On my travels I get to talk to lots of different people with different views. Some of these people I may agree with in whole or in part, and others I may disagree with. However there is one comment that comes up from people, some quite bright and intelligent people as well, on a regular basis and that is this: ‘90% of Muslims just want to get on with their lives peacefully’. Those who make this statement may well be correct and thinking that 90% of a particular group isn’t a problem may be comforting for them. However, I sometimes ask myself have they tried to imagine what 10% looks like.
It’s alight saying that 90% of Muslims don’t want to kill you but that still leaves 10% who do. If there were only 100 Muslims in the whole of the UK then 10% would be such a negligible figure the problems caused by these ten individuals would be manageable. The odds in that case of a Briton being a victim of terrorism or some other aspect of shariah compliant behaviour such as being targeted for rape or violence on the grounds that you are non Muslim is infinitesimally small.
Now lets look at some real and not hypothetical figures. When you look at them you will see why I find the use of the statement ‘it’s only ten per cent’ either foolish and dishonest, depending on the context in which it is used.
At the last census in 2011, the stated Muslim population of the UK was 2,790,800. Now ten per cent of this number gives us 279,080 Muslims who will be troublesome either to us or to the majority of allegedly peaceful Muslims. Some of this 279k of problematical Muslims will be engaged in recruiting others from the majority Islamic community thereby sustaining or even increasing the number of walking Islamic time-bombs.
Oh but, some may say, not all of this 10% is involved in actual killing or planting bombs or whatever. Point taken, to a certain extent. Although not all this 279k of Muslims is actively planning to kill us, that doesn’t mean that they are a problem that can be ignored.
Let’s be a little generous here and say that only 10% of the 279k are actually violent and the other 251,100 are either Islamic gobshites like Anjem Choudary or Asghar Bukari or are providing cover and assistance to those who actually carry out acts of violence and oppression. We still can’t ignore the 10% of British Muslims who are problematical. 251K of Choudary’s and similar and those who would be quite happy to excuse, assist Islamic terror isn’t something that a civilised society should have to put up with. It’s a clear and present danger.
To put it bluntly Britain probably has 27,000 or so of Muslims who mean us actual harm along with another 251k of Muslims who are prepared to either assist or excuse Islamic violence or hinder the authorities in rooting it out. These are not good or comfortable figures to either write or think about.
I wonder how many people who lazily use the ‘10%’ line when confronted with an Islamophobe like me are starting to squirm by now? People who play the ‘10%’er ‘ card should squirm when I tell them that it only took 5 Islamic terrorists to carry out the Brussels attacks and four to carry out the 7/7 attacks. At present if only 1% of Britain’s Muslims are violent jihadists that leaves 27,000 Muslims willing to kill us and our families.
This is an intolerable figure for a civilised people to be expected to live with. There are enough violent Muslims in Britain to have a Brussels attack size cell plus back up and extra bodies in every major city in the UK. Now I ask the ‘10%’ers’, who blithely dismiss those of us who bring up the subject of Islam: Are you prepared to live with that level of risk to yourself and your family? Are you prepared to live in a city that may have 15 or 20 or more individuals wandering round unidentified who see nothing wrong with murdering people like yourself for Allah? How about your family, would you like them beheaded or blown up or shot by an individual who loves death more than every normal person loves life? Or what about your children? Do you want to send your daughter to school knowing that there is a significant risk that some Muslim rape gang will bundle her into a van and rape her because the Islamic Allah tells Muslims that non-Muslim girls and women are ‘property’? All these horrors can be yours and your your community’s simply by saying ‘it’s only 10%….it’s only 10%’. Ten per cent of 2.7million is a large number, hell, even 1% of 2.7m is a large number.
The more you consider the problem of Islam and the scale of the problem that it poses, the less realistic and sensible the ‘10%’ argument becomes. The ten per cent argument is merely foolish and lazy wishful thinking which is sometimes promulgated by those who have had good and cordial relationships with those Muslims who genuinely are good people, and not at all involved in terror or supporting terror.
It’s dangerous to extrapolate a positive judgement about Islam from personal dealings with decent people of Muslim background. Although the ‘10%’ers’ are correct in that terrorism is a minority sport among Muslims, that should not blind us to the numbers of extremists, which is significant, or to the inherent violence and exhortation to violence contained in so much of Islamic scripture.
I find discussing these issues with Islamophiles or Islamo-ignoramuses an interesting exercise. This is because I often find out our little my opponents know about their chosen subject. I find that many of these people are woefully ill-informed about Islamic scripture or Islamic culture or history and very rarely have any idea about the relevant numbers or data. I’ve often found those who lazily treat Islam the same as they treat other belief systems do not understand the pervasiveness within Islam of ideas that we would call extreme. For example: Some Islamophiles cannot comprehend that certain shariah compliant behaviours in a society are a good indication of extremism and the likelihood that people from that society may engage in jihad. An acceptance of the stoning of women, the death penalty for homosexuals or support for oppressive Islamic dress codes for women all indicate that the person or the nation that lives by and accepts these things is likely to end up as a threat to you and me.
When you challenge a ‘10%’er’ several things could happen. They could realise that you might have a point (may not happen immediately) or change the subject or call you a ‘racist’ or an ‘Islamophobe’ in which case you know that you’ve won the discussion. What should not happen is the 10%’ers be left unchallenged. Their argument and their figures are wonky to say the least and their lazy thinking needs to be called out. Ten per cent of Muslims being dodgy isn’t something to boast about, it’s something to be concerned about.
Link
Guardian article about the rise in the number of Muslims in the UK
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/11/muslim-population-england-wales-nearly-doubles-10-years
Ben Shapiro on the myth of the tiny minority of Muslim extremists
