For those of us who have observed Islam for a while the appalling figures disclosed by the ‘What Muslims Think’ programme, presented by Trevor Phillips, that show the increasing self segregation of Muslims in Britain and a hardening of their attitudes come as no surprise. They will however surprise those who believe erroneously that Islam is a religion of peace and that the followers of Islam will mellow as the generations go by, just as has happened with other groups.

Despite a lot of spinning of these figures and attacks on the methodology of the survey by various Islamic groups and the Quislings for Islam, you would have to be a fool to deny that the survey doesn’t throw up some worrying numbers. The numbers show that there is a support for violence in defence of Islam, a desire for law change with regards to homosexuality, restrictions on freedom of speech as it pertains to religion and an attitude that Shariah Law should replace civil law.

Although the survey does indeed say that the majority of Muslims are happy to be here in the UK that doesn’t’ mean that this is the whole story. The survey showed significant minorities in favour of things that are not compatible with a free society that has a culture of freedom of religion. To give just one example from the programme that should make us all sit up and take notice: 4% of Muslims saw suicide bombing as acceptable as opposed to 1% of those from the general non-Muslim population. The non-Muslims were surveyed as a ‘control’ in order to judge how much Muslim attitudes differ from the mainstream. It should be remembered that 4% of Britain’s Muslim population represents 108,000 people. That means that over 100k of British Muslims feel some sympathy or have some support for those who with to kill or maim my fellow citizens via suicide bombing. Does that sort of figure make you feel comfortable or safe? It doesn’t make me feel comfortable or safe, it makes me feel angry at both a Muslim community who feels this way and at successive governments who have done very little to sort out Britain’s Islam problem.

Some may whine like an air-raid siren when I say that Islam is uniquely troublesome when it comes into contact with non-Muslim societies. But sadly it’s a fact. Whether or in Britain or elsewhere Islam causes problems. Terror problems, crime and sex trafficking problems, corruption and threatening of local authorities problems and so on and so on. Much of these problems can be traced back to Islamic religious ideology and the encouragement it gives to Muslims to despise and disregard those who are non-Muslim and the laws of nations populated by non-Muslims. Islam is a supremacist ideology and anyone who thinks otherwise has either not understood Islam or understood history.

What this survey and other similar surveys show is that although there are many Muslims who are integrated who do contribute to the host societies that does not mean that we should ignore or attempt to minimise the conflicts that Islam creates with those societies.

I’d like to think that this programme has at least brought into the open many things that need to be spoken about. For too many years members of the metropolitan liberal left have argued that any discussion about the problems caused by Islam is inherently ‘racist’. This programme is not a whole answer but it is at least a start.

As regards criticism of the programme there are several. The kid gloves handling of the Islamic extremist Hamza Tsortis was one glaring failure. The other aspect, and one that disgusted me, was Trevor Phillip’s suggestion that there should be forcible integration in schools. This is a policy almost guaranteed to cause conflict. Would you as a non-Muslim with a child in a school that is majority non-Muslim really want to see Muslims bussed in as some sort of social experiment? I would not. The idea that my child could be in a school and then the government imposes on their school a large number of children from families that follow ideologies that state that they want my child dead, absolutely horrifies me as it will probably horrify others. It’s a grossly authoritarian suggestion that tramples over the rights of parents and the rights of our children.

All in all this was a good programme. Yes it was dripping in the sort of liberal condescension that could have been expected bearing in mind both the presenter and the broadcaster, but it was I hope, the start of a debate that we really need to have about Islam. The programme showed that there are a significant number of Muslims who hold views about support for violence, hostility to free speech and a bad attitude to the rights of women that are way different from those held by the majority community. The show also highlighted how different Islam is from other faiths and I believe that the fact that attitudes are in some cases harder in the younger generation than the older mean that we cannot continue to make assumptions about Islam based on the successful history of integration of other minority groups.

‘What Muslims Think’ showed Britain that our nation has an Islam problem and that it is a problem that urgently needs to be dealt with. However it should not be dealt with by forcing the rest of us to accept Islamic norms or by telling lies such as ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ to our children. The problems caused by Islam need to be dealt with by standing up for our own values, applying the law equally to Muslims and by treating Islam with suspicion and as a threat to those values and to our people.

Even though many individual Muslims are OK people this should not blind us to the true nature of Islam itself. Islam is so aggressive, violent and untrustworthy that it’s difficult to make an honest case why this ideology should be allowed to fester as much as it has been previously allowed to. No other religious ideology at present in the British Isles commits as much violence as Islam, forces their dietary rules on everyone else, has such disgust for the rest of us or kicks off over so many minor issues than does Islam. Islam is inherently violent and destructive and we ignore that fact at our peril.