The Times
MELANIE PHILLIPS
The elephant is still in the room. Even now, with Theresa May
saying “enough is enough” after the London Bridge atrocities, we are still
refusing to identify correctly the threat that has already claimed so many
lives.
These
attackers are not “evil losers”. They are not “sick cowards”. They are not
nihilists or psychiatric cases or lone wolves. They are devout and ecstatic
Muslim fanatics who are waging a war of religion against us.
Mrs
May correctly referred to “Islamist” terrorism. Yet she also said this was a
“perversion of Islam”. How can it be a “perversion” when it is solidly rooted
in religious texts and theological doctrine validated and endorsed by the
world’s most powerful Islamic authorities?
In his article in The Times, the communities
secretary Sajid Javid tied himself up in knots. He rightly said it wasn’t
enough for Muslims merely to condemn terror attacks; they must ask themselves
“searching questions”, and issue challenges.
Yet
he also said the perpetrators were not “true Muslims” and that it was right to
say the attacks were “nothing to do with Islam”. Well if that’s so, why should
Muslims need to do anything at all?
The
West views Islam through its own cultural prism, which equates religion with
spirituality. The problem is that Islam is as much a political ideology as a
source of spiritual guidance.
In
2010 a German study, which involved intensive questioning of 45,000 Muslim
teenagers from 61 towns and regions across the country, found that the more
religious they were the more likely they were to become violent.
Sheikh
Mohammad Tawhidi, a Shia cleric in Australia who campaigns against Sunni
extremism, has said: “The scriptures are exactly what is pushing these people
to behead the infidel. Our books teach the beheading of people.”
Of
course, millions of Muslims don’t subscribe to any of this. Some are merely
cultural Muslims who observe no religious practices. Some, such as the Sufis or
the Ahmadiyya sect, are pious Muslims who are truly peaceful (and are
themselves victims of the Islamists).
But
political, aggressive, jihadist Islam, constrained for so long by both the
Ottoman empire and western colonialism, is now dominant once again in the
Muslim world. Which is why in 2015 Egypt’s President Sisi remarkably told the
imams of Al-Azhar university in Cairo — the epicentre of Islamic doctrinal
edicts — that Islam’s corpus of sacred texts was “antagonising the entire
world”, that it was “impossible” for 1.6 billion Muslims to “want to kill the
rest of the world’s inhabitants”, and so Islam had to have a “religious
revolution”.
We
should be promoting and defending such Muslim reformers in the desperate hope
that they succeed. Instead we knock the ground from under their feet by saying
Islamist attacks have nothing to do with Islam. Until and unless Islam is
reformed, we need to treat its practices on a scale ranging from extreme
caution to outlawing some of them altogether.
Mrs
May said we need to make people understand that our “pluralistic British
values” were “superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of
hatred”.
The
problem is, though, that Islamists believe their values represent the literal
word of God. So to them, no other values can possibly be superior. As a result,
you can no more deradicalise them than you could have deradicalised the priests
of the Inquisition.
We
must require Muslims to take responsibility for the actions of all in their
community. An ICM poll of British Muslims two years ago found that nearly a
quarter wanted Sharia to replace British law in areas with large Muslim
populations.
Four
per cent — equivalent to more than 100,000 British Muslims — said they were
sympathetic to suicide bombers fighting “injustice”.
In
other words, we must see jihadist Islam as at the extreme end of a continuum of
beliefs which are themselves incompatible with British society.
So
we shouldn’t just be stopping people coming back to Britain from Syria or
Libya, or detaining terrorist suspects through control orders. We should also
be closing down radical mosques, deporting those born in other countries who
are involved in extremism, stopping foreign funding for Muslim institutions and
banning the Muslim Brotherhood.
We
should also outlaw Sharia courts because, since Sharia does not accept the
superior authority of secular legislation, it inescapably undermines the core
British value of one law for all.
The
message should be that British Muslims are welcome citizens but on the same
basis as everyone else: that they subscribe to the binding nature of
foundational British laws and values. If not, they will be treated as
subversives.
The
chances of any of these measures being taken, though, are slim. There will be
inevitable claims that judge-made human rights law, which has often protected
the “rights” of extremists rather than their victims, cannot be set aside
without “destroying British values”.
Jihadist
terrorists, however, are not trying to divide us, destroy our values or stop
the general election. They are trying to kill us and conquer us.
If
it is to defend itself, a liberal society may need to adopt illiberal measures.
If we don’t do so now, we’ll be forced to eventually. The only question is how
many will have to die before that happens.
