I have just finished Ann coulter's book Demonic and she pointed out a few things that touch on this subject. One of the things she pointed out is that when you allow extremists to get away with what they do, you get more, not less of it. Her example was the obamacare protestor who had their finger bitten off by an obamacare supporter. The guy didn't press charges because he said he wasn't the litiguous type of person. Her point here is you can't capitulate to violent people, it only allows them to continue what they do. She states, and I think it applies here, "Tranquil, law-based societies are the most vulnerable to attack because those with an interest in defending it are calmly following the law. They don't like disorder even in defense of order. " You see this point here in the states and also apparently in Great Britain and the other democracies around the world as radical islamists preach hate and incite their young men to commit violent acts.
The way you deal with this is exposing it, not allowing it to go unreported. For example, the biggest help to the civil rights movement here in the States was the television camera. As our country saw innocent people, peacfully marching, being attacked by nightsticks, police dogs and fire hoses, and then the reports of the church bombings and murders were covered on television, things began to change. You had all of those things before, but the wider country wasn't forced to face them because they were hidden. That is, until television came along. What does that mean for the extremism from the first post. I think the BBC should send undercover reporters into Mosques and record the guys inciting these young men. Then put it on the air with extended coverage and footage. They should also do lots and lots of stories about this extremism so that regular muslims and other British citizens can't ignore it and that sort of behavior is acknowledged, openly as being wrong and something that will not be tolerated by the rest of the country as well as the greater muslim community. Regular citizens need to see this stuff on television as much as possible. Muslim citizens need to see this stuff on television as well. You may say, some muslims already hear and see this extremism already when they go into the community. True, but television pulls it out of the sympathetic environment in which they see it, much like seeing it under a microscope. Good people will find it harder to go along to get along when this stuff is out in open, and not hidden in their community.
The BBC also needs to do more stories on mistreatment of women in the muslim community. If you want to free women, you need to expose the abuse to the wider community, where they can't hide from it or ignore it. If you think of all the great monsters in history, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and the rest, they made their greatest progess in their atrocities when people refused to see that they were evil and ignored what is easily seen now. Hitler was praised when he first came to power as were the communists. Now, when their evil is exposed, (at least the nazi evil) you can't have a neo-nazi march here in the states without 10 times the counter protestors denouncing them.
The truth about these extremists needs to be on television and the stories of their behavior needs to be on television. That is one way to combat it. When it is allowed to be hidden, and then explained away, it will just grow and the extremists will feel justified because the greater community doesn't deal with them, but hides their faces from them.
Another thing, the police need to be allowed to do their jobs. The klan was destroyed here in the states because after their evil was on television, law enforcement was able to take them on and it was demanded that they be taken on. I heard an agent on a show once who said that for every klan member today, there were 10 undercover agents infiltrating their group. That is one way you take on extremism, you let law enforcement enforce the law and that will only really happen when the extremism is exposed on television where the good people can see it and not ignore it and insist that it be dealt with by law enforcement and the judicial system.
} but it raises a point that might bear discourse - how can we stop religious fanatacism banning the flames of discord and hatred to the point at which people, who were once 'ordinary', become the grist for the suicide bomber mill?
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