Islamism is the biggest threat we face, yet our leaders do nothing
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What will it take to convince our political leaders that Islamism represents the greatest direct threat facing our democracy?
And lest anxious readers misread that first sentence and perceive, wrongly, that I refer to the whole of Islam, let me offer a clarification: Islamism is not Islam but a vile iteration of it, a malignant mutation that aims, by political and often violent means, to create a worldwide caliphate whose citizens, whether Muslim or not, would be subject to the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.
And with such tiresome, though unavoidable, housekeeping out of the way, let’s return to my original question: why haven’t our MPs recognised the rise of Islamism in this country as the threat it so clearly poses?
Mike Freer’s decision to stand down at the next general election out of fear for his and his family’s personal safety is merely the latest example of the ugly consequences of not dealing with this appalling philosophy. The constituency office of the Finchley and Golders Green MP was recently the target of a suspected arsonist attack and Freer has been threatened by Islamists.
Who can blame him for walking away when parliament has shown time and time again that it will not take Islamism seriously?
If the murder of more than 50 people in the terrorist attacks on the London transport network in July 2005 were not enough, if the near fatal knife attack by an Islamist on Labour MP Stephen Timms in 2010 left his parliamentary colleagues unconcerned, if even the appalling murder of Conservative MP David Amess in his constituency surgery in 2021 by an Islamist could not motivate MPs to take the threat seriously, must we conclude that idle and dangerous complacency is the settled will of parliament?
In May 2017 a bomber targeted teenage girls leaving an Ariana Grande concert. Two months earlier an Islamist murdered a police officer and three civilians outside the Commons. Two years later an Islamist carried out a frenzied knife attack on citizens at London Bridge, killing two and injuring three others.
And yet the chances are that if you asked most MPs what the greatest existential threat to the country is today, they would answer, “The climate emergency”.
Things seem to have have gotten worse on our streets in recent months as Islamist protesters, supported by a range of useful idiots from the broad Left, have loudly proclaimed their support for Hamas, which is itself an Islamist terrorist outfit in the mould of Isis and Al-Qaeda. When an MP chooses to take advantage of one such event to publicly quote an apologist for terrorist atrocities and can do so without fear of admonition from her party, it’s clear which side of this particular conflict is gaining the upper hand.
It is not enough to condemn such complacency towards Islamism. We need to understand why MPs have proved so reluctant to challenge it and call it out for what it is. Concern about community relations is, of course, right up there, especially among Labour representatives. But I fear that too often, “concern” is as much about electoral prospects as about multiculturalism.
Two things have to be made clear at this point: it is insulting to the vast majority of Muslims to imagine that robust arguments in favour of combatting Islamism would be anathema to them; rather, the more distinctly mainstream Muslims are separated from their militant, anti-democratic co-religionists, the better it would be for that community and for its relations with its non-Muslim fellow citizens.
But the other, more important, point is that even if this were not the case, the aim of removing the stain of Islamist terror from our country, and indeed, the world, is too important for any adverse electoral consequences to be considered. If there are any Muslims who might take offence at a recognition by our political establishment of the threat Islamism poses, they are entirely free to switch their votes accordingly.
And the first, most important step along that path must begin with political support for institutions besieged by Islamist orthodoxy. The issue of the Batley Grammar School teacher forced to go into hiding because of the threat of violence from those who objected to his decision to show cartoons of Mohammed to his pupils remains unresolved because there is no political pressure for such a resolution. MPs of all parties are happy for the topic to disappear from view, for it not to be mentioned in polite company.
Yet it represents a fundamental challenge to our culture as well as to our politicians. Do they believe in that teacher’s right to safety or not? How disgraceful it is for any civilised nation to tolerate this kind of bullying, for anyone to suffer such an upheaval because of the religious and bigoted intolerance of a minority.
If even these low-level examples of British authorities’ surrender to religious intolerance cannot provoke an appropriate response from our politicians, perhaps we should not be surprised by the deafening silence that has accompanied Freer’s decision to stand down. And unless something changes, unless MPs wake up and recognise this clear and present danger to us all, things can only get much, much worse.
