"In a speech today the minister [Hazel Blears] will make her first foray into tackling radicalisation and extremism in the community. She will announce plans to 'beat the terrorists at their own game' by extending the fight against terrorism to gyms, cafés and the internet where increasingly-sophisticated techniques are used to recruit youngsters.Ms Blears said: 'This is a generational issue. We have got to get to young people - five to 15-year-olds, as well as the teenagers who are currently being targeted - and strengthen their resilience, so that they can say to the extremists ’I am comfortable with being a Muslim in Britain today and I want no part of it’.'" -- from this news article, describing the nearly 200 million dollars that the British government intends to use to bribe Muslim "youths" into not engaging in violent Jihad
The recently departed Karen Hughes believed in "reaching out" to "the Muslim community.” Her notion of "public diplomacy" consisted of telling Muslims how very deeply we respected them, how wonderfully Muslims were being treated and succeeding in the United States, and how very hard we were trying to meet Muslim demands and to exhibit extreme solicitousness for Muslim sensibilities (Iftar dinners at the White House and suchlike).
She expatiated on how very impressed we all were with Islam, the real Islam, not the false Islam that motivates all that vast yet tiny minority of extremists all over the known world who keep misunderstanding or misusing, for their own quite unclear ends, the "religion" of Islam.
This meant nothing. This changed nothing in the texts of Islam, the tenets of Islam, the attitudes of Islam toward Infidels and toward the most powerful, and so far most resolute (if confused) of the Infidel powers, the United States. It was taken only as a sign of weakness that could be played upon, if expressions of Muslim victimhood continued to be offered and continued to be taken at face value rather than ignored or, even better, denounced by Infidels as farcical.
For every complaint about a "war of civilizations" by Muslims should have been met with discussions of the "war that Islam has been waging for the past 1300 years on all non-Muslims," and every attempt by Muslims to focus exclusively on the supposed sins of a West, with its transparently guilt-edged security, should have been met by references to the 60-70 million Hindus murdered by Muslim masters in the past, or to the blacks of the southern Sudan, and to the Buddhists of southern Thailand, and to all the other victims of the ideology of Islam (texts, tenets, attitudes) that have nothing to do with the West.
Now comes Hazel Blears, the British equivalent of Karen Hughes. She insists on spending money, throwing money at Muslims -- because if only they can stop hanging around street corners, and can come to feel that they "belong to Britain," then they will forget what they, and anyone else (yes, so can you, and so can any man) can read in the Qur'an, can read in the Hadith, can read in the biographies of Muhammad, about what Muslims must think and do, and to what and to whom their sole loyalty must be given. But of course none of this will change. No amount of money will change it.
But Hazel Blears is determined that this reality must never be examined. It is too painful. It is too painful for her even to begin to recognize what Islam teaches. It is too painful for her to express a hint of recognition of what Islam has always taught and of what has always explained why Muslims felt justified in conquering so many non-Muslim lands, and then subjecting the vast populations, so varied, so "diverse," of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and others to a permanent status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. (In the case of those other than Christians and Jews, the alternative at first was conversion or death, and only later, to preserve the tax base -- the population of jizyah-payers -- were people other than Christians and Jews allowed to survive so as to keep paying the jizyah on which their Muslim masters depended.)
She's just too dumb. She's not up to the task.
Who, in Great Britain, is?
We need to scrape the bottom a little deeper to get someone who can grovel for us, now that Karen is gone.
I nominate the new red-head of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to replace Karen. She can read, 'rite and do 'rithmatic too. She once had a muslim classmate in the 4th grade. She shares a common bond with muslims since she a vegetarian and doesn't eat pork. She saw the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" 3 times. And those Saudi Princes will love her little cheerleading outfit
Yep. She's qualfied. Send Air Force One to pick her up right after tommorow's game.
The scale of the problem is increasingly apparant to ordinary people in the UK.
The rhetoric of the Government and the reality of peoples' everyday experiences are diverging sharply.
Interestingly humour at the expense of islamist bigotry is beginning to turn up on TV and Radio, including the BBC.
This would have been unthinkable a year or two ago, but it's happening.
Why?
Is it simply that commediens are pushing the envelope of what is acceptable, or are people beginning to realise there's a problem and it's currently almost impossible to discuss it without feeling, or being accused of being, a racist.
I think people increasingly want to talk about it, but don't know how to. The door is slowly, tentatively, being opened.
Previewing your Comment
What I simply cannot understand with regard to the attempts of the British government to combat 'terrorism' (I refer of course primarily to Islamic jihad) and the brainwashing of the susceptible is why don't they close down violent jihadi websites and seize publications if they are dangerous?
It is a very serious crime in the UK, punishible by almost mandatory imprisonment and a lifetime on the sex-offenders register for anyone to look at paedophile websites or possess imagery of minors in a sexual context or to attempt to 'groom' minors for future such activity.
What is more the police will - quite rightly - go to great length to bring the guilty to justice. Surely it would not be impossible for the UK police, backed by relevant and urgently needed legislation along similar lines to make it a serious criminal offence for anyone to visit websites glorifying or inciting terrorist activity. These websites could be closed down or have their UK access terminated and anyone in the UK 'grooming' others for the purpose of terrorism could be imprisoned.
The British government can appoint as many Hazel Blears as it likes but the country's real problems are never addressed in any coherent way. Only a few weeks ago when I was in England there was a political row going on about the fact that the government were trying to bar entry to the UK by the former Iraqi interpreters and translators who had played such a crucial and doubly dangerous role in enabling the British armed forces to achieve anything at all in Iraq.
Now that Gordon Brown is trying by some sort of sleight of hand to get all the British troops out of Iraq and they are virtually confined to the airport base in Basra there is no longer any need for the previous number of interpreters.
These men and women - so vital to any communication with Arabic speakers - were now being thrown to the wolves and their families too were under threat from Shiite militias, in some cases people like the mothers and sisters of interpreters were kidnapped and murdered. Quite reasonably these people asked to be granted asylum in the UK.
Gordon Brown and his ministers said 'no' and informed that they could settle elsewhere in the Middle East. Never mind that thousands of people will arrive in Britain each month (and have unceasingly done so for many years) with no skills and nothing to offer that will benefit the long-suffering British people except in many cases an addition to already spiralling Islamic numbers.
The Iraqi interpreters (about 80 were asking to be admitted I believe, later on there will be more, when the airlift gets under way) could have provided the British government with a golden opportunity to employ 80 extra Arabic speakers and their families in the intelligence services (subject to clearence). Does Hazel Blears speak or understand any Arabic or any Farsi or any Urdu? I wouldn't want to risk a UK or a US penny bet on that one.
Instead of utilising this potentially useful linguistic pool they have thrown away a great opportunity in the fight against terror. Not to mention, one might add, the immorality of offering to find them safe havens in the Middle East knowing such safe havens do not exist. Let us see what Hazel Blears does about the fact that 90 Iranian post-graduate students are researching doctoral degrees in nuclear physics and nuclear engineering at British universities.
A dim-witted dhimmi, Ms. Bears,
Did her best to allay British fears.
But the trouble is foreign
(Read "blogging the Koran")
And has been going on for, well, years.
You wrote: "It is too painful for her even to begin to recognize what Islam teaches."
I think this is a mistake. She not only recognizes what Islam teaches; - she is already practicing it on behalf of the British Government. Just read the Koran, 9:29, and you will see the Islamic shari'a authorization of her policy and humiliating jizya payments.
The Muslim Youth organisation is one of a few Muslim groups that will receive part of the £70 million payout mentioned in the article above by our Government, to help fight "extremism" in the UK.
Here is a sample of the sort of material that can be found on their website:
http://www.muslimyouth.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3727
Bravo Gordon. Bravo Hazel. You've certainly picked the right group here, haven't you.
I look forward to Hazel Blears' success. I'm confident it will parallel that of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" youth-targeted, beat-them-at-their-own-game anti-drug campaign.
Hugh, I have a post here in Gates of Vienna re, this:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/11/hate-literature-in-quarter-of-uk.html