Thursday, 21 August 2014

If British Muslims are as angry as the rest of us about jihadist barbarity, why don’t they show it?

Ever since Islamic State released the video of the American journalist James Foley being murdered by an Islamist gangsta thug with a standard London multiculti accent, the 24 Hour news channels have been dragging Muslim spokesmen and women into their studios to offer them an opportunity to distance their communities from the horrors evidently being perpetrated by their fellow countrymen and co-religionists abroad. And a pretty unconvincing fist they’re making of it.

If I were a follower of Islam living in a Muslim community in Britain, I’d feel utterly outraged and dreadfully ashamed at another British Muslim committing acts of unspeakable horror in the name of my religion. Hell’s bells - Anglican bishops are forever going into a collective cringe and apologising for stuff Christians did centuries ago, before they had the Guardian comment pages to set their moral compass for them. But the Muslim spokesmen I’ve seen on television yesterday and today have been about as outraged as a bloke who’s just discovered he’s been given the wrong pie in Gregg’s, and about as ashamed as someone caught jumping a queue in Italy. One of them even had the effrontery to start banging on about Israel! The rest just seemed bored and a bit miffed at being asked to express an opinion on the topic of the “radicalisation” of Muslim youths in Britain, as if it was all a bit off-topic.

My favourite was the black-clad spokesman who spent most of the time staring at the studio floor before mumbling that these blood-crazed barbarians had nothing to do with Britain’s Muslim communities. Really??? Then what do they have to fucking do with? I mean, Muslims can hardly go on blaming British schools or Western-style permissiveness – the vast majority of the 10,000 gun-toting kuckle-draggers who make up the Islamic State murder machine will no doubt have been raised in Muslim countries. What went wrong there, then?

I mean, it’s not as if Muslims don’t get worked up about stuff – it only takes a cartoon in a Danish newspaper for thousands of them to flood onto the street screaming their heads off, baying for blood and burning down embassies. Can you imagine the reaction if James Foley had been a brown-skinned Muslim and his murderer had been a white Christian with the Cross of St George emblazoned on his robes? I bet we’d have had a march or two by now - and a lot worse.

When I heard that London accent issuing from behind that vile butcher’s mask, I felt rather ashamed, because I am a Londoner: I felt partly responsible. I think that's quite natural. I felt the same way on hearing of the slaughter carried out by Anders Behring Breivik - another Norwegian with decidedly antiliberal views.  Would it be too much to expect representatives of our Muslim communities to even pretend to feel the same, rather than leaping to deny any sense of communal responsibility? I’m not asking for wailing and gnashing of teeth or hysterical ululating in the streets (all frightfully tedious). But some form of ritualised atonement – a peaceful march, a letter signed by a hundred prominent British Muslims sent to all newspapers, a Muslim-organised candlelit vigil in our main city centres for the Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Western hostages and fellow-Muslims murdered by subhuman Islamist psychopaths? And perhaps they could make a real effort and manage to do it without using Israel to excuse atrocities committed in the name of Islam? 

I just have a feeling that a teensy-weensy hint of an apology would go down quite well at this particular moment. Even if they don't feel responsible in any way, they've made their home in Britain, where - endearingly - people are so keen to say sorry that they'll apologise when someone who wasn't bothering to look where they were going bumps into them in the street. Or maybe multiculturalism means never having to say you're sorry. 


9 comments:

  1. This is a fine post. Have read it a couple of times and you are bang on.
    Your rec. "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer is waxing large. Am now reading it for the second time.

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    1. Similarly, for me, everything started to make sense when I read that wonderful 1951 book, especially the fact that there is absolutely no point in trying to negotiate or compromise with these psychopaths as if they are rational human beings with achievable goals.

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  2. I think you are being just a little unfair. In July around 100 imams in the uk signed a letter urging uk muslims to support Syrians and Iraqis in a "responsible " way rather then going to fight and become jihadis.......but , of course, we dont know what the other 500 British Imams thought about the issue!

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    1. Delighted to hear they’re making some sort of effort – and I realise that some imams and many Muslim Britons are directly helping the security services to identify extremists. But they really need to speak out more clearly and loudly in public and not follow the (bizarre) Obama line that this is nothing to do with Islam. The public tolerance shown towards Muslims in this country has been extremely impressive (but no less than I’d expect from the English) – it may be time for Muslim spokesmen to show their appreciation of that tolerance in a more wholehearted way.

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  3. Excellent writing, as ever. Many thanks

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  4. Bullseye, Scott.

    David Cameron gave a speech some time ago on the threat by faux- British (as he didn't call them) Muslims.

    You might appreciate this open letter to the PM by Dr Frank Ellis, a retired Slavonic Studies academic (Leeds University) :

    http://sarahmaidofalbion.blogspot.com/2011/02/response-to-cameron-by-dr-frank-ellis.html

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    1. Splendid piece from Dr. Ellis. I was wondering how a modern British academic could have arrived at conclusions which his own university described as "ahorrent". So I looked him up on Wikipedia and read this: "Before entering academia, Ellis served in the Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Service (SAS). He served with the latter in Oman." Ah, that explains a lot.

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  5. Dr Ellis was fired for the same reason that Dr James Watson, Nobel Laureate for Cambridge DNA work, was fired from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the research organisation which he founded.

    They were both heretical enough to mention that they had read (and found persuasive) a book on racial group differences in IQ, viz., 'IQ and the Wealth of Nations' by Professors Richard Lynn (University of Ulster) and Professor Tatu Vanhanen (University of Helsinki).

    This book upset Finland's Leftists so much that Prof Vanhanen was taken to a police station in the capital and questioned about the books 'racist' conclusions.. His son Matti was Prime Minister of Finland from 2003 to 2010.

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