MELANIE PHILLIPS: THE THIN BLUE LINE OF JIHAD
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5723371/the-thin-blue-line-of-jihad.thtml
The thin blue line of jihad
Thursday, 21st January 2010
The Telegraph reports that the National Association of Muslim Police has attacked government policy on countering Islamic extremism. In evidence to a parliamentary committee investigating Islamic extremism, the NAMP attacked
the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy, warning that it is an ‘affront to British values’ which threatens to trigger ethnic unrest… that ministers were wrong to blame Islam for being the ‘driver’ behind recent terrorist attacks. Far-Right extremists were a more dangerous threat to national security… that Muslims were being ‘stigmatised’ by the Government’s attempts to tackle terrorism, which was adding to ‘hatred’ against entire communities.
…The memorandum warned that Muslims were subjected to ‘daily abuse’ due to the strategy. ‘We must not diminish our British values further by continuing to allow such behaviour and policies to continue unchecked.’
This is an extremely alarming development.
First, a general point. The very idea that police officers form themselves into interest groups of any stripe whatever should be anathema to the ethic of policing. That applies equally to Black, Gay, Jewish or One-Legged Transgendered Red-Haired Police associations. Police officers should serve the entire community equally, and should have no agenda but that professional commitment of equal public service to all. The idea that they identify themselves as an interest group is simply wrong, and the police service should never have allowed this to develop.
The memorandum by the National Association of Muslim Police, however, is of a different order of magnitude altogether.
To take their least serious point first: the idea that there is no Islamic threat and that the real threat to Britain comes from the ‘far right’ is demonstrably ludicrous. The ‘far right’ poses no threat to Britain other than some low-level thuggery. The Islamist threat to Britain is very great indeed. Dozens of Islamist plots aimed at murdering thousands of people have been thwarted, and the security service say between 2000 and 4000 British Muslims are radicalised to potential acts of terrorism. This terrorism is part of a global holy war being waged in the name of Islam. While many British Muslims support neither the aims nor the tactics of this holy war, an insupportable number do. For Muslim police officers to deny this is extremely disturbing. It means they have bought into the radical narrative of systematic denial and deceit.
But the NAMP went much, much further than this. They attacked government policy; worse, they attacked government policy aimed at protecting the lives and safety of British citizens; worse still, they suggested that British Muslims should resist that policy, and implicitly threatened disorder if it were not changed.
Let us pinch ourselves: these are British police officers, subject to the same disciplinary and professional codes as any other police officers. Yet their call for action to ‘check’ counter-terrorism policy, and the implicit threat of violence if it is not so checked, suggests that rather than helping form the line of defence against the Islamist threat, these police officers must be considered to be part of that threat.
On its website, moreover, NAMP recommends that British Muslims reporting crimes should also ‘report any such actions to the Islamic Human Rights Commission’. Let’s think about the implications of this for a moment. The IHRC is an extremist organisation with links to Iran. The NAMP is therefore advising British Muslims to use an extreme Iran-linked Islamic jihadi front organisation, which threatens the security of this nation, as a parallel law enforcement mechanism in Britain. The attempt to set up parallel Islamic institutions and jurisdiction in Britain is a core element of the Islamist attempt to suborn and take over this country.
The irony of this frightening situation is extreme. The government has bent over backwards to avoid associating Islam with terrorism. In an attempt to peel moderate Muslims away from the radicals, it has poured more than £140 million a year into ‘moderate’ Muslim groups. It has positively fallen over itself to encourage the recruitment of Muslim police officers in the belief that that this would persuade British Muslims that the government had no problem with them, only with the radicals in their midst. Yet these are precisely the policies which the NAMP claims have led to ‘hatred against Muslims’ which ‘has grown to a level that defies all logic and is an affront to British values’.
Thus the fruits of appeasement. Rather than taming jihadi extremism in Britain, the cowardice of politicians has merely resulted in fracturing the thin blue line that protects us — and turning it into a potential weapon of the jihad.
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