So I’ve been thinking about this
a lot and posted this morning on twitter about David Cameron’s comment
(“they are monsters, not Muslims”). I’m very concerned by growing
reprise that “Islamic State” (IS) is not Islam, that they are not
Muslims. I can understand where it’s coming from but its a very
dangerous form of political correctness. Clearly not all Muslims
support IS, nor are all terrorists Muslim. But there is no doubt that IS
say they are acting on behalf of Islam, they are Muslims and they want
to establish an Islamic Caliphate.
If
you detach their monstrous ideology from what we like to think of as
Islam, then do you detach from the Muslim community responsibility for
denouncing it? I have no problem if moderate Muslims — as some have done
(albeit late in the day) — stand up and say that IS does not represent
what they believe to be Islam. I similarly say that Naturei Karta, the
“ultra-Orthodox” anti Zionist Jews — who by the way simply throw words,
not stones, not swords and are nonviolent — do not represent Judaism in
any form that I know. But I want the moderates to stand up and say it.
More importantly, do you, by saying IS is not
Islam, they’re not Muslims, detach from the Muslim community at large
the responsibility for helping prevent radicalisation which we know full
well goes on in certain mosques and on campuses? (It is astonishing how
many campuses world wide have HUGE investment from Saudi and Qatar and
huge investment in BDS, anti Israel, and radicalisation programmes.)
I am not blaming any particular Muslim
community but just as I hung my head in shame when extremist Jews
murdered that poor young man in Jerusalem after the death of the three
Jewish teenagers, so the Muslim community worldwide must say, not that
IS is an Israeli / CIA conspiracy (as Iran currently claiming) but that
something is rotten within the Muslim world and it must be stopped.
There are Middle East and other Muslim
societies, particularly Iran, bringing up their children on a relentless
feast of hate — against Jews, against the US, against the West. There
has also been dreadful oppression of Sunnis by Shias in Iraq, of Shias
by Sunnis in Iraq (depends which year and who’s in charge) and all over
the ME, Iran and Pakistan etc. IS, a radical Sunni movement, has grown
out of those struggles and has been strongly funded by Qatar (they would
claim not but even if not directly, certainly indirectly and they
directly fund Hamas, another murderous Sunni regime). But we must wonder
why so many well educated EU-born men AND women are flocking to take
part in the barbaric IS regime. It is a shame for the whole of British
society that some of the absolutely worst offenders (“Jihadi John”, the
women in charge of the sex slaves) are British Muslims who have turned
their backs on their homes and gone to Iraq. Some might just be hot
headed young people looking for an ideology. But some have been
indoctrinated and that must stop, now.
We need interfaith discussions; we need to
avoid the vile rhetoric that appeared everywhere, instantly, over the
Israel Gaza conflict. The rhetoric which painted the problems in black
and white, condeming Israel without contemplating the impact, the
propaganda and the lies that Hamas were feeding the West and that were
so willingly believed (and spread by the media which apparently Jews
control — if we do, we do it very badly!). We need to open our eyes to
how the hate is poisoning the youth of our land.
We have to consider the anti-Semitism (and
sorry that’s what it is) that led to the huge disparity (disproportion
to use an emotive term) in the speed, ferocity and extent of the
response to the Israel Gaza conflict compared with, for instance, how
many months it took anyone to notice and even quietly protest that Assad
was slaughtering hundreds and hundreds of civilians (nearly 300,000
dead in three years in the conflict, many many civilians including
thousands of children but none of the emotive hour by hour accounts we
had over Gaza); that IS was truly ethnically cleansing Mosul of
Christians, was waging a genocide (still is) against the Yazidis, was
systematically raping women and children as a punishment (there has
never been a single case of rape by an IDF soldier — not something to
celebrate but notable in modern warfare).
Why were so few people raging over these mass
slaughters and war crimes and yet out on the streets in minutes over
Israel defending itself against 100s of rockets raining down aimed at
civilians.
My take was that it was fuelled fundamentally
by anti-Semitism (the singling out of a particular state etc) but also
importantly there is no sanction for criticising Israel (and Jews).
However, Muslims don’t/won’t criticise Muslims and others are afraid of
doing so. I realise that’s a generalisation and some, such as the
Quiliam Foundation are doing wonderful work in this area. But you only
have to look at how slow the UN (with one member one vote, and just one
Jewish state but 50+ Muslim states) has been to denounce Syria and even
ISIS, yet has criticism of Israel as a standing agenda item.
Muslims who support democracy, who reject a
Caliphate, who reject the barbarism of IS now need to speak up. In
Britain and the EU and all Western liberal democracies, we cannot have
increasing ghettoisation, we cannot have areas run by Sharia law where
police turn a blind eye to abuse of women and children, and we have to
say, this is Britain and the law is British. We have to have mutual
respect for all faiths and people of all faiths have to abide by the
laws of the land.
I have not set out to offend with this post
and I am trying to read it as if everything I’ve said about Muslims
mentioned Jews instead (a la the terrible piece by Matthew Parris in The
Times a few weeks ago). But we do not solve the problem by pretending
that fundamentalist Islam is not Islam and is not run by Muslims. As
Edmund Burke so wisely said “All that is necessary for the triumph of
evil is that good men do nothing.” I truly believe the Muslim
communities in Britain (I can’t speak for the rest of the world) are now
speaking out louder and more strongly — from my perspective they
weren’t and there has been a reluctance to criticise bad Muslims in
direct contrast to the willingness to denounce Israel at the drop of the
hat.
At least with IS it is very clear, no one can
blame Israel and in fact Israel is the front line for the West against
IS. Thank God Israel is there. Not least, it’s proving a safe haven for
UN troops running away from IS in Syria on the Golan border. We need to
unite in our condemnation of Islamic terrorists whether ISIS, Hamas, Al
quaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood – they all subvert democracy, fail to
respect other faiths and are murderous in their methods; they may differ
in the detail but not in the fundamental ideology. And that is what all
of us, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists need to speak out and act
against else evil will triumph.
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