Why Israel?

editor Saturday 26 February 2011

By Melanie Phillips Some four-and-a-half years ago, a book of mine was published that caused something of a sensation. It was called Londonistan, and it was about the way in which – astoundingly – Britain had become the most important centre, outside the Islamic world itself, for the production and export of Islamic terrorism.

Worse yet, I wrote, even after the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 London Tube and bus bombings, the British political, legal and security establishments were still refusing to get to grips with the threat posed to Britain by militant Muslims who wanted to conquer it for Islam.

For my pains, I was called ‘mad’ by the Guardian, ‘bonkers’, ‘alarmist’, ‘­hysterical’ and, of course, ‘Islamophobic’.

Indeed, I had a hard time getting the book published at all. It was turned down by every mainstream London publisher because they regarded my views as dangerous extremism. One even remarked: ‘I’d rather take the poison ricin, than publish this.’ Nice!

For a while it looked as if it would be published only in the U.S., but a few weeks before publication in America, a tiny British publishing house bravely volunteered to publish it here.

Given the terrifying nature of what I wrote in that book, it really does give me no comfort to say this – but the fact is that, ever since it was published, a steady stream of revelations has proved that I was absolutely right.

We learned that Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly, who blew himself up in a December 2010 terrorist attack in Stockholm, was yet another radicalised British Muslim university graduate who spent several years in Britain. He was but the latest in an unremitting procession of British Muslims who have committed terrorist attacks in other countries. And many have been educated to a high level in Britain.

Over the past decade, around 30 Muslim graduates or students at British universities have been involved in Islamic-inspired terrorism, including former University College London student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been charged with trying to blow up a U.S. airliner above the city of Detroit on Christmas day 2009 with explosives hidden in his underpants.

As for Luton – where Abdulwahab lived and attended university – this has long been regarded as a hotbed of Islamic extremism.

So why is it that, with the Security Service periodically issuing chilling warnings that it’s monitoring more than 2,000 dangerous Muslim fanatics and dozens of terrorist plots, Britain is still failing so dismally to curb its home-grown industry of Islamic terrorism and extremism?

As I pointed out in my book, most of the British establishment is in denial about what it is up against. Our leaders know there is a major threat of terrorism.

But they remain wilfully blind to the fact that the terrorists’ ultimate aim, the Islamisation of Britain and the West, is being pursued by Islamic groups that are not violent, as well as those that are.

Of course, millions of British Muslims shun violence or extremism. They want only to live peacefully and enjoy the benefits of Western democracy and human rights.

Moreover, since they and their children are themselves among the principal victims and targets of the Islamist fanatics, they beg the British Government to crack down on such extremism.

But here is the most astonishing thing I explored in my book. For the establishment is so heavily imbued by a deadly cocktail of political correctness, multiculturalism and ‘human rights’ law that, far from curbing Islamic extremism, it has actually fanned the flames.

Over the past decade and more, the judges have made it all but impossible to police Britain’s borders against undesirables or throw extremists out of the country.

Universities have shamefully refused to crack down on extremists on campus, even though countless Muslim students are being radicalised there by Islamist speakers with no fewer than four university Islamic Society presidents having been involved in major acts of terrorism.

Idiotically, politicians cravenly attempting to defuse Islamic rage by appeasing the Muslim community have funded organisations that have turned out to be extreme.

Even more extraordinarily, to this day the Government is employing radical Islamists in Whitehall as political advisers on curbing Islamic extremism.

The core reason for this supine approach is that the establishment refuses to acknowledge that Islamic terrorism is rooted in religious fanaticism – an extreme interpretation of the religion that dictates Muslims must impose Islamic law throughout the world.

While most British Muslims most certainly do not accept this interpretation, it is rooted in theology and history, and is supported by the major religious authorities in the Islamic world.

So truly moderate Muslims cannot make their voices heard. The extremists therefore have the whip hand. And the way they intend to achieve their ends is through a pincer movement comprising both terrorism and cultural infiltration to gain social, economic and political power.

The threat of violence makes it more likely they will succeed in infiltrating British institutions. And that in turn makes it ever harder to curb radicalisation. It also galvanises the extremists, who perceive correctly that the society they have in their sights has no stomach for the fight.

This is precisely what is happening in Britain. Because our political and security establishment has defined extremism as involving violence, it is blind to the steady process of Islamisation that is taking place.

Astonishingly, it is tolerating – and even encouraging – the relentless incursion of Islamic religious law. Yet this is inimical to British values, and not just because it denies the human rights of women, homosexuals or anyone who wants to renounce Islam.

Fundamentally, it does not recognise the superior authority of the law of the land, against which it therefore asserts itself.

But it is a fundamental principle of a democratic society that there must be only one law for all. And yet in Britain today, blind eyes are being turned to Sharia courts meting out not just family law judgments that oppress women, but even criminal sanctions, too.

In addition, there has been in this country an enormous growth of Islamic banking –  despite the fact this serves as an umbrella for the financing of Islamic terrorism and is a vehicle for putting yet more pressure on British Muslims to subject themselves to Sharia law.

Almost every week, more examples surface of the way in which British culture is giving way to Islamic­practices. As a recent BBC Panorama programme demonstrated, some Muslim schools are teaching their pupils to hate ‘unbelievers’ – all under the nose of Ofsted, the schools watchdog organization.

And a growing number of education authorities serve halal meat to all pupils – without even informing the public of this minority faith practice. London hosts three Muslim TV channels — all with ties to fanatical Islamic organisations or regimes.

In short, Britain is being steadily Islamiscised, and the establishment appears paralysed like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Four years ago in my book, I delivered a warning. A country that can’t even bring itself to name the nature of the enemy it faces, will be defeated by that enemy.

The Stockholm bomber is but the latest export from Londonistan, and unless the Government gets up off its knees and changes its disastrous strategy, I very much fear he will not be the last.

(Melanie Phillips is an Orwell Prize winning British journalist and author. Her articles appear mainly in the Daily Mail newspaper. She has also written for The Guardian, and is a regular panelist on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Moral Maze and BBC One‘s Question Time. She has written four books, including Londonistan and most recently World Turned Upside Down in 2010)

Tags: End times, Home, Islam, jihad, terrorism