RUTHFULLY YOURS

She must certainly be feeling proud now, then, having been a major player in Whitehall’s forging of close ties with the Muslim Council of Britain (MBC, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood) when she sees scenes like the ones pictured here, outside the Egyptian Embassy in London, as enemies of the pro-Western Egyptian government vent their hatred of Mubarak’s regime.

There are the fanatical young men (with their grotesquely-garbed womenfolk) screaming that “Islam is the Solution” – the rallying cry of the Muslim Brotherhood itself – and doing the verbal equivalent of holding two fingers up to Britain and the West by decrying democracy, making taunting remarks about our religions and way of life, and telling us that we’ll all be in dhimmitude sooner or later.

In his splendid article “The Days of Doing Deals with Muslim Extremists are Over,” that great British journalist Charles Moore (about whom I’ve blogged before) delivers a few insightful warnings, starting with the coverage of the Egyptian riots by certain left-liberal TV pundits some of whom have been reporting subjectively on “Mubarak’s thugs”.  Moore also says, inter alia:

”Lenin lived in London and other parts of western Europe before returning to Russia as a revolutionary leader. The Ayatollah Khomeini flew in from Paris. Today, no city is more important in fomenting revolt in the Muslim world than London. The place is awash with exiles, and with British-born extremists. Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s version of the Muslim Brotherhood, the most significant global Islamist organisation, has been living here for several years. Last week, he returned to his country as the old regime fell. And although the Muslim Brotherhood began life in Egypt, and claims 20 million followers there, its power centres have grown in the West. Much of the propaganda for Hamas, and for one of the Brotherhood’s religious gurus, Yusuf Qaradawi (a big pal of Ken Livingstone), is generated here. Money from charity fund-raisers in Britain is used for its work in Egypt. The Muslim Association of Britain is the Brotherhood’s vehicle in this country. The Muslim Council of Britain, which supposedly represents all Muslims here, contains leaders who are highly sympathetic to the Brotherhood. We think of everything about the Middle East as “abroad”, but many of the truths about the state of the Muslim world are also home truths.”

Read all of Charles Moore’s article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8304545/The-days-of-doing-deals-with-Muslim-extremists-are-over.html

And here’s Moore talking about the Muslim Council of Britain, in a panel discussion last year, along with Conservative peer Baroness Warsi , who’s a Muslim, and former MP (Lib Dem) Susan Kramer:

Britain, particularly Londonistan, is the base of some of the most deranged and dangerous Islamists in the world, yet despite the anger and anguish – yes, anguish – this state of affairs arouses in the average man and woman in the street, little is done about it by the chattering classes who comprise the metropolitan elite and the latter’s outlets such as the BBC and the Guardian.  People –  decent, everyday people –  who express anxiety are intimidated by the “racism” label – or by the “Islamophobe” tag. In fact, just as outspokenly supporting Israel is increasingly something done only by consenting adults in private, owing to the scorn and rage it’s liable to provoke, so too is expressing concern about the Islamism that is in our midst.

A young working-class lad who – calling himself “Tommy Robinson” – founded the English Defence League (EDL) after being outraged by the behaviour of a bunch of Islamic extremists insulting British troops returning from a tour of duty in the Middle East has been demonised by the media and politicians with such routine immediacy and to such an extent that it is impossible for the average member of the public to make a considered assessment of the real nature and motivations of him and his organisation. (Here’s Roberta Moore, of the EDL’s so-called Jewish Division, who’s certainly made up her mind):

Why, even a public figure with so illustrious a name as Winston Churchill (the great wartime prime minister’s grandson, a Conservative MP who died in 2010) was in effect given the cold shoulder by his party when, like a prophet in the wilderness, he warned:

“Britain sends some of the finest and most courageous of their generation to risk their lives and spill their blood chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan. But who, meanwhile, is guarding our homeland? A recent police report makes clear that, back here in Britain the Deobandi – the very same Islamist sect responsible for spawning the Taliban in Afghanistan – has succeeded in taking over more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques. In addition, it controls 17 of Britain’s 26 Islamic seminaries and produces 80 per cent of Britain’s home-trained Islamic clerics. It’s a funny old world, as Margaret Thatcher once famously remarked. Except that this is no laughing matter. Not for 70 years has there been a more clear or present danger to our internal security, to our free society and to our democracy, than that posed by this vipers’ nest in our midst. The Deobandi, an ultra-conservative sect, outlaws music, art, television and football, and also demands the entire concealment of women. According to the Lancashire Council of Mosques, the Deobandi has now taken control of 59 out of 75 mosques in the old Lancashire mill towns of Oldham, Preston, Bury, Blackburn and Burnley. While not all Deobandis are extremist, leading preachers of this sect aim to radicalise the Islamic youth of Britain, and to mobilise them against our society and the freedoms we hold so dear. When will the Government wake up to this mortal threat which – if not swiftly dealt with – threatens to bring strife and bloodshed to the streets of Britain on a scale far exceeding anything seen in the bombings of recent years? Why are Gordon Brown and David Cameron, indeed our entire political class, so deafeningly silent on this, the most pressing matter confronting Britain today? Who will help the moderate majority of Muslims maintain control of their mosques? Who will safeguard the homeland?”

A few days ago, at a security conference in Munich, David Cameron – raising the spectre of Islamic radicalism and terrorism for the first time in his premiership – criticised “state multiculturalism” and called for initiatives to integrate minorities into the fabric of national life. He made the obligatory – some would say deluded – distinction between Islam and Islamism (“We need to be clear: Islamist extremism and Islam are not the same thing”) and foreshadowed a get-tough policy on recruiters for militant Islam on university campusese and in prisons, and a withdrawal of government funding of and liaison with advisory bodies that are neither as moderate nor as useful as they appear.

“Let’s properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?

“These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations.”

The relevant part of Mr Cameron’s speech can be found here:

Predictably, the BBC has been giving more than their fair share of airtime and webspace to the opinions of people and organisations opposed to Cameron’s message. For instance, it reported the jaundiced reaction of the Muslim Council of Britain (which perhaps recognised itself as one of the bodies whose cosy ties with Whitehall are now in jeopardy). Dr Faisal Hanjra, the MCB’s assistant secretary general, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

“We were hoping that with a new government, with a new coalition that there’d be a change in emphasis in terms of counter-terrorism and dealing with the problem at hand….

Again it just seems the Muslim community is very much in the spotlight, being treated as part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution”

and Inayat Bunglawala , the MCB’s media secretary, was on several Al Beeb television news bulletins waxing similarly indignant.

An Al Beeb regular, London imam Ajmal Mansoor, pronounced that Cameron is “barking up the wrong tree”, since “foreign policy blunders” cause the “extremism and radicalisation in the world”.

And so on, and so on.

Al Beeb newsreader Chris Rogers did his best to challenge two Cameron-supporting Muslims who came on, presumably as tokens among the long parade of Muslim critics of the speech, to praise Cameron’s initiative – new Tory peer Lord Tariq Ahmad (to whom Rogers behaved a tad flippantly) and Mohammed Amin, vice-chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum, whose description of the speech as “excellent” and observation that “some Muslims want to bring back the kind of state that existed a thousand years ago where Christians and Jews paid extra special taxes in exchange for the privilege of being exempt from conscription” did not please young Rogers – evidently fully immersed in that left-liberal “mindset” that former Al Beeb presenter Peter Sissons assures us pervades Al Beeb – at all.

For Isi Leibler on the need for moderate Muslim voices to be heard see
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=2789

and for Lee Kuan Yew’s thoughts on Muslim integration see
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2011/01/on-muslim-integration