Poor BBC. No matter how often they try to sell us on the idea that British Muslims are about as threatening as paraplegic Care Bears, reality just keeps on getting in the way:

Detectives are continuing to question nine men over what is thought to be a plot to kidnap and kill a Muslim member of the armed forces.

On videotape. After forcing him to beg for his life. Clearly, it’s going to take some serious spinning to make the Care Bears Defence work this time around:

Another terrorism raid, another Muslim community in shock. At Alum Rock, the community woke up on a bright Wednesday morning to witness anti-terror arrests on their doorstep.

This, from Dominic Casciani, a man for whom Britain’s Muslim community (leastways those not serving in the Armed Forces) are forever traumatised by the very suggestion that terrorists might be lurking among their number.

We have, of course, been through all this with Dominic before. Straight after 7/7, he was fretting over ‘impressionable kids’. A year on from that episode, and, to listen to Dominic tell it, Leeds’ Muslims were being cowed by ‘a legacy of fear and suspicion’. Today, in Birmingham, it’s communitywide ’shock’.

Alum Rock is a relatively poor area east of Birmingham city centre. Most of its Asian residents come from a Pakistani-Kashmiri background.

Notice that? How Dominic is quick to point out the relative poverty of Alum Rock? This might well be true, but since the arrested men were (as is usually the case with home-grown jihadists) mostly well-to-do businessmen, it’s also irrelevant. Nice try though, Dominic. It never hurts to tug at liberal heartstrings with images of poverty-stricken Muslims.

The area has been changing in recent years with the arrival of Somalis and, in the last year, Polish migrant workers looking for cheap housing.

Again, this is irrelevant — All those arrested were of Pakistani origin, the sons and grandsons of those who came to Britain decades ago.

But amid the day-to-day business of solving local problems, they now have a much larger one.

Wait a minute. What ‘local problems’ are these? The ‘relative poverty’ the arrested Islamopaths weren’t suffering? Or the sudden influx of Polish immigrants? Well, damn, but you know a Beeboid is getting really desperate when he uses mass-immigration as a mitigating factor to explain violent crime … But back to the ‘much larger’ problem of terrorism and Islamism in the Alum Rock — That is what we’re talking about, right?

At 0400 GMT, police from the Midlands counter-terrorism unit, a new police team based in Birmingham, with West Midlands Police officers and colleagues from the Metropolitan Police, raided 12 properties across the city. Two homes and a grocery shop in Alum Rock are among those now shut up.

Nope. Not terrorism. The ‘much larger’ problem is, in fact, cops turning up to arrest terrorists.

At the Alum Rock Islamic Centre, just a street away from the raid on the shop, local leaders said they had first heard of what happened on the news. But they said the key thing was for the community to stick together and support the police in their work.

Or, to draw the sense out of the above paragraph: ‘The local leaders I met were pissing and moaning about how the police didn’t inform them prior to raiding their little state within a state. But they’re still willing to co-operate with the police. Such generosity!’

Ayub Pervaz, president of the mosque, said that the committee had contacted local police chiefs as early as they could to propose that officers base themselves in the institution during the investigation to help ease any potential community tensions.

You never can guess what’ll make some people tense. For most of us, the thought of sharing a street with guys who kidnap war-heroes and saw their heads off on videotape would do the trick. As for Birmingham’s Muslims, tension happens when the police turn up to arrest the people plotting to do this.

But at the same time he said the community wanted to see the wheels of justice turn correctly.

Well, we all want that. It must be said, however, that most of us have the good-grace to actually wait on a miscarriage of justice to happen before protesting about it. Not so British Muslims. Or BBC journalists, for that matter.

“If there has been a crime, the people who have done this should be brought to justice. But if they are innocent, then they should be exonerated and be seen to be exonerated.

Well. Yes. That is the way things generally work in Britain … Or is Ayub Pervaz implying that cops might try to frame innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit? Damn, but wasn’t he on a mission to calm tensions just a few seconds ago?

“We do not want trial by media and that is what this community is most afraid of - that British justice used to be innocent until proven guilty and now it may be the other way around.”

So now we’re adding ‘negative press’ and ‘British justice’ to the list of things Muslims are more afraid of than madmen sawing off the heads of kidnap victims? Riiight.

Shabir Hussein, another community elder, said that the public could not underestimate the fear of local people. He said that parents were worried sick about their young men and just wanted to do what they could to help the investigation.

At first glance, this sounds more promising. Does Shabir Hussein mean that Muslims are desperately scrambling to de-radicalise their increasingly-nutty offspring?

As Mr Hussein was being interviewed by the BBC, a van which was passing slowed. The driver hurled racist abuse at Mr Hussein, before driving on.

Gosh, but wasn’t that an amazingly convenient piece of white-on-black racism? Lucky, lucky Dominic! No one, not even the Guardian or Independent, were fortunate enough to have their interviews with Muslim elders punctuated by perfectly-timed Islamophobic outbursts. If only Dominic had been around in 1963, it’s a safe bet he’d have had his camera pointed straight at that grassy knoll.

“Look at that,” he said. “This is what we are dealing with because of what happens. Parents are scared. They want to work with the police.

Ah. So it’s not the whole ‘my kids are turning into head-hackers for the Moon God’ scenario that scares Muslim parents, after all. Oh no. What they’re fretting over is the dreaded (and much-publicised) Anti-Muslim Backlash Of Humiliation.

It’s at this point that conservatives (or, indeed, any people not suffering from delusional paranoia) like to point out that said backlash never actually happens. Only, we can’t really do that this time around, can we? After all, both the Muslim-loving Beeboid and the Muslim ‘community elder’ commented on Van-Driving Racist’s outburst, didn’t they? Our capacity for criticism is now and forever disarmed in such matters — Along, it must be said, with our incredulity.

“Parents are asking their sons who they are talking to, who they meet, where they go, what they are looking at on the internet. We are all being very, very vigilant but we never spotted or smelt anything like this in our area.”

Perhaps this is a definition of ‘very, very vigilant’ that only members of Birmingham’s RoP use. Because, otherwise, some unkind person might suggest Shabir Hussein check out the goings-on at Green Lane Mosque (where they gleefully extol the virtues of murdering British soldiers). Too far to travel? Well, then, how about popping around the corner to the Maktabah Al Ansar bookshop, founded by ex-Gitmo detainee Moazzam Begg, and, in spite of his years away from the place, still stuffed to the gills with Islamofascist propaganda. Still too much trouble for the ‘very, very vigilant’ elders of Alum Rock? What does a terrorist have to do to get noticed around there? Drive a van?

But according to one community source, there has been some frustration over the pace of countering the threat posed by extremist political groups in Birmingham.

Although Dominic doesn’t point this out, it’s telling that the only Muslim in this report who is actually critical of Islamofascism is also the only Muslim in this report too scared to give their name. Kind of makes you wonder about the commitment of fair-weather anti-jihadists like Ayub Pervaz and Shabir Hussein, doesn’t it?

One community worker told the BBC of previous running battles with Al Muhajiroun, a radical group that says it has disbanded, in predominantly Muslim areas of the city.

Let’s get this straight: Al Muhajiroun disbanded because they were banned under British law — Bluffers tip, Dominic, the official non-existence of illegal organisations shouldn’t be made to sound like voluntary disbandment.

Leaflets would go out, or stickers onto lampposts, promoting what most people would regard as extreme views. Local young Muslims, opposed to Al Muhajiroun’s views, would tear them down.

… So, it’s ‘Yes!’ to hate-speech in mosques, and ‘Yes!’ to hate-literature in bookshops, but ‘No!’ to sticking notes on lampposts. You know what? At long last we seem to have actually pinned-down the definition of ‘moderate Muslim’.

“We found it difficult to get some people, including within communities and the authorities, to take this kind of thing seriously,” he said. “People had their head in the sand as to what was going on. It makes it a lot harder to combat.”

*Sigh* If only Dominic had been around back then, doubtless the terrorists would have driven up in van, rolled down the window, and announced their intention to engage in a spot of hero-beheading.

But other young men in the area said that the raid was another example of how Muslims in British society felt they were now being treated.

There’s always a ‘but’ with Dominic, isn’t there? ‘But’ cops upset the Birmingham Ummah. ‘But’ the criminal justice system is biased against Muslims. ‘But’ bad press upsets community ‘elders’. But ‘young men’ who may or may not (Dominic, doubtless still reeling from the racist abuse hurled from vans, doesn’t ask) belong to the illegal Al Muhajiroun, now feel ill-treated by the society whose heroes they wish to see beheaded on videotape.

“I have a lot of white friends,” said the man, who said he worked in forensic science. “But get on a bus now with a beard and a rucksack and you get the stares. I don’t blame them, you know.

Gosh, but is Dominic going to wind-up his Islamist whine-fest on a positive note of self-awareness? Is Forensic Science Man actually admitting that the predilection of British Muslims to slaughter large numbers of innocent people on behalf of their Moon God bad PR? Is Dominic accepting that others quite reasonably wince at the thought of sharing a railway carriage with someone dressed for jihad? Well, no:

“It’s all been so hyped up.”

9/11 — Hype. 7/7 — Hype. Plots to kidnap, torture and saw the head off one of the few genuinely brave, decent and honourable British Muslims — Hype. The very thought that huge numbers of the RoP’s new generation have tipped themselves over the edge into Sharia-supporting, head-severing, 7th-Century insanity — Hype.

But the idea that Dominic Casciani might get around to asking tough questions of British Muslims — Unthinkable. After all, it wouldn’t do for the BBC to wind up labelled as ‘dirty hype-ers’, now would it?

(Cross-posted at Rottweiler Puppy)

Said RottyPup @ 2:00 am | Permalink   

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