Signs Of Awakening
A British Labor MP, Denis MacShane, writes an op-ed for the Telegraph that indicates that some people are waking up to the fact that Britain has a serious problem. It all started with Jack Straw's declaration that he asks Muslim women to remove their veils before he will speak to them. It has now started to gather steam. The people talking about it are drawing a hard distinction between Islam as a religion and Islamism as a political movement. (I make that distinction myself here. I do not believe the Islamists are advancing Islam. Rather, they are hiding behind religious trappings in a search for temporal power).
At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.
The 10,000 Muslims in my constituency of Rotherham can only benefit from removing the dead hand of ideological Islamism – allowing their faith to be respected and their children to flourish in a Britain that finally wakes up to what must be done. Despite the efforts of extremists to prevent any sort of rational debate about the place of Islam in Britain, it is at last happening.
A fight-back is beginning to reclaim Britain from the grip of those who refuse to acknowledge the centrality of British values of tolerance, fair play and parliamentary democratic freedoms – notably those of free speech and respect for all religions, but supremacy for none. Voltaire noted this attribute of the English three centuries ago, when he wrote: "If there was just one religion in Britain there would be despotism. If two, there would be civil war. But as there are 30, they all live at peace with each other."
It is rather a long piece, but worth taking the time to read. The debate in Britain is being refocused. They appear to be moving away from knee-jerk multi-culturalism and questioning the political motives of those who spew hate. This is a good thing, I think. Many of us have been quite fearful of what we have seen happening in Britain over the past few years. It is time to wake up and start addressing the real issues. Another interesting bit from the op-ed:
An all-party commission on anti-Semitism that I chaired reported recently. Our most worrying discovery was the complacency on many university campuses about harassment of Jewish students. Jew-baiting behaviour that would have had the Left outraged in the 1930s is now actively encouraged by an unholy alliance of the hard Left and Islamist fundamentalists, and the odious anti-Semites who have infiltrated some lecturers' unions. Ruth Kelly, whose fealty to her faith matches that of any deeply religious British Muslim, is right to make clear there are now limits which must not be overstepped.
The apparent alliance between the left and the Islamists has long been commented on by various pundits. That it is now out in the open in political discourse in Britain is another hopeful sign.
World news | Gaius Tuesday, 17 October , 2006
