When in doubt about how to begin a blog, I find the best way is to build it around a well-known phrase.
So here's one: You can't make an omlette without breaking any eggs.
And if you want to create a safe, terrorist-free society in 2007, it's pretty much assured that some people arrested will be innocent.
I'm referring to the anti-terror raids which took place in Birmingham last week. Birmingham, of course, is a city which has first-hand experience of terrorism and its human cost.
It also has a police force which many feel was unfairly used as a scape goat when the Birmingham Six had their convictions for the IRA bombing in 70s, quashed.
That same police force, some 30 years on, was at the centre of last week's raids after intelligence suggested a 'Baghdad' style plot to kidnap a British soldier and execute him on camera - only in the UK.
One of the men arrested was Abu Bakr. He's since been released without charge and - as you do - went straight on to TV to blast the police. Admittedly, Operation Gamble - the name the police used for this raid - probably wasn't the smartest in terms of giving pundits an easy hit, but that's besides the point.
Bakr said the police had no grounds to arrest him and that his arrest proves Muslims live in a police state.
Actually, it doesn't. The fact he was allowed to go on Newsnight and make that claim shows he isn't living in a police state.
What's more, if it was a police state, he probably wouldn't have resurfaced for several weeks - if at all. Did he appear on Newsnight with bruises all over him from repeated beatings? No. His harshest accusation was that the police seemed to be fishing for information. Also known, I think, as asking questions.
Sure, it must feel like an affront to be arrested for something you know nothing about, but here are the facts: Twice in 2005, radical Muslims set about blowing up parts of London. One group succeeded, another didn't.
That doesn't mean all Muslims should be suspects, far from it. But it wouldn't hurt for people like Bakr, when released without charge, to express an understanding for the work of the police and why they are doing it. After all, how would he like it if 'dodgy' intelligence - as he called it, although we don't now how reliable it was - wasn't acted upon, and a member of his family died when a bomb went off?
Back to the phrases: Engage brain before mouth appears to one that's spot on here...
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1 comment:
I am sorry to reply so late on this post. I only read it just now. Anyway, I feel, if Muslims feel being attacked by media, police and/or the rest of the world, they should not complain about it, but do something about those who give Muslims a bad name. But so far I've only heard them shout when something was done to them, but remain awfully quiet when a bomb explodes, killing several people.
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