An Open Letter to Baroness Warsi
http://englishdefenceleague.org/edl-news-2/1866-an-open-letter-to-baroness-warsi
We’ve just come across a programme that aired on Al Jazeera television in October 2012. In it, Conservative Party Peer Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, says the following:
‘The English Defence League despise me, predominantly because of my faith’
This throw-away statement sums up a great deal of the
rubbish that politicians like to spout about the EDL, so much so that
we’ve decided to write her a response…
“Oh Sayeeda, you’ve got us all wrong – we don’t
despise you because of your faith, we despise you because you come out
with nonsense like that.
We really don’t care if you believe in God, Allah or
whoever else. We couldn’t care less if you pray five times a day,
whether you attend a mosque, church or a synagogue, whether you believe
you’ll go to heaven or that you’ll be reincarnated as a sea lion.
Seriously, we don’t care.
Believe what you want, and do what you want as long as you’re not harming anyone.
Now, your views on Islamic extremism – those we do
care about. You seem to believe that Islamic extremism only really
exists within the heads of a few bearded lunatics, and that the best way
to combat it is to harp on about how Islam really means peace, love and
community cohesion.
We don’t think that’s going to work. Why? Because we
think the reason Islamic extremism is such a problem is because the
larger Muslim community has failed to confront it.
Rather than encouraging the conditions in which
British Muslims will stand up to extremists, your government encourages
continued inaction. It says to British Muslims: ‘you don’t need to
tackle extremism, you don’t need to press for reform, you don’t need to
take a long hard look at some of the things your religion teaches.’
That worries the life out of us. It’s enough to
frustrate us, to anger us even. But at its heart it’s still little more
than a disagreement – it’s not a reason to despise you.
But then you go further. It seems that it’s not enough to tell British Muslims that their religion – the only
religion so absolutely plagued with extremism – is not in desperate
need of reform. To that you add that the poisonous lie that the main
reason people form negative opinions about Muslims is the rampant spread
of ‘Islamophobia’.
That’s right – it’s not that Islamic extremism is
barely off the front pages, or that criticising the continued spread of
Islamic extremism has become such a taboo subject – it’s because of an
irrational phobia that has sprung out of nowhere. So how has it ‘passed the dinner-table test’?
This one’s a bit of a puzzle because surely if it’s all the fault of
Neanderthal hate-mongers like ourselves, then how on earth have we
managed to influence people who eat at tables?
Ah, of course, the media must be busy manufacturing
links between extremist acts and the religion of peace, right? Never
mind that any meaningful criticism of Islam has effectively been banned
from the state broadcaster, or that critics of Islam are assailed by a
tide of name-calling whenever they do receive any column inches.
‘Racists’, ‘fascists’, ‘Nazis’, ‘the far right’ –
you’d think Britain was swamped with these dangerous fanatics; going
round attacking free speech, rubbishing democracy, sticking offensive
labels on people who happen to disagree with them…
Oh wait… who are the fascists again?
Of course, many people do recognise the irony. But
many people don’t – which is presumably why you persist. Why get into a
difficult debate where you have to face some difficult questions or
address some uncomfortable home truths when you can just continue to
peddle the myth that all criticism of Islam is nothing but
‘Islamophobia’?
Mud sticks, or so they say, so why not just keep
flinging it? No smoke without fire, so if constantly portraying the EDL
as the sort of place where jackbooted Nazi idiots would feel right at
home means that some of these characters do turn up at our
demonstrations, then great – fantastic little photo opportunity for your
tabloid of choice and more fuel on the fire. Never mind that anyone
with any kind of extremist sympathies is immediately made unwelcome.
Never mind that we’ve repeatedly spoken out against all forms of racism,
fascism and authoritarianism. But of course, we would say that – we’re
the bad guys, remember?
Sometimes we think it’s getting old, that there’s not
a lot to left to amuse, horrify or baffle us any more. But then we came
across your claim that we’ve threatened to ‘put lead in your head’.
Have we now? That’s a new one to us. Last time we checked, we didn’t
have a hit list. And even if we did, we probably don’t despise you quite
enough for you to be particularly high up on the list – sorry.
But then we would say that wouldn’t we?
It’s something of a surprise that we’ve not come
across this allegation until now. It sounds like something the police
would – and should – be taking very seriously. And yet nothing in the
press? They really must want to safeguard our good name.
Still, we feel that we should have been informed. If
someone claiming to represent the EDL was making threats then we would
need to immediately disassociate ourselves from these comments and send
what information we might have to the police. That is assuming, of
course, that these were genuine threats and not just some anonymous
Facebook user. If we called the police every time some idiot threatened
to ‘bash’, ‘smash’ or otherwise injure us we’d probably need to get our
own dedicated line.
Of course, we don’t doubt for a second that you had
every reason to believe that this threat was genuine and did originate
with the EDL.
Wait, yes we do – that’s exactly why we despise you.
It’s not just that we think your approach is
calamitous to community cohesion, to the fight against extremism and to
the future security of our country. That’s bad enough. But what really
irks us is your stubborn refusal to accept that what this all really
boils down to is a difference in opinion, not a question of tolerance vs
intolerance, of hate vs hope, good vs evil, or whatever else.
Refusing to accept that someone else has a legitimate
point of view, writing it off as prejudice, ignorance or even a
‘phobia’ - you know what that approach stinks of? Arrogance.
You think you can ignore our concerns, call us names,
cast aspersions, misrepresent what we stand for, portray us as
extremists for daring to criticise the spread of genuine extremism, and
even make use of a bullshit claim that we’ve threatened to shoot you,
all to detract from the fact that you have absolutely no idea how to
combat Islamic extremism.
Your government has failed, your fellow Muslims have failed. That need not spell disaster, if only you’d just admit it.
Yes, yes, yes, the extremists are only a small
minority that do not represent the however many Muslims in the world,
blah, blah, blah. We know – we’ve never suggested that they do. Who
has!?
Instead of putting our fingers in our ears every time
an Islamic extremist tells us he did what he did because the Qur’an
told him to, we should be asking why his interpretation still holds such
weight. Why aren’t the mosques doing enough to challenge these
extremist interpretations? Why are some of them hosting imams who
encourage violence, segregation and supremacism? And why aren’t British
Muslims boycotting those that do?
Why is the example of a man who raped and killed his
way through Arabia still held up as an ideal? Why do so many Muslims
still seek to copy his backwards attitudes towards women, his hatred of
Jews and his love of jihad? And why aren’t British Muslims out on the
streets protesting about all of this?
‘The English Defence League despise me, predominantly because of my faith’?
No.
Some of us may despise Islam, just as people have
always despised ideologies (religious or otherwise) which they believe
worsen the lot of mankind. But separating how we may or may not feel
about Islam from how we treat individual Muslims isn’t something we have
a particular problem with.
We don’t need to be reminded that a person isn’t
defined solely by their race or their religion, or by the peaceful
protest movement that they might happen to support.
Obviously you do.
Regards,
The ‘Islamophobes’ of the EDL
This letter has been posted to Baroness Warsi. We wait on her response.
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