RUTHFULLY YOURS

Paul Weston, the chairman of a new political party in the United Kingdom called Liberty GB, was making a speech Saturday outside the Winchester Guildhall in Hampshire when suddenly everything went wrong. Weston made the mistake of quoting a notorious Islamophobe, whereupon a woman in the audience, disgusted by this hate speech, contacted police, and Weston was duly arrested.

The Islamophobe in question was an obscure British politician of the distant past named Winston Churchill, who apparently had something to do with leading the British to victory over something called Nazi Germany in a conflict apparently known as “World War II.” However, the Nazis were vociferous critics of Zionism, and thus couldn’t have been all bad.

Even before he interfered with this righteous anti-Zionist activism, Churchill was an obvious hatemonger. In 1899 he wrote a book about an even more obscure war known as The River War, in which he spewed this Islamophobic hate:

He quoted the following excerpt about Islam from the book The River War by Winston Churchill:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.

It is stunning that such a racist, bigoted Islamophobe could ever have risen to prominence in a gloriously multicultural land such as Britain, but Churchill apparently rose to prominence at a time when racists and bigots roamed free and unchallenged, before Britain discovered the glories of diversity. Now hatemongers like Weston – who quoted this exact passage – get their comeuppance swiftly. Churchill, were he walking around free today, if he didn’t already have enough citations for puffing away on smelly and carcinogenic cigars in public places to put him away for life, would certainly be cited for his Islamophobia, and his public career would be ruined.

For now we live in different times. Now we know that diversity is our strength, and therefore we applaud the recent decision of the Subway fast food restaurant chain. The  Daily Mail reported on Wednesday that “around 200 branches of Subway have cut ham and bacon from their menus, serving halal meat in response to calls from their Muslim customers.”

In the caption on a photo accompanying this article, the Daily Mail wrote: “Nearly 200 Subway branches across the UK and Ireland have cut out ham and bacon, selling only halal meat, in response to demand from their multicultural customers.” By their “multicultural customers,” of course, they mean only customers from Islamic cultures, but those are the only cultures that matter anymore in the United Kingdom. Some people may carp and complain, pointing out that this decision has rendered these 200 Subway restaurants less multicultural than they were before, since now non-Muslims in Britain who would like to enjoy a Chicken and Bacon Ranch Melt or an Italian sub with pepperoni are out of luck: Muslims and Sharia-compliant dhimmis are the only ones who will be served.

But people who would raise such an objection are as hidebound and deeply racist as Weston and this Churchill fellow. It is diversity, you see, to offer the choices preferred by only one group. It is multiculturalism, you see, to respect the preferences of only one culture. It is hate, you see, to point out that The Belief System To Which Everyone Must Pander has been the cause of and justification for the oppression and misery of untold numbers of women, non-Muslims, and others. It is bigotry, you see, to point out that all too many adherents of that hallowed and protected Belief System hold to a violent and supremacist ideology that they believe gives them a responsibility before God to wage war against and subjugate those who hold different beliefs.

And so it is good that Paul Weston was arrested for quoting that hateful Churchill chap. I’ve just checked Wikipedia and discovered that Churchill succeeded one Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1940, after Chamberlain had tried to keep the peace with those lovely anti-Zionist Nazis by giving them Czechoslovakia, which Chamberlain aptly dismissed as “a far-away country” filled with “people of whom we know nothing.” Chamberlain should have remained in power, and Churchill subjected to the ridicule and abuse that all hatemongering Islamophobes should receive regularly. After all, who really did care about Czechoslovakia? And who cares today about Subway restaurants? As long as we stop the hate, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. As long as we give Islamic supremacists what they want, they will see our good will, and not demand anything more.

After all, wasn’t everything just fine after Chamberlain gave his Czech gift to the Nazis? At least until that Churchill came along.