At a family Christmas get together the other day, our conversation inevitably strayed towards the latest Islamic terrorist plot; a young man’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight. One suggested- half in jest it must be said- that we should launch a Muslim-free airline, and that it would be the most popular and successful airline around. Now of course in real terms this is a ludicrous and highly immoral idea, but it nevertheless represents the palpable fear and concern that dominates many people’s minds in this country when they think of Islam. Like so much else, these views and fears of the people are not represented by their leaders nor reflected in the mainstream media. In particular on this subject, the reluctance to admit what we actually think about Islam in public is due to a fear of upsetting the sensitivities of Muslims which has led to special treatment of this religion.
It is this special treatment of Islam that I find so distasteful, cowardly and more importantly, counter-productive to defeating Islamic terrorism. We need to face up to Islam and ask the questions that those in the public arena are too scared to ask. We keep hearing in the columns of papers that Islam is a peace loving religion where the vast majority of Muslims are moderate believers and are against the use of violence. The more that terrorist attacks- attempted and successful- occur, the more this is becoming increasingly harder to swallow. Indeed, certain surveys that have been conducted show that an increasing proportion of Islamic people in Britain have sympathy with the use of violence in the name of their religion. We need to ask the difficult question: is there something in particular about Islam which lends itself to motivating young people to want to kill themselves and murder hundreds of innocent people? Any analysis that separates the religious ideology from the terrorism is not only gutless, but ultimately useless in attempting to defend against future atrocities.
Some of these questions and discussions will not be comfortable or easy to initiate, but that is no reason to avoid doing what is right. One of the most disgraceful representations of our spinelessness for fear of Islamic sensitivities was our response to the Muslim protests through London in 2006, following the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. A protest is one thing, but when the protesters held placards and chanted “7/7 again”, openly inciting people to murder innocents, what was our response? A police escort! The most common argument played out in defence of this action is that to arrest all of the protesters on the spot (which is what should have happened) may have caused a riot. If there were to be a riot, then so be it, but this is what I mean when I say we must face up to the problem. It might not be pleasant, but we have to meet it head on.
Please do not interpret this as a call to arms. The very premise of Al Qaeda is to start a fight with the western world so that all Islamic people rise up and instigate a Jihad (they have already gone a long way to achieving this since 9/11). We must not play into their hands and pick a fight for the sake of it. We must maintain a difficult balance of facing up to the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism without putting our principles and beliefs in jeopardy. Such a response would clearly rule out the creation of a Muslim-free airline, but perhaps people in private would not say such things if they felt their fears and concerns were being reflected upon in the public arena. If we do not respond appropriately we shall never get to the root of the problem, and we can expect not to be so lucky next time.
