In an ideal free society the rights and liberties of everyone in that society should be respected and that includes the rights of individuals to follow, change or create a spiritual path that best suits them. I’ve met many sane and normal people who have left their birth religion, if they had one, and become Christians, Jews, neo-Pagans, Hindus etc and this change of religion more often than not had very little negative effect on the wider society outside of the convert and their family. Those people who have exercised this right to change their religious path have by doing so probably made things more settled spiritually for the individuals. I’ve also noticed that in a few cases becoming newly religious can push or encourage people into doing good works for both their immediate religious community and the wider society as a whole. It’s often been my experience to observe how it is the new Christian or the new Jew or the new neo-Pagan who finds in their chosen faith the instructions and the impetus to be charitable and good, to feed and shelter the homeless or take care of the local environment.
I have little problem with people choosing their own religious path, with one major exception and that is with regards those who choose Islam. Unlike any other spiritual path that a person could choose, accepting Islam in a remarkably large number of cases causes the new Muslim not to go out and succour the sick or the distressed, but to engage in acts of terror, murder or sedition. We’ve seen this time and time again. The murderers of Lee Rigby, the Shoe Bomber, the man who was behind a foiled bomb plot in London’s Oxford Street, the Westminster attacker, the ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh, these were all converts to Islam who became enamoured of Islam’s violent and hateful heart incredibly quickly.
Now another case has come into my view where a convert has apparently gone straight to terrorism without passing through any sort of ‘moderate Islam’ stage and this time it is from Germany. According to the German mainstream media outlet Deutsche Welle in a report dated the 18th October, (h/t ROP) a convert to Islam has been arrested for involvement in a terror plot and for encouraging women to ‘marry’ ISIS jihadis and by doing so provide the jihadis with a German spouse and therefore a right to enter Germany. The woman, whom DW name as Marcia M in accordance with German media practise not to give the full names of suspects in these cases, was not only actively involved with known Islamic terrorists but recruited women in Northern Germany for this ‘marriage’ plot. I believe that if this plot had remained undetected then it could have resulted not only in death and destruction at a German music festival but also in the influx of dangerous jihadis entering Germany by way of a German spouse. Who knows how many innocent people these jihadis would have killed if Marcia M and her compatriots had not been stopped? It would not have just been those slaughtered in the name of Allah at a music festival but also the scores of other innocent people who would have been afflicted by any other possible attacks by Islamic savages.
As I said I’m pretty liberal with regards the rights of people with a religious belief but this stops with Islam. This is because it Islam and mostly Islam that is behind so much of the death, destruction and sedition that we see in Europe today. We do not see for example new Anglicans stabbing to death soldiers and police officers on our streets nor do we see new Jews or new Hindus or New Pagans planting bombs, driving vehicles into crowds at high speed or engaging in acts that any reasonable person would call sedition. Granted that there may be the odd one or two oddballs who choose non-Muslim religions and do bad things in that religion’s name, but those who go down this route are so tiny a number as to be statistically all but insignificant. Islam on the other hand has given the world a veritable parade of deranged bombers, stabbers, shooters etc whose sole aim in life is to kill as many non-Muslims as possible.
Our societies in the West have, over the last few centuries, built nations that accept that not everyone will believe or want to believe in the deities that others do. In a lot of cases states have taken the view once espoused by England’s Queen Elizabeth I and not had ‘windows into men’s souls’ and that has benefited everyone, no matter what their belief system. up until now. Unfortunately with the arrival of Islam we now have amongst us a faith ideology that does not promote either mutual respect among humans nor peaceful coexistence. The presence of Islam, a violent and uncompromising faith path, breaks the social compact that a person can believe and practise whatever religion or spiritual path that they choose. We can see that by the sheer number of those who convert to Islam who go on to commit or plot acts of bestial terror that Islam is different from any other spiritual path. Freedom of religion is a good thing, it can be good for the individual and good for society as a whole, but when you have a destructive force such as Islam that takes advantage of such freedoms then maybe it is right to look again at whether such a freedom should be universal? We should be suspicious of Islam, we should not grant Islam, a cult of death, the same rights as are enjoyed by more civilised faiths.
The growing problem of violent people being attracted to a violent ideology such as Islam is one that is only going to get worse unless it is tackled by both the various states where this has become a problem and by the people of these states. The states could and should treat converts to Islam as potential time bombs (which too often they are) and monitor and even restrict their movements and their activities and try to detect if, or as happens depressingly often when, the particular convert decides to go ‘full Islam’ and kill people. As individual citizens we can help alleviate the problem of potentially explosive Islamic converts by telling the truth about the ideology of Islam and not taking any note of the claims made by Islamic converts that Islam is ‘a religion of peace/a feminist religion/misunderstood (insert Islamic lie of your choice here)’. We should not associate with those who have voluntarily taken up this Islamic path just as any moral person would not choose to associate with anybody else who has taken up a violent or destructive path. Just as any normal decent person would shun the paedophile or the violent thug or the rapist if they suddenly appeared in their social circle, so also should we shun the convert to Islam. This is because by choosing Islam that person has chosen a path of violence, intimidation, abuse and misogyny and is therefore beyond the pale.
Even though not all Muslims follow all the tenets of Islam and not all Muslims are a threat to us, the same cannot be said for Islam itself. This ideology when taken to its logical extremes, as converts to any religion can often do, does not just lead to people doing odd things, but to acts that bring death and destruction.
Because of the record that converts to Islam have for being involved in jihad, it is right that those who choose Islam, knowing what it is, should be treated as much more of a threat to the rest of us than they may have been treated in the past. If a person chooses, hand on heart, to follow a spiritual and ideological path that tells them to revere a man who by Islam’s own accounts was a paedophile, a warlord, a robber, a murderer and an individual filled with hatred for others, then they are saying a great deal about how unpleasant and dangerous a person that they are.
Too many converts to Islam have gone bad so very quickly for civilised nations to see these converts as anything other than a threat. I don’t think these converts should be physically harmed in any way by either the public or the State, not only would this be morally wrong but could also be counterproductive as it would provide martyrs for Islamic extremists to parade as recruiting agents. However, there is nothing wrong as I see it with observing and monitoring them, mocking them, shunning them and have our governments take steps to ensure that these people who have chosen the path of evil, do no harm to the rest of us. It’s long past time that those who choose such an obviously evil path were treated as being the threats that they so often are.
