| | Melanie Phillips (pictured) in her column in yesterday’s Daily Mail offers her usual mix of hyperbole and hysteria as she comments on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspected terrorist who allegedly attempted to ignite explosives aboard a plane bound for Detroit, Michigan on Christmas Day.
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She writes:
‘Britain remains - to its eternal shame - the biggest hub of Islamic radicalisation outside the Arab and Muslim world.
‘Radicals flocked to the UK, attracted by Britain's toxic combination of criminally lax immigration controls, generous health, education and welfare benefits and the ability to perpetuate their views through the British veneration of the principle of free speech....Extremists are still slipping into the country. The courts are still refusing to deport terrorists in order to protect their 'human rights' abroad.’ (original emphasis)
'London boasts the shameful reputation of the world's premier money-laundry for terrorism, which shelters behind a label of 'charity' that the authorities choose not to challenge.
'Not only is no action taken against extremist mosques and madrassas, but many British universities have been turned into terrorism recruitment centres.'
Her sources, for validating these claims?
‘More than four years ago, the intelligence expert Professor Anthony Glees listed 24 British universities which he said had been infiltrated by militant jihadists’,
and
‘Last year, a poll by the Centre for Social Cohesion found - horrifyingly - that almost one in every three Muslim students in the UK said that killing in the name of religion was justified, with one third also in favour of a worldwide Islamic caliphate, or empire, based on Islamic sharia law.
‘The Centre also noted on campus the presence of extreme Islamist books in some prayer rooms, appearances by militant Islamist speakers, and links between extreme Islamists and the student Islamic Societies.’
You can read more about the CfSC ‘poll’ here, and avail yourself of the academic rigour with which it was conducted. It’s not difficult to see how these alarmist claims can be conjured up when questionnaires are themselves designed in a way to determine the results rather than objectively investigate Muslim student attitudes.
Perhaps more chilling is the conflation of attitudes disposed to violent extremism with those Muslims who hold to a notion of an Islamic state. Blurring boundaries in this way, to crudely classify all Muslims who profess support for an Islamic state as potential terrorists, surfaced at the time of the Government’s publishing its updated counter-terrorism strategy document, Contest 2, and sparked outrage with leaks suggesting that the government was intending to engage in thought control.
It would seem, to Phillips, that campuses are not the only places 'Islamists' abound.
She argues, 'radical speakers are regularly invited into the very heart of the defence establishment, on courses teaching intelligence officials as well as soldiers and police officers about radical Islam.
‘The Government is funnelling money into extremist Islamist groups, and even employs Islamist radicals within government as advisers on - wait for it - 'combating Islamic extremism'.
‘The root cause of this madness is that British ministers and officials refuse to accept that what they are facing is religious fanaticism.
‘They insist that Islamic extremism and terrorism have got nothing to do with Islam but are rather a 'perversion' of Islam. And they believe that the antidote to this is 'authentic' Islam - which they then use taxpayers' money to promote.
‘But what they fail to grasp is that 'authentic' Islam is currently dominated by a deeply politicised interpretation which promotes holy war to conquer 'infidels' and insufficiently pious Muslims.
‘And although many such Muslims abhor this and have nothing to do with violence or extremism, it is an interpretation backed up by Islamic theology and history and currently supported by the major religious authorities in the Islamic world.’
Perhaps here is where one sees Phillips’ discreditable analysis so starkly displayed.
Those who use Islam to justify the murder of innocents, whether non-Muslims or ‘insufficiently pious Muslims’, are not representative of ‘authentic Islam’ at all, something evinced by every poll conducted since 9/11 which show that the overwhelming majority of Muslims the world over reject the inference that Islam in any way justifies terrorism and indiscriminate murder.
The ideology of violent extremists is not a dominant trend within Islam at all, let alone a defensible interpretation of ‘holy war’, contrary to what Phillips claims. In arguing that the extremists’ twisted ideology, is ‘backed up by Islamic theology and history and [is] currently supported by the major religious authorities in the Islamic world’, Phillips does the extremists themselves a favourable turn by repeating their deluded claims that their actions find analogies in Islam’s history. Nothing could be further from the truth and whatever Phillips might believe, the vast majority of Muslims are clear that terrorism has no place, purpose of precedence in Islam.
Phillips’ prescribed solution to defeating violent extremists? She writes:
‘If Britain is ever to get on top of its terrorism problem, it has properly to acknowledge and tackle this radicalisation process. That means giving no quarter to this politicised interpretation of Islam.
‘And that means junking its current idiotic definition of an 'extremist' as merely someone who is committed to violence. It must outlaw instead the religious fanaticism that also threatens the British way of life.
‘So the Government should say that Muslims are welcome to live here on exactly the same basis as all other religious minorities - that they accept the principle of one law for all, and do nothing to threaten or undermine the prevailing culture.
‘That means an end to the increasing toleration of Islamic sharia law as the effective jurisdiction in Muslim areas, which so badly threatens in particular the safety and well-being of women, homosexuals and converts from the faith.
‘It means giving no quarter to the Muslim Council of Britain and all the other organisations and individuals who support Islamic extremism but are currently wooed by Whitehall.
‘It means outlawing Hizb ut-Tahrir. It means prosecuting the anti-West fanatics in mosques and madrassas. It means profiling Muslim extremists at airports.
‘None of these things is currently being done. Instead, radical Islamism is being appeased on the grounds that Muslims must not feel targeted in any way.
‘But in fact, this merely cuts the ground from under the feet of genuinely moderate British Muslims.’
It is characteristic of Phillips’ style and motives to favour a pseudo-intellectual analysis and proffer crude solutions over and above a rational, objective critique advancing focused and nuanced recommendations. Were she rather more sensible and sensitive she would see that Muslims do seek to live in Britain on ‘exactly the same basis as all other religious minorities’.
This means the right to establish faith schools, like those enjoyed by Christians, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs in the UK. It means establishing voluntary Shari’ah tribunals, where the demand for them exists, analogous to the existence of Beth Din courts that have long serviced the Jewish community in the UK. And it means applying the laws of the land equally to all British citizens, whatever their religious affiliation.
This means accepting the right of Hizb ut-Tahrir to propagate its ridiculous message of abstaining from political life if it so chooses, unless and until it is proven guilty of breaching the laws on incitement to hatred or violence.
This means accepting that a ‘politicised version of Islam’ is not synonymous with violent extremism any more than Christian Democrats or the Israel lobby in the UK are reflective of subversive religio- political designs.
And this means engaging with all Muslim groups, including the Muslim Council of Britain, that are demonstrative of Muslim associational life in Britain.
With her disdain for our liberal democratic values, castigating our freedom of speech and the Human Rights Act, Phillips mirrors the sort of derision leveled at our values and our open, democratic society by extremists themselves.
Phillips argues that ‘the deeper and more urgent issue for Britain concerns the key role this country has once again played in a Muslim's trajectory to radicalisation and terror’.
She is of course right but her flawed, dubious analysis and her patent disregard for an objective appraisal of British Muslim life not only subtracts from a constructive contribution to the debate, it wilfully demonises the many British Muslims who share her interest in properly understanding how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly went from being a promising student at UCL to the Christmas Day bomber.
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