About 150 automatic number plate recognition cameras (ANPRs) have been installed in two predominantly Muslim areas of Britain’s second biggest city Birmingham from the government’s anti-terrorism fund, it was reported Saturday.The installation project, which is three times the number to monitor the city centre, was principally been sold to locals as an attempt to combat antisocial behavior, vehicle crime and drug dealing in the area.
But according to the Guardian, the cameras have been paid for by a £3 million grant from the Terrorism and Allied Matters Fund, which has been previously used to monitor potential targets but not whole communities.
Respect Party councillor for Sparkbrook Salma Yaqoob said that the funding arrangement was not made clear to the local authority, which was only told at a briefing the money was from the Home Office.
“The terrorism aspect was certainly not emphasised in that meeting. In fact it was me having to be portrayed as the awkward squad, or even paranoid, for even raising the issue of whether this was really about counterterrorism,” Yaqoob said.
“I raised my concern then: is this really about spying?” she said, but who was told “No, this is about burglary and crime.”
The surveillance of Muslims is in addition to the government’s Prevent extremism program, which the Institute of Race Relations has already castigated as “one of the most elaborate systems of surveillance ever seen in Britain”.
Prevent, set up by the Home Office over two years ago, offers additional funding to work with community groups to effectively spy on all Muslims as potential terrorists.
We Muslims had barely recovered from the news of the 14-year conviction of the Canadian terrorist Saad Khalid, when our Labour Day holiday was interrupted with the bulletin that three of our co-religionists had been found guilty in the U. K. of plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up planes bound for Toronto, Montreal and other North American cities.
The heavy focus on al Qaeda in the new AfPak strategy could complicate America’s broader strategy of strategic public engagement with the Muslim world. The politics of the focus make perfect domestic sense, as Obama — quite effectively, in a disappointingly Bush-like way — tried to recapture the mantle of the “good war” and to focus American public attention on 9/11. And to the extent that this represents a limiting of American objectives, then I’m all for it. But the heavy focus on al Qaeda risks rescuing it from the position of marginality in Arab and Muslim politics to which it has largely been relegated over the last year — and could end up strengthening the strategic threat of violent extremism even if it weakens al Qaeda Central.
Since al-Qaeda declared holy war against the world’s only superpower a decade ago, Washington has either been in denial or is no closer to understanding what really motivates al-Qaeda militants and its affiliates, or how to deal with them. 
