Tuesday 10 February 2009

Feeding The Crocodile In The Hope It Eats You Last…

Prominent British Muslims are being recruited to star in a government-backed advertising campaign aimed at preventing people in Pakistan from engaging in extremist activity, the Guardian has learned.
Seems daft to me, but if that’s how they want to spend their money…

Oh:
The three-month public relations offensive, called I Am the West, consists of television commercials and high-profile events in regions such as Peshawar and Mirpur. It is being funded by the Foreign Office which is paying up to £400,000 for a pilot project.
Correction, ‘the Foreign Office’ isn’t paying – we are.

British taxpayers are funding adverts in Pakistan to persuade Muslims in Pakistan not to bomb us.

You truly couldn’t make it up:
Starring in the first three adverts are Sadiq Khan, the communities minister, Jehangir Malik, the UK manager of Islamic Relief, English cricketer Moeen Ali and the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Chaudry Abdul Rashid, who is from Mirpur. Mirpuris represent around 70% of Britain's Pakistani population.

According to a project synopsis, the target audience is 15-25-year-old males who are "less than well-educated and worldly wise, but potentially susceptible to extremist doctrines". If successful, it will be implemented in Egypt, Yemen and Indonesia.
And are British taxpayers going to be footing the bill for that too…?
The campaign has four key aims: to ensure Pakistanis realise the west is not "anti-Islamic", that British society is not "anti-Islam", to demonstrate the extent to which Muslims are integrated into British society and to stimulate and facilitate "constructive debate" on the compatibility of liberal and Muslim values.
We must be insane…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is almost a textbook example of how 'government campaigns' mean in reality juicy sinecures for those 'in the loop'.
All the 'Health promotion' campaigns (Five a day, stop smoking etc)show this tendancy as well.
This latest 'campaign' will in all likelihood be about as effective as the campaigns warning about the pitfalls of single teenage pregnancy.It is a bucket of warm spit thrown into a tide of cultural factors flowing in the opposite direction.