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by Denis MacEoin • June 16, 2017
at 5:00 am
- At
the moment, the bar for taking extremists out of circulation
is set ridiculously high. People known for their own extremism
that reaches pre-terrorist levels should not be walking the
streets when they have expressed support for Islamic State
(ISIS) or tried to head to Syria or called for the destruction
of Britain and other democracies or allied themselves to
people already in prison. Their demand for free speech or
freedom of belief must never be elevated above the rights of
citizens to live safely in their own towns and cities. It is
essential for parliament to lower the bar.
- Is
this to be the political landscape for the future, where
groups of people demanding death and destruction are given the
freedom of the streets whilst those wishing to hold a peaceful
celebration are prevented from doing so?
- To
see extremist Islam as a "perversion" of Islam
misses an important point. The politically correct insistence
that radical versions of Islam somehow pervert an essentially
peaceful and tolerant faith forces policy-makers and
legislators, church leaders, rabbis, interfaith workers and
the public at large to leave to one side an important reality.
Flatly, Islam in its original and classic forms has everything
to do with today's radicals and the violence they commit. The
Qur'an is explicit in its hatred for pagans, Jews and
Christians. It calls for the fighting of holy war (jihad) to
conquer the non-Muslim world, subdue it, and gradually bring
it into the fold of Islam. Islam has been at war with Europe
since the seventh century.
In a June
3 speech, British Prime Minister Theresa May regrettably fell into
a politically-correct trap, when she said in reference to Islamic
radicalism, "It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam
and a perversion of the truth." (Photo by Hannah
McKay/Pool/Getty Images)
On the Sunday morning after the terrorist attacks in
London the night of June 3, British Prime Minister Theresa May
addressed the nation in a powerful speech. It deserves to be read
in full, but several points stand out and call for a response.
We cannot and must not pretend that things can
continue as they are. Things need to change and they need to change
in four important ways.
First, while the recent attacks are not connected by
common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They
are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism
that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism.
It is an ideology that claims our Western values of
freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the
religion of Islam.
Lower down, she enhances that by saying:
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