The choice of channel is remarkable. The station suffered constant vilification during the previous regime. Journalists and politicians used to play Boycott Tennis and RadicaLinkage weaving at their Global Peace and Unity events. Not that I personally cared. Better without them I say. For this reason, I wonder how Islam channel came to carry the Minister's message? Who asked who? Did the channel have other options? What did viewers make of it? How much of it was true?
To get more of a flavour, listen to how she addresses israeli security policy platforms. Complicating isnt it? check out the 'Britain can learn from Israel' headline on the googlewhack and the building resilient communities vision.
With her Islam Channel statement the minister intended to create a new relationship between her work and UK Muslims and exert more than a bit of power. Its been a while since someone of her capability was in government addressing 'Securitising Muslim' issues, anyone remember Hazel Blears? Apparently current policies and their operations are going to be reviewed, and the security function of government community engagement will be separated from other ones. I wonder what that means...
The word 'operations' came up quite a bit, an artefact of the minister's previous roles in the diplomatic and intelligence communities, as well as the hi-tech military industrial complex.
Another baroness, Baroness Warsi came up in the context of a tick box, she's Muslim and she's female you know.
Sorry that should have been the other way around. Feminism first, then Matronisation.
This particular minister has probably come across quite a lot of 'privileged information', so should we trust her expertise? Whenever I've prodded pseudo powerful people about these matters, they always play the 'If you had read what I had read' argument. She certainly wields a great deal of symbolic capital in the establishment. But what about amongst us?
On the face of it there is some cause for optimism. Policies and operationalisation of policy are to be reviewed. Stop and search, pre-trial detentions etc and wait for it .... PREVENT.
PREVENT is interesting, depressing, revealing and inshAllah the worst is over. It is sad to see how cheaply folks will run for the money and be diverted from addressing the Ummahtic. Folks who should know better keep falling into an imposed guilt for some reason, for not aspiring towards liberal secular triumphalism. Scholars keep getting parachuted in on the advice of gatekeepers and meddled with. Lovely brothers and sisters keep going on foreign office jollies to legitimise military occupations. Organisations are created and nurtured for the specific purpose of policing the Ummah here and stifling its enhancement, cutting its relations and suffocating its politics. Its effective name is CO-OPT, filed under Intellectual Corruption along with NGOisation and Developmentia.
To prevent and subvert PREVENT/PVE and RAND type incursions from deforming Islam, rather Muslim subjectivity, again and again we might need...
A Potent Social Potion.
One part Tablighi Jamat - uncooptable
One part Suffragette - Forward
One part A-Team - Active
One part Royal Society - Learned, with Mastery
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