The conviction this week of a Muslim radical for inciting racial hatred once again highlights the growing threat posed by the pernicious fringe of Islamism. We have only ourselves to blame, says Ruth Dudley Edwards
'UK you will pay, Islam is on its way," is the chilling slogan favoured by Muslim radical Abdul Saleem, who was convicted this week of stirring up racial hatred at a rally in London last year. Addressing the crowd in Belgravia Square, near the Spanish and German embassies, Saleem was filmed saying: "There will come a time when we will stand inside these embassies. There will come a time when we will remove that flag. There will come a time when we will raise the flag of Islam – whether you like it or not, Islam is superior and cannot be surpassed."
His defence should have pointed out that he was merely stating the obvious. He and his kind believe that through intimidation, conversion and out-breeding, the United Kingdom – and the world over – can be brought under Sharia law.
I take Islam – a religion which, at its best, greatly improves the lives of its adherents – and Islamism – its pernicious fringe – very seriously. The Qur'an is beside my bed, along with Bruce Lawrence's The Qur'an: A Biography; I've just finished Karen Armstrong's hagiographical Muhammad and its antithesis, Robert Spencer's The Truth About Muhammad; I try vainly to persuade visitors to watch my DVD of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West; Michael Gove should pay me commission for having persuaded so many people to buy his Celsius 7/7; I've just ordered Nick Cohen's What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way to join the pile of Islam-related books on my to-read pile, which I have little time to address because, in addition to working for a living, I spend at least two or three hours a day reading about Islamic matters or talking to similarly obsessed friends and colleagues at speeches and seminars.
There is much in my personal and working life that, early on, put me in the camp of those who believe Islamism is a totalitarian threat that could destroy our civilisation within a few decades with the help of the West-loathing Left, the wimpish Right, the political and diplomatic wishful thinkers, the massed ranks of risk-averse politically correct bien-pensants and the cowards who want to avoid confrontation at all costs – not to speak of the innumerable peaceable British Muslims who allow bullies and bigots to represent them in the media and who buy into the comfort blanket of victimhood.
I grew up in the Republic of Ireland under an authoritarian religion that bossed about submissive governments; as a British public servant, I saw the damage done by pusillanimous jobsworths; as an historian of the 1930s, I learnt how the wishful thinking of the deluded intelligentsia helped Hitler and Stalin; researching a book on the Foreign Office I came to understand the limitations of a diplomacy that believes the best of everyone; and fascination with the wilder shores of Irish republicanism that I encountered at my mad granny's knee led me subsequently – as a journalist and campaigner – to spend many years in intellectual combat with militant Irish republicanism, struggling, with some success, to understand the terrorist mind.
And then there is academia, which I know well: my new crime novel centres on the degradation of the humanities by politically correct moral relativists who collude with those who seek to destroy a dangerously apologetic civilisation. As for the media, for which I write, they have become so terrified of offending Muslims and making Islamists cross that they refused to do their job as reporters of news and publish the series of cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed that appeared in a Danish newspaper and which led to Danish citizens being threatened and their country's goods boycotted.
Not only did British newspaper proprietors and editors think freedom of speech not worth fighting for, but Jack Straw, then our Foreign Secretary, condemned as "disrespectful" those European newspapers honourable enough to print the cartoons.
The Ireland from which I fled in 1965 taught me how a powerful religion can get its way by bullying and frightening politicians and influencing a susceptible electorate. Still, it would be unfair to compare the Irish version of Rome Rule with what Islamists wish to impose on us: even our most reactionary bishops were educated; the Enlightenment had not passed them by. Islamists would burn our books, indoctrinate our children into thinking like seventh-century nomads and outlaw joy. "An Islamic regime must be serious in every field," explained Ayatollah Khomeini. "There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam." Roman Catholics might believe in an after-life but they do not yearn to get there: IRA terrorists – even the hunger-strikers – hoped to live. The Islamist brainwashing of the vulnerable – combined with what Bernard Lewis, author of The Crisis of Islam, describes as "the minutely described delights of paradise" – has given us the suicide bombers. Sleepwalking with the enemy by Ruth Dudley Edwards
Mark Alexander
4 comments:
Mark, I must thank you for bringing this article to our attention.
I have not read such a piece of truthful and sincere analysis in the mainstream media, for a very long time.
I have not heard of this lady, but it gives me great hope to think that, along with the likes of M. Phillips, and yourself, there are some deep, clear thinking writers able and willing to offer their profound analysis of the murky tide of self-deception and foolish procrastination that clouds our understanding of the relationships between Islam and the West.
It is not just a case of raising the Union Jack and shouting "kick them all out."
The disease is progressing from something akin to the common cold, to a virulent pandemic of MRSA.
There are no easy answers.
Indeed, there are no answers at all, until our elected representatives face reality or are replaced by those that are able to.
There are those amongst us, who are at various stages of preparation of their deliberate and callous intent to disrupt or disable our ability to function as a society.
Our politicians have decided to imperil our traditional and ancient freedoms and rights, because they are so cowardly that they cannot stand up for the citizens that expect that task of them.
They criminalize and confuse the public into nervous exhaustion, and offer us only more regulation and more control-freakery.
At this moment, somewhere in an apartment or below a religious meeting place, or at the back of some obscure business premises, I feel quite sure, there lies the makings of a dirty-bomb or worse.
Likewise I am quite sure that the capacity to bring down an airplane over a major city already exists.
These materiels will have been brought into our lands taking advantage of our inability to adequately police our borders or control those that travel through them. (I cite the example of the cowardly would be bomber that escaped, burkha-clad, from British justice.)
I have known some decent human beings that profess the beliefs of their prophet, but live as good citizens, and do not commit acts of violence and do not want to impose their views on their neighbors, but, these are not the voices we hear.
If, when the time is deemed right, the advocates of terror unleash their ultimate attacks, then I have no doubt that the people of Britain will awake with the steely determination that was once invoked by Winston Churchill at the hour of need.
We are as a Nation, well accustomed to war, and better soldiers you will never find. Woe betide those that bring the wrath of decent British citizens down upon their heads.
The terror of the ira was tolerated with grim silence by most, and little revenge was enacted upon the ordinary Irish people, but the evil actions being planned by the two-faced "friends" of the like of Ken Livingstone will likely never be forgiven.
You may say these thoughts are paranoid right-wing rants, but take the time to look at the pieces falling into place. Use clear cool analysis of the facts emerging, and do not lap up the daily froth of media hacks who tell you, for instance, that ex-spy Litvinenko was poisoned with millions of dollars worth of a substance that has very few uses, and was certain to be discovered by it's radioactive footprints.
That substance, Polonium, apart from being used to heat space-craft, has but one real use,---in the Alpha-particle trigger of a nuclear device!
Litvnenko was known to be a smuggler and to have close contacts with Chechnyan radicals, and he himself preferred tea to vodka. (Very strange for a Russian.)
The point being, why the hell is that stuff being trawled around on British Airways and then around hotels in London?
During the Spanish civil war, it was common-place for bombings to be described to the foreign press as "gas-mains" explosions and the like.
We hear daily about teenage children in black London communities killing each other with converted replica guns, just lately.
Where then, are the thousands of deadly military weapons that have poured into London from Bosnia, since it's "liberation" courtesy of Nato, last decade?
What is the dark purpose they are being stored for, and where?
It seems certain we will be dragged into another situation as big or bigger than 9-11, whenever that dark day will dawn.
No amount of PR stunts or public exercises to show off police and emergency services' readiness will suffice to do more than delay the day.
I hope that public awareness will finally drive our lame political narcissists into defending more than just their tattered reputations, and their failing foreign policies.
Winesy, Jack Straw is a pandering idiot. Unfortunately, he is in a position to give away the UK to the invaders and even now is looking for ways to do so. Straw is a traitor to the Queen and to the British people.
AOW. Our leaders are indeed stupid; they are also profoundly dishonestl They don't have a clue about what to do about the threat of Islam. It probably doesn't matter as they are 'on the take' from the Muslim world. What else could explain their traitorous behavior??? Oh, for decent and competent leaders. We certainly don't have them now either in Britain or America.....
Mirrorman, RIGHT ON! Many thanks for your candid and straightforward analysis.
In the last few years the British police have prevented numerous terror attacks. What if they all had been successful - like the plot to bring down 12 airliners trans-atlantic? Or the gas attack in London?
At what point is a critical mass achieved where something is done?
Or will the British public be like the frog in the boiling pot? Just quietly give away their civilized standards and culture?
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