THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG: I debated Tariq Ramadan last night in London for Intelligence Squared, the British Council and the BBC. I’ll link to the video here once the BBC put it out. The motion was “Europe is failing its Muslims”. I argued of course that it was not Europe that was failing its Muslims, but Islam that was failing Europe, indeed Islam that is failing Muslims.
Ramadan was seconded by the former Dutch diplomat Petra Stienen. I was seconded by Flemming Rose, the Danish Jyllands-Posten editor who commissioned the famous Danish cartoons.
The fact that Flemming was my number two wasn’t publicised in the run-up to the debate because of the security threat around him. Just last October two men were arrested in Chicago for another alleged plot to murder him. And on the first day of this year an axe-wielding Somali Muslim broke into one of the cartoonist’s houses and attempted to decapitate him. So there were more police than usual and Flemming and I had more burly security men than we usually would for a discussion.
In a way this proved a lot of the argument that Flemming and I were making. I’ve been told not to pre-empt the results until the BBC screens the debate. But one of the most striking aspects of the evening was that the Muslims who turned out en masse, rallied by certain organisations, let themselves down appallingly. Continually cat-calling, jeering and hissing. They made a very bad impression.
What was most striking of all however was the level of complete denial. I pointed out that the reason Europeans often associate Islam with violence (as Ramadan complained) is that Islam is often associated with violence. I pointed out that it wasn’t Sikhs or Buddhists who flew the planes into the twin towers. This was welcomed by an extraordinary level of anger. I don’t know, maybe some of them thought it was Jews who did it. Read on and comment >>> Douglas Murray | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
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