Somehow there is an assumption that local government, police, university authorities, and others will learn by osmosis about “The Ideology”.
The palpable fear and reluctance in naming “The Ideology” speaks volumes about the malaise of the modern west. Worse, the patronising attitude that somehow naming Islamism will result in loss of Muslim support is based on the premise that “the Muslim community” is what the game-players of sectarian politics define it to be.
Brits of all backgrounds deserve higher standards and greater transparency from the government. We are not stupid. We can distinguish between Islam the religion, and Islamism the political ideology
Ed Hussain, The Guardian
Ed Hussain, author of The Islamist – well worth the effort of reading – writes in yesterday’s Guardian about the seeming reluctance of the authorities to acknowledge Islamism as an underlying cause of terrorrism.
This is strikingly similar to the observation made last week in The Blogger’s ‘Muslim Balls’ post about this new council leaflet – ‘5 Myths about Islam’.
This leaflet, you may recall, claims “There is no such thing as ‘Islamic terrorism'” without bothering to mention anything about the very real issue of Islamist terrorism.
Hussain puts this denial down to the pernicious influence of the Saudis’ petro-dollar diplomacy toward the west and what he calls the “separatist, Muslim representation game” tolerated by large swathes of the liberal/left in this country.
You can see the latter effect in Bristol quite clearly. Much of the public realm seems to have been forced into uncritical silence through the aggressive pursuit of a punitive and politicised equalities and diversity regime – working under the name of multiculturalism – that claims to represent the interests of a wider Muslim community.
Operated and policed by a loud and influential minority with considerable political support, the result is the kind of patronising, self-serving, unrealistic tosh characterised by ‘5 Myths about Islam’.
It seems to me that with the council leaflet ‘5 Myths about Islam’ that the people in charge of Bristol haven’t read the newspapers, haven’t watch the news in the last 7 years and don’t get out much in their own city.
Any law abiding, normal person would treat other people the way they want to be treated, regardless of skin colour, religion, wealth etc. Why I need some local government body to tell me in a patronising way how I should think is quite amazing, surely they should be more concerned with the state of Bristol Secondary schools, or transport, or the massive equality that appears to be happening in this city.