One of the biggest piles of bullshit the British public get fed about Islam is the phrase ‘a tiny minority of extremists’. It’s comforting bullshit as the alternative, that the majority is either not hostile or ambivalent to Islamic extremism is significantly less than comforting.
Both the recent Channel 4 survey on British Muslim attitudes, and the excellent drill down into the figures in a Pew report on worldwide Muslim attitudes by Ben Shaprio, blast through this comforting lie about ‘tiny minorities’. They both show a large level of support for many of the sort of shariah compliant behaviours that are troubling for free and multi-religious societies. These Shariah compliant behaviours, such as support for oppression of women, brutal punishments, support for jihad, are in my view prime indicators of dangerousness. If you support going beyond the sort of modesty rules for dress that apply in other faiths and are in favour of trapping women in mobile canvas prisons or see jihad as acceptable then you are not peaceful and do not support a peaceful religious path.
There are of course Muslims who although I will vehemently disagree with them on a theological basis, are committed to peace. The Ahmeddiya for example have obviously read the Koran and decided to dump the violence, dump the hatred that this book contains and do as the Christians and the Jews have done for centuries, which is reinterpret their guiding book to take account of later knowledge. However, we have to remember that the Ahmadiyya are a tiny minority of the worlds Muslims. What an Ahmediyya person says about the Koran is an Ahmedi interpretation of it and not a mainstream Orthodox Islamic one.
It’s similar to the situation in other faiths, although without the violence, for example with Judaism. In the UK we have a situation where Orthodox Judaism is the normative type with the most adherents and Reform and Liberal Judaism which are not and have less followers. An interpretation of a passage of the Torah by a Liberal or a Reform Jew would not necessarily be the same interpretation as that of an Orthodox Jew. For example my own view that the Torah is a combination of the result of God and man working together or was written by man inspired by God, is heresy to some Orthodox Jews. It’s my view based on textual analysis of the Torah. Catholic and Protestant Christians also have their own interpretations of the same Bible and we should never forget how deep those divisions can get or the hostility that they have engendered in the past.
All of this may seem a bit like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin to many readers and normally the internal disagreements of religions other than ones own are of little relevance to you. Normally I’d agree, but with Islam the difference between a peaceful minority and a not so peaceful majority is not so much a theological argument but a security one. We don’t worry about our security because Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews disagree on matters of religion as it’s highly unlikely that such disputes will result in violence. With Islam religious disputes often boil over in to violence. Big difference.
Ahmedi Muslims are an absolute minority, they are a minority numerically and a minority in terms of theological view. What an Ahmedi says about Islam is purely their own view. It’s not the view of Islam that is screamed from the pulpits of extremist linked places like the East London Mosque or the Islam of many other Muslims across the UK.
But the Ahmedi have inadvertently done us all a great service recently. Following the brutal and disgusting murder of an Ahmedi Muslim in Glasgow allegedly by an orthodox Muslim, members of the Ahmedi Muslim community put out a call for a demonstration against extremism. Good for them. I’ll try always to salute those who genuinely and intelligently try to walk the derech ha shalom, the path of peace. This call for a demonstration against extremism was attended by a wide range of people ranging from Jews, Christians, Sikhs and others. Not all of those who came were people I agree with either politically or theologically but, at least most of those attending were decent and they turned up.
There was one notable exception to this list of people wanting peace and that was orthodox Muslims. No representative of mainstream majority Islam turned up and that should tell us a lot.
The lack of genuine support for a peace and anti extremism demonstration should wake us all up to the true nature of Orthodox Islam. If they can’t put aside their hatred for Muslims who they disagree with what on earth do they think about the rest of us? If they can’t swallow their hatred just for a couple of hours what does that tell us about the majority of Islam in Britain?
What it tells us is that the majority of Islam in the UK is not peaceful, it has no intention of learning from the rest of us or respecting us and indeed holds the majority population in contempt. We should be worried about this as it indicates that if the chips were down, the majority of Muslims, who follow paths other than that of the Ahmediyya, would be quite relaxed about attacking Britain’s non Muslims. It also shows that orthodox Muslims would be more likely not to cooperate in attempts to root out Islamic extremism because they have an admiration or at least an acceptance of such extremism. These are not the actions of a peaceful but distinct minority or believers in a particular religion or spiritual path, these are the actions of a fifth column.
The refusal by Orthodox Muslims to speak out or act against the extremism within their community really only indicates just how widely accepted such extremism really is. It’s not just that they’ve refused to attend a demonstration organised by Ahmediyya. There are multiple instances where Muslims have denied that there is a problem with extremism in their particular community, even though it is widely known that their local Muslim community has produced jihadis. We’ve even seen the spectacle of Muslim ‘community leaders’ whining about police attention, attention they’ve brought on themselves by harbouring and producing jihadists.
As I said before the Ahmediyya of Glasgow have done this nation a valuable service, they’ve shown up the mainstream Muslims and their organisations for what they are, which is arrogant, hostile and often working against this country, our people and our values. They’ve grossly abused the doctrine of religious tolerance that in the UK can be traced right back to a statement by Queen Elizabeth I that she didn’t want ‘windows into men’s souls’.
The time has come to bite the bullet and take the hint from the refusal of the leaders of a considerable number of Muslims in Glasgow and see orthodox Islam and those who follow it as a threat. A refusal to stand up for and defend the peace of the city in which you find yourself is not the action of a decent person who just happens to worship a different god to me, it’s the action of hostile soldiery who are encamped in our midst.
What we have here is an indication of the true situation viz a viz Islam in Britain. The truth about Islam is that the problem with it isn’t the fault of a tiny minority of extremists as the extremists seem to be in the majority in one way or another. What we have in Britain today is an Islam where the ‘tiny minority’ are not the murderers, bombers, corrupters and criminals, but the peacemakers and those who wish to live in peace.
Islam has yet again shown itself not to be anything like a ‘religion of peace’.
Links
Brietbart coverage of the refusal of mainstream Muslims to condemn extremism
Ben Shaprio’s excellent and well presented examination of Muslim extremism in both the Muslim and non Muslim worlds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TAAw3oQvg
Fahrenheit 211 pieces on the most recent survey of Islamic attitudes in the UK
