Attack in Forbury gardens (Reading)

[N1985]

He will be in a Cat A prison which unfortunately means he will be segregated on a wing with fellow like minded individuals and allowed to continue spreading his hate and extremist views

Correct, with food and room paid for.

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

There is one problem with your solution of deporting them and I am no far right wing nut job. We have free legal aid and very soft judges. Only recently a load were about to be deported when the solicitors claimed they had insufficient time to speak to their clients so the judge halted the deportation. Throw in the fact that you cannot send someone back to a war torn country, a pretend Christian/gay person cannot be sent back if he claims his life is in danger and on it goes.
All that said, if it means genuine asylum seekers can stay in this country then it is a very fine balancing act and if you ignore the daily mail, I think it isn't a bad system at the moment.

fair enough. I wouldn’t link it to being right wing - I think it’s perfectly sensible to want know criminals either locked up or deported. I think it is a bad system, it seems to be very easy to stay in the country, no matter how bad the crime

if they can’t be deported because of war or whatever reason, put them in jail. I don’t really want criminals walking around on the street for instance. I know you can’t do that all the time, but I think most ordinary people would be ok with that.

 

[Fame Monster]

We have a serious problem, where we aren’t deporting criminals who come here/ then carry out crimes (known terrorists, killers, rapists)

the authorities are allowing a lot of these people to live in Britain and they then carry out these horrific crimes.

Why on earth are known criminals from other countries not being deported or even locked up. It’s happening too much now

We do have a serious problem on that front. The fact that members of them paedo gangs are still walking around Rochdale and bumping into their victims is appalling.

Deportations are getting fewer and fewer every year and even though I'm sure it's an expensive and complex process, everyone benefits from having scum like this removed from society.

 

[Mike Cledford]

Bastard, that's the moral high ground right there - and here I was thinking I was 'down with the kids' for sticking up for muslims. Worth noting though that the amateur Steven Spielbergs of Reading had plonked more info on twitter last night than we have now.

Think positive. Think about those ordinary people who deserve bravery awards rather than plastic best pictures awards at the Oscars.

 

[BlueMoonRisin’]

He will be in a Cat A prison which unfortunately means he will be segregated on a wing with fellow like minded individuals and allowed to continue spreading his hate and extremist views

Should be thrashed with A cat o' nine tails with salt rubbed in his wounds, Then hung. We're far too soft in this country!

 

[I'm With Stupid]

But they have talked about it haven't they. Your point of view only holds any water if the police kept quiet which they haven't. You are equating things here with things in America, which isnt the case. That place is not remotely like ours and under the leadership of a mentalist who is trying to control information. The police here could not have been more transparent about this. Everyone should be assured that the authorities here knew all about this man; his actions are tragically his own and the actions of deranged people with criminal intent like him are rarely acted out, but when they are I am reassured that the police knew about him rather than he was a complete unknown

Oh I'm not talking about the police, I'm talking about the media not reporting it, and in particular, not plastering the face of the killer everywhere or publishing his name. Criminal psychologists will tell you that this encourages other similar people to do the same.

The other question of course that's relevant to your point here is how the police knew him. If they knew him because he was someone with a history of violent and threatening behaviour, for example, or had well-known mental health problems that singled him out as a danger, that's one thing, and the idea that he was a 'lone nutter' is accurate. If they knew him as a religious extremist with dangerous ideas, then they would presumably know this based on the people he associated with, and therefore the idea that it's just a lone nutter is harder to accept. We see this pattern again, where someone commits a terrorist attack and it turns out they were radicalised by non-terrorists in very particular mosques. I'm sure the authorities know this, of course, but a question that we need to answer is the extent to which we're going to allow hate-filled preaching to take place when it's clearly inciting violence. Is it acceptable for extremist regimes like Saudi Arabia to be allowed to fund religious and educational activities in our country? Is it acceptable that extremist preachers from other countries (of any religion) are able to get visas to preach in the UK? I'm sure these are questions the government asks too, but they're arguably more important than trying to watch every potential terrorist.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

When you say you found a story about budget cuts are you talking about police cuts ? I have no figures but I do not think that they would ever say they have had their budget cut, they would never go public on that. The Anti terrorism unit/MI5 is funded separately to the police by the government. Further as we have suffered quite a few fatal terrorist attacks over the past few years it is the one area I do not think they could get away with cutting. The problem is they simply do not have enough people to follow every suspect and it is extremely hard to monitor them online. Sadly a lone wolf attack is nearly always going to succeed and that is what they count on.

No, MI5. Here are the two stories I found:
Telegraph (2013)
Times (2017) - not MI5, but a counter terrorism unit that works with them.
I don't see why it would be unusual for MI5 to have their budget cut like any other department. Presumably after the Cold War finished, they cut the budget of MI6, for example. It's also worth mentioning that the police operate in counter terrorism too, so any cuts to the police would necessarily impact this unless that particular task force was ringfenced. Either way, it would seem your initial answer of "no" to my question was overconfident, as you're now saying that we wouldn't know even if it was.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

The rule of thumb for a live surveillance team for one shift of people is £1000 a day. For every identified terrorist possible subject that would be £365k each. If anyone thinks this is either achievable, reasonable or practical then they would have to chose divert £13 million or sacrifice something else for it. Nothing else warrants the risk v reward of funding that, and there are probably 0.05% of trained surveillance cops to manage it. That means employing more cops while others are trained to do that one job, which is also nonsense.
I could go on. But the point Im making is that is not the fault of the authorities. It is the fault of one deranged knobhead

I don't get this argument. There seems to be a series of people on here who think that because it's impossible to watch someone 24/7, it's therefore not relevant if a department has its budget cut. We'll likely never find out, but it would be interesting to know if those responsible for counter terrorism believe that they have the resources to do their job properly.

 

[stonerblue]

I was referring to the faith and its teachings. If you follow a belief that mandates death for none believers and gays, misogyny and the treatment of women as chattel and inferior to men then that says something about your morality.

Probably applies to all of 'em

 

[stonerblue]

According to mainstream Islamic scholarship (see below) this was a context-specific declaration that has no wider remit than the Meccans from whom the nascent Muslim community faced an existential threat . However, it has provided some inspiration for Salafi-Jihadists.



Certainly Old and New Testament figures crop up in it but there are significant differences. For example, Jesus isn’t crucified, angels lack free-will, Adam and Hawwa (Eve) are forgiven for their sins, and Satan is a jinn, a being of fire.

If I remember rightly, Muhammad may have been influenced by oral traditions found among Jews and Christians that were based in Arabia at that time rather than the Bible itself and those traditions were quite far removed from the content of the Bible. The Qur’an is also not a linear text.

It is also incorrect to describe Islam as a ‘death cult’. Suicide is forbidden in the Qur’an and proscribed in the Hadith. Additionally, Muslims are not meant to deliberately seek martyrdom.

To provide a bit of context, no major faith (with the exception of Jainism) has a history that is free from violence. This continues into the present day with the Army of God in the USA, Hindu Nationalism, and the persecution of the Rohingya by Buddhists (to take just 3 examples off the top of my head).

Islam has also never been a pacifist faith, as the right to self-defence has been maintained pretty much almost throughout its entire history. But if someone is looking for a benign manifestation of it today, the best candidate is possibly the Ismaili sect.

If by ‘death cult’ you are implying that Islam is an inherently violent religion which leads it’s adherents to seek their own demise and has been since its inception, then you may need to be aware that this claim has sort of been made but is contestable, as there is considerable scholarly disagreement. Here are some examples:

Asma Afsaruddin The First Muslims- she attempts to show that violence in self-defence only became permitted after the early Muslims moved to Medina (Yathrib) in 622CE and faced the threat of being wiped off the face of the earth by Muhammad's Meccan enemies.

David Cook Understanding Jihad - pretty much takes the opposite line to Afsaruddin. She discusses him here:

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/orientalists-militants-and-the-meanings-of-jihad

Some other somewhat contrasting views about the early Islamic community can be found in the following:

Fred Donner Muhammad and the Believers - the first 'Muslims' actually called themselves 'Believers' and consisted of a coalition of monotheists. The movement was ecumenical in nature (Jews and Christians were welcome to join) and gained territorial ground with little resistance because of its broad appeal. The actual designation 'Muslim' and self-identification using that label happened much later.

Nicolai Sinai The Qur'an A Historical-Critical Introduction - Islam initially began as a movement predicated on the threat of divine punishment for those Meccans who continued to practise polytheism. When this divine act of retribution failed to materialize and the early Muslims became established in Medina, they themselves became the instrument of that punishment.

Personally, I like what Adam Silverstein wrote about this issue. He says that extremists are likely to sign up to a lenient interpretation of jihad but nevertheless still insist that Islam is under attack, and a defensive jihad is necessary, and that non-combatants who are killed in terrorist incidents are not innocent because in democracies, voters bear full responsibility for the actions of their governments (in the case of Britain and the USA the catalyst is our aggression (as they see it) against Muslims in places like Afghanistan and Iraq).

When it comes to homosexuality (also mentioned up thread), it is true that homophobia is rife in the Islamic world. For more on that, see M. Steven Fish’s acclaimed survey, Are Muslims Distinctive?

But this has not always been the case. John Boswell's discussion of Moorish Spain is worth briefly quoting in this context (Boswell himself was a gay Catholic)

'Although the Qur'an and early religious writings of Islam display mildly negative attitudes towards homosexuality, Islamic society has generally ignored these deprecations, and most Muslim cultures have treated homosexuality with indifference, if not admiration.

Almost without exception, the classic works of Arabic poetry and prose, from Abu Nuwas to the Thousand and One Nights, treat gay people and their sexuality with respect or casual acceptance...The Arabic language contains a huge vocabulary of gay erotic terminology...Erotic address by one male to another is the standard convention of Arabic love poetry; even poems really written to or for women use male pronouns and metaphors of male beauty: it is not uncommon to find poetry addressed to a female in which the object of the poet's affections is praised for 'a dark mustache over pearly white teeth', or the 'first downy beard over damask skin'. Poems about the physical allure of a young man's first beard constitute an entire genre of Arabic poetry...'

It might also be worth mentioning that one of the greatest of all Islamic poets was a wine imbibing bisexual who personally puts me in mind of someone like Shane MacGowan. Here are some examples of his poetry.

From Vintage Humour: The Islamic Wine Poetry of Abu Nuwas(translated by Alex Rowell)

I Miss Al-Hira*

By God, I dearly miss
Al-Hira and its wine
And the ‘oud strings’ sound at dawn
As the church bells chime,
And I miss the taverns at
The sacrifice time**
And spending, on drink and
Beardless youths, my every dime
By God, were you to hear
The Poems I’ve devised
Their splendour would leave you in
Despair till your demise

*formerly a famous centre for Nestorian Christianity in Iraq
**Eid-ul-Adha

Take Revenge on Ramadan

Take revenge on Ramadan
With the fine wines aged in clay
And spend Shawwal in revelry
As the songstress plays
May you be, without exception
Drunk at least twice a day
Shawwal has been most generous
Our thanks must be conveyed
It brought festivity and song
And kept the fast’s shackles at bay
The months I find most agreeable
Are, from Ramadan furthest away

Maybe copies of these poems should be distributed to those anti-LGBT school protesters in Birmingham.

Good post.