Those are the words written by Michael Portillo in his compelling and spot on piece in today’s UK Sunday Times. He outlines brilliantly why the British must not fall into the trap of appeasing Muslim extremists by pretending that the 7/7 London bombing were the result of Britain’s actions rather than Islamic extremism bent on destroying the West.
To begin, Mr. Portillo points out that Muslims aren’t victimized and oppressed by the British government but by the Muslim terrorists. When Muslim extremists take it upon themselves to kill innocent people in the name of Islamic purity, they are the ones who make victims out of other innocent Muslims, not the law enforcement officials trying to prevent future terrorist attacks:
It is there that Al-Qaeda has scored its greatest success. More significant for the long term than the bombs is the impact that terror has in dividing the groups that make up our society, and in increasing the appeal of militancy to those who can be duped into seeing themselves as repressed.
Muslim complaints about being victimised are perversely directed. Muslims are victims of the bombers, not of the state or the police. It is the terrorists who make Muslims potential objects of suspicion and fear because the bombers murder in the name of Islam. Muslims have every right to be outraged, but their fury should focus on the men of violence. The police action in Forest Gate was cack-handed and the shooting of one of the “suspects” was indefensible. But given the profile of the terrorists, Muslims are bound to be more affected. By analogy, when police are looking for a rapist they interview males without anyone believing them to be institutional men haters.
This is a point that can not be made enough, not only in Britain, but here in states, as well. Airport screeners are told to search airline passengers randomly. As a result, our screeners waste their time searching four year old children and 83 year old grandmothers instead of being purposeful and searching those who fit the terrorist profile. Yes, the terrorists my try to recruit members who are outside the profile to blow themselves up and kill innocents in the name of Islam, but the argument that these recruits could be children and grandmothers is pretty weak.
Mr. Portillo rejects the argument that to call out the terrorists because of their religion is hypocritical and inconsistent because he doesn’t call out the IRA for their Catholic connections or Christian extremists for their religious roots:
There are good reasons for that. Although the IRA is rooted in the Catholic community, its aims are political and secular. Although there certainly are Christian extremists today, just now they are not murdering people in the name of purifying the world. By contrast, across the globe human beings are being slaughtered in large numbers by Muslims quoting from the Koran and vowing death to infidels, including other Muslim sects. Their objectives are political and religious.
So to try to condemn the expression “Islamic violence” is a dangerous attempt at censorship that would hamper our understanding of the threat we face. The term is certainly offensive to Muslims, but the offence is caused by the bombers, not by those who describe the process.
Another problem in Britain’s Muslim community is that even those Imams who oppose committing violence in the name of the Koran still try to explain away the terrorists behavior as being a reaction Britain’s foreign policy rather than an effort to force Islamic laws on free societies. As Mr. Portillo points out, many Britons disapprove of Prime Minister Blair’s Iraq and Afghanistan policies, but it is only the Muslim extremists who are blowing themselves up in subways and on busses.
Michael Portillo ends his essay with a point that needs to be understood not just by Britons but by Americans, too:
I believe that we can move closer if we are more honest about what is happening. Mayhem is being unleashed globally in the name of Islam. There is no point denying it, especially since most of those butchered have been Muslim. The British state is not the problem but part of the solution. A tolerant society can survive only if it bands together to suppress intolerance because we are all victims of that intolerance.
Every Briton must join in that effort, no ifs, no buts and no excuses.
Mr. Portillo makes many more great points that I didn’t mention, which make his essay a must read.
Update: The BBC continues to appease Muslim extremism: now the word dhimmi is banned from its website. Interesting irony. By banning the word dhimmi, it embraces dhimmitude.
here here!!
ISLAMIC Terrorism…ISLAMIC tyranny!!
If Islam wants to go back to being a religion then that is fine with me! But as long as Islam = Jihad, and Jihad = Death to the West, then it is them or us. I choose US!
Four letters too many: We Must Call Islam Terror
Has been for a long time. Check out America’s First War on Terror, saw it at rightwingsparkle. There is a reason why that when the religion of Islam takes a hold of a people, they halt development. Christianity tried that but scientists were able to break free. The allowance of such things as “honor killings” in the religion of Islam and a greater tolerance of violence has cowed any sort of progress and any sort of digression. Everyone is afraid of (sorry to use the analogy) the “all seeing eye” of Allah. Here is a quotation from the original article…Sir Winston Churchill’s comments regarding how the religion is used:
However I must say that Christian extremists HAVE done some damage of late…remember the abortion clinic bombings?
Portillo has always been a very interesting and charming man.. A personal favorite of Thatcher, he was for a decade viewed as the next natural Conservative leader before he lost two very close leadership contests,a nd then abandoned parliamentary politics in Janury 2003, following his second defeat, largely because he had advocated more ‘inclusive social policies’ than the other Tory voting MPs felt their constituents could bear. American conservatives make take some comfort from today’s column in his calling’ a spade a spade’, with his denunciation of Islam extremism, but Portillo at other times, in the same breath, and with the same eloquence has been critical of the West’s, particularly Bush’s policies in Iraq, and its failure to win ‘the hearts and minds’ in his Sunday Times column of July 4, 2004, and June 4th this year.
“remember the abortion clinic bombings”.
Not ever close, but if they were, how did we treat clinic bombers? We pursued them with our justice system. Huge manhunts. We didn’t celebrate them as martyrs and give $50,000 to their families.
BTW, what do you think the Muslim’s opinion of abortion is? Please try to open an abortion clinic in SA.
RE: jpm100… What he said.
To add to jpm’s statement, you would be hard pressed to find a number of supporters of the clinic bombers in the Christian community in comparison to the number of supporters that the Islamic terrorists have in the ‘peaceful’ Muslim community.
I may be wrong in my figures, but I think I read the other day that, in a poll of Muslims conducted in the UK post 7/7, 16% supported the terrorists. Nowhere close to what you would find in the hated [by many on the left] Christian community.
The abortion bombers, do you mean Eric Robert Rudolph? If so, he is a RACIST, bombing the clinics for RACIST’s reasons. He stated the reason for being anti-abortion is because only white women get abortions and it is allowing the non-whites to win the war of attrition in race-relations here in the US.
Eric Robert Rudolph gives Christians a bad name and should not be associated with them/us, since his actions were not in the name of Jesus (unlike the homicide bombers of islamo-fascism).
I honestly don’t know the answer to this question: just how many abortion clinics were bombed, anyway, and how many individuals and/or groups were involved?
J.
Jay, according to the National Abortion Federation (.pdf), who track these things, there have been 7 murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, and 173 arsons of abortion workers or clinics in the US & Canada since 1977, along with a lot of other, lesser crimes.
You say “racist” like it’s a bad thing.
It’s racism that could protect highly evolved cultures from being destroyed inferior cultures. (Like muslims flooding into europe)
How can they let that happen?!?!?
As far as how many groups or individuals have been involved in those activities, I don’t know of a definitive number or list, but the Wikipedia entry is a good start. I’m only really familiar with the Nuremberg Files website story, as it is a pretty interesting 1st Amendment case.
The people behind that website were the American Coalition of Life Activists, Advocates for Life Ministries, and a guy named Neal Horsley of Army of God. It seems that the whole abortion violence crowd has over time consisted of many groups of varying cohesiveness and interconnectedness (especially since people start using the web) plus plenty of lone gunmen/bombers/arsonists, and it’s pretty hard to get a grip on how many there are or have been. I’ll bet the FBI could come up with a number (probably wrong).
Eric Robert Rudolph gives Christians a bad name and should not be associated with them/us, since his actions were not in the name of Jesus (unlike the homicide bombers of islamo-fascism).
First, you’re wrong about Rudolph, he was most certainly a Christian, at least a self-identified one. And did you just say that Islamic terrorists do it for Jesus? That’s weird.
Of course, as jpm said, we do hunt these people down and while they may have networks of supporters, no one is sending them checks. I don’t recall hearing about a lot of Palestinian bombers (or rocketers I guess, since the bombers usually die) being turned in or caught.
mantis: “7 murders… in the US & Canada since 1977”
So in 33 years, there have been 7 murders? If (and I don’t accept that they were) all SEVEN of these murders were committed by rabid Christians in the name of Jesus, that would be aproximately 1 murder every 4.5 YEARS.
If the Islamo-whackjobs only killed on person every 4.5 years in the name of Allan, then I would stop worrying about them! Sadly, they have most likely killed 7 people while I was typing this!!
We’re talking totally different levels of magnitude here.
We’re talking totally different levels of magnitude here.
No argument here.
I totally agree with all of you on that, I was just pointing out what complete extremisn CAN do on either side, however did you notice the earlier point of my post when I quoted Churchill? Maybe I should have quoted Eaton, his quote was a lot easier to read and understand. Basically what I was saying was the religion of Islam seems to degenerate into extremism a lot easier BECAUSE of the nature of how the religion is applied into daily life. In Theocratic Islamic countries, everyone is afraid of going against the Koran and Islamic law, not because of the fear that they will go to hell and not get their 75 virgins, but because the guys in masks (there seem to be a lot of them there, huh) will show up at their door and have themselves a “punishment”. Not only that, but families are allowed “honor killings”, for example, if a girl goes out into public without a veil or an escort and talks to a man she doesn’t know for any reason.
And to use the same LotR analogy, they’re all afraid of the all-seeing “eye” of Allah.
Talking about extremism, I cannot help but chime in the most bloody extremism in history so far: the atheistic/secularist extremism (ie communism). It claimed hundred of millions people dead so far. This atheistic/secularist extremism still run the worst gulags in the world right now in NOrth Korea, Cuba.
I cannot help but notice the obvious huge difference between the so-called “christian extremism” of America and the secular/atheistic extremism. I guess abortion has become a religion of the secularist extremists.