The EDL says Islam is ‘Extreme’.
Is it?
People who cut other people’s heads off in the name of Islam are obviously extreme, suicide bombers are extreme, people who hang 16 year old girls from cranes are extreme.
But is Islam, when compared to our democratic, progressive, secular nation ‘extreme’?
That’s not a question many people will ask..or ‘allow’ to be asked.
To do so means disposing ‘of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem.’
Having listened to Tommy Robinson’s interview on the Today programme in which he suggests Islam is ‘extreme’ we saw the hysterical reaction…a reaction that lacks any rationality or reasonableness based as it was on pure prejudice and bile rather than any coherent thoughts.
Apparently the BBC has ‘poisoned the airwaves’ with this interview.
Polly Billington, Labour candidate for Thurrock, wrote on Twitter: “That interview did not constitute scrutiny. Unchallenged lies and hatred poison our national debate…“This did not clear the air. It poisoned it”
The truth is though that Robinson said no more than Cameron or Blair or Boris Johnson or many other ‘respectable’ and authoritative voices.
Ironically it is the BBC, the Islamophobia industry and those on their political bandwagons themselves who have made it impossible to challenge Tommy Robinson in any intelligent and critical manner on their own terms….all that remains is to shout ‘racist’ or ‘islamophobe’ as often and as loudly as possible.
The whole basis of the EDL’s existence is to challenge the Islamic ideology, the teachings and values of the ‘religion’.
To ‘challenge’ the EDL’s claims you have to examine Islam.
The BBC et al have steadfastly refused to do that in any meaningful way, steadfastly refused to examine Islam and the beliefs and values that stem from that ideology….and they will not do so because they know that to do so would raise some very awkward questions about the ‘religion’ and the consequences of allowing it to spread in a democratic, secular or Christian nation.
If the BBC can’t bring itself to critique Islam then it cannot hope to challenge the EDL because it will have nothing to argue with….it cannot say ‘Islam says this or that whilst you in the EDL say this.’..because it doesn’t know or admit what Islam says or means.
Such questions about Islam also then beg answers…answers that no politician dare even contemplate…hence we hear ‘Islam is a religion of peace‘. The politicians kick the questions down the road and hope nothing serious happens on their watch that they have to deal with.
Robinson said ‘It ain’t going to be pretty’……what is he predicting? Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan?
Maybe we should talk…..about Islam.
Perhaps Boris Johnson could kick start the conversation:
The question is what action we take now to solve the problem in our own country, and what language we should use to describe such action.
This is a cultural calamity that will take decades to correct.
We — non-Muslims — cannot solve the problem; we cannot brainwash them out of their fundamentalist beliefs. The Islamicists last week horribly and irrefutably asserted the supreme importance of that faith, overriding all worldly considerations, and it will take a huge effort of courage and skill to win round the many thousands of British Muslims who are in a similar state of alienation, and to make them see that their faith must be compatible with British values and with loyalty to Britain. That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem.
To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture — to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques — it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.
The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s mediaeval ass?
It is time that we started to insist that the Muslim Council of Great Britain, and all the preachers in all the mosques, extremist or moderate, began to acculturate themselves more closely to what we think of as British values.