
You might think this is an April 1 spoof but alas, it is in deadly earnest. An article on Guardian Comment is Free by Robert Lambert and Jonathan Gizens-Mather is an unabashed pitch for radical Islamism, a piece which stands truth, reason and morality on their heads in virtually every line and sides openly with those who wish to destroy the free world. Lamenting
an unnecessary schism
between the government and British Islamists, it cites as evidence first the
government failure to condemn Israel in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead [which] exposed a bias towards Israel and an ambivalence towards the value of Palestinian lives that angered British Islamists.
But the British government did not fail to condemn Israel. It condemned it virtually from the start as a ‘disproportionate’ operation that was ‘killing too many people’, and said this repeatedly thereafter. What this claim appears to be referring to was the government’s observation made from the other side of its mouth that Israel was entitled to protect its citizens against Hamas rocket attack. The idea that innocent Palestinians were targeted by Israel which thus deemed them to be worthless -- rather than what actually happened, which was that Hamas were targeted to prevent the further killing of Israeli innocents and it was Hamas, using innocent Palestinians as human shields and bonb fodder, who deemed their lives to be worthless -- is one of the lies promulgated by the Arab and Muslim world.
The second piece of evidence is Communities Minister Hazel Blears’s
ill-judged assault on Daud Abdullah and the Muslim Council of Britain. Taken together these incidents reinforce concerns that British Islamists are uniquely held out for political attack, and illustrate the power of key anti-Islamist lobbying groups. The result is a feeling that the government holds Islamists to a different political standard based on a Bush-ite principle of ‘either you are with us or against us’, where the ‘us’ is clearly not Muslim.
Let us remind ourselves why the minister insisted that the MCB disavow Daud Abdullah, the MCB’s deputy director-general, before the government would deal with it again. Daud Abdullah signed the Istanbul Declaration in which, inter alia, he called on all Muslims, including those in Britain, to take up arms against any forces, including British ones, should they ever seek to prevent arms from getting to Hamas to be used to murder more Israeli citizens. This is what the authors believe is holding Islamists
to a different political standard...
To which one might ask – different from what? It is the same standard required of all British Muslims – not just Islamists – along with every other minority and the indigenous majority, ie, all British citizens, that they do not take up arms against their own country, and that they do not support terrorism anywhere in the world. It is the authors who are requiring the government to hold Islamists who take this position to a different standard from everyone else.
Indeed, given that Islamism is the shorthand for politicised Islam, according to whose tenets there can be no secular government and so Britain and the world must be conquered by Islam by both violent and cultural means depending on circumstances, the authors -- using a sanitised definition of Islamism which fails to make this clear -- are promoting what used to be called sedition, and then arguing that it is outrageous to treat its adherents differently from anyone else. (The authors nevertheless make their one truthful -- if back-handedly revealing -- point in observing that Abdullah Quilliam, the British Muslim whose name has been taken by the Quilliam Foundation as a supposed example of how Islamic precepts can be reconciled with British values, was himself an outright Islamist who wanted Britain to become an Islamic state).
The authors strive to present Daud Abdullah and the MCB as ‘mainstream’ Islamists, as opposed to the ‘extremists’ of Hizb ut Tahrir and Islam For The UK. This is a totally specious distinction. All Islamists are extreme by definition, because they do not accept secular government and refuse to live by its tenets, devoting themselves instead to its overthrow and replacement by Islamic rule. The fact that they have different strategies for achieving that end -- some of which, as exemplified by the MCB, use the democratic system to undermine itself -- certainly does not obviate their common extremism and the threat they pose to British and western societies. The idea that some Islamists are Bad because they speak unambiguously about the threat they pose while other Islamists who veil that threat in more acceptable language are therefore Good and even a useful tool against the Bad Islamists is as ridiculous as it is lethal. Yet this is a continuum which the government -- the Daud Abdullah affair aside -- refuses to acknowledge, as the growing phalanx of Islamist 'counter-extremism' advisers within Whitehall continues so egregiously to advertise.
Which brings me to why this particular article -- whose proposterous bad faith is after all replicated time and again in other Guardian columns -- merits such attention. It is because Robert Lambert is a former Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism officer.
Amazing to report, as head of the Muslim Contact Unit within the Met’s Counter-Terror Command Lambert employed two Salafists (Islamists) as officers on the basis that – as he has stated -- terrorism cannot be fought by contact with moderate Muslims but through partnerships with the Salafists. Now we can see how his position has developed, from using Salafists to defeat other Salafists into becoming a Salafist apologist himself.
Lambert may no longer be a serving police officer; but the fact that the Met could employ such a man in such a post says all you need to know about counter-terrorism in Londonistan.
Blogs: Martin Bright | Susan Hill | Alex Massie | Coffee House | Faith Based
Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (41)
Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
Advertisement
1 Yes campaign launch will cause problems — for the independence movement - Ysenda Maxtone Graham
2 Obama vs Balls - edited by Graham Storey, Margaret Brown and Kathle
3 Cameron's attack on Balls is strangely endearing - Lloyd Evans
4 Susie Squire to take over as Tory press chief - James Forsyth
5 What Farage's offer means for David Cameron - James Forsyth
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
1,700 Unusual Christmas Presents Request Catalogue 01935 815 195 Quote SPEC10 for 10% discount www.presentfinder.co.uk
Pimilco based Florist with online ordering Web: www.olivebranch.net Tel: 020 7630 1868 Fax: 020 7233 8844
62 Shore Road, Warsash, Southampton, SO31 9FT Telephone: 01489 578867 Web site: www.ruffs.co.uk
Apollo Magazine | Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms
Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
All Articles and Content Copyright ©2012 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved
Brian Moshe
April 1st, 2009 3:16pmI hope anyone who reads the appalling Guardian e-article by Robert Lambert and Jonathan Gizens-Mather (see Melanie's link above), also scrolls down to the third comment on the Comment is Free thread underneath it.
This comment is by Inayat and I believe it is by Inayat Bunglawala as he uses the name Inayat to comment on CiF.
Lambert may no longer be a serving police officer but Inayat Bunglawala is still advising the government and carries a lot of weight in trendy circles like the Guardian and the BBC.
Read his comments and shudder.
GaryO
April 1st, 2009 3:39pmThis is an extremely worrying development. The moderators there just delete the comments they do not approve of. So, if you do comment, you have to couch your words in extreme PC.
I wonder what this country is coming to.
No seriously.
Original Tony
April 1st, 2009 4:03pmMay I be permitted to put another angle on the West's fascination with Islam?
Western governments (or rather the people behind the governments) want world-wide "peace" (read slavery). The only way they can achieve this is by control of their populations...TOTAL control.A dictatorship.
But how do they achieve this in peacetime?
Would it not be a good idea to use some scary tactic to induce their lemmings into asking for total protection and peace?
Why yes, of course...but who? Well, why not these nasty Islamists who will kill without question? "Let's use them to drive terror into peoples' hearts! Let's select one to run the USA! Let's couple this with a world wide currency crash and threatened nuclear extiction. And when all these threads are in place and a cashless society, under the glare of street cameras is established, we will rid ourselves of the nasty Islamists once and for all.
In other words, radical Islam is being used by the West to set up a dictatorship. World-wide!
Laugh if you want to but Maybe the G20 is just the start of it.
And what is the aim of this evil entity? Why, the destruction of Israel of course.
It is happening right in front of our eyes but we are too thick to see it.
Herbert Thornton
April 1st, 2009 5:58pmThe international ramifications of all this are no doubt important, but so far as Britain is concerned, the most urgent and important question is Britain's own fate.
Rational consideration of this question can lead to only one conclusion - that there should be no place in Britain for Islam. Sadly, unbiased observation of British political parties also reveals that the Labour, Tory and Liberal parties are resolute in their determination to sweep all discussion of that conclusion under the carpet.
Now which party is it that does face up to the question and propose an effective solution? We all know that the answer - yet if I even type its initials, it is likely to guarantee that nobody will be allowed to read the answer.
Michael B
April 1st, 2009 7:35pmOn the other side of the pond - via Sec. of State Clinton and U.N. Rep. Susan Rice - the Obama Admin. has decided to go forward with membership in the UNHRC, now officially confirming what was expected in conjunction with their Durban II planning session foray and applauded by the AJC. One can always hope and refrain from prejudging, but this is the same UN "human rights" council that 1) has exhibited a deleterious obsessive/compulsive fixation with Israel while largely ignoring Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea and other human rights fiascoes, beyond "study" groups, 2) whose inaugural session in 2006 included an "Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration," 3) which continues to sponsor Durban II, 4) which evidences Orwellian programs, titles and language in general to mask such systematic abuses, 5) which includes member states such as Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China, etc.
Refrain from prejudging in absolute terms, yes. But virtually nothing in this now official move can be said to be propitious - while everything lends itself to yellow flag and red flag warnings that signal still further Orwellian cooptations, now with the stamp of approval by a too compliant administration in Washington.
Michael
April 1st, 2009 8:03pmMelanie perhaps you need this explaining: to certain people, the government didn't condemn Israel *enough* - in other words they failed to declare Israel the sole modern Middle Eastern state whose very right to exist should be questioned in light of the fact that it has to fight for its life every generation in the face of unwavering racial and religious hatred.
Augustus
April 1st, 2009 8:07pmIt's about time people in Britain proudly and convincingly proclaimed the West's ideals at every opportunity. What made the West great is individualism, reason, and the pursuit of happiness. And these things are vastly superior to the tribalism, supersitition, and earthly deprivation that many Muslims seek to live out and bring to European countries. We must reject the insidious idea of multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures are of equal value. Cultures are not of equal value: prosperity is superior to poverty; happiness is superior to misery; freedom is superior to slavery; and a visible face to the world is superior to a slit revealing two anonymous eyes.
American Bystander to a British Tragedy
April 1st, 2009 9:48pmIt's no good saying you reject multiculturalism (as you should) if you don't demand the end of immigration into your country of people who have no intention of integrating but only wish to dominate you, now is it? It also stands to reason that you have too many people in your country from this group already, and that they should be forcibly removed (they won't go of their free will, after all, you're paying the jizya to them and they are living in the UK high off the hog, the Br govt has just announced it will pay them 190 pounds for each baby they produce!) You will have to bestir yourselves, surrender, or emigrate yourselves.
Sam Armstrong
April 1st, 2009 11:10pmAmerican Bystander: Britain does not reject multiculturalism, that's the point you idiot. Many millions of us wish it would but it doesn't. We also wish it would stop immigration, but it's a country with a deep wound of guilt in its heart about the excesses of the former empire, and the way it feels it needs to make amends with the world is to humiliate itself. There is another country embarking on this path of national suicide, it's called America.
Wilhelm
April 2nd, 2009 12:39amHebert Thornton
Enoch predicted all this would happen when he said 40 years ago.
''In 30 years time the ethnics will hold the whip hand.''
Owen Morgan
April 2nd, 2009 2:46amBrian Moshe, well spotted. I had pretty much the same response to that CiF post, but failed to recognise the name. I saw Inayat Bunglawala on the television (BBC, naturally) recently. I didn't notice any identification of him cited, beyond his name, which didn't mean a thing to me then, so the way his opinion was so indulged seemed very puzzling. Later, I recognised the name in references to his role in "advising" the government.
GaryO, the Guardian does seem to be purging a lot of comments and I suspect that "moderators" probably is not le mot juste for those doing the purging, but since when did the Guardian's priorities remotely relate to those of the population at large?
Bhaskar
April 2nd, 2009 6:40amI think the main problem Melanie has is that this former senior police commander writes in the Guardian. How disgraceful that a senior police officer may be a Guardian liberal! Well Melanie, this is called democracy. Why shouldn't senior police (or army or intelligence officers) hold liberal or left wing views in a democracy? Thank God we have moved on from the bad old days when overwhelming majority of the police, army and judges held 'robust right-wing' views(which during the seventies and eighties meant belief in hanging, flogging and repatriation). Look at the old footage of the miner's strike and how enthusiastically the police were beating up striking miners. They were meant to be politically neutral? No? Compare this with the restraint shown by the police during last night's G20 riot in the City. I would not be surprised at all if many of our low paid and overworked front line police officers are sympathetic to the views of some of the rioters if not their methods. Thank God senior police officers are nowadays better educated, more reflective and analytical and recognize the subtle dimensions of modern policing when faced with the existential threat posed by international terrorism ( and drug trafficking and, yes, large scale international financial fraud). I would be really concerned if any of our senior police officers shared Melanie's political views.
Geoff M
April 2nd, 2009 9:50amWell, Bhaskar, the Police certainly no longer beat up rioting miners. There are now fully paid up Guardianista's in charge and now they only beat up grannies and children at the Countryside March whlist standing around protecting Abu Hamza's "right" to preach hatred and murder on the streets outside Regents Park Mosque and employ Islamists to, err, oversee the terror campaigns of Islamists.
Miranda Rose Smith
April 2nd, 2009 10:17amDid Israel ever butt in when Britain was fighting the I.R.A.?
Original Tony
April 2nd, 2009 10:48amBhaskar..6:40 a.m. No wonder you support liberal views, your name would indicate that you would be one of those repatriated under a right-wing government, which is precisely what us indigenous should have started from 'day one'.
Fabio P.Barbieri
April 2nd, 2009 11:25amOriginal Tony: how many Huguenots, post-revolutionary emigres, Irish labourers, German waiters and Jewish tailors in your pedigree, you sorry piece of disgusting ignorance? You are every bid as poisonous as the Islamists, and I would love to see how you would survive without the Chinese, Hindu, Sikh and other civilized persons who prop up this country at every level, and most of whom were born here.
Meh
April 2nd, 2009 11:29am"Bhaskar..6:40 a.m. No wonder you support liberal views, your name would indicate that you would be one of those repatriated under a right-wing government, which is precisely what us indigenous should have started from 'day one'."
Original Tony; keeping it classy
Dave
April 2nd, 2009 11:52amOriginal Tony: I'm sure he has a good biblical reason for such offensive stupidity.
Original Tony
April 2nd, 2009 12:08pmFabio PB...it's funny that Britain's power, influence and industrialization was at its zenith when none of those people were here (excluding the Irish who are British)...I wonder why that is? And precisley why did all the foreigners come here? To learn from and enjoy the benefits of an advanced, non-mongralised society, that's why. It's precisely why your Roman empire eventually collapsed, because of the influx of so many different nations that watered down the direction and beliefs of the indigenous Romans.
Anyway, my my first comment was tongue-in-cheek against radical Islamists if you look closely.
Wm. Hazlitt
April 2nd, 2009 12:28pmOriginal Tony,
Read some of Stanley Jerusalem's posts - from Monday, for example. You see? When he prompts hilarity, it is deliberate on his part.
stanley Jerusalem
April 2nd, 2009 2:25pmWm. Hazlitt
April 2nd, 2009 12:28pm
Original Tony,
"Read some of Stanley Jerusalem's posts - from Monday, for example. You see? When he prompts hilarity, it is deliberate on his part."
Help! Au secours! I'm being supported by the opposition! Nurse! The screens!
Original Tony - We know you meant what you said. You just have to find a nicer way of saying it so that your message arrives withhout the birdshit from the pigeon all over it.
Take a lesson from lower case phil. He's the expert.He'll disembowel someone so gently even they won't notice.
Bill Corr
April 2nd, 2009 2:49pmMiranda Rose Smith mentions the I.R.A. and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
The moment the I.R.A. started snuggling up to the vile Libyan despotism and Arafat's gangsters, the Israelis monitored them with due care and attention, passing information along to the Irish authorities, the Brits and Americans.
Miranda Rose Smith may have missed the news item of Gerry Adams laying a wreath at Arafat's grave. She obviously isn't watching Iranian-funded Press TV often enough. She may even have missed the nauseating spectacle of Blair literally fawning over an aloof and obviously disdainful Muammar Gadhaffi.
Melanie's columns raise good issues; those who enjoy considering these in greater detail would probably enjoy going to the Harry's Place website.
Original Tony
April 2nd, 2009 3:43pmDave..11:52 am....actually, God told the Jews entering the promised land to kill everything before them as they entered the land.
Why? Because mongralization would water the Jews down; intergration would weaken and destroy them.
Every empire on earth, every great nation has collapsed due to mass immigration. Why? Because the host country fears offending the immigrant, to the point where the host's ideals, philisophy, culture and religion are totally eroded.
It has happened all over Europe and Britain is not exempt.
I prefer a strong National identity. I don't think of people in india as being blue eyed and blond, any more than I think of a Sikh living in England, as indigenous English. I would not look at a British Sikh as someone to represent Britain any more than I would a white person living in India, represent India. This does not mean I despise the Sikh people, I actually have a very high regard for them.
Is it so disgusting to ask that Britian remains British and not a multicultural soup that has no identity at all?
Hugh Brennan
April 2nd, 2009 3:53pmWhat will we do when the fighting starts? Should the US declare acceptance of all British refugees from the Anglointifada? You can count on our home grown multiculturalists to resist so favoring "White" refugees.
I understand you are unarmed now, so how do you propose to maintain the rights of Englishmen in the face of dhimmitude? Perhaps you should have kept the faith after all.
Leslie
April 2nd, 2009 4:04pmOriginal Tony:
"And precisley why did all the foreigners come here? To learn from and enjoy the benefits of an advanced, non-mongralised society, that's why."
Non-mongrelized?Really? lol.
stanley Jerusalem
April 2nd, 2009 4:08pmOriginal Tony
April 2nd, 2009 3:43pm
"This does not mean I despise the Sikh people, I actually have a very high regard for them."
Don't tell me, some of your best friends are people.
Carl
April 2nd, 2009 5:02pmOriginal Tony - if someone like you does not like this country, then I view that as a positive as I would truly hate to be identified with your bizarre and unpleasant views.
Suffolkbor
April 2nd, 2009 6:19pmIt is an urban myth that English people all have immigrant genes in our "Pedigree".
In cities there is a higher likelyhood that this may occur as this is where immigrants settled but is not true of rural areas .
It is interesting that the proponents of this myth never do any of their studies of geneaology outside of the large urban areas .
There was a channel four programme on this subject a while back which was a complete load of rubbish , claiming that we are descended from Africans et al and of course never doing any research out in the countryside .
That is why the Marxists/ liberals despise the countryside and it,s people .
New Labours think tank complained recently that "The countryside is still far to white ", as if that were some kind of crime .
Incidentally the Romans , Vikings ,Normans etc, were not immigrants . They were invaders and conquerors .
With the fusion of Normans with Saxons over the years following the conquest we became one .
English .
This includes the development of our language .
Stephen
April 2nd, 2009 8:26pmSuffolkbor: The historical and archeological evidence suggests that the pattern of migration by Vikings, northmen, Angles, Jutes, Danes, Saxons, Scots into land held by a variety of Celtic, Gaulish, Scotish, Pictish etc is much more complex than we once believed. There is evidence of invasion, war, trading, seasonal settlement and permanent settlement. There is evidence that many people did not migrate west as others moved in from the east - DNA evidence from Cheddar Gorge Man being particularly compelling. And of course, everyone is descended from Africans. It's where all humans began. It's only a matter of time.
Original Tony: Your desire to keep people (literally) in their place not only makes no sense on genetic grounds it is also a very strong argument against people from the UK migrating to other parts of the world. Do you wish to argue that the British Empire was a mistake because we should have stayed at home? Should the British be encouraged not to emigrate to say, Southern Spain, because the 'direction and beliefs of the indigenous Spanish' will be diluted?
stanley Jerusalem
April 2nd, 2009 8:40pmCarl
April 2nd, 2009 5:02pm
"Original Tony - if someone like you does not like this country, then I view that as a positive as I would truly hate to be identified with your bizarre and unpleasant views."
Strange bedfellows indeed.
Carl
April 2nd, 2009 9:45pmStanley, a racist is a racist. Such people as OT have nothing positive to offer.
Original Tony
April 3rd, 2009 9:18amCarl..me a racist? What about all your hatred directed towards Jews, for no apparent reason other than that they are Jews; a different race. What does that make you?
I do not despise other races, I just want non indigenous races to respect and integrate the culture of the indigenous.What is wrong with that? If Muslims entering Britain had this attitude we wouldn't be growing our own terrorists.
It's strange that when a person stands up for his own (particularly white) skin he is branded a racist. But if a black person does this he is applauded and given Black History day or whatever. I am intrigued by the fact that my suspicions are right; a white man can simply not defend what he stands for. If I was black not one of you would have responded to my "racism".
Indigo121
April 3rd, 2009 9:48amEverybody sing with me:
-
'Sharia's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming;
-
Sharia's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming;
-
la la la la...'
stanley Jerusalem
April 3rd, 2009 10:07amOriginal Tony
April 3rd, 2009 9:18am On this blog everyone is assumed to be black, and white and yellow and brown and above such things as race or colour. Get your racial definitions right. As I said of Carl; strange bedfellows.
Carl
April 3rd, 2009 10:30amOT - you are attempting to weasel now, you don't even have the courage to stand by your original post made on 2nd April.
And no, as much as you would like to imagine it, I don't hate Jews.
Original Tony
April 3rd, 2009 11:36amStanley J....how have I got my racial definitions wrong? The statement about Jews being a different race perhaps? As far as I know they are. And good for them for wanting the Jewish blood-line to remain Jewish.
Original Tony
April 3rd, 2009 11:38amCarl...I am not being a weasel at all. All posts of mine subsequent to the one on April 2nd, ARE in defence of that post!
stanley Jerusalem
April 3rd, 2009 1:43pmOriginal Tony
April 3rd, 2009 11:36am
Stanley J....how have I got my racial definitions wrong?-
There are converts who were Chief Rabbis and Jews who are/were Cardinals [except the first few popes who were all Jews, of course. A truly sincere convert is an extremely welcome individual among Jews the world over. We are not concerned about blood, only that it need not be spilled.It took a Goy [non-Jew like C.P. Snow to utter 'Levis make the best jeans']Jews would never say such a thing[even were we to agree with it!]
Fabio P.Barbieri
April 3rd, 2009 7:41pmOriginal Tony, you sorry, ignorant dolt: look at a light-skinned, brown-haired Ashkenazi Jew; then look at a light-skinned, dark-haired Bene Romi from central Italy; then look at a tanned, curly-haired Sephardi from (originally) Iraq; then look at a negro Falasha Jew from Ethiopia; then at a brown-skinned, smooth-haired Cochin Jew from southern India; and explain, if you can, how these are all from one race. You desperate moron, they are one race - the human race. If you don't like it, you are welcome to opt out of it.
Suffolkbor
April 4th, 2009 8:47pmWhere has everyone gone ?
Are they handing out twenty pound notes somewhere and I have missed out ?
As Chris De Burgh once sang in a song called "Fatal Hesitation",
"The cafes are all deserted , the streets are wet again ,
there,s nothing quite like an out of season holiday town in the rain,
when the tourists go and the cold wind blows and my girl is on a plane ,home."
It is even bleaker when a thread on Melanies blog dries up .
I am alone , there is no intelligent life here. Help!
I am sending out an sos , a messsage in a bottle ." Dot dot dah dah "!
Suffolkbor
April 6th, 2009 9:17pmMy message was unanswered ,my sos unheeded .
I am the Robinson Crusoe of the blogosphere .
Cyberspace is a cold and empty place with no one to occupy it .
Will I find my Friday like Robison Crusoe did ?
Will I be rescued by a passing thought?