- I know, let's ban the buggers and drive them underground (pun not necessarily intended) - that'll make it easier to keep tabs on 'em...
And no, I have no knowledge of or interest in either of those groups - but they should be allowed to spout whatever nonsense they like as long as they don't incite violence, just as should the BNP and their ilk. Banning them achieves nothing especially useful beyond restricting the freedom of people in this country to form and hold repellant views. Which is a restriction on all of us.
And - honest, sincere question - can someone explain to me the logic of the government's apparent position whereby Iraq (a very prominent war going on for two years and in the papers and on telly every day, being seen and heard about by millions) has no influence on our terrorist buddies, yet a few small groups of nutty preachers (behind closed doors, monitored by the security services, and being seen and heard by mere tens of people) have such an immense impact that we have to proscribe their tinpot organisations and boot them out the country?
7 Comments:
Banning Hizb ut-Tahrir, eh? That'll help.
Unfortunately the 'nutty preachers' are not regarded as such by their followers. Their ability to use mosques to spread their nuttiness lends them a respectability that they do not serve. As the muslim community seems unwilling or unable to control their nutty preachers then the government will have to do it for them. Yes, it will be a loss to free speech, but we can no longer afford ourselves the luxury of regarding the nutty preachers as harmless eccentrics.
Hambrough, I fear you are missing the point: banning HUT won't make them dissapear and may actually strengthen them. The Central Asian Respublics have banned them for years, arrested thousands of suspected members, torturing many of them. Has it actually helped? Not at all. If anything they're getting stronger.
So Britain's a Central Asian Republic.
Thought your demographics would be a bit different. Bit of a come down I'd say.
I haven't got a clue what you're talking about Ronnie. Britian obviously isn't a Central Asian Republic. It isn't in Asia, let alone Central Asia and it isn't even a republic.
My point, which I though was fairly obvious, is that there is a precedent for banning Hizb ut-Tahrir and it doesn't appear to have a great record of success.
I also implied that the CARs were likely to be much more thorough in their implementation of bans than the authorities here. This might suggest that the British government is likely to have even less success.
Is that really so hard to understand?
I'm sure we banned the Nazi party in the war. We didn't worry about 'driving them underground'. Same difference.
Oh, and HuT are indeed preachers of hate, they distribute leaflets kalling for the killing of all Jews... 'wherever they are..'
Case closed.
Nice post. From my experiences with people from HT, they seem to me to be pretty dumb but fervent idealistic guys with a really twisted view of the world. I've never really thought of them as potential suicide bombers.
Which is why I think nosemonkey is right about the dangers of driving such groups underground which would most likely radicalise and reduce the ability of govt to keep a check on their activities.
The only possible thing I can think of in favour is that groups such as HT may well act as 'gateways'to more sinister groups which are actually likely to try and carry out terrorist attacks.
It would be interesting to know whether any of the bombers were indeed at any time members of the banned group.
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