Azhar Ahmed -- charged with treason over Facebook comments?

Comments about the army on a Yorkshire teenager's Facebook page seem to be too much for the new 'total policing' state
Richard Seymour
The Guardian
Mar. 19, 2012

Azhar Ahmed is to be prosecuted by police over a Facebook statement about the British army in Afghanistan. Photograph: Gaz Faulkner/MoD Crown Copyright/PA Azhar Ahmed is the latest victim of a concerted effort to redefine racism as "anything that could conceivably offend white people". Ahmed is being prosecuted by police over a statement that appeared on his Facebook page. The police say it is a "racially aggravated public order offence".

Look at the statement. There is not a hint of racism in it. To make it racist, one would have to assume that the troops were not just exclusively white, but somehow the bearer of whiteness in its essence. Maybe they are in this day and age; maybe it is through imperialist action and its effects both domestically and internationally that whiteness is produced. But the second assumption one would have to make is that white people are the victims of racist oppression by black people, Muslims and so on. We'll come back to this.

A spokesperson for Yorkshire police said: "He didn't make his point very well and that is why he has landed himself in bother." So, the penalty for not making a point "very well" is prosecution and potentially a sentence of up to six months in prison. The suggestion, though, is that aside from being "racially aggravated" this statement constitutes an incitement to disorder. Of course, it is considerably more even-tempered than some sentiments I have expressed myself in the past, though I won't suffer arrest or prosecution for it.

In addition, the internet -- and Facebook in particular -- contains an abundance of pages that really do exist to incite violence. Yet a Muslim sassing our brave boys is too much for the state. Either this suggests that Muslims are an excitable brown rabble, apt to start cutting white people up at the merest hint of block capitals and exclamation marks, or it implies that it is the feelings of offended white people that must be protected, lest they be the ones who are incited. Unsurprisingly the EDL and Casuals United dirt (may I say that, or is it "racially aggravated"?) are delighted. Muslims won't be allowed to sass our brave boys now that the bizzies are "on our side". Hurrah for the filth! (Is that OK, or...?)

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