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A country at the end of its tether
In a perfect mimicking of a Melanie Phillips column, Alasdair Palmer writing in the Telegraph denounces a government commission that turns a blind eye to the Muslim problem in Britain, and he urges, as the title of his piece puts it, “No compromise with those creating terrorism.” But, as with Phillips, Leo McKinstry, and other warners about Islam, his strong language is unaccompanied by any call to meaningful action. First, he elegantly describes the reigning left-liberal belief, reflected in the commission report, that while all cultures are different, all cultures are equally open to liberalism:
The central fantasy has been that immigrants from very different cultures to our own share our commitment to tolerance, personal freedom and the separation of politics from religion that has evolved in this country over the past 300 years. There is an astonishing arrogance at the heart of that attitude: it is as if no other culture could possibly have anything like the hold over an individual that ours does, so that as soon as anyone comes into contact with our liberal, secular values, they must automatically convert to them and make preserving those values their highest priority.In contrast to the attitude that all people would automatically convert to Britain’s tolerant, secular values, Palmer recognizes that those who believe in a tolerant society must insist on it and enforce the rule of tolerance. Accordingly he gets tough:
The conflict between our culture and one that insists a father is obliged to kill his daughter if she marries outside her tribe, or which says that democracy should be forcibly replaced by theocracy, is a conflict for which there cannot be a compromise solution. In that sense, the jihadists are right: our secular, tolerant, individualist society is irrevocably opposed to their values. We will not prevail in the struggle until we, too, recognise that fact, and do everything we can to confront and expose the cultures that deny the individual’s right to pursue his or her own conception of happiness. That, however, is precisely what we are not doing. Government policy still seems based on the myth of multiculturalism: denying that the conflict is real. The Government has not even found the heart to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group that openly recruits Muslims to violent jihad. It may even be on the receiving end of a government grant.So, the key to prevailing in the struggle with totally incompatible Islam is to recognize that it is totally incompatible and to expose that incompatibility. All right, what then? Well, we’ve got to ban Hizb-ut Tahrir. Ok, and what then? … Uh … Palmer has shot his bolt. He’s got nothing more to say. But what else can we expect of a man who repeatedly defines his own country as a “tolerant and secular” society—i.e., as a nothing, as a void? Britain’s Islam debate boils down to this: There is the dominant left view, which says that Muslims cannot possibly be a problem and ignores all evidence of what Muslims actually are. And there is the slightly more moderate, liberal view, such as that of Phillips and Palmer, which sees that Islam as a serious menace, but which—because it sees England itself as nothing other than “tolerance and secularism”—cannot conceive of doing anything about this serious menace, other than to issue stirring calls to “fight the forces of surrender,” and “refuse to compromise.” Since the liberals’ experience of their country, and thus of themselves, is of a vacuum, an emptiness lacking any substance (“we’re a tolerant, secular society”), how could they even imagine real action to defend their country against a real enemy, let alone take real action to defend it?
We will save much mental energy if we realize that Britain, as it now is, is dead. As Britain now is, there is no hope for Britain. If it is to live again, and have hope again, new life must enter it, from new sources. Email entry |