Is Gordon Brown England’s Idiot for the World?
In “‘Islamophobia’ Idiocy” in the New York Post (thanks to JW), Amir Taheri skewers Gordon Brown’s ridiculous prohibition on calling the terrorists “Muslims,” and explains why this politically correct straitjacket is a bad idea:
THE car-bomb/suicide-terror operations in London and Glasgow should have provided a fresh opportunity for reminding everyone, especially Muslims in Britain, that terrorism in the name of Islam still poses a major threat to public peace and safety. Yet this is not what is happening.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown keeps repeating that the attacks have nothing to do with Islam – but, at the same time, keeps inviting “Muslim community leaders” to Downing Street to discuss how to prevent attacks. If the attacks have nothing to do with Islam, why invite Muslim “leaders” rather than Buddhist monks?
Brown hasn’t deemed fit to tell it like it is: that Muslims in Britain, indeed all over the world, must come out and condemn terrorism in unambiguous terms.
* Something they can’t do. Because jihad-terror is commanded by the ‘immutable Koran’ and jihad is the ‘pinnacle’ of Islam.
If Islam is the religion of peace, then the real Islamphobes are those who planted the car bombs in London and Glasgow – not the poor Brits who are censoring themselves and curbing their hard-won freedoms in order not to offend “the Muslim community.”
*
Melanie Phillips injects some sanity into this madness
Fatal flaws in our defence against terror
Far from damping this fire down, the Government itself is fanning the flames still further. Because it refuses to acknowledge that this is an Islamic religious war against the West, the political and security establishment is actually trying to use Islamist religious extremism as an antidote to Islamist terrorism without acknowledging the unbroken line between the two.
So it is actually promoting, as role models for impressionable young Muslims seeking a purpose to their lives, Islamists who claim not to support violence – even though they spout hatred of the West, Americans and Jews.
Ludicrously, it has even recruited Islamist radicals into government – to act as advisors against Islamic radicalism.
This lethal misjudgment has had disastrous results. Extremism has multiplied. The police themselves have been compromised. As the former radical Ed Husain has written, Islamists who work closely with the police to “represent Muslims” have been tipping off jihadists about police activities.
And the Government’s refusal to outlaw Hizb ut Tahrir, on the spurious grounds that although it promotes the Islamic takeover of Britain it is not committed to violence, has meant that this group continues to recruit thousands of students on campus to the cause of jihad against the West.
This is madness. The result is that, while most British Muslims say they would have no truck with terrorism or violence, an insupportable number of them do endorse appalling ideas.
The most fundamental failing of all, however, is the Government’s counter-terrorist strategy itself. Known as Project Contest, this refuses to acknowledge that the true driver of Islamist terror is religious fanaticism.
Instead, it attributes its causes to Muslim poverty, discrimination and grievances over foreign policy. In other words, it blames us.
The analysis is demonstrably absurd. Many of these terrorists are prosperous, middle class and well-educated. Indeed, two of the suspects who have been arrested are doctors. Muslims are being murdered in vast numbers in Iraq not by us, but by other Muslims.
And as Mr Brown said yesterday, the first attempt to blow up the Twin Towers occurred as long ago as 1993; Islamist terrorism is taking place all over the world and in countries where there is no connection with Iraq or the Middle East at all.
The fact is that the Islamists have always used any and every grievance – Bosnia, Kashmir, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Salman Rushdie (twice) – to recruit to their cause.
But the real source of this terror, as former extremists have told us, is the aim to conquer the West and Islamise the world.
Without doubt, they are currently using the Iraq war to whip up further hysteria and gain more recruits. The dreadful thing is that they are being aided by self-loathing British ideologues.
For every time someone blames the West for Iraq, yet more overwrought and culturally stranded British Muslim boys are recruited to mass murder by this echo chamber for Muslim rage.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Though Melanie has been shouting from the rooftops about Islamic penetration of Britain, she still refuses to spell out, that stopping Muslim immigration is the first and urgently required step.
I think MP is being careful. The fact that she is Jewish may well explain her reticence, understandably. It would leave ger wide open on many fronts and she knows the British government is not going to protect her.
Brown turned into the disappointment we expected. Sad.