H/T to Teddy Bear for the title…it sums up this post in one line…how the BBC can misrepresent the facts by spinning and contorting cause and effect so that the guilty are innocent and the innocent are guilty.

A point in case, which came first, the Islamic desire for a Caliphate or Muslim anger at Western ‘interference’?  Upon that question lies the West’s response to the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Get the analysis wrong and you are fighting the wrong battle.

The BBC tries to influence that response by changing the Public’s perceptions of Islam and the reasons for Muslim ‘anger’, thereby attempting to put pressure on politicians using Public opinion.  The BBC of course blames Western interference, that is, foreign policy.

So far that pressure has worked and the politicians refused to tackle Syria and are still trying to wriggle out of any direct military action against ISIS due to the ‘hangover’ from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The correct answer is naturally that the desire for a Caliphate came before all else…after all there was no British foreign policy in the 7th century when the first Caliphate was created in a remarkably similar way to the ISIS one, a small band of fanatical warriors taking advantage of a power vacuum and the lack of will of the great powers to stop them.

There are three major questions that need to be answered….

• Why are Muslims being radicalised?  (and does it matter if they are?)

• Are Muslims obliged to go on Jihad in order to defend other Muslims and Muslim lands?

• If Muslims are so obliged are they justified in their belief that Muslims and Muslim lands are under attack and need defending?

 

The narrative used by the BBC is the same one used by the terrorists, that foreign policy has forced them to fight against the West which has launched a war against Islam and Muslims who now need defending.

If you don’t change that narrative it is hard to see how you can defeat this enemy and prevent radicalisation due to that narrative….the BBC’s assertion is that if you fight against ISIS then you just add to the Muslim perception that you are anti-Muslim…thereby creating more Jihadis…though it is a curious thing that the BBC highlights Muslim disapproval of ISIS and yet tells us that the same Muslims will be angry if we set the troops onto them….the BBC having its cake and eating it….telling us how moderate and integrated the UK Muslims are….and yet still managing to try and block military action in the Middle East.

Shiraz Maher in the New Statesman has a different view and gives a far better and indepth explanation of the causes of events in the Middle East than the BBC cares to do:

From Bin Laden to Isis: Why the roots of jihadi ideology run deep in Britain

Had Osama Bin Laden lived to see the present state of the Middle East he would have been rather pleased. The realisation of his ultimate ambition is gripping the Levant with the announcement of a caliphate straddling parts of Syria and Iraq.

This is precisely what Bin Laden always envisioned. His main thesis on the failure of the Islamist project was that western interference in the Middle East prevented the rise of Islamic governments. Weaken the west’s sphere of influence, he argued, and a caliphate would emerge.

The BBC puts ‘western interference’ as the cause for the conflicts….the reality is that the ‘Islamist project’ to create a Caliphate came first….’western interference’ was not the cause, it was merely an obstruction on the road to a Caliphate.

That is a crucial point……if people fail to grasp that they cannot counter the Jihadis narrative or at least the rationale for it, something we are constantly told is essential to prevent radicalisation.

Nick Cohen isn’t impressed with the likes of the BBC’s narrative, though he claims it is cowardice rather than betrayal…..

Since 9/11, western intellectuals have had a choice. They could have taken on militant religion, exposed its texts, decried its doctrines and found arguments to persuade young British men not to go to Syria and slaughter “heretics”. But religious fanatics might have retaliated. Instead, they chose the safe option of attacking the phantom menace of militant atheists, who would never harm them. Leaving all philosophical and moral objections aside, they have been the most awful cowards.

 

ISIS is scaring the hell out of everyone.

Famously there’s no strategy to deal with it…apart from this exercise in futility….

The US government has slipped out a sly little video that tries to undermine ISIS by highlighting its tendency to kill what the US government says are Muslims…as well as blowing up their mosques.

The video, graphic in nature, is available to view on the Huffington Post site,  or you can see it on YouTube…where ironically you cannot see it unless you sign in to ‘prove’ your age….so kind of limited as propaganda…and the fact it is obviously from the US government must somewhat undermine its credibility with anti-The Great Satan recruits.

The problem with the video’s thesis that ISIS claims it is defending Muslims but is in fact killing Muslims is that the ‘Muslims’ being killed are Shia, so not Muslim in the Sunni’s eyes, and the mosques are also Shia mosques…so no problem there….and the people being crucified are criminals….probably not a problem there either for many who like to see the smack of firm justice.  So IS is killing apostates, heretics and criminals.  All good so far for the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim.

The release of this video at least gives the lie to the claim that religion has no part in this.

Personally I prefer the sentiments expressed in this video (graphic)

 

A second part to the propaganda war is the wooing of discontented Jhadists who want to come home to mom and apple pie…..the BBC’s preferred course of action….treating terrorists as victims.

The BBC has leapt upon the ex-MI6 bod, Richard Barrett, who wants us to allow these Jihad dropouts to come home where they will be recruited to serve in the government’s war of ideas:

Good idea, as all the talking heads and politicians who rushed onto the BBC professed….and using an ‘ex’ MI6 person gives a degree of separation from the government…so this isn’t a government initiative…yeah right.

Only…..not so much of a good idea.

Imagine a Jihadi who jumps ship, not only does he flee the battlefield leaving his comrades to fight on but he begs the hated British government to let him back home and not to sling him in jail….and then he goes on the telly or gets a write up in the Guardian and the Times where he tells potential Jihadis they’re makimg a mistake, stay home, get an education, get a job, stay under the thumb of the Kufar.

What do you reckon any potential Jihadi would make of him, or even any ‘moderate’ Muslim?

Consider what they think of Quilliam.

They would have nothing but disdain and contempt for such people.

 

Consider the appeal of the Caliphate…..

 

 

You have to admit there would be a romantic appeal to this for many.  ISIS is working hard at the hearts and minds as well as slaughtering people.

 

 

So that is one aspect any government should be trying to disprove and undermine…the belief that there is an obligation upon all Muslims to defend Muslims and Muslim lands from attack and that there is any justification for acting on any such obligation….problem with that is…there is such an obligation.  Islam, that religion of peace, demands it.

If there is such an obligation that leaves only one other way out…to persuade Muslims that Islam and Muslims are not under attack….and therefore they have no need to conduct Jihad.

Trouble is….the BBC et al have spent years telling Muslims they are under attack.  Kinda hard to reel back on that one.

 

Another aspect to this is the frequent assertion is that, you know what, these Jihadis aren’t really Jihadis…they went to help charities, feed the poor, build schools for the children, they were just caught up in the fighting, in the worng place at the wrong time,  only radicalised once they get out there…but not true……

Islamism with a Human Face

The British media is continuing to publish puff pieces about Islamist extremists working for British charities in Syria.

“Aid workers”  use philanthropic endeavour to put a human face on extreme Islamism. These various puff pieces paint violent Islamism as nothing more than welfare provision. Although the misuse of charitable aspirations is by no means a new phenomenon, the media is, at present, particularly guilty of affording legitimacy to such barefaced exploitation.

 

And of course we all remember ‘charity worker’ Moazzem Begg, the BBC’s favourite goto boy for a comment…the BBC that campaigned to get him released from Guantanamo….the same Begg who is now proselytising on behalf of the Islamist cause as part of the Islamist campaign group Cage’s operation.

Why is it the BBC sees no problem with the statements made by Cage?  Islam offering a genuine alternative to neo-Liberalism?  What could that mean?

“We’ve been a bit politically naive,” he said. “We haven’t questioned some of the underlying assumptions about who Muslims are and what they believe in.”
PREVENT strikes at the heart of the transnational identity that Muslims have, and confuses or shrouds the core principles of Islam which offer genuine alternatives to an aggressive global neo-liberal system.
Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE

Is it a crime to care?

The concepts of jihad, shariah and khilafah are not the exclusive possession of ISIS but core Islamic doctrines subscribed to by almost one third’s of the world’s population. It is telling that the government’s treatment of ISIS is similar to its treatment of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the Taliban, despite the enormous differences of belief and methodology between the groups.
Witch-hunts such as the Trojan Horse hoax and the mass hysteria over issues of the niqab, halal food and conservative Muslim values demonstrate that the criminalisation is spreading beyond Middle Eastern politics.
Join CAGE at this series of events around the country to unite the Muslim communities against this criminalisation of our faith, our beliefs, our mosques and organisations, and our leaders.

 

It would be a mistake to kid yourself that what is being proposed is merely a campaign to ensure Muslims can practise their faith, within the confines of a secular, democratic society.

 

The BBC’s and the Establishment approach to defining the problem is the problem.

 

Finally it must have been very galling for the BBC to hear an Iraqi Sunni spokesman on the Today programme (08:00 ish) state that Sunnis were proud to be Iraqis an wanted to remain as part of an Iraqi nation….John Humphrys certainly sounded surprised.

That undermines the line the BBC has been spinning that the creation of such nation states is an anathema to Arabs who all want to live in a borderless caliphate…..and therefore Britain and France are to blame for all the ills in the Middle East due to the imposition of the ‘secret’ Sykes-Picot agreement.

Sykes-Picot was not secret, the Arab leaders negotiated the agreement before the Bolsheviks revealed the agreement to the world….and of course it was the League of Nations who finally settled the borders and status of the different regions.  The Arabs agreed the borders and fought with the British in order to end the Ottoman Empire, or Caliphate, and not to save it…they wanted their own nation.  Sykes-Picot gave them an Arab state, Saudi Arabia, and eventually, as agreed, much more, such as an independent Iraq and Trans-Jordan..or Palestine as it should be called.

The BBC has long supported the terrorist’s own narrative, the one that also recruits fresh blood to the cause…the idea that Western foreign policy is to blame for all ills in the Middle East and for the radicalisation of Muslims.

However that line is designed by the BBC to avoid one inconvenient factor, the responsibility of Muslims themselves for their own situation and for the urge to conduct a holy war against their chosen opponents.

Muslim supremacists want to impose Islam upon the Middle East.  That should be the starting point of any explanation for events.  This isn’t an attack on the West per se…that will come later.  The Holy war is to impose Islam…the West just happens to be in the way.

The BBC and others instead start from the point where the West is the target due to ‘blowback’ for its actions, if the West weren’t in the Middle East there would be peace, but they refuse to explain the real issues, the real cause of the wars…to do so would put the blame squarely onto the Islamists, the Muslims.  And the BBC is desperate to avoid doing that for many reasons.