In the New York Post, yesterday, Amir Taheri raises a question [1] I raised the other day [2], and takes it farther:
THE car-bomb/suicide-terror operations in London and Glasgow should have provided a fresh opportunity for reminding everyone, especially Muslims in Britain, that terrorism in the name of Islam still poses a major threat to public peace and safety. Yet this is not what is happening.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown keeps repeating that the attacks have nothing to do with Islam – but, at the same time, keeps inviting “Muslim community leaders” to Downing Street to discuss how to prevent attacks. If the attacks have nothing to do with Islam, why invite Muslim “leaders” rather than Buddhist monks?
Brown hasn’t deemed fit to tell it like it is: that Muslims in Britain, indeed all over the world, must come out and condemn terrorism in unambiguous terms.
Instead, we are hearing that the attacks may have been prompted by “Muslim bitterness” about Salman Rushdie’s knighting, the latest addition to the Islamist litany of woes. Some “moderate community leaders,” like a certain Baroness Uddin, drop hints that Muslims have “foreign-policy issues” that might make them unhappy. The barely coded message: Unless Britain reshapes its foreign policy to please al Qaeda, it must expect to be attacked.
Well, the question that I would raise then: If we are unable to come out and address and condemn terrorism in the name of Islam in the most unambiguous of terms, how in the world can we expect Muslims to do the same? That is exactly why I consider Brown’s comments counterproductive to the goal of peace.
If you want a look at the logical conclusion to the “yes, but” logic being applied to blaming Western peoples for Muslim atrocities, one need look no further than a couple of paragraphs down in the same article:
Worse still, Ken Livingstone, London’s quixotic leftist mayor, has shifted the blame from the terrorists to the British at large, who are supposedly tempted by “Islamophobia.”
Thus, Livingstone works his way into a logical impasse: Do we dislike them because they want to kill us, or do they want to kill us because we dislike them? He implies that the main blame must lie with the British government and its U.S. allies, especially President Bush, who has declared war on terror rather than seeking to cuddle it.
But can one accuse Britain of “Islamophobia”? The answer is an emphatic no.
Britain and a few other Western democracies are the only places on earth where Muslims of all persuasions can practice their faith in full freedom. A thick directory of Muslim institutions in Britain lists more than 300 different sects – most of them banned and persecuted in every Muslim country on earth.
Idiots like Livingstone will always exist, alas. In the most recent post on this site, I cited and discussed complaints regards civil rights being curtailed [3]here in the west in the name of national security. But what right is more precious than that of the right to the truth? That right is being sacrificed on the altar of not offending Muslims. In our efforts to be so accommodating, we have given up the truth, and have also opened ourselves up to further attack; the very attacks we are trying to curtail by butt kissing. The absence of truth, is the biggest weapon radical Muslims could have in their effort to establish tyranny.
Looked at from the opposite side, the biggest weapon against tyranny is the truth. And, yes, the truth can sometimes be offensive to some. Most of all, the truth is offensive to those whose undesirable activities are exposed by it. In the end, the truth is of larger value than anyone’s sensibilities.
Addendum: Bit
To the issue of the west supposedly blaming the wrong group; and to the nonsensical idea that a large Burr of various diverse groups are responsible for the attacks on the west I offer a complete description of the seven doctors held in places around the world for their part in the recent bombings in United Kingdom…. you may notice if you look [4] closely that they are undiverse , to the point of monotony.