A threat to the world

19 August 2006

Stephen Schwartz, who has travelled the world studying the faith to which he converted, says that Britain has allowed doctrinal poison imported from Pakistan to flourish here as nowhere else. We must act, or face terrible consequences

By contrast, the leaders of British Islam — exemplified by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) — have assumed a posture of truculence, obstruction and indignation when any suggestion is made that jihadist sympathies infect their ranks. British politicians and media exacerbate this problem when, apparently baffled, they rend their garments in dismay over Muslims and converts raised to be British but turning out anti-British. The problem is not British society. British Muslim youths who enlist for jihad act not out of negative experiences of British culture or politics, but as tools in a deliberate process of indoctrination, carefully pursued by imams and agitators mainly imported from Pakistan with Saudi backing.

Unfortunately, the Blair government, notwithstanding its support for the US administration of George W. Bush, seems to be completely paralysed when dealing with this matter. I witnessed the pathetic paradigm of official Britain’s relations with radical Islam at two recent colloquia held to address ‘discrimination against European Muslims’ (terrorism is a subject off the agenda at such affairs). One was called in Warsaw by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) last year, and the other was sponsored by the UK Foreign Office and the Saudi-financed Organisation for the Islamic Conference (OIC) at Wilton Park in May.

At the former conclave, dominated by British Muslim representatives, the Brighton-based Pakistani-ethnic imam Dr Abduljalil Sajid, of the obscure Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony, blasted Tony Blair for an alleged assault on civil rights after the London bombings of July 2005. Imam Sajid entertained delegates with anecdotes of how he harassed Blair, acting out his insistence that Islam and terrorism are completely unconnected. To many Muslims present, the bombings and the radicalism that inspired them were nothing compared with the need of said Muslims (and demagogues) to appear to defy British and other Western authorities.