Islam in Britain: A Candid ViewpointThe 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
