Having criticised Dave for well over a year on the need to stop denying that Radical Islam poses a major threat to our way of life in the UK, it is right, I think, to now give credit where it's due and to welcome his speech today and the upcoming initiative aimed at addressing the 'poison' of extremism.
I have been saying for a long time that, sooner or later, we will have to ask British Muslims whose side they're on, by which I mean do they accept the absolute authority of UK law over the religious teachings of the Qu'ran and some of their community leaders. This is, it seems to me, a fundamental requirement of British citizenship and living in this country.
That is not to say that being British or living in the UK means they have to renounce or give up their religious beliefs, just that they have to practise them in an environment wherein UK laws take precedence over their 'holy book'.
In our modern secular democracy we simply cannot have the rule of law by which we all live, undermined or ignored by adherence to religious beliefs that do not coincide with our way of life. We didn't ask you to come here, we allowed you to come here and I think we should therefore expect you to accept the values of our communities which are founded upon living within long-established and democratically arrived at laws and practises.
That may sound blunt but where has our tolerance got us so far? It has often been thrown back in our faces in a way in which our 'tolerance' has been used against us to introduce Islamic 'intolerance' into our society. I think, and hope that Dave's speech today was the start of our saying, as a society, that enough is enough.
Mr Blair's drive for multiculturalism has simply not worked either for indigenous Brits or for incoming families who seem to have been swallowed up by existing Muslim communities in which fundamentalism and conflict are far too commonplace because we have allowed certain beliefs and practises that are contrary to our views, way of life and laws, to thrive unchallenged for fear of our causing offence. This is just mad.
It has led to the current position in which Islam, in our towns and cities throughout the land is effectively promoting the breaking of our domestic laws. We have polygamy, child brides, forced marriages, honour killings, electoral fraud, female genital mutilation on a massive scale and the grooming of vulnerable 'white trash' and often underage girls which is a nationwide disease. To top it all, we have young men - and families - returning to the Middle East to fight against our values by supporting ISIL. And our teachers and security forces get the blame for this? This is also entirely mad.
And these behaviours certainly cannot be accurately described as the actions of 'lone wolves'. They are Muslim community-based practises that whilst illegal in the UK, have largely been ignored by the police, our media and politicians for fear of offending Muslims. You've guessed it, this is also entirely mad and I think that Eric Pickles' letter last year; some comments from Dave and Prince Charles more recently and today's speech have been building towards addressing.
And about time too.
I happen to think that this is a situation which also lets down ordinary Muslim families who come to our country as well. I think that most genuine Muslim families who risk everything, pay over everything they have in order to come to the UK, do so seeking a better way of life in a freer, better governed country; one which offers better healthcare, education and opportunity than the one they left.
Instead our 'tolerant' 'PC' society has effectively meant that on arrival, they are quickly subsumed into exisitng Muslim communities wherein many of the practices and religious bullying they were fleeing from have been allowed to become established - and they're effectively then back where they started from.
And then we do get the so-called 'lone wolves' committing terrorist atrocities in host countries around the world as young Muslims are exploited and radicalised just as they would be in their countries of origin. When all hope of achieving a better life has effectively been extinguished.
In trying to welcome people, to accommodate them, to create an environment of 'tolerance' we have instead created an environment in which incomers are being exploited and bullied, cowed by the teachings of Mohamed and the Qu'ran, here in the UK, to the point where they are not much better off than they would have been staying in their country of origin.
Bullied and cowed by extremists in their communities - and not sufficiently protected by UK laws because of our mad PC outlook and the turning of a blind eye by our police, politicians and media - so that even if they abhor what is being done in the name of Islam right here in the UK, they are almost powerless to stand up to it.
I think 'Moderate Muslims' do need to stand up and be counted; do need to declare their allegiance to the UK and our laws and way of life and that we need to make it a whole lot easier for them to do so.
This is essentially what Dave is now trying to achieve. There's a long way to go but at least he's made a start and has stopped denying that there's a problem within our society. The next step must be to enable these 'moderates' to stand up, to declare their views and to let us know, unequivocally, whose side they are on. And they must stand up and do so, once this facility is in place. The sooner the better.
If they fail to do so then I think we might have our answer as to whether 'Moderate Muslims' actually exist.
I think they do - and more importantly so does Dave.
But if it turns out that they don't at least we will have been able to identify and recognise the problem we face and can then go about sorting it out. In this instance (i.e. that they don't) it will be difficult but not nearly as difficult as if we carry on ignoring and denying that we have a problem.
In the end the question, 'whose side are you on?' is one which needs to be answered by all Muslims in 'the West'. And for their own good as well as ours. Our freedoms and theirs rest on the answer, one way of the other.
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment