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Sunday 6 July 2008

Cameron plays into terrorists' hands

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Conservative Home has had this picture made up from a David Cameron piece in yesterday's Observer: 

  
Sometimes you have to wonder if there is any limit beyond which Mr Cameron will not go in securing power? On the fifth anniversary of 9/11 he made a dreadful, cynical speech which can have served only to undemine the war on terror: 

David Cameron has said the UK must not be an "uncritical" or "slavish" ally of the US - and said recent foreign policy had lacked "humility and patience".

The Conservative leader accused the US and UK of viewing the "war on terror" in "unrealistic and simplistic" terms.

Melanie Phillips rips what passes for Cameron's argument apart here, by pointing out the message of a superb and essential new book, The Islamist, by a former Hizb ut Tahrir supporter, Ed Husain. Here's her conclusion: 

We may draw three principal lessons from this book. 1) The recruitment to Islamist extremism and terror of large numbers of British Muslims long predated 9/11 let alone Iraq. 2) The British political and media class is criminally negligent and worse in their appeasement and indulgence of HuT and Islamist extremism. Those politicians who refuse to ban it and those newspapers and broadcasters which promote HuT and its ilk have blood on their hands. Those like David Cameron or the British police who refuse to use the term ‘Islamist terrorism’ are doing far more than merely sanitising the language; they are actively conniving in the lie that enables this horror to replicate itself.

And 3), Husain shows that Islam and Islamism are two different things: that it is perfectly possible to be a Muslim who derives spiritual solace from the faith in a way that threatens no-one — and that it is essential to distinguish such Muslims from Islamists and protect the former, along with all of us, from the latter. Muslims like Husain need our support, encouragement and protection. David Cameron’s words instead take the ground from under his feet. ‘The Islamist’ should be sent to every politician at Westminster, put on the desk of every counter-intelligence officer and thrust under the supercilious nose of every journalist who maunders on about ‘Islamophobia’ and the alleged right-wing conspiracy that identifies Islamist terrorism solely to promote bigotry and sow needless fears to sanitise the crimes of the evil Bush and Blair.

(EDIT: In an earlier version of this post I wrote that the graphic above should be put by the site of a future Islamist murder. It's been pointed out to me that this might have meant I thought Mr Cameron would thus somehow be in part responsible, which of course I don't. It was a silly thing to write and I apologise if anyone was offended by it. That doesn't mean, though, that I resile in any way from the comments above that in his dreaful article he has played in to the Islamists' hands.)

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