UK Government names 'Islam in Europe' one of most influential 'pro-Islamic' bloggers: In Islamic Blog Mapping Exercise

It would seem strange that 'Islam in Europe' is one of the blogs viewed as 'pro-Islamic' ~ when it is more likely neither pro or anti-Islam.

There are two issues with Islam that are in conflict with each other ~ there is the need to root out terrorism ~ where governments find it useful to reach out to the Islamic world such as Obama did in Cairo. Some of this involves producing a message that is not factually accurate ~ but makes Muslims feel good ~ for example, when Obama talked about Muslim history in relation to the US he was careful to leave out the Barbary attacks in the 1700's ~ shortly after the US gained its independence and no longer sailed under the protection of the British Navy. The US Congress was then to told of these puzzling unprovoked attacks by Muslims along the Mediterranean: 

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

These anti-terror efforts use the religious element of Islam to stem the military wing. For a long while we heard Jihad meant 'inner peace' ~ but the Jihadists and leaders like Iranian's Ahmadinejad and now the Libya leader have put paid to that. The aim was to say if jihad means ~ to struggle for 'inner peace' then it removes the violence from Islam. It did not work. The next thing then was to say ~ then jihad should be carried out only with the permission of a respected cleric. Only millions of Muslims see Sheik Osama Bin Laden as a good example of one. There have been subsequent efforts to control and label clerics and mosques.

What these policies are poor at acknowledging ~ is the reason for the terrorism. Which is to create an Islamic state ~ where Islamic rules are the norm. And this also leads us to Islam's political wing ~ or Islam's social element that has the same goal as the terrorist. The debate is often about how far back towards the 7th century does one want to go ~ the radicals want to go further back than many of the so called progressive Muslims ~ who would likely opt for sometime in the last millennium. Many Muslims have renounced terrorism ~ because they realize that under the radar social activism yields more results. To help accommodate Muslims ~ often westerners authorities or organizations are at times all to happy to agreed to Muslim demands ~ and act in a way to Islamize society. The reasoning being ~ what is one or two lost freedoms here and there ~ but then you find that Muslims are not only applying pressure on the local pool ~ they are applying pressure on the local school ~ for halal, for Islamic compliant dress for non-Muslims, for Islamic toilets, for Islamic prayer rooms and the infiltration of politics and academia for the ultimate hole-in-one Islamic law. And all these efforts ramped up several gears after the terrorist attacks. Obviously taking advantage of the governments' desperation to ward off any future terror attacks.

What the the Guardian newspaper is proud to call pro-Islam coverage is essentially Islamic proselytizing. Similarly the New Statesman ~ all Left-wing journals believe in the better nature of Islam ~ a religion they know absolutely nothing about ~ and allow Muslim writers to promote their religion and beliefs ~ turning the political pages into a church service. Westerners are all well aware of the struggle for women's rights, and basic freedoms that we all enjoy including Muslims ~ the idea that we should casually hand these over to those who wish to curtail freedoms to what exists in the Islamic world ~ because they feel 'strongly' about their religion ~ amounts to a betrayal based, on a fantasy, of an Islam that simply does not exist.

Truthfully it probably would not have gone down well if Obama had said in his Cairo speech ~ you so-and-sos ~ you have been attacking us for 300 years it is time you got it together ~ its the 21 century. But we have to know that jihad is as old as Islam ~ and we have to understand its aims are why we should not give into it whether it comes in a violent form or other type of struggle. We have to know that this is a struggle for our demise.


The Home Office's counter-terrorism communications unit has named its top 20 most influential "pro-Islamic" political bloggers.

The list forms part of a mapping exercise carried out on behalf of the Home Office to estimate and track the scale and influence of Islamic bloggers in Britain.

The results of the exercise, which was carried out in 2008 but only published today, show that a network of Islamic bloggers who post on British politics does exist but is still relatively small and draws its information overwhelmingly from mainstream media, mainly the Guardian and the BBC.

The research was carried out by the Home Office research, information and communications unit (RICU) to see if there were new ways of ensuring the government's counter-terrorism messages reached people in the Muslim community who did not read or watch mainstream media.

It pinpointed 140 "pro-leaning Islamic" blogs when it was carried out in 2008 by David Stevens of Nottingham University.

"Compared with other political blogging communities this is not terribly high," the study says. "As suspected, any pro-Islamic blogging community is likely to be still in its early stages of development in quantitive terms. However the existence of Islamic blog-feed sites (that list recent posts across Islamic blogs in one place) indicates that the community is reaching something of a critical mass."

The project is primarily concerned with how "radical Islamic messages" are disseminated in Britain, yet it notes that many blogs are not overtly or mainly political in this sense, but contain such messages or references to them.

It says a large anti-jihadist and anti-Islamic blogging community exists which is far larger and more cohesive than the pro-Islamic blogging community.

The top 20 list compiled as a "snapshot" in 2008 includes several based outside Britain but posting on UK politics in English. The top five sites listed are Ali Eteraz, Islam in Europe, the Angry Arab News Service, Indigo Jo Blogs/Blogistan and Daily Terror. Ali Eteraz is the author of Children of Dust – a memoir of Pakistan that was named on the New Statesman 2009 books of the year list – and has been a regular poster on Comment is Free.

The list only covers blogs published in English. Some, such as Angry Arab, which publish news articles in full from various sources draw heavily on the New York Times, al-Akhbar and Ha'aretz. But once these are excluded much UK-related material is drawn from the Guardian, the BBC and the Times. Very little material is drawn fromal-Jazeera, Islam Online or other Islamic-focused media.

A Home Office spokeswoman said that after the research was undertaken it was decided to focus on sending the government's counter-terrorism messages to Muslim communities through national mainstream media, including publications such as the Muslim Weekly and Daily Jang.

Guardian