Peirce on Muslims in Britain

Gareth Peirce, a UK lawyer who has since the 1970s represented individuals accused of involvement in terrorism from both the Irish and the Muslim communities, finds instructive parallels between their situations:

The history of thirty years of conflict in Northern Ireland, as it is being written today, might give the impression of a steady progression towards an inevitable and just conclusion. The new suspect community in this country, Muslims, want to know whether their experience today can be compared with that of the Irish in the last third of the 20th century. It is dangerously misleading to assert that it was the conflict in Northern Ireland which produced the many terrible wrongs in the country’s recent history: it was injustice that created and fuelled the conflict. Before Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers shot and killed 13 unarmed Catholic demonstrators who were marching to demand not a united Ireland but equal rights in employment, education and housing (as well as an end to internment), the IRA was a diminished organisation, unable to recruit. After Bloody Sunday volunteers from every part of Ireland and every background came forward. Over the years of the conflict, every lawless action on the part of the British state provoked a similar reaction: internment, ‘shoot to kill’, the use of torture (hooding, extreme stress positions, mock executions), brutally obtained false confessions and fabricated evidence. This was registered by the community most affected, but the British public, in whose name these actions were taken, remained ignorant: that the state was seen to be combating terrorism sufficed. Central to the anger and despair that fuelled the conflict was the realisation that the British courts offered neither protection nor justice. The Widgery Report into Bloody Sunday, which was carried out by the lord chief justice, absolved the British army and backed its false account of 13 murders, ensuring that Irish nationalists would see the legal system as being aligned against them.

We should keep all this in mind as we look at the experiences of our new suspect community.

More here.

Comments

[JNM]

It's easy to pick this up and pontificate when terrorists haven't blown themselves up - and many, many other normal, good people - in your city.

There's a vicious, evil ideology going on here, and people have to take reasonable steps to protect themselves. In the UK, the security services are having to deal with a huge number of terrorist plots - I don't have the figures, but from memory it's somewhere in the 30 - 150 range each year.

Are you suggesting that we should be weak and pathetic and allow ourselves to be slaughtered in the name of militant Islam? Wake up, mate!

[Namit]

JNM:
I'm sure you'll agree that there is a smart way to combat an ideology and a dumb way that might achieve worse results—the former derives from knowledge, the latter from fear. A fearful people do not habitually make smart decisions. I think Pierce too is making a case for "reasonable steps" by learning from another historical experience. What exactly do you object to? Have you even read the article?

It might help you to read some more reasonable analysis on what's turning young Muslims into terrorists, especially in your own country.

[lim]

i dont think any of us can explain why these young muslims are turning into terrorists but maybe it would be different if they were taught to think for themselves, their elders dominate them,they are told what they can and cant do so are ripe for the rantings of idiots calling themselves men of god.i'm affraid the gov of britain has been too soft and allowed people to come into this country and take advantage of the good things it has to offer but refuse to change their customs when in another country...there are second generation immigrants who cannot speak english and still think of their parents homeland as their own even though they've never been there. this is a problem that wont go away until countries get more strick with there immigration laws where as if you want to move to another country you learn its language and customs, your faith is your own but when it contridicts with the customs of the country you're living in then it has to be modified. i've spent 20 years travelling around this world and met amazing people from the north of greenland to dirt villages in south america and i never tire of seeing and meeting new people who have open minds, the problem is certain religions are hell bent on closing the minds of its people and this is when you get youngsters strapping tnt onto themselves in the hope they end up in paradise with 50 virgins, if they only opened their eyes they would see that they are already in paradise and it has females in it as well,

[mugisha levi]

lim,
Agree with me that politics and religion are inseperable but this should not close the minds of our brothers and sisters to go ahead terrosing the innocent massses in ireland.how ever ,people have got a right to advocate for their rigts in case their abused. But iam of the view that,love ,peace,and conflict managment can cease terrorism i ireland if critcally obeserved.