as a way to combat the spread of AIDS in Africa (see for instance Pope John Paul II's speech in Tanzania in 1990) and the Taliban targeting vaccination workers in Afghanistan. Normally speaking, Muslims don't commit terrorist acts either. Remember that my city of residence (Birmingham UK) has vast areas of a predominantly Pakistani Muslim population living in it, and I walk those streets safely. Many of my hospital colleagues are Muslim; we work together happily. Some of my patients are Muslim --and in the privacy of the counselling room they display a rather balanced and critical attitude towards Islam and their Muslim community. Turns out that underneath we're all human after all*. People believe all sorts of crazy stuff. Often their beliefs are inherently contradictory and based on little evidence or logic. I tend to worry more about what they do. As much as US foreign policy bears scrutiny. * Only in Birmingham can you see Starbuck3773T, a big white American, do high-fives with a bunch of African Muslim girls in full black hijab in a bowling alley every time someone hits a strike. Here, religious traditional dress and ipod earphones frequently go together.
No matter how much we personally dislike someone or what they say, we can't just go locking them up though. It's the price we pay to be able to speak our mind, others may not like or agree with what you are saying and it's a fine line between speaking your mind and incitement. I would lay down my life like many of our ancestors to defend our right to live in a society that honors freedom of speech, the alternative is far worse than occasionally being upset or offended by what someone says.
I don't want the governement locking people up without due process. Internement is nearly always counterproductive. But we have a situation in the UK where some pretty nasty people have managed to set up base here, getting "indefinite leave to remain" on the grounds that the country they came from doesn't like them and then ww let them carry on recruiting, planning and inciting voilence at home and abroad. People do die. Mostly Muslims of course, but I don't want a Muslim child to blow himself up in Syria trying to kill other Muslims after getting drawn in by some dodgy preacher any more than I want to not see a repear of the London tube bombings of 2007.
