RUTHFULLY YOURS

Imagine a cone divided into segments. At the base are non-practicing Muslims. In the next are Muslims who occasionally attend mosque. In the next are devout Muslims who ‘religiously’ attend mosque. In the next are extreme Muslims who would like a world caliphate and sharia law. And at the top (‘coneheads’?) are terrorist Muslims who want to kill people in the name of Allah and often do.

Now it is possible, of course, to come up with finer and more complex divisions but these will do. Is my description of the cone’s segments objectionable? I can’t see any reason why it would be. It is simply putting the different views of Muslims into broad categories.

Why use the device of a cone? It is a stable structure. It will not easily topple over. Muslim terrorists would be in a precarious position if they were sitting atop a thin stem. The broader the base, the safer they are. Let me get to the point which I made in greater detail in the May 2013 issue of Quadrant (“Moderate Muslims are the Problem, Not the Solution”). I think it is worth making again.

Radicals run out of oxygen if the lines between them and the people whose aspirations they purport to represent become too stretched. The IRA could not have operated as long as it did without a large body of people in Northern Ireland and in the Republic being sympathetic to varying degrees. Hitler succeeded because a large body of non-Nazis among the German people were fellow travellers when it came to nationalism. Anarchist movements all fizzle out because there is a head and little body

There can be no rouser without a rabble and no rabble without sympathisers. The strength and resilience of Muslim terrorists in their various guises is built on an extremely solid and graduated structure underneath them. One level supports the next above. And the connectivity is bonded with a powerful adhesive. That adhesive is Islam.

The mistake that we can and do make is to believe that graduated thinking among Muslims – from non-practicing to extreme — is reflected in Islam. Thus we hear about an “extremist version” of Islam from our politicians. I wonder, how many versions they know about that the rest of us don’t? The Koran comprises the timeless and immutable words of Allah. There is only one Koran. The Koran repeatedly says that Mohammed’s words and actions are a model for humanity. According to Bill Warner (The Hadith), the most authoritative accounts of Mohammed’s words and actions are in the collection of hadiths by Bukhari and Abu Muslim.

I have done my own cursory examination. I recommend politicians do at least the same. An “extremist version” of Islam is not required. There is more than enough material in the canonical version of the religion of peace to inspire a legion of supremacist killers and enslavers. And if this isn’t so, then please, you imams, muftis, ayatollahs, and assorted apologists, give us the lowdown. Here we are waiting with bated breath — sick of sops — to have the true, peaceful version of Islam revealed. Set it down in black and white!

There is a human inclination to believe in solutions if only they can be found. I notice that Matt Ridley, writing originally in The Times (“Have faith, not even ISIS can halt the march of non-believers”), thinks Micawber-like that atheism will turn up to do the job. It won’t. Lapsed Irish Catholics insipidly voting for gay marriage is one thing. Muslims, all 1.7 billion of them, giving up their religious, cultural and political identity is quite another. Islam will not be wished away. To one extent or another, Muslims will hold onto their supremacist ideology as they out-populate and ultimately subjugate kafirs in the very heartlands of Western civilisation. The daughters of our grandchildren will be wearing hijabs.

The existential threat that Islam represents could be contained by Western civilisation. But, as it stands, that is extremely unlikely. The threat is being systematically downplayed by those who presume, in the face of antithetical evidence, that all religions must be accommodating and peaceful at their core. Welcome to the schizophrenic world of politicians, the mainstream media, and the chattering classes.

Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus, but peaceful Islamists cut off his head.