mehru
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All need to do more
THE past week was a bad one for Pakistan. The crash of Airblue flight 202 in the Margalla Hills, with the loss of all 152 lives on board, sent shock waves through the country. The floods that swallowed much of northern Pakistan left hundreds dead in their path.
Only a few weeks earlier, Pakistan lost more victims to the highly symbolic terrorist attacks on one of the nation’s most prominent Sufi shrines. Perhaps, in light of these tragedies, it was not only unusually blunt for the British Prime Minister David Cameron to adhere to his seemingly one-sided comments about Pakistan “promoting the export of terror”, but also quite unsympathetic to the nation’s current tragedies.
Cameron’s remarks appear more unfortunate since they were made from India, on a trip where he was explicitly seeking to further British trade interests. Cameron would not be unaware of the historic rivalry between these two neighbours, and the fact that his remarks made from India may feed into this unhealthy and competitive rivalry even more. The result was that Pakistan once more dominated the world’s front-pages, and sadly again for all the wrong reasons.
I’ve written before for these very pages about why we need to do more to combat not just terrorism but extremism inside Pakistan. I am often criticised for my stance on the need for Muslims, and Pakistanis, to be more self-critical about their own contribution to, or neglect of, the extremist rot that has set solid inside this country. It goes without saying that taking such a stance comes with considerable risk to my person.
In the UK, I make the same points loud and clear. Britain is currently undergoing a review of its counter-extremism strategy in recognition of the fact that more needs to be done, particularly in challenging non-violent extremism, and that the policies of old have largely contributed to home-grown extremism running riot across Europe.
In the spirit of the remarks made by Cameron about the need to “discuss these things frankly, openly and clearly” here are some home truths intended to serve as a reminder for us all. I have travelled up and down Pakistan discussing with students that there is no wisdom in living in a culture of denial about the existence of extremist elements inside Pakistan. Likewise, the UK would also do well to remember that the traffic of extremism involving Pakistan is two-way.
It was from Britain that groups such as Hizbut Tahrir, al-Muhajiroun and others exported their brand of extremism to multiple countries in the world. I know this first-hand, because before renouncing the extremist ideology, I was one of the first British-Pakistani members of Hizbut Tahrir to leave Britain and move to Pakistan to help establish this group in 1999.
We had received instructions from our global leader that Pakistan’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb made it a prime target for our objectives, in the hope that our future ‘caliphate’ would go nuclear. In the year 2000, again from London, we recruited Pakistani army cadets who had been sent to the UK’s premier military training facility, Sandhurst, and sent them back with the aim of instigating a military coup against the Pakistani regime. These same members were apparently discovered in the 2003 coup plot purge inside Pakistan’s army.
In fact, using Britain as a base, Hizbut Tahrir has been involved in spreading and financing their nefarious ideology to countries ranging from Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Kenya and many other nations. I personally know the members who went from the UK to each one of these countries — they were my former comrades, or shabab as we called each other. Even more worrying is the fact that Britain was used as a launch pad for the now global and banned al-Muhajiroun terrorist-affiliated group of the notorious Omar Bakri Muhammad.
The review of Britain’s counter-extremism strategy is likely to focus on the recognition that there is no long-term solution to a more harmonious society unless civil society does more to challenge non-violent extremists inside their communities.
Alarmingly, Pakistan is yet to develop its own counter-extremism strategy. With this in mind, it would perhaps be best to work with the Pakistani people, in a way that does not antagonise, so Pakistan may be given all the help it needs to devise a counter-extremism strategy that recognises the desire and potential of its people to stand up for their traditional values of tolerance, pluralism and individual choice.
As a British-Pakistani, with deep ties to both countries, having been personally involved in trafficking extremism to Pakistan from the UK, and now working in both countries to challenge such extremism, my remarks should be seen as they are intended: a call for sobriety in this critical debate.
This is not to suggest that Pakistan does not have its fair share of denial and blame in this problem. But through my efforts of challenging extremism, which have taken me across the length and breadth of the country, I have found that any constructive criticism must also be accompanied by an admission of one’s own faults. Blaming one country or the other for extremism will not allow us to move forward. Britain needs to do more. Pakistan needs to do more. We all need to do more. Let us not compete over who is not ‘doing more’ enough.
We should remember that we no longer live in a world where ideas and people stay locked within the borders of one country. Islamist ideals that started in the Arab world as perceived resistance to colonialism, fused with the global foreign policy escapades of the US in its fight against the USSR, financed by Saudi petro-dollars, found homes through exile in London so that British intelligence agencies could use them to their strategic advantage.
There they attracted tech-savvy, trendy, highly educated angry young western teenagers who used American-based Internet sites to take us to the age we find ourselves in: jihadism is now a 21st century multinational corporation, and the extremists look like and live among us all.
The writer is founder of the Pakistan-based Khudi, a platform to counter extremism, and director of the London-based counter-extremism think tank Quilliam.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect...e-newspaper/editorial/all-need-to-do-more-280
THE past week was a bad one for Pakistan. The crash of Airblue flight 202 in the Margalla Hills, with the loss of all 152 lives on board, sent shock waves through the country. The floods that swallowed much of northern Pakistan left hundreds dead in their path.
Only a few weeks earlier, Pakistan lost more victims to the highly symbolic terrorist attacks on one of the nation’s most prominent Sufi shrines. Perhaps, in light of these tragedies, it was not only unusually blunt for the British Prime Minister David Cameron to adhere to his seemingly one-sided comments about Pakistan “promoting the export of terror”, but also quite unsympathetic to the nation’s current tragedies.
Cameron’s remarks appear more unfortunate since they were made from India, on a trip where he was explicitly seeking to further British trade interests. Cameron would not be unaware of the historic rivalry between these two neighbours, and the fact that his remarks made from India may feed into this unhealthy and competitive rivalry even more. The result was that Pakistan once more dominated the world’s front-pages, and sadly again for all the wrong reasons.
I’ve written before for these very pages about why we need to do more to combat not just terrorism but extremism inside Pakistan. I am often criticised for my stance on the need for Muslims, and Pakistanis, to be more self-critical about their own contribution to, or neglect of, the extremist rot that has set solid inside this country. It goes without saying that taking such a stance comes with considerable risk to my person.
In the UK, I make the same points loud and clear. Britain is currently undergoing a review of its counter-extremism strategy in recognition of the fact that more needs to be done, particularly in challenging non-violent extremism, and that the policies of old have largely contributed to home-grown extremism running riot across Europe.
In the spirit of the remarks made by Cameron about the need to “discuss these things frankly, openly and clearly” here are some home truths intended to serve as a reminder for us all. I have travelled up and down Pakistan discussing with students that there is no wisdom in living in a culture of denial about the existence of extremist elements inside Pakistan. Likewise, the UK would also do well to remember that the traffic of extremism involving Pakistan is two-way.
It was from Britain that groups such as Hizbut Tahrir, al-Muhajiroun and others exported their brand of extremism to multiple countries in the world. I know this first-hand, because before renouncing the extremist ideology, I was one of the first British-Pakistani members of Hizbut Tahrir to leave Britain and move to Pakistan to help establish this group in 1999.
We had received instructions from our global leader that Pakistan’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb made it a prime target for our objectives, in the hope that our future ‘caliphate’ would go nuclear. In the year 2000, again from London, we recruited Pakistani army cadets who had been sent to the UK’s premier military training facility, Sandhurst, and sent them back with the aim of instigating a military coup against the Pakistani regime. These same members were apparently discovered in the 2003 coup plot purge inside Pakistan’s army.
In fact, using Britain as a base, Hizbut Tahrir has been involved in spreading and financing their nefarious ideology to countries ranging from Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Kenya and many other nations. I personally know the members who went from the UK to each one of these countries — they were my former comrades, or shabab as we called each other. Even more worrying is the fact that Britain was used as a launch pad for the now global and banned al-Muhajiroun terrorist-affiliated group of the notorious Omar Bakri Muhammad.
The review of Britain’s counter-extremism strategy is likely to focus on the recognition that there is no long-term solution to a more harmonious society unless civil society does more to challenge non-violent extremists inside their communities.
Alarmingly, Pakistan is yet to develop its own counter-extremism strategy. With this in mind, it would perhaps be best to work with the Pakistani people, in a way that does not antagonise, so Pakistan may be given all the help it needs to devise a counter-extremism strategy that recognises the desire and potential of its people to stand up for their traditional values of tolerance, pluralism and individual choice.
As a British-Pakistani, with deep ties to both countries, having been personally involved in trafficking extremism to Pakistan from the UK, and now working in both countries to challenge such extremism, my remarks should be seen as they are intended: a call for sobriety in this critical debate.
This is not to suggest that Pakistan does not have its fair share of denial and blame in this problem. But through my efforts of challenging extremism, which have taken me across the length and breadth of the country, I have found that any constructive criticism must also be accompanied by an admission of one’s own faults. Blaming one country or the other for extremism will not allow us to move forward. Britain needs to do more. Pakistan needs to do more. We all need to do more. Let us not compete over who is not ‘doing more’ enough.
We should remember that we no longer live in a world where ideas and people stay locked within the borders of one country. Islamist ideals that started in the Arab world as perceived resistance to colonialism, fused with the global foreign policy escapades of the US in its fight against the USSR, financed by Saudi petro-dollars, found homes through exile in London so that British intelligence agencies could use them to their strategic advantage.
There they attracted tech-savvy, trendy, highly educated angry young western teenagers who used American-based Internet sites to take us to the age we find ourselves in: jihadism is now a 21st century multinational corporation, and the extremists look like and live among us all.
The writer is founder of the Pakistan-based Khudi, a platform to counter extremism, and director of the London-based counter-extremism think tank Quilliam.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect...e-newspaper/editorial/all-need-to-do-more-280
You do realize the deals that were signed on this tour right? What world are you living in dude? A simpleton perfect world?
