Muslim spokesman in Britain openly supports terrorism—and there’s no response

Howard Sutherland writes:

In this post, Jeff in England says “But whatever any polls have said, the reality is that the huge majority of Muslims do NOT support this specific sort of violent terrorism. Not a single Muslim young or old has called up a phone in that I have listened to and supported these acts. If they did things would be a lot easier for us.” If this WND article is accurate, though, a very prominent “British” Moslem has now come out and done exactly that:

The thwarted car bombings in London last week and the terror attack this weekend against Scotland’s busiest airport were “completely justified” and likely the beginning of many more attacks in Britain, a prominent UK Islamist leader connected to terror supporting groups told WND yesterday.

“There is no doubt whatsoever that there will continue to be attacks against the British government, its interests and the home front as long as we see the continued British and American occupation of Muslim land in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for criminal Israel, and draconian measures taken against Muslims in the UK,” said Anjem Choudary, founder and former chief of two Islamic groups disbanded by the British authorities under antiterror legislation.

Then Choudary descends to the usual grievance-mongering:

“A war is being waged against Muslims on every level. There are many in Britain who take their ideology from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and are ready to carry out many more attacks,” Choudary said.

Give him credit, though, for not hiding what “British” Moslems are up to:

Choudary said the attempted terror attacks the past few days were “probably carried out by local British Muslims.”

Later, Choudary speaks his mind in terms that even a dhimmified Briton should be able to understand:

Choudary told WND the perpetuators of the attempted terror attacks in London the past few days “have their own justifications for carrying out their plans.”

“Muslims in Britain are under siege. There has been unjustified internment, innocent Muslims are in prison, extradition laws have been applied for made up crimes, individuals are arbitrarily arrested. … Don’t be surprised when Muslims fight back,” he said.

There, it seems to me, is what Jeff was looking for. Have any other prominent “British” Moslems come forward to denounce Choudary’s extremism? I doubt it, because in its Moslem context, what he says is not extreme. Indeed, has any member of Gordon Brown’s not-so-new Labour government denounced Choudary’s utterances? Has anyone in the British government even noticed? Confident as he is of jihad’s ultimate victory, Choudary does Britons a favor by speaking so freely—but only if they will listen, and learn from what they hear.

LA replies:

I saw a imam in Britain being interviewed on CNN last night who was completely frank that he’s against the British political system, wants to bring about sharia, and that this includes hand-chopping, death for adultery, and so on. He’s an immigrant, yet is allowed to continue to remain at liberty in Britain saying these things.

Jeff writes:

I said the huge majority of Muslim are against the recent terrorist actions and I stick by that. Of course there are some Muslims who are not, Choudhary being the most prominent at the moment. But he has little credibility among the huge majority of Muslims. Really.

As I said our task of stopping Islam from spreading in the UK would be a lot easier if most Muslims did support Choudhary and acts like the recent terrorist actions. But they don’t.

What we have to concentrate on is convincing people that the Islamic religion and culture itself is not good for the UK. The focus on the recent sort of violence, while inevitable in the short term, will surely be a dead end tactically as most Muslims are against that violence. But many more Muslims support Sharia for example. Or are against free choice in marriage. Or are against open display of homosexuality. Or are against women dressing in western dress. Or women having a career.

These are the sort of views of Muslims that the British public will respond to negatively in the long-term. Most of the non-Muslim British public understand that most Muslims oppose terrorist violence here so that will not arouse them (the Brit public) in any long-term sense.

LA replies:

I agree with Jeff’s basic point. The “peaceful” spread of sharia would be enough to spell our doom. That is enough to make us insist on the point that Muslims do not belong in the West. At the same time, it’s also the case, as I argue repeatedly, that the constant threat and reality of Islamic terror will remain among us, forever, so long as there are large Muslim populations among us.

There are so many things wrong with Islam that it can be confusing to pick out which thing to focus on. There’s no simple answer to this problem. We just need to make the best arguments we can, and keep making them. And we must keep showing the relationship between the different dimensions of the problem, for example, the connection between the more general sharia-support and anti-Westernism on one hand and the terrorism on the other. We need to have an overview of the whole Muslim phenomenon, and see what the total effect of it on our society is, so that we can instantly answer the people who reduce it to the individual scale of saying, “Lots of Muslims don’t like terror,” “Lots of Muslims are nice people,” etc. We don’t need to be experts on Islam, but we do need to know enough about it that we can describe it the key parts of it and the whole of if and how they interrelate and what the actual effect of it on our society must be. This takes mental energy and work. Our civilization is mortally threatened by Islam and by our liberalism that wants to open to it. There is no alternative to doing the work of thinking and learning about the issue and forming effective arguments with which we can reply to the sleep-inducing reassurances that flow constantly from the liberals and the Muslims.

However, speaking of less-than-effective arguments, to say that Muslims are not welcome among us because they disapprove of the open display of homosexuality is not a good argument outside liberal circles. Any Western serious conservative is also against the open display of homosexuality, something which only became permissible in the West in very recent decades.

Jeff replies:

By open display of homosexuality, I mean the open identification of oneself as gay, not an over the top flaunting of the fact.

The reality is that in Britain, the huge majority of people believe in the right to be openly gay without condemnation whether in private or workplace or school. Therefore, whatever our private views of homosexuals and homosexual behaviour, the attitudes of Muslims concerning it can and should be used against them. Muslim attitudes towards homosexuals and homosexuality are very unpopular among the majority of indigenous people in Britain.

For good or bad, this IS a liberal society, with a very liberal indigenous populace and many Muslims on the whole don’t like that and that turns off much of the British indigenous population. In addition, in Britain, conservatives, serious or not generally agree with liberals concerning this open identification and support the right of anyone to do so.

LA replies:

All that may be, but as far as I’m concerned, when I see Westerners put at the very top of their list of what they object to about Islam the fact that Islam persecutes homosexuals, this conveys to me that those Westerners are only defending modern liberal freedoms from Islam, not the West as a civilization. The reality is that Islam threatens our entire existence, EVERYTHING WE ARE. Since it threatens EVERYTHING WE ARE, what does it say about people that they think the threat to homosexuals is more important than the threat to EVERYTHING WE ARE? It says that liberals do not care about our actual existence as a people and a society. They only care about freedom and equality, especially in its more outre, sexual forms. That is not only objectionable in itself; it suggests that the liberals are not equipped to defend the West against Islam.

I criticize Ayaan Hirsi Ali for a similar reason, that the main problem she has with Islam is not that it is a threat to our entire civilization, but that it is a threat to women’s rights.

Jeff replies with a 648 word reply:

The reality is that most European white people (liberal, conservative, left or right) support the right to be openly homosexual in a reasonable way. I’m not saying they put that at the very top of any “list” but I will say it is a “given” for them.Therefore if another culture comes into the country and out and out opposes that, and threatens its own homosexuals with exclusion or even violence, that is a matter for some degree of conflict with the white indigenous people. Therefore I feel that on a tactical level the “right to be openly homosexual” issue is one to attack Muslims on.

There is nothing inherently anti-Western or anti-conservative about homosexuality itself. It could be said to be anti-Christian but Western society, while based on Judaic-Christianity, is not synonomyous with it. If it was, we would be burning astrologers and witches as well as putting to death homosexuals. Modern conservatism and most modern conservatives would certainly protect the rights of these groups to practice as they wish. I may or may not like homosexual acts but one must recognise that a small section of the populace (conservative, liberal or whatever) are homosexual and there is nothing particularly “liberal” about supporting their right to be so. As I’ve said, most conservatives here (and even in the U.S. would support the right of homosexuals to practice their homosexuality in a reasonable private manner, not hiding it but not flaunting it either.

Now, if you are talking about out and out homosexual marriage that is a somewhat seperate issue. There, you have areas of agreement between the indigenous white culture (especially conservatives but some liberals too) and the Muslim immigrant culture. They both don’t approve of it. Therefore, from a tactical point of view there is little if any use attacking Muslims on their views on this issue.

In addition, there is a good argument to be made that homosexual marriage is anti-Western. It can be said to be undermining Western society which is based on the heteresexual nuclear family. In particular, it can be said to be detrimental for raising children. Conservatives generally condemn homosexual marriage. Liberals seem to have mixed views about it though I don’t have the statistics to hand.

So our enemy, Islam, condemns homosexual marriage and and this view does ally them with modern conservatism and Western society in general. That is bad news for us tactically speaking in regard to making a case for Muslim’s exclusion from our society.

However there is a significant difference between indigenous modern conservatives and Western society in general and Muslims on another aspect of this issue. Conservatives and Western society in general would disapprove of homosexual marriage (legal or not) as would Muslims. But they (conservatives and Western society) would most probably not exclude the people involved and certainly not threaten them with violence. Indeed, conservatives and Western society in general would condemn the extreme sanctions that much of Muslim culture would put on Muslim homosexuals who would want to marry. Those sanctions include everything from total exclusion from the Islamic community to honour killings.The latter in particular repulses all indigenous people.

So though there is much agreement from many sectors of British society including Muslims in regard to homosexual marriage (as opposed to homosexuality) itself, the differences between most of the indigenous culture (and even many other immigrant groups) and Muslims in how we react to it are significant. These differences should be used in the argument against Islamic immigration.

LA replies:<

This was a very long reply by Jeff in which I think he just repeated the obvious and was not really responsive to my point, which was: To put the Muslim persecution of homosexuals at or near the top of one’s list of what’s objectionable about Islam shows a profound loss of perspective about what’s important in our own civilization and what’s at stake in the confrontation with Islam.

Jeff replies:

Yeah I wasn’t happy with my comments. A bit all over the place. Still, there were some good points. .

One mustn’t make assumptions based on perceived past attitudes of Muslims. The majority of Muslims here in the UK have changed since 7/7. They are much more condemning of Muslim violence and fanaticism in general. Yes there there is a fanatic minority who advocate violence and the creation of an Islamic state. But it really has little support, so we have to think carefully about our verbal tactics. I don’t want us to end up as a fringe entertainment like the BNP.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 02, 2007 12:00 PM | Send