One of the things that apologists for Islam say, is to insist that the majority of Muslims are not at war with non-Muslims and that those that are are merely a tiny minority of extremists. This statement is both true and false. It’s true that the majority of Muslims don’t care much for the intricacies of Islam or Shariah law and have no intention of declaring a Caliphate in Bognor or wherever. However, it cannot be denied that the number of Muslims, especially Muslims resident in non-Muslim nations who are violent, who do approve of terrorist acts and who do approve of violent reprisals against those who depict the Islamic ‘prophet’, is not as small as the apologists would like us to believe. Therefore, as stated earlier, the phrase ‘tiny minority of extremists’ is both true and false. It’s true that the number of British Muslims who would engage in Islamically inspired violence or see head-chopping kuffar as a form of worship, is smaller than the number of Muslims as a whole but there are many more Muslims who turn a blind eye to the violent ones or who approve of their actions.
When shocking survey figures such as that 27% of British Muslims have some sympathy for those who carried out the Charlie Hebdo murders, and believed it was justified, it gives the lie to the idea that the number of Muslims who want to kill us, or make war on us, is small enough not to worry about. At the very least, that 27% figure represents a lot of individuals who would say nothing and do nothing if they came across another Muslim planning an attack on the rest of us.
I cannot think of another major religion in Britain today that holds that holds the view that aggressive, attacking, violence is justified when their religion is criticised or mocked. Hindus and Buddhists have to put up with their symbols and their idols being used as decoration or in ways that Hindus may consider odd or disrespectful. Do we have a problem with 27% of Hindus thinking that attacking those who do things they disapprove of is justified? No we do not. Jews, in Britain have put up with insult after insult over the centuries, either from the malignantly anti-Semitic such as Mosley and his followers, or from those who are ignorant of Judaism and make thoughtless remarks. Jews also face, as Muslims do, the mocking of religious figures such as Moses in the case of Judaism. Do we face a danger from 27% of Jews approving of, or feeling that violence against someone who drew an unflattering image of Moses is justified? No we do not. Are our Buddhists getting all arsey over a statue of the Buddah being used as a doorstop, no they are not. There isn’t 27% of British Buddhists planning to get all medieval on those who have Buddah-themed door stops.
All of these other religions if not completely pacifistic, or broadly pacifistic, accept defensive violence to a greater or lesser extent. In Judaism for example violence in self defence is acceptable even though the Torah contains tales of aggressive violence and details of wars of conquest. But that was then, thousands of years ago, and that time is not now, things have changed. Even before the State of Israel was first created, senior Rabbonim such as Abraham Kook, urged that the settlement of the Eretz Yisrael proceed peaceably, in my view a remarkably pacifistic view for the Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine to take, at a time when the conditions for Jews in Europe was to say the least ‘not good’, and the Mandate Jews were surrounded by Arabs who would have very much liked to mass murder Jews. This is a considerably different view to the issue of violence than the ones we see from Muslims. In Judaism some Rabbonim have said it is not permitted to see anybody at all as meeting the Biblical definition of an ‘idolator’ and therefore nobody is a religiously permitted target for aggressive violence, yet cries of ‘death to the kuffar’ is becoming as much of a motif for Islam and Islamic as the words ‘allah hu akbar’ are. Whilst sensible religions see Muslims as humans to be respected, Islam insists on seeing us as ‘other’, as Kuffar. I’ve done a quick search on extremism in Judaism and the number of what could be called major league ‘Jewish terrorists’ is surprisingly small as there has really only been five big terroristic incidents carried out by Jews using religious excuses for their attacks. Contrast that with the number of terror attacks carried out by Muslims, who have committed 26,291 acts of terror since September 11th 2001.
Let’s face it, Islam is a violent ideology that creates violent people. It has never walked the path of reform and enlightenment that Christianity has, it has never consigned the violent bits of its history to history as Christians have tried to do. With Islam, despite vehement denials of such from both Muslims themselves and apologists for Islam, the violence and the desire for violence is never far from the surface.
It’s now being proved, with more and more evidence coming in each day, almost beyond reasonable doubt, that enough Muslims to be considered as troublesome, have declared war on the non-Muslims of Britain and on British society. A considerable number of Muslims, some born or immigrated here and some, based overseas, are plotting to kill non-Muslims, as the second part of this piece will show. So far, we’ve been relatively lucky, the Security Service (MI5) has been quite effective in foiling Islamic terror plots and they’ve also been aided by mistakes made by various terrorist groups. We have not been totally safe and have been attacked, most notably on 7/7 and with the murder of Lee Rigby, but many more attacks have been stopped. How long this impressive anti-terror strike rate can continue who knows, but the Security Service must be under a lot of pressure with a growing number of arrests of Muslims for terror activity. These arrests of terror planning and terror supporting Muslims can really be seen only as the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of Islamic terror activity. If 27% of British Muslims approve of violence when they feel their beliefs are being insulted, then that should open people’s eyes to the sheer scale of the problem we face with Islamic violence.
Enough Muslims have declared war on us for it to be sensible of us to wake up to that fact and do something about it. Both the phrases ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ and ‘tiny minority of extremists’ are statements that are about as dishonest as they could possibly be.
Links and supplementary comment.
Telegraph report on survey of extremist attitudes towards Muslims.
By way of comparison I attempted to search for data relating to the number of British Jews who support individuals, groups or political currents that could be called or termed ‘extremist’. Yes, there is the religious strictness of the Haredim, who are very stringent in their adherence to Halakah (Jewish Law). But this strong religious adherence doesn’t affect anyone else, unless you are expecting to find a Haredi Jewish newsagents open on a Saturday that is. Such people may seem different or odd to many non-Jews and even to many British Jews, but Haredim are no threat to those of other religions or none. Britons would be highly unlikely to find a Haredi terrorist, yet day after day we are seeing terroristic activity from the growing number of Muslims who follow a Salafist / extremist path.
I tried to search for support among British Jews for groups that have been recognised as extremists by the Israeli and US governments, such as Kach and Kahane Chai, and I can find nothing in the way of support for such organisations among British Jews. Nothing, zilch, nada. Yes the British Jewish community has it’s ‘meshuganas’ such as the Jewish Socialist Group and Jewdas who are of the far (some would say completely bloody barking mad) Left. Even the well established political rightists such as the Jewish Defence League are not getting anything like the communal support that Islamic jiahdists are getting from the Muslim community. About the only thing I can find that is even remotely relevant to political attitudes among British Jews is a BRIN survey (link below) on political affiliations from 2010 and that was at the time roughly evenly split between Conservative and Labour. The Jewish Far Right can therefore can quite rightly be said to be so small as to be almost non-existent. The Islamic Far Right, on the other hand, is a much greater and more pressing problem than any other that Britain faces. It’s more likely to kill to further its ideology than any other religious or secular doctrine current in Britain today. The comparison between two monotheistic rule-based religions with regards to extremism and violence is both interesting and very instructive.
http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2010/political-leanings-of-britains-jews/
