We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Let us listen to what Dr. Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain is saying:
Senior Muslims have warned the Government that it needed to revise British foreign policy if it wants to put an end to the violence. Dr Azzam Tamimi, from the Muslim Association of Britain, said the country was in real danger and that this would continue so long as British forces remained in Iraq. He described the July 7 bombings and the attempted attacks in London on Thursday as “horrifying” but said it was not enough to simply unite in condemnation of the bombers.
People reading this blog may or may not share my enthusiasm for the war in Iraq, but even if you were an ‘anti’, make no mistake, what these ‘senior Muslims’ are demanding is nothing less that capitulation to terrorism. Dr. Tamimi is quite unequivocal: change your foreign policy or these people will continue to blow you up.
And when Massoud Shadjareh, chairman the Islamic Human Rights Commission, says:
we know this wasn’t a one-off, we need to look at ways of addressing the underlying factors that created it. I feel it’s urgent to start addressing these before there is further loss of life.
He had better think deeply before making such statements again or an increasing number of British people may start concluding that the ‘underlying factor’ that needs the most urgent action is the existence of his community in Britain. I look forward to the large body of ‘moderate’ Muslim leaders that is allegedly out there to unequivocally damn Al Qaeda and all their works (and that means not a single use of the word ‘but…’). It is becoming increasingly urgent that this occurs soon and over a sustained period.
Until that happens, I suspect the majority of British people who do not live in Islington will see people like Azzam Tamimi and Massoud Shadjareh as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
British police shot dead a man strongly suspected to have been one of yesterday’s would-be suicide bombers as he tried to board a train full of people at Stockwell Tube station.
It has also been reported that British Muslims are worried there is a ‘shoot to kill’ policy in force. However contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, anytime a policeman shoots someone, they are prepared to kill them (the usual policy is to shoot at the ‘centre of mass’). Technically they are ‘shooting to incapacitate’ and that often means killing the target. If a person who has been shot and incapacitated subsequently survives, that is a bonus.
However in the case of a suspected suicide bomber, once the decision to shoot has been made, taking the extra step of a bullet through the brain of a fallen suspect who under other circumstances would not be shot again may well be justified, given that the ability to so much as touch a button makes them a continued threat. This is particularly true if they have gone down near a number of civilians as was indeed the case this morning.
I am only surprised it has taken Al Qaeda this long to get around to attacking us here in London, given that they thought nothing of slaughtering hundreds of African civilians in Kenya and Tanzania and dozens of Australian civilians in Bali over the last few years since 9/11. We are in a war against an implacable enemy and although we have every right to demand our security services only use appropriate force in our defence, unless the facts turn out to be quite different than so far reported, this looks like it was a ‘clean shoot’.
A commenter in an earlier article here responded to someone arguing that Muslim immigrants should never have been treated as ‘immigrants’ in Britain but as ‘guest workers’ the way the Germany treat Turks in their country, making them much easier to deport when the powers-that-be decide it is time for them to go. His reply was:
…but removal of those guest workers is one hell of a job isn’t it?
Quite so. Moreover it seems obvious to me that a significant number of Muslims in Britain have successfully integrated into British society just fine and I see no reason to pretend otherwise. Yet clearly we do have a major problem with an equally significant number of Muslims who have not assimilated, show no sign of doing so and are manifestly a source of recruits for Al Qaeda.
Endlessly blathering on about how “Islam is a religion of peace” or alternatively to call for expelling ‘Muslims’, simply because they are Muslims, is the sort of wilful blindness and one size fits all collectivism of a sort I would rather leave to socialists of both left and right. Anyone who values western liberal civilisation needs to think a little harder than that, avoiding both atavistic collectivism and a head-in-the-sand refusal to see we have a serious problem that will not go away on its own.
If what we are trying to defend is a pluralistic tolerant society, then we have to make sure that the message is not just “throw the wogs out!” but rather “You are welcome here if you are willing to assimilate to a sufficient degree.”
But how does one define what that ‘degree’ is exactly? I am not talking a Norman Tebbit style “cricket test” but rather a willingness to tolerate ‘otherness’. We do not need Muslims to approve of alcohol or women in short skirts or figurative art or bells or pork or pornography or homosexuality or (particularly) apostasy. We have no right to demand that at all and obviously not all Anglicans approve of some of those things, so why require that Muslims must? No, what we do have the right to demand (and that is not too strong a word) is that they tolerate those things, which is to say they will not countenance the use of force to oppose those things even though they disapprove of them. In fact it is not just Muslims from whom we must demand such tolerance.
If we can get them to agree to tolerate those things, then it does not matter if Muslim women wear burquas because as long as they are not subject to force, a woman may elect to say “Sod this for a game of soldiers!” and cast off that symbol of misogynistic repression… and if she does not do so, well that is her choice then… but she must have a choice. They do not have to look like us (I do not hear calls for Chinatown to be razed to the ground), they do not have to share our religion(s), or lack thereof, but they do have to tolerate our varied ways and if by their actions or words they show they do not, we have every right to regard them as our enemies and take action to defend ourselves.
For decades the supporters of multiculturalism have used tax money and government regulations to actively discourage assimilation of immigrants into the broader society, preferring to see communities develop which favour ‘identity politics’ better suited and more amenable to their own collectivist world views. And now we are paying the price for that. We will not be able to defend ourselves physically or preserve our liberal society unless we stop tolerating intolerance, and that includes not just fundamentalist Islam but also the anti-western bigotry of the multiculturalists.
We maintain that the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ is not only inevitable but imperative.
– Hizb Ut Tahrir (as quoted by the Daily Ablution)
And there we have it: something that a radical Islamic group has said that I totally agree with.
…I am shocked, shocked! No, not really.
Kudos to Scott Burgess for breaking the story that the Guardian has hired Dilpazier Aslam, a supporter of a global Islamic Caliphate, to write for them, regardless of his association with Khilafah.com and Hizb Ut Tahrir. Presumably whoever hired him at the Guardian knew all about his views as all it takes is typing “Dilpazier Aslam” into Google and then pressing Search to discover what he writes.
It is really no different than if the Telegraph has hired a white English neo-fascist supporter as a ‘trainee journalist’ and invited that person to report on a riot in which Jews were attacked, even though the internet was full of articles by that person calling for violence against people based purely upon their ethnicity (say, Jews, for example). But then of course we all know that when the Guardian hires someone who has called for exactly that, well, it is just that they are being ‘inclusive’.
The silence on this issue from the Guardian itself has the making of a rather good story in and of itself. You would have thought a newspaper which was as aware of new media and blogging would realise that they do not get to pick and choose which stories are newsworthy anymore, particularly when they are the story. Even that fount of MSM idiotarianism The Independent has run with this one.
And this story could just run and run. Pass it on.
The Mirror may not be the most august of newspapers but if half of what they are saying is true, this could be very interesting indeed and puts the whole psychological makeup of the ‘suicide’ bombers in question. Maybe it was not suicide at all!
The evidence is compelling: The terrorists bought return rail tickets, and pay and display car park tickets, before boarding _ a train at Luton for London. None of the men was heard to cry “Allah Akhbar!” – “God is great” – usually screamed by suicide bombers as they detonate their bomb.
Their devices were in large rucksacks which could be easily dumped instead of being strapped to their bodies. They carried wallets containing their driving licences, bank cards and other personal items. Suicide bombers normally strip themselves of identifying material.
So perhaps it was all done with timers and those little terrorist shits were told a porky about exactly when they were going to blow up. If this is true then the more widely this is known, the less likely it will be that non-suicidal Muslim terrorist supporters might not be quite so willing to act as couriers or bomb planters for ‘the cause’. Maybe the whole deranged ‘Shaheed’ thing has rather less resonance with the UK Islamic fringe than we thought. If the facts are correct, it is a pretty compelling interpretation.
Whilst watching the BBC news’ report about the horrific terrorist attacks against Shi’ite civilians in Iraq, I was astonished to hear the following uttered:
Ominously, there are increasing calls for locals to take up arms and defend their communities.
Excuse me? These poor people have just had the centre of their community blown out and many people killed but the desire to defend themselves is denounced by the BBC as… ominous? It might tell you something about what is happening in Iraq but it also tells you quite a lot about the mindset at the BBC.
It seems to me that locals taking up arms to defend themselves against terrorism directly are exactly what the USA should be encouraging whole heartedly. The fact is that people will start doing so regardless of the wishes of the USA if the security situation continues to deteriorate, so not only would it be pointless to try and stop them, why not make a virtue of necessity and show that the occupying powers welcome Iraqis becoming more self-reliant and willing to confront these murdering bastards themselves?
Iraqi territorial para-militaries could be quite an asset fighting the insurgency precisely because they are not going to be centrally directed, at least to some extent. Counter-insurgency by its nature relies on more than just firepower, which the US has in abundance. It also relies on local knowledge and a willingness to be ruthless, something pissed-off locals could certainly provide. The idea that Al Qaeda can only be fought in Iraq ‘top down’ (i.e. directed from Washington using US and Iraqi government forces) is probably a mistake, so arming the people who are taking the brunt of the attacks seems a pretty sensible way to go.
Watching the news is starting to give me a strange throbbing headache. Most people in Britain realise that just because our enemies are Muslims, that does not mean all (or even most) Muslims are our enemies. Other than in a few shitholes like Oldham, most British folks really do value, or at least accept, the pluralistic tolerant society that largely prevails in these ‘Sceptred Isles’.
Ok? Did you get that Messers Blair, Howard, Kennedy, etc. etc? Most of us understand that and those who think otherwise are not going to listen to you anyway. You will note that synagogues getting vandalized in France are such a regular occurrence that it is hardly even news anymore, whereas a stone through a mosque window in the UK makes the papers. Does that tell you something?
So next time there is some hideous atrocity, be it here in the UK, in the USA, in Iraq, in Israel or anywhere else in the world that Al Qaeda or Hamas have infested, can you kindly resist the urge to say “But Islam is a religion of peace…”. We heard you before and we have not reacted to previous incidents by torching mosques from London to Lanarkshire. Please. PLEASE…just.shut.the.fuck.up.
Thank you.
Now that we know what everyone except Tony Blair suspected (that the suicide bombers were probably British born or at least legal residents), perhaps it is worth noting that had mandatory ID cards been in force, they would have been perfectly entitled to avail themselves of one each.
Yes, I can see how this will help stamp out terrorism. Right? Right?
Here is a project I certainly welcome called We are not afraid. The message is simple, worth repeating and lets you do strange things with a camera.
USAF personnel in the UK have been told to stay out of London because of the bombings. Sorry but this is not just a propaganda gift to the enemy, it is just plain daft.
Firstly, the US was not the target of these bombs, Londoners were. Secondly, London is always full of American visitors and US military folk do not really stand out from the crowd all that much. In fact Americans are probably more likely to form identifiable ‘target clusters’ in the rural communities around the US bases in the UK.
It was a terrible atrocity but we have seen it all before in London at the hands of the IRA, so please, telling US service personnel to avoid London is foolish and plays to the often held stereotype of Americans as easily scared by such incidents. Methinks USAF people are made of sterner stuff and more than capable of assessing the risks for themselves.
Next time London mayor Ken Livingston professes to speak for London’s outrage at the 7/7 attack, perhaps his long standing support for Islamic extremists (not to mention Irish terrorists) needs to be thrown back at him. Moreover those who continue to support him must not be allowed to avoid these issues either and if the Labour party wants Red Ken ‘back in the fold’, they must be made to pay a suitable political price.
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