The Torygraph interviews Dr Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain. The article begins: “Britain could face the threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists, says a senior Muslim leader.”
Sunday Telegraph, 10 September 2006
See also Daily Mail, 11 September 2006
Update: See “Sunday Telegraph’s unfair distortion”, MCB news release, 11 September 2007
Olga Craig complains that it’s Christians, not Muslims, who are being discriminated against in Britain today:
“The cause for such a difference in treatments, many believe, lies with Christianity itself, with its own over-eagerness to encompass multi-faith movements. Damian Thompson, the editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, said: ‘The fact that Christians are persecuted and harassed, while Muslim extremists are left alone to spread their propaganda, can be partly attributed to the incredible wimpishness of Anglican and Catholic bishops in Britain, who have spent decades wringing their hands and apologising for the sins of Christianity – and, now that it is under threat, they simply do not know how to speak up for it forcefully,’ he said. ‘Much of the damaging appeasement of extreme Muslims can be traced back to the multi-faith movement embraced so vigorously by the liberal clergy in the Seventies and Eighties. Offending Muslim sensibilities frightens Church leaders far more than acts of terrorism.’…
“Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, believes that ‘any society must be based on its values. And for the UK they are Judaeo-Christian. The pluralism of the Seventies and Eighties marginalised Christianity. Then secularism came along and effectively neutralised it. So, now we have a moral/spiritual vacuum and anything that is seen to be Christian can be attacked.’…
“One who has fought back is Major Malcolm Hampton, of the Salvation Army. When his band was asked to play carols at the switching on of the Christmas lights in Oakengates, Shropshire, he refused, because the local council had rebranded the event as ‘winter celebrations’ to avoid offending non-Christians. It was, Mr Hampton felt, the final straw. ‘We decided to take a stand’, he said. ‘We are a Christian church and it is a Christian festival which we did not want to see undermined or demeaned. They decided to remove the word Christmas from the event and we thought it was the thin end of the wedge. Enough is enough’.”
David Selbourne, author of The Losing Battle with Islam, offers ten reasons why the West will succumb to the advance of Islam. For example:
“The second reason why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated is that the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated, and the nature of Islam misunderstood. It is neither a ‘religion of peace’ nor a ‘religion hijacked’ or ‘perverted’ by ‘the few’. Instead, its moral intransigence and revived ardours, its jihadist ethic and the refusal of most diaspora Muslims to ‘share a common set of values’ with non-Muslims are all one, and justified by the Koran itself.”
Yusuf Smith replies to an article by Ben MacIntyre in the Times claiming that, despite the occasional talk of a Muslim “fifth column” in Britain, there has been no scare remotely comparable to those surrounding German spies in the early years of World War II and the “Red Scares” of the 1950s:
“As a Muslim who has been paying close attention to the media since Sept 11, I’d beg to differ that society has moved on much since then. The key difference is that Britain is not facing an invasion from a regular or well-equipped army, as Britain did from Germany or the Spanish Republic did from the Nationalists who first coined the term ‘fifth column’. The situation is more of a small, international criminal syndicate capable only of occasional, but devastating, acts of terrorism. Most British people know, whatever the media is telling them, that most Muslims couldn’t possibly support such a thing.
“While ‘official pronouncements on the threat of Islamic extremism have been deliberately nuanced, and carefully measured’, the same cannot be said for the media treatment of the situation, which has been marked by ignorance and by sensationalism across the board. Newspapers have routinely given space for bigoted and inaccurate articles written by people with an agenda, notably Amir Taheri and Patrick Sookhdeo, who have often used the space to lay into ordinary Muslims, not just the extremists…. the fact is that it has become fashionable, and acceptable, to malign an entire religious community in the press.”
“The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn’t the irresponsible nonsense on the left – destructive though that is. The really ugly ‘domestic insurgency’ is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism. How? By insisting that Islam can never reform, that the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith’s primary agenda – and, when you read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman.
“I’ve received no end of e-mails and letters seeking to ‘enlighten’ me about the insidious nature of Islam. Convinced that I’m naive because I defend American Muslims and refuse to ‘see’ that Islam is 100 percent evil, the writers warn that I’m a foolish ‘dhimmi’, blind to the conspiratorial nature of Islam. Web sites list no end of extracts from historical documents and Islamic jurisprudence ‘proving’ that holy war against Christians and Jews is the alpha and omega of the Muslim faith. The message between the lines: Muslims are Untermenschen.”
The Daily Star reports an opinion poll revealing that 79% of respondents said they’d feel uncomfortable living next to a Muslim. The Star has no doubt where the blame for this lies. In addition to the effects of 7/7:
“Many moderate Muslims seem intent on leading separate lives. They send their children to faith schools, clad their women in burqas and talk of bringing Sharia law to Britain.”
The incitement of anti-Muslim bigotry by right-wing rags like the Star of course plays no role at all.
A burka is the mark of female oppression
By Virginia Blackburn
Daily Express, 7 September 2006
I LIVE in a nice part of London known as Little Tehran. The place has a pleasant atmosphere – the Iranians who live here arrived after the 1979 revolution and are sympathetic to the West.
They brought much that is good with them, including a couple of excellent Persian restaurants, shops where you can buy caviar at about a tenth the price of elsewhere and a work ethic that means they are determined to succeed in their new life.
But, just occasionally, I see something that chills me as much now as it ever did: a woman wearing the full burka.
Even the most politically correct of people know in their hearts that the burka is possibly the strongest visual indication of female oppression in the world.
In countries where it is commonplace, and in some cases mandatory, women are not allowed to vote, drive or leave the house unaccompanied by a male relative.
Adultery, like homosexuality, is punishable by death. Forced marriage, an event better classed as rape, is common – as is female circumcision. Rape itself is almost impossible to prove and shames the victim, not the criminal.
The burka is the sign of a medieval society – although even in the Middle Ages in this country, women were treated better than they are now in certain countries in the Middle East.
But no one has been allowed to say any of this for fear of being labelled racist, dismissive of another culture, or a Little Englander. Only a very few who saw what was really going on looked on and despaired.
As a contribution to promoting harmonious interfaith relations, an evangelical Christian magazine has reprinted Patrick Sookhdeo’s anti-Muslim rant from Monday’s Evening Standard.
“The rhetoric about ‘Islamic fascism’ is a pack of lies – another attempt to repackage the increasingly unpopular ‘war on terror’ by identifying a current enemy of the US government with something that everyone can be counted on to oppose.”
Alan Maass writes in Socialist Worker (US), 8 September 2006
“The West needs strategies conveying to the vast majority of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims that acquiescence to jihadists and their ideologies means a rupture with Western civilization. The consequences for this should be spelled out by withholding Western commerce, the Internet, arms, machinery, and know-how – all of which still represent the bulk of progress as we define it in today’s world…. In the West itself, the last vestiges of tolerance toward Islamic fundamentalism must be removed. Laws targeting extremist speech, Islamic dress, storefront unregulated mosques, and the traffic of immigrant Muslims who do not speak the language nor share the values of freedom must surface in the legal codes of America, Europe, and Australia. The West must clearly process the fact that it is facing an existential threat to its core values, and it cannot be shy about installing tools of war in its democratic practices.”
Mad Mel enthusiasticallly welcomes these proposals: “Exactly. Anything less misses the main point – that it’s ideas that kill, and that it’s these murderous ideas, not just the bomb cells, that must be destroyed.”