Only in a democracy can you cry 'police state'
Daily Telegraph (UK) ^ | 2/9/07
telegraph.co.uk
Distressing though it must have been for Abu Bakr to have been arrested and questioned in connection with an alleged terrorist kidnap plot, only to be released without charge a week later, it hardly warranted his intemperate reaction. "It's a police state for Muslims," he opined. The fact that he had been released from custody and was able to make his preposterous statement on national television rather argues the opposite.
Abu Bakr's paranoia (fuelled, of course, by the swarms of human-rights activists these cases inevitably attract) got short shrift from both Tony Blair and David Cameron yesterday. The two party leaders robustly asserted that his treatment actually showed the law working as it should in a liberal democracy. What we were, in fact, witnessing from Mr Bakr was another minor excrescence of the sense of victimhood that comes so readily to many Muslims because of the community isolation multiculturalism has malignly engendered.
The row also exposes the wider problem of policing the Muslim community during anti-terror inquiries. The Forest Gate arrests last summer that resulted in no charges being brought left the police facing inevitable (and quite specious) claims that they were pursuing some sort of vendetta against the Muslim community. In last week's West Midlands sweep the police sought to avoid such accusations by leafleting local Muslims to explain what they were doing. This, in turn, generates justifiable irritation in non-Muslim communities, which point out, with some justice, that they do not get placatory leaflet drops when some of their own have their collars felt.
In fact, the police deserve our sympathy for they have scant choice in the matter. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 imposes a statutory obligation on the police (and indeed all other public bodies) to take active steps to promote racial equality. The legislation was, of course, drafted in response to the Macpherson inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence, which concluded that the Metropolitan Police was "institutionally racist".
This legal requirement means the police are being pulled in opposite directions when investigating terrorist plots. Whether Muslims like it or not, these tend to be focused on their community because Islamic fundamentalism is the threat we face. So the police are obliged by the law to do everything in their power not to offend Muslim sensibilities – while being expected by the whole community to catch terrorists before they can act. This places them in a hopeless double bind that no law-enforcement agency should be asked to tolerate. |
