"certain communities" to be targeted for surveillance

The recent speech by Nu Labour insider Kim Howells was truly worrying. Using the term "certain communities" (we know who you are and where you live!), Howells was able to get away with a deeply racist and dangerous suggestion that "the Muslim Community" should be targeted for a far more intrusive level of surveillance at the same time as we should pull troops out of Afghanistan. Rather than being clear that he meant to target Muslims he was able to use the term "community" to disguise any such suggestion. In doing so he has taken the (ab)use of the term community to new ideological depths. The term community is dangerous because it can so easily be used - as here - to mean much more (or conversely, sometimes much less) than it might seem at first sight. As Rizwaan Sabir says in the Guardian: 'at a certain point, turning "certain communities" into terror suspects becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy'