U.K.: FAILURE TO CONFRONT RADICAL ISLAM

Our failure to confront radical Islam is there for all to see
By Denis MacShane

At long last, the debate on Islamism as politics, not Islam as religion, is out in the open. Two weeks ago, Jack Straw might have felt he was taking a risk when publishing his now notorious article on the Muslim veil. However, he was pushing at an open door. From across the political spectrum there is now common consent that the old multicultural emperor, before whom generation of politicians have made obeisance, is now a pitiful, naked sight.

The 10,000 Muslims in my constituency of Rotherham can only benefit from removing the dead hand of ideological Islamism – allowing their faith to be respected and their children to flourish in a Britain that finally wakes up to what must be done. Despite the efforts of extremists to prevent any sort of rational debate about the place of Islam in Britain, it is at last happening.

A fight-back is beginning to reclaim Britain from the grip of those who refuse to acknowledge the centrality of British values of tolerance, fair play and parliamentary democratic freedoms – notably those of free speech and respect for all religions, but supremacy for none. Voltaire noted this attribute of the English three centuries ago, when he wrote: "If there was just one religion in Britain there would be despotism. If two, there would be civil war. But as there are 30, they all live at peace with each other." It is worth returning to Voltaire on this issue. The struggle is not between religion and secularism, nor between the West and Islam, and still less between Bush-Blair and the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents. It is the ideologisation – an ugly word for an ugly thing – of religion that needs confronting. Return to Voltaire who noted, "Neither Montaigne, Locke, Boyle, Spinoza, Hobbes, or Lord Shaftesbury lighted up the firebrand of discord in their countries; this has generally been the work of divines, who, being at first puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a sect, soon grew very desirous of being at the head of a party."

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Pertinent Links:

1) Our failure to confront radical Islam is there for all to see