Britain plans an anti-terror law forcing internet companies to reveal who is using IP addresses
Home Secretary Teresa May will introduce the measure as the Anti Terrorism and Security bill passes through Parliament. And police, security and political leaders are calling on internet service providers to censor Islamic State (IS) terrorists’ content, which includes video footage of beheadings and torture.
It comes as a research report, published by the anti-extremism think tank, the Quilliam Foundation, warns that young women as well as men are being persuaded by online campaigns and DM (direct messaging) on social media such as Twitter and Facebook to leave their homes in the UK and travel to Syria to marry IS fighters. Foundation spokesman Charlie Winter told the PAssW0rd with Peter Warren radio show on Resonance 104.4FM www.resonancefm.com:
“They need women to have their children because they believe they are building a new perfect state, a caliphate.”
He explained that the terrorists, who have taken large areas of Syria and Iraq by military force. appeal mainly to young people in their early twenties from disadvantaged backgrounds
“But it’s important not to typecast them” he said.
Winter, an Arabist who has lived in Syria for one year, is now based at the Quilliam Foundation think tank in central London where researchers are producing a steady stream of publications aiming to shed light on the Islamic State and other extremist groups. IS uses brutal methods including hostage-taking, beheadings and crucifixions. It has murdered western journalists and aid workers bringing relief supplies to refugees from the fighting in Syria – including Salford taxi driver Alan Henning (pictured).
When Henning was beheaded and the footage posted online, Shameela Islam-Zulfiqar created an online giving site for a memorial fund in his name. To date it has raised £33,000. At a service to celebrate his life at Eccles Parish Church mourners wore yellow ribbons and the church was decked in the same colour – a symbol of hope that local people wore when he was still a hostage and continue to wear even though he will never come home. Henning’s widow Barbara told the mourners that he was killed for being selfless. She said her thoughts were with the families of John Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines and Peter Kassig, other Westerners killed or believed killed by ISIL, and she said she prayed for the release of John Cantlie, a journalist who was captured but still may be alive. Earlier she condemned her husband’s killers saying:
“They are hiding behind a peaceful religion. We know this from the outcry from Muslims around the world.“
British imams published open letters in national newspapers calling for Henning’s safe release.
Yet the IS message of a call to arms in a so-called jihad or ‘holy war’ on websites and social media appeals to young British Muslims – according to the Quilliam Foundation research – precisely because of its extreme violence.
Even non-Muslim girls are being influenced – like south Londoner Khadijah Dare who converted to Islam and attended the mosque in Catford where Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale worshipped. The pair have been jailed for life for murdering off-duty soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby outside his barracks in nearby Woolwich in 2013. Dare has now married a Swedish convert and posts messages on Facebook and Twitter encouraging others to join them in Syria. Six young women are believed to have gone from the UK to join Islamic State in Syria, and twenty-three British men have been killed in the fighting there, according the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.
http://icsr.info/2014/10/icsr-insight-guardian-icsr-document-british-fighters-killed-syriairaq-conflict/
Calls for censorship
The new head of Britain’s spy centre GCHQ Robert Hannigan and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogen-Howe have both warned that Islamic terrorists are using the internet to spread messages of hate against westerners and radicalise young Muslims in the UK. At the G20 meeting of world leaders in Australia, British Prime Minister David Cameron warned
“We must not allow the internet to become an ungoverned space. There is a role for government in that. But there is also a role for companies too.”
Counter-extremism
But the Quilliam Foundation, co-founded by Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate Nawaz Maajid, urges a different approach. Its report ‘Jihad trending‘ says censorship is not only ineffective but possibly counter-productive. There is a need to tackle radicalisation not by censorship but by posting alternative messages and footage and working within Britain’s Muslim communities, it says. It recommends the government establishes a seed fund to pay for new counter-extremist websites and social media, improving digital literacy and teaching critical consumption in schools. More controversially, it recommends that Britons returning from fighting with IS in Syria and Iraq should face the due process of law, and then be rehabilitated, treated for post traumatic shock disorder and returned to society.
