Britain panders to radical Islam
The Pioneer, India ^ | Wednesday, January 31, 2007 | Kanchan Gupta
dailypioneer.com
At a recent conference on 'World Civilisation-Clash of Civilisations,' hosted by London's Mayor 'Red' Ken Livingstone, some weird notions of multi-culturalism and its merits were voiced, including bizarre assertions by a certain Salma Yaqoub that Islamist terror attacks like those witnessed on July 7, 2005 when the Underground was bombed are actually "reprisal events" and hence, need to be understood rather than condemned. Mr Livingstone, who has in the past outraged saner Britons by hosting public receptions for rabble-rousing theologians of terror like Yusuf al-Qardawi who believes Muslims must not hesitate to use their children as human bombs and posts the most appalling edicts on his online fatwa service, was in his elements defending the indefensible.
Apart from describing Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now cooling his heels in Doha, as the "strongest force for modernisation of Islam - he is the future of Islam", Mr Livingstone explained why "Israel should never have been created in the first place" and "the creation of Israel was a travesty". At some point he quoted John Stuart Mill, advising the gathering, "live as you wish as long as you do not hurt anyone." If only Britain's rapidly growing community of radical Islamists, most of them immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh who are seeking to recreate in their adopted country the bigotry that has brought their home countries to rack and ruin, would have lived by that dictum, the world would have been a safer place. For, and Mr Livingstone should know this better than anybody else, British Islamists are known to have been involved in acts of terrorism in as many as 15 countries. Neither at home nor abroad do they wish to let others live in peace, leave alone live in open societies free of the burdens imposed by Islamic orthodoxy and its preachers.
Mr Livingstone, warming up to the theme of multi-culturalism which has come to mean blackmail and worse by Britain's immigrant Muslims who are now demanding that they should be governed by shari'ah and not Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, reminded his audience that 300 languages are spoken in London, 62 per cent of Londoners are not UK-born and one in 20 is of mixed race. These are telling statistics, amply reflected in absurdities like "halal Chinese restaurants" which are flaunted as evidence of Britain's success with promoting multi-culturalism. Of course, not everybody, including Mr Livingstone's colleagues in the Labour Party, would agree with such balderdash; some like Britain's outspoken Minister for Communities Ruth Kelly have all but admitted that multi-culturalism, instead of unifying, has splintered British society.
Nor have Britons taken lightly to incidents like that involving Aisha Azmi who insisted that it was her religious right to wear a burqa while teaching children at a school, never mind the trauma of her students. In more recent days, London's Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair had a taste of multi-culturalism when a newly recruited Muslim woman police constable refused to shake hands with him at the passing out parade because "Islam forbids a woman from indulging in physical contact with men apart from her husband". For good measure, the constable, who is not of Asian origin, turned up for the parade wearing a hijab and refused to be photographed. Presumably, she fully subscribes to Islam as interpreted and imposed by the Taliban during the years they ruled with a bloody sword from Kabul. After this story was published in the British Press, a reader wrote in to ask whether the constable, while on duty, would help a man in distress or simply turn around and walk away, confident that nobody could punish her since she was only following her religious faith.
And how has the top brass of Metropolitan Police reacted to this astonishing incident? Instead of sacking her, they have decided to wait and watch her performance over the next two years when she will be on probation. Meanwhile, Mr Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission of Britain, has justified the constable's action by declaring that the "overwhelming majority" of practising Muslims would avoid physical contact with members of the opposite sex. "Muslims do not physically touch members of the opposite sex unless they are married or very closely related - for example, brother and sister or uncle and niece," he said, calling for greater tolerance of cultural differences and religious faith.
Since political expediency is often allowed to ride roughshod over good sense, it is not surprising that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after waxing eloquent on the need to fight bigotry and intolerance that breed Islamist violence and militate against the very principles that form the foundation of open societies, has quietly buried his much-touted plan to combat terrorism on Britain's soil. According to the Observer, Mr Blair "has been forced to shelve a central plank of his 'war on terror' strategy after opposition from senior police officers and the Home Office... Plans to ban Hizb ul-Tahrir, the radical Islamic group, have been dropped in the past few days following intense discussions between Number 10 and legal advisers." Citing "counter-terrorism sources", the paper said Mr Blair had been "warned that banning the group, which campaigns for Britain to become a caliphate - a country subject to Islamic law - would serve only as a recruiting agent if the group appealed against the move." Mr Blair, it may be recalled, announced his intention to ban the Hizb ul-Tahrir soon after the London bombings as part of his Government's "12-point strategy to counter Islamic extremism". For Islamists in Britain, this is a major victory, not least because the group is banned in Pakistan, almost every Arab country and many European countries; during his visit to Pakistan, Mr Blair had given "personal assurances to President Pervez Musharraf that the ban would go ahead".
With the British Government wilting in the face of Islamist belligerence and open defiance of laws that are ostensibly meant for all subjects of the Queen, irrespective of their religious identity, mullahs who preach hate are once again in business after a brief lull following the Underground bombings and the uncovering of the plot to bomb trans-Atlantic passenger jets. Abu Hamza al-Masri may not be preaching at Finsbury Park mosque anymore, but that does not mean Friday prayers in London and across Britain have become a tame affair. On the contrary, having tasted victory by forcing Mr Blair and his Government on the backfoot and getting away with taunting mainstream British society with which they refuse to integrate, Britain's Muslims are now preparing for the big push. To pretend otherwise would be plain stupid. |
