Monday, November 27, 2006

Global Peace and Unity?

This weekend the Excel centre in Docklands played host to the Islam Channel's annual Global Peace and Unity event. Watching snippets of it served as a reminder that young Muslims in Britain don't have to hang out with dodgy old imams in order to become radicalised by a deliberate blurring of faith and politics.

Whatever the stated aims of the meeting, the message being touted by one group of snarling Koranic rappers that I flicked over to on Saturday afternoon was about as peaceful as a Katyusha rocket. It's hard to see the value in pressurising crusty old "community leaders" to out their "extremists", when such an aggressive identity-political stance is becoming an integral part of the continuity of popular youth culture within this particular community.

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