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Charles Moore tells the truth in The Telegraph: "Where is the Gandhi of Islam?," with thanks to Daryl:
...Yet there seems to me to be a radical disjunction between our heroic capacity to deal with the immediate effects of terrorism and our collective refusal to confront what lies behind it. The effects of this disjunction are, literally, fatal.The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was in Singapore on Thursday, having helped London's successful Olympic bid. His stricken face showed his shock, and of course he condemned the attacks. Then he analysed them.
They were not, he said, attacks "against the mighty and the powerful", but against "working-class Londoners". Would they have been all right, one wondered, if they had been against the mighty and powerful, or if they had cleverly found a way of killing only middle-class Londoners?
Then Mr Livingstone said: "This is not an ideology or even a perverted faith." Why did he want to say that? How - if, as the authorities tell us, the attacks were carried out by Islamist extremists - could this be true?
The main spokesman for the Metropolitan Police on Thursday was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick. He also complained about attacks on "purely innocent members of the public", thereby making one think that there might be other people (police? soldiers? politicians?), who are not purely innocent and should have been attacked instead. Asked about the nature of the terrorists, Mr Paddick said: "Islam and terrorism don't go together."
It is true that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, or involved in terrorism, and this needs to be said strongly if people assert otherwise. But if the Metropolitan Police really believe what Brian Paddick says, if they really, truly think that the words "Islam" and "terrorism" must not be linked, then we have little hope of catching the killers, of understanding how the terrorism works, or of preventing new atrocities.
You can show this with a simple comparison. When Britain was afflicted by Irish republican terrorism, most Irish people repudiated that terrorism. It was nevertheless the case that the great majority of the terrorists - more than 95 per cent - were Irish, or of Irish origin, and they drew overwhelmingly on Irish people to help and hide them.
This was not a funny coincidence. It was because the IRA preached a doctrine about Ireland and called on the loyalty of a perverted version of Irishness. Therefore, the words "Irish" and "terrorist" went together, hard though this was on the majority of Irish people. The Brian Paddicks of the day would have been appallingly negligent if they had not concentrated their investigations among the Irish. And the vigilance of the public, which the police then and now rightly call for, inevitably directed itself towards Irish neighbours, Irish accents, Irish pubs.
So it must be with Muslims in Britain. In fact, the situation is more serious because we are dealing with a religion, not merely a national aspiration, and the demands of a religion are more absolute than anything else. If fanatics can persuade people that their religion insists that they kill others (and often themselves) in its service, then they will obey. And whereas the IRA, though utterly sadistic and fanatical, kept in mind a political aim which, once achieved, would mean that they need kill no longer, the religious fanatic lacks even this check on his behaviour....
What strikes one again and again about the reaction of the public authorities, of commentators, of the media, is the terrible lethargy about studying what it is we are up against. We are dealing with an extreme interpretation of one of the great religions of the world.
The theology that forms the basis of the terrorists' self-justification is not actually all that extreme in Islam.
We flap around, looking for moderates and giving them knighthoods, making placatory noises, putting bits of Islam on to the multi-faith menu in schools, banishing Bibles from hospital beds, trying to criminalise the expression of "religious hatred", blaming George Bush and Tony Blair. But if we do not know the way the faith in question works, its history, its quarrels, its laws and demands, we will not have the faintest chance of distinguishing the true moderate from the fellow-traveller or of bearing down on the fanaticism.If you look at the Koran, you will find many glorifications of violence. In Sura No 8, for example, God is quoted as saying: "I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers!" This punishment comes to them for having "defied God and His apostle". It seems reasonable to ask Muslims what this sort of remark means in the modern world.
Read it all. I don't agree with all of its assessment, but it is sound in the main.
Posted by Robert at July 12, 2005 8:36 AM
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I found this piece superb, I will definitely translate it into my native language in a near future.
With what don't you agree with, Mr. Spencer?
Posted by: cruzado![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 12, 2005 9:47 AM
Mr. Spencer probably doesn't agree with the author's assumption that Islamic jihad is just one extreme interpretation of the Qur'an, and not the central tenet and duty of every Muslim.
I agree with Mr. Spencer: it's not enough, it still has too much PC and respect for a religion that deserves neither, but it IS a step in the right direction, in the sense that it urges an inquiry into the islamic writings and nature of the religion. This inquiry in turn will inevitably reveal the true nature of Islam.
at July 12, 2005 9:57 AM
Anfry Kaffir, make sure you read this excellent Telegraph piece from Mark Steyn "Islam does incubate terrorism"
" 'There are no Muslim terrorists. There are terrorists," Father Paul Hawkins of St Pancras parish church told his congregation on Sunday. "The people who carried out these attacks are victims of a false religion, be it false Christianity or false Islam."
Oh, dear. "Britain can take it" (as they said in the Blitz): that's never been in doubt. The question is whether Britain can still dish it out. When events such as last Thursday's occur, two things happen, usually within hours if not minutes: first, spokespersons for Islamic lobby groups issue warnings about an imminent backlash against Muslims.
In fairness to British organisations, I believe they were beaten to the punch by the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress whose instant response to the London bombings was to issue a statement calling for prayers that "Canadian Muslims will not pay a price for being found guilty by association".
In most circumstances it would be regarded as appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a non-existent one. But it seems the real tragedy of every act of "intolerance" by Islamist bigots is that it might hypothetically provoke even more intolerance from us irredeemable white imperialist racists. My colleague Peter Simple must surely marvel at how the identity-group grievance industry has effortlessly diversified into pre-emptively complaining about acts of prejudice that have not yet occurred.
Among those of us who aren't Muslim, meanwhile, there's a stampede to be first to the microphone to say that "of course" we all know that "the vast majority of Muslims" are not terrorists but law-abiding peace-loving people who share our revulsion at these appalling events, etc.
Mr Blair won that contest on Thursday, followed closely by Brian Paddick and full supporting cast. If "of course" Mr Blair and Mr Paddick and the rest do indeed know that "the vast majority of Muslims" do not favour terrorism, is that because they've run the numbers and have a ballpark figure on the very very very slim minority of Muslims who do? And, if so, what is it? 0.02 per cent? Or two per cent? Or 20 per cent?
And, if they haven't run the numbers, why do they claim to speak with authority on this matter? If it were just a question of rhetorical sensitivity, I'd be happy to go along with Mr Paddick's multiculti pap and insist that "Islam and terrorism don't go together" - events in Beslan, Bali, Israel, Nigeria, Kashmir, etc, notwithstanding. But the danger in separating "Islam" from "terrorism" is that it leads the control-freaks of the nanny state into thinking that "terrorism" is something that can be dealt with by border security, ID cards, retinal scans, metal detectors. It can't.
Terrorism ends when the broader culture refuses to tolerate it. There would be few if any suicide bombers in the Middle East if "martyrdom" were not glorified by imams and politicians, if pictures of local "martyrs" were not proudly displayed in West Bank grocery stores, if Muslim banks did not offer special "martyrdom" accounts to the relicts thereof, if schools did not run essay competitions on "Why I want to grow up to be a martyr".
At this point, many readers will be indignantly protesting that this is all the fault of Israeli "occupation", but how does that explain suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there's not a Zionist oppressor for hundreds of miles? Islam has become the world's pre-eminent incubator of terrorism at its most depraved. Indeed, so far London has experienced only the lighter items on the bill of fare - random bombing of public transport rather than decapitation, child sacrifice and schoolhouse massacres.
Most of us instinctively understand that when a senior Metropolitan Police figure says bullishly that "Islam and terrorism don't go together", he's talking drivel.
Many of us excuse it on the grounds that, well, golly, it must be a bit embarrassing to be a Muslim on days like last Thursday and it doesn't do any harm to cheer 'em up a bit with some harmless feel-good blather. But is this so?
Why are we surprised that "Muslim moderates" rarely speak out against the evil committed by their co-religionists when the likes of Mr Paddick keep assuring us there's no problem? It requires great courage to be a dissenting Muslim in communities dominated by heavy-handed imams and lobby groups that function effectively as thought-police.
Yet all you hear from Mr Paddick is: "Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here." This is the same approach, incidentally, that the authorities took in their long refusal to investigate seriously the 120 or so "honour killings" among British Muslims.
Just as the police did poor Muslim girls no favours by their excessive cultural sensitivity, so they're now doing the broader Muslim community no favours. The Blair-Paddick strategy only provides a slathering of mindless multiculti fudge topping over the many layers of constraint that prevent Islam beginning an honest conversation with itself.
Unlike Malaya or the Mau-Mau or the IRA, this is a global counter-terrorism operation across widely differing terrain, geographical and psychological. We need to be able to kill, constrain, coerce or coax as appropriate.
Kill terrorists when the opportunity presents itself, as 1,200 "insurgents" were said to have been killed in one recent engagement on the Syria/Iraq border the other day. Constrain the ideology behind Thursday's bombing by outlawing Saudi funding of British mosques and other institutions. Coerce our more laggardly allies like General Musharraf into shutting down his section of the Saudi-Pakistani-Londonistan Wahhabist pipeline.
But the coaxing is what counts - wooing moderate Muslims into reclaiming their religion. We can take steps to prevent Islamic terrorists killing us, most of the time. But Islamic terrorists will only stop trying to kill us when their culture reviles them rather than celebrates them.
There are signs in the last week's Muslim newspapers, in London and abroad, that some eminent voices are beginning to speak out. At such a moment, Britain should be on the side of free speech and open debate. Instead, the state is attempting to steamroller through a grotesque law at the behest of already unduly influential Islamic lobby groups. One of its principal effects will be to inhibit Muslim reformers. Shame on us for championing Islamic thought-police over Western liberty."
at July 12, 2005 10:11 AM
cruzado,
I think that these 'Daily Telegraph' articles are sailing as close to the wind as they can without actually spelling it out that Islam itself is the problem.
I'm not sure what it is that is preventing them from actually calling a spade a spade, maybe the government has given certain guidelines to the press.
Posted by: Elephant at July 12, 2005 10:54 AM
Folks,
LGF is reporting that the religious thoughtcrime bill has passed the UK vote. Tragic indeed.
Here's the link in case the htnml tags above don't work:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=16617_Thoughtcrime_Law_Passes_UK_Vote#comments
Also, about that rhetorical question Where is the gandhi of islam? Well, Islam aborts its Gandhis long before they utter a word. Islam ain't capable as a culture (kill-ture?) of producing a Gandhi, much less a Buddha.
at July 12, 2005 11:02 AM
"I think that these 'Daily Telegraph' articles are sailing as close to the wind as they can without actually spelling it out that Islam itself is the problem."
Absolutely, but the way I see it, they are definitely an improvement. That this sort of material is able to reach vast audiences through a mainstream newspaper, is in itself a victory.
The ordinary folk are not stupid, they now what they see DESPITE all the multicultural PeeCee trash that the BBC and Co. want to force down our throats.
Did any of you notice how the very day after the London bombings, the BBC tried to deflect that impact by placing the Srebrenica massacres celebrations in the front page of its news site?
at July 12, 2005 11:10 AM
Charles Moore wrote an article a few weeks ago in which he asked if Mohammed was a paedophile....He had some very unpleasant responses...Some reminded him of what happened to Salman Rushdie. He is one of the few British journalists to have the balls to actually write a few home truths about Islam.
Another leading British Newspaper, The Independant, today had an article about the "backlash" against Muslims and a picture of a Mosque with a broken window....Dhimmis....Doesn't quite compare with blown up people.
Posted by: Celsius at July 12, 2005 1:13 PM
It is also true that the IRA had a very limited goal whilst engaging in terror. They still have: that is the unification of Ireland.
Islam is an imperial religion and wants to recreate a Muslim Imperium.
Posted by: iconoclast at July 12, 2005 2:21 PM
cruzado,
Yes, I agree with you. At least they are getting those qur'an quotes to a big readership.
Apparently, the 'Daily Telegraph' has the biggest readership for any of the broadsheets.
at July 12, 2005 3:51 PM
A beginning.
At least he asks some basic questions that all of the politicos in the West are desperate to avoid having voiced.
And may have even read the Koran... or at least some useful excerpts.
In a way, the present state of the press (and politicians), about Islam, is reminiscent of the general bend-over-and-grab-the-ankles level of silence and acquiescence that descended upon the usually pugnacious and skeptical press about the JFK assassination. (Until Mark Lane published his evisceration of the happy horsesh*t of the Warren Commission report, "Rush To Judgment".)
We are in a similar 'rushed judgment' period- ...before any skeptic about the "Religion of Peace" has gotten a wide enough audience to tear aside the p.c. veil of denial.
I hope this is a start of the rending of the curtain.
Posted by: BigSleep at July 13, 2005 2:27 AM
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