On a mild Thursday morning, in the middle of November, the K family received a visit from the anti-terrorist unit, who coolly informed them that they had received intelligence that they were involved in ‘radical’ activities and subjected them to a sequence of ambiguous questioning. Then they left, and the family breathed a sigh of relief.
They were the lucky ones. Although the officers had come to arrest them under anti-terrorist legislation, the questioning revealed a family link to the police force and hence the invariable vetting of the family on a regular basis. In other words, had they done anything even slightly out of the ordinary, it would have been picked upon immediately.
After weeks of uncertainty and apprehension, the police finally revisited the family with an apology and with the source of their ‘intelligence’. A single malicious, anonymous phone call made to crimestoppers, lacking any substance, evidence or proof. The only thing it mentioned was the family's name, their address, the unsubstantiated claim of ‘radicalism’; and the deed was done.
And this is the danger facing British Muslims today, random denunciations to the authorities, from the people who know them well. I say Muslims, because it is clear that they are seen as the greatest threat. And I say British, because it is the British bred, loyal, even patriotic British Muslims who are most at risk from this arbitrary police interference in their lives.
And the greatest threat to the British Muslim today is simply that, the British Muslim. For it is the British Muslim who the ordinary British Muslim socialises with, who the ordinary British Muslim shares most aspects of his life with, who the ordinary British Muslim knows and respects and prefers over other groups in society. In short, it is the British Muslim who knows enough about his Muslim brother to present and convert the most innocent of information into the most suspicious of activities.
Since 9/11, over 1,100 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000. Of them, only 38 have been convicted, 12 of them Muslims. The massive disparity between the number of arrests and the actual number of convictions is indicative of the urgency of the police to prevent any terrorist threat from emerging. But it is also indicative of the huge breadth of the conditions that people may fall under for them to be arrested and held without charge. A single malicious phone call can tip that balance, and lead an innocent person into a cell.
With growing claims of Britain becoming a surveillance nation, and a police state, it is hard not to draw comparisons with other police states that have plagued Europe in recent history, most notably, the regime that was Nazi Germany.
In the period between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi’s secret police force, the Gestapo, were seen as the most terrifying, brutal secret police force in the whole of Europe. But at the height of the terror, the number of Gestapo only reached 7,500. Out of a population of 80,000,000, that meant only one secret policeman for more than 10,000 of the population. The most striking question was therefore this; how did the Gestapo wreak such havoc on the German population?
The uneasy conclusion reached by historians is that, instead of the much held myth of the Gestapo being an omnipresent, omnipotent force in a ‘police state’, the facts actually reveal something quite diverse, and unusually alarming. The Nazi State could only run as a police state if it itself was self-policing; that is, if its population aided it in its terror. It was by the denouncing of their neighbours, employers, friends and family, that the Gestapo was able to arrest people for violating the stringent Nazi laws, with the motives behind such denunciations often not asked for, nor volunteered. Yet one thing remains clear. The huge majority of Gestapo arrests came from denunciations, and it was the collaboration by the population at large in this sphere, that led to the Nazi State’s enablement to terrorise its citizens on a grass roots level.
From his extensive research, Robert Gellately, a prominent historian on Nazi Germany, found that self-interest fuelled the self-policing system of the Nazi State, and was the primary motivation for denunciations to the Gestapo and other authorities. These overt ‘instrumental motives’ led to neighbours denouncing their neighbours, friends denouncing friends, and even family members denouncing their own family. Motivations were as varied as the different cases; some fuelled by jealousy, some by revenge, others by mere dislike. Women falsely accused their husbands of listening to foreign radio to facilitate their divorce, or mother-in-laws accused hated son-in-laws of befriending Jews. Furthermore however, Gellately found that even when the evidence presented to the Gestapo was, even by their standards, inconsequential, they pursued the case regardless, and, by doing so, created a multiplicity of social effects, such as rumours, gossip and anxiety, and hence enabled the Gestapo to continue to terrorise the population.
It is hard not to be alarmed by the parallels that we now face in Britain, to those of the Nazi regime. The mass number of arrests but small number of actual convictions is synonymous to that of the Nazi regime. Furthermore, the number of denunciations, mainly anonymous, is rising, another factor identical to that of the Nazi regime.
And just as the denouncers in Nazi Germany were the closest people to the accused, a similar, if not identical pattern will begin to emerge in Britain. Where British Muslims are the prominent cause of concern, it will be those closest to them who will be the denouncers in their case; the other British Muslims who make up the majority of their social circles. And just as the German population were fuelled by jealousy and vengeance, Muslims too, will be susceptible to such human traits, and will be encouraged to falsely accuse and denounce for their own self-motivated reasons. This is the most prominent danger British Muslims face today.
And this is the real Muslim terrorist threat.
