Recruiting Muslim spies
BBC - Radio 4 - News and Current Affairs - Recruiting Muslim Spies
This is a BBC Radio 4 programme about attempts by the British security services to recruit Muslims as informants, supposedly to help them track down terrorists. People allege that they have been pressured to join by threats related to their immigration status or past criminal activities, and on one occasion setting up an arrest in Pakistan as an attempt to force them into joining. The reasons why Muslims are reluctant to become spies is obvious - it's against Islam and specifically forbidden in the Qu'ran, which is made clear in the programme, but another aspect not discussed in the programme is the fact that employees of the security services are required to lie about their occupation to even their close family, by telling them they work for the Foreign Office or the Government Communications Bureau. Given Muslims' past experience with the security services elsewhere, particularly in the USA where people were set up by government agents recruiting for fake terrorist plots, I don't believe MI5 et al will have much luck in recruiting Muslims to inform on each other.
Comments
You would be surprised at the number of 'Muslim' informants there are, many who do not consider themselves religious and think they are doing some good.
Posted by: Umar | December 24, 2007 2:08 AM
"...it's against Islam and specifically forbidden in the Qu'ran"
there was a debate about this on one of the forums and many thought that, if you were spying on people plotting to commit mass murder, it was quite legitimate, given the ayah's original contexts was a pious community under threat from a larger, hostile enemy.
Not that I believe for a moment that most of MI5s spying Muslims is about rooting out terrorists.
However, I read somewhere that the leaders of at least one London Salafi mosque work closely with Special Branch, since both recognise Salafis are more at risk of joining a bang gang.
Posted by: Yakoub/Julaybib | December 24, 2007 7:53 AM
Umar, Surely you mean: You would be surprised at the number of 'Muslim' informants there are, many who consider themselves religious and think they are doing some good.
Posted by: Thersites | December 24, 2007 4:41 PM