Fellow traveller comments on Islam

You may have had this experience.  You open a newspaper, and the news pages are full of reports of crime, poverty, and failure.  You feel frustrated, but then you turn to the comments page.  You read the comment, and the columnist is inveighing against the crime, poverty, and failure that are blighting life in Britain today.  Suddenly you cheer up, because someone feels the same way as you.  As you finish reading the newspaper, you reflect that the world is not such a bad place after all.

The problem is of course that nothing has changed.  The fact that a newspaper columnist is saying something akin to what you are thinking does not in itself make the world a better place.

A recent comment in The Daily Express serves to remind me why I will never buy a national newspaper.  The comment by Leo McKinstry is about Islam, and I will quote some of his observations below along with my own response.

McKinstry starts by reflecting on the fact that hundreds of Muslims from this country are now fighting in Iraq, and the possible danger these men pose to people in this country if and when they return here.

He argues that there is nothing incomprehensible about the actions of the British jihadists. They are just doing the same as Muslim extremists all over the world, following a vile political ideology.

I dislike the word extremist, which is of course meaningless.  What he calls an extremist or a jihadist is what I call a Muslim.  I agree that Islam is a political ideology rather than a religion.  It was invented at the end of the seventh century to hold an empire together.

The British state, especially under Tony Blair, pretended that militant Islam could be contained at home by fighting it abroad but that was a complete fallacy.

Militant Islam is Islam.  Is there such a thing as non-militant Islam?  Is there a non-belligerent Koran?  I agree that Tony Blair was wrong about fighting Islam abroad, but is David Cameron any less wrong?

Commenting about open door immigration, McKinstry remarks that one in 10 British children under the age of four is Muslim, and I'll take his word for it that ten percent of young children in Britain are Muslims.

The pro-immigration brigade tells us that this is no problem, since the "vast majority" of Muslims are moderate. But that is more self-deceit at odds with the evidence. One independent survey showed that 40 per cent of Muslims here want to live under Sharia law; another revealed that 32 per cent of Muslim students at university felt killing in the name of religion is justified.

And yet The Daily Express has never urged its readers to take a stand on this issue, and neither does it do so now.  McKinstry urges the government to take a tough line with Muslims from this country who go to fight in Iraq, but presumably does so in the expectation that the government will ignore him.

He concludes that we would not be in this mess if our rulers had decided to protect our society instead of feebly colluding with our enemies.

We are in this mess because the British people insist on voting in elections for political parties which support open door immigration.

I could suggest realistic solutions to the problems that Britain faces, and readers who look back over previous posts in this blog may well come across some of my previous recommendations.

The trouble is though that there is no point in making suggestions to people who think it acceptable to vote in elections for the Labour Party or the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats.  If you were to tell David Cameron about my blog, he would probably say something entirely negative about it.

The deal is this.   Mainstream politicians create problems.  People shouting from the sidelines suggest solutions to those problems, and the mainstream politicians then demonise anyone who dares to suggest a solution which actually makes sense.

I will not believe that Leo McKinstry is anything other than a fellow traveller, unless he will state unequivocally that the problems he identifies will not be solved unless people stop voting for either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats.

Related previous posts include:
The Daily Express must try harder
Our fellow travelling national press
Your Muslim faith - really?