Do you know what happens when you bomb London? The British government apologises for any offence caused and offers your coreligionists a job. No seriously, bomb us, and we’ll apologise to you. Yesterday, the BBC reported that Margaret Hodge, the Employment Minister, believes that it is important to find ways of encouraging young Muslims to feel integrated into British society, in the light of the terrorist attacks in London on 7 July, and ensuring they get jobs when they leave university is her answer. Quite apart from the ethics of such preferential treatment, she’s clearly ignorant of the circumstances of the four men (and the seven suicide bombers we previously exported to countries like Palestine and Pakistan), because decent education, jobs, the appearances of contentment and decency, really were not the cause of their radicalism.
Of course, there’s been a lot of talk about tightening up the terrorism laws, extending the security services, and policing our borders, and I cautiously applaud these measures, but, as Bill Durodie wrote in Chatham House’s recent Security, Terrorism and the UK report, the ‘problem with these is that, in seeking to secure society from the outside, we fail simultaneously to engage society from the inside with a view to winning a debate as to what we actually stand for.’ It remains to be seen if we have the nerve for that. Not just in terms of frank debate, but also in terms of unequivocal clarity. Although Tony Blair said yesterday that those who advocate suicide bombing ‘whether it's in London, whether it's in Afghanistan or Iraq, or it's in Palestine or it's in Turkey or Kashmir, or anywhere … have got no place in our country’, it’s not clear whether the government will make good on this rhetoric.
Even after being subjected to the worst terrorist attack on British soil, you can still go and read for yourself incitements to jihad on the Leeds Grand Mosque website, for example. Not dissimilarly, members of the MCB on television and radio – and this includes Sir Icqbal Sacranie – fail to condemn unequivocally suicide bombing on the appallingly rickety grounds that it’s different in Palestine. Last night I was shocked to watch on BBC news as Anjem Choudary, a former leader of al-Muhajiroun, a group which applauded the 9/11 attacks, refused to condemn the London suicide bombers. And if Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is truly considered a moderate by the Islamic community, then I rest my case Your Honour on the case for how radicalised mainstream Islam has become.
But then the thing I’m missing, I suppose, is that it’s got nothing to do with Islam. The widespread use of the Qu’ran to justify violence is irrelevant, jihadists are a loony fringe, even if they are spreading all over the world, even if their influence on the airwaves and across the internet is alarming. We Brits, staggering under the twin assaults of external terrorism and internal guilt, remain kinder to extremists than any other European country. Take Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned across Europe but welcome in Britain. As Mark Steyn reports in the Daily Telegraph, the German Interior Minister says the group ‘supports violence as a way to realise political goals’, namely a worldwide caliphate, the BBC says it ‘urges Muslims to kill Jewish people’, and the Guardian has dubbed it ‘Britain’s most radical Islamic group’. Which is some cachet. How extreme is too extreme? The Guardian has just given one of them a job.
But it’s entirely our fault, remember? If it wasn’t for our foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan everything would be alright. Well hang on. It’s undeniable that Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the radicalisation of Muslims throughout the world, but the militancy already existed quite independently. Would it end if the UK and US withdrew from the Middle East? Would it heck. The idea that al-Qaeda was no threat until we created it does not stand the slightest scrutiny of events in the 1990s — from the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993, to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and, of course, the September 11 atrocity a year later. But of course, we probably created them with the formation of the Israeli state, or perhaps it was the Crusades… Any other bright ideas?
Comments (3)
OK, here's the deal as I see it... Peace in the Middle East for Israel and the Arabs... In return the Arabs get Europe under Islam, headed by the secular EU Soviet rulers... and the Globalists get the oil for their industries... Everybody is happy... I mean except for the European People who end up beneath both the EU elite AND sharia law.... But hey... you can't please everybody.. Besides with 500 million fewer Europeans, more if you include what is happening in Australia and the US & Canada....That cuts world Population down a notch or two AND reduces the strain on peak oil...
Not a bad plan....
Posted by royalecraig | September 4, 2007 10:58 AM
Posted on September 4, 2007 10:58
And what worries me is that many of the so-called moderates with whom the government wants to work are actually closer to the radicals than is often realised. A good example is the MCB (see http://mcbwatch.blogspot.com/).
Posted by MCB Watch | July 21, 2005 7:16 AM
Posted on July 21, 2005 07:16
When you compare the language of the Extremist Islamists with that of the Far Left, you can see where their ideas really came from. The speak the same language of Anti-Americanism, Bloody Revolution and conspiracy. It is little wonder that they have ended up on the same side of the argument. Both have no logic in their arguments and both are driven to fury at the success of Global Capitalism (a competitor of their alternatives) and its percieved cheerleaders, Bush and Blair.
So you see, by excusing their behaviour and providing intellectual ammunition and credibility to their wild accusations, the Global Left is actually to blame.
Posted by EU Serf | July 20, 2005 3:53 PM
Posted on July 20, 2005 15:53