Author: Ruth Dudley Edwards
Publication: The Irish Independent
Date: August 13, 2006
URL: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/what-uk-and-irish-muslims-can-do-for-their-countries-133387.html
Railing against Israel and blaming the West
for Muslim alienation, liberal opinion-formers are refusing to face the truth
that western civilisation is not just under threat, but will not survive unless
it wises and toughens up. A worse menace than communism, Islamism is a totalitarian
ideology that believes the world should live according to Islamic law and
is prepared to wipe
RAILING against Israel and blaming the West
for Muslim alienation, liberal opinion-formers are refusing to face the truth
that western civilisation is not just under threat, but will not survive unless
it wises and toughens up. A worse menace than communism, Islamism is a totalitarian
ideology that believes the world should live according to Islamic law and
is prepared to wipe out anyone, anywhere, who stands in the way.
Contemplating what Islamists have in mind
for us (think Taliban), there are moments when I feel positively nostalgic
about the Fifties Irish Catholic Church.
In the UK, last week produced several wake-up
calls:a hand-wringing Channel 4 documentary; a ludicrous speech by MetropolitanPolice
Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur; an apocalyptic address by the Home
Secretary, John Reid; and the revelation that home-grown Muslims apparently
intended to blow up 10 or so aeroplanes and several thousand passengers.
Before I focus on the negatives, what brings
tears to my eyes is that while all this awful stuff is going on in the news,
English cricket-lovers of all ages have been whooping joyfully at the performances
of two new heroes of the team that just trounced Pakistan. Both the Sikh Monty
Panesar and the Muslim Sajid Mahmood, whose families come from Pakistan, think
themselves English. So does Mahmood's cousin Amir Khan, who at 17 won an Olympic
silver medal and is one of the coolest role models around.
Panesar, Mahmood and Khan are living testimony
to the tolerance and welcome the English show immigrants who want to integrate
and contribute to their new country. The tragedy is that race relations are
being poisoned by the fifth column among Muslims who will not rest until they
have destroyed the democracy and culture of the country that harbours them.
Jon Snow, the highly articulate Church of
England bishop's son who fronts the Channel 4 News at 7pm, is a classic English
guilt-ridden leftie, never happier than when standing up for those he perceives
as victims of his own kind. Last Sunday, his naivety dominated his hour-long
What Muslims Want , as - wide-eyed - he discovered that those born in England
were more radical than their immigrant parents, heard youngsters tell him
straight that they despised his values and reluctantly had to admit that such
views cannot be blamed on poverty or exclusion. Some of his most chilling
and uncompromising interviewees were students and graduates, happy to stone
adulterers and gays to death and force the rest of us to live under Sharia
law.
But it was not only extremists that shocked
him. Snow's peregrination around Muslim neighbourhoods was conducted in the
light of a survey of British Muslim opinion. Among what he found startling
was the revelation that 51 per cent of young Muslims think 9/11 was carried
out by America and Israel, 41 per cent think Princess Diana was murdered to
stop her marrying Dodi Fayed and 31 per cent think the 7/7 bombings are justified
because of British support for the war on terror. Of Muslims in general, 9
per cent (that's around 150,000) think it acceptable for religious or political
groups to use violence.
Snow wanted to believe the woman clothed from
head to foot who explained that she freely chose to adopt a veil; feminist
Muslims would describe her as an example of the Stockholm Syndrome, by which
people succumb emotionally to their captors.
Snow didn't tell us how he felt about the
news that 59 per cent of Muslim men (and 51 per cent of women) think women
should always obey their husbands, but he was rattled to find little support
for that great British bastion of liberty - freedom of speech: 68 per cent
of Muslims believe that anyone insulting Islam should be prosecuted: some
would recommend execution.
The most telling part of this survey was that
61 per cent of British Muslim women and 51 per cent of men have so embraced
victimhood - with the encouragement of useful liberal idiots - that they think
that Muslims in what is probably the most tolerant society in the world are
likely to become victims of extreme religious persecution. This fear will
have been exacerbated by the report last Tuesday that top UK cop Ghaffur had
whinged to the National Black Police Association about the racism he had suffered
and claimed that "a generation of angry young people" have been
radicalised by Islamophobia. Some of us - who think Muslims should have been
grateful for the tolerance shown by Londoners after the carnage of 7/7 - concluded
that Ghaffur is self-pitying and over-promoted.
Two days later, a fed-up British Home Secretary
showed that, at last, some member of the government there had grasped that
this part of the world is under severe threat from fascists who want to destroy
our values and freedoms: "We need to understand the depth and magnitude
of that threat - all of us, each of us across the whole political, media,
judicial and public spectrum."
It became clear from the events of the following
24 hours that John Reid made that speech in the full knowledge that the Met
was about to go public about murderous conspirators they had been trailing
for months.
There is widespread panic among those who
take terrorism seriously, at the depth of alienation among young Muslims and
the degree to which pandering to minorities has made ethnic groups focus on
their rights instead of their responsibilities. The question is not: "What
do Muslims want?" The question is that posed by John F Kennedy over four
decades ago: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you
can do for your country."
As an immigrant, I have a simple view. I came
to England for freedom and opportunities I lacked in Ireland. I was and am
grateful and I think my contribution should be positive. I always thought
that the discontented Irish should shove off home, as I thought communists
should emigrate to the Soviet Union.
If Muslims don't like it here, let them take
off for one of those innumerable failed states rendered poor and fractious
and oppressive by unreformed Islam. Meanwhile, those hundreds of thousands
of Muslims who prefer life in the UK need urgently to take responsibility
for the Islamists in their midst, challenge and inform on and demonstrate
against ('Not in my name' banners would be a start) the lunatics, reassure
their neighbours and get involved with modernising their religion.
The same goes for Muslims in Ireland. As Abdel
Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya news channel, memorably wrote,
"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists; but it is
equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are
Muslims."
