VINCENT COOPER: ISLAM IS CHANGING AND INTIMIDATING THE WEST
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5322/islam_is_changing_the_west
Islam is changing the West
Western leaders keep saying that we must not be intimidated by militant Islam. Yet their actions suggest we are indeed being intimidated, all the time, and that our way of life in Britain and elsewhere is changing
After the recent Islamist outrage in Ottawa, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “let there be no misunderstanding. We will not be intimidated.”
That’s tough talk, just what the public expect. And we’ve heard it before from another politician, David Cameron, after the Islamist murder of Lee Rigby. Mr Cameron said: “We will never give in to terror—or terrorism—in any of its forms.”
When politicians say such things, are they saying they are determined to speak the truth and seriously defend our Western way of life, or is such talk little more than fear and bravado, hoping to reassure an increasingly worried public about Islam in the West?
Mr Cameron went on to say, “one of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives.”
Presumably, going about our normal lives is what “not being intimidated” means. Yet recently, the Home Secretary Theresa May threatened the most sweeping changes to traditional freedoms that the British have enjoyed for hundreds of years, all because of Islamic terrorism. What is normal or “not being intimidated” about abolishing long-held traditional freedoms?
And now armed soldiers have to guard Horse Guards Parade, with its ritual ceremony of the Changing of the Guard. That’s London today. Innocent tourists have to be protected from threatened Islamist attacks. What is normal, we may ask, about armed soldiers on London’s streets protecting the public from Muslim extremists?
Over in Canada after the latest atrocity, military personnel have been requested “to restrict movement in uniform as much as possible.” That request came from Rear Admiral John Newton, Commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic.
So the Canadian military’s response to Islamist aggression in Canada is to instruct military personnel to take off their uniforms. Is that defending our Western way of life? How is it “not being intimidated” when you are afraid to walk your own streets in your country’s uniform?
If Prime Minister Harper meant what he said about “not being intimidated”, was this not precisely the time to insist that Canadian values be respected by all citizens? As the Canadian journalist Mark Steyn commented:
“If we have to have dress codes on the streets of free societies, I’d rather see more men like Corporal Cirillo (the murdered Canadian soldier) in the uniform of the Argyll & Southerland Highlanders — and fewer women in head-to-toe black body bags.– I’m tired of being told that we have to change to accommodate them.”
Back home in Britain, Mr Cameron’s version of not being intimidated by Islamism shows itself in Ofsted bullying a highly praised and academically successful Christian primary school into inviting an imam to speak to the children about morality.
Trinity Christian School in Reading was told by government inspectors that it was not meeting the “spiritual, moral, social and cultural development” of its six and seven year old pupils. To improve the moral awareness of the children, Ofsted inspectors insist that an imam and other non-Christian preachers should be allowed to preach to the children.
The school governors strongly oppose this government imposed social engineering. In a letter to the Education Secretary, the chairman of the governors said: “The comments made by Ofsted undermine our aims and would prevent us from teaching in accordance with our Christian foundation.”
That is the situation in Britain today — a perfectly responsible Christian school has to defend itself against government-funded bureaucrats attempting to impose a non-Christian ethos on their school.
David Cameron has said that Britain is a Christian country. But if being a Christian means anything, it surely means Christians being allowed to teach Christian values without being imposed upon by those with a political and, at times, anti-Christian agenda.
Mr Cameron may well claim that Britain is still a Christian country, but his claim is little more than a politician’s empty rhetoric as he presides over an education system that forces Muslim and other non-Christian preachers on avowedly Christian schools.
This Trinity School case is a particularly good example of how the problems of Islam in Britain are forcing unwanted changes on the rest of society.
This social engineering of our children is a direct result of the government’s handling of the Islamist infiltration of Birmingham’s heavily Muslim schools. But rather than defend the teaching of traditional British values and insist on Muslim adherence to those values, the government tars every school with the same brush, thereby destroying those very values that should be defended.
Elsewhere in multicultural Britain today, some of our culture’s most fundamental moral principles are being eroded. Polygamy, for example, is illegal in Britain. Yet the welfare state of both Labour and Conservative administrations effectively bankrolls this sharia-sanctioned Muslim practice.
Recent changes to welfare mean that polygamous “wives” with children will be treated as single mothers, with entitlement to housing and other cash benefits. Effectively, a Muslim male in a polygamous relationship in Britain today can run a harem of three, four or five houses, all at tax payers’ expense. And not surprisingly, that’s exactly what some of them are doing.
The Daily Mail reported a study of Britain’s Muslim polygamous culture. The paper revealed the case of a Blackburn Muslim with five wives and so many children he struggles to remember their names. His five wives come from all over the Muslim world, including Yemen, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan.
The government is aware of what’s happening, but claims there are “only 1,000” such relationships. However, the Daily Mail revealed a report by social workers who state there are 20,000 bigamous and polygamous relationships in Britain, all supported by the tax payer.
Monogamous marriage is at the heart of the Western family and of wider social values. It has been a fundamental part of Western culture for centuries and is legally protected. No government has a mandate from the people to change that most basic feature of our culture.
Yet by bankrolling polygamy, the government is effectively encouraging the growth of an Islamic polygamous culture in British society.
If the necessary changes are not made to the welfare state, then that polygamous culture will almost certainly become an irreversible feature of British society. The Daily Mail investigation quoted one person of Pakistani origin from Lancashire: “There are thousands of bigamous and polygamous marriages in the UK’s Pakistani community. The issue is going unreported but in the Asian communities this is becoming a way of life.”
One of the saddest aspects of all this is that those traditional institutions and people who should be protecting traditional culture have lost all faith in it. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, publicly supported the recognition of sharia law in Britain. No doubt His Grace did not mean polygamy, but there were those in the Muslim community who could read that between the lines
Mr Cameron continues to say we should go about our normal lives and not be intimidated. But in all honesty, and to repeat, what is normal in Britain today when the country’s most basic traditional values are being eroded and undermined?
Mr Cameron and most of the political class seem to think, or perhaps they pretend, that Britain today is the same as Britain was in the ‘40s and ‘50s, with just some of the neighbours a little different. But the truth is that over 60 years of immigration now threatens to change everything, unless our fundamental values are protected.
If those fundamental values are not protected, then we could find that, as Mark Steyn said immediately after the Ottawa killing, “the price of welcoming and incubating and growing Islam in the West is, ultimately, the loss of everything else.”
Vincent Cooper is a regular contributor to The Commentator
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