timeimmortal

Predictably, for indeed this sort of thing always seems to happen when terrorists are interrupted in their plans, the Muslim community in Britain has been angered by the latest terror cell bust-up, and the interruption of the plot to behead a British soldier who happens to be Muslim. Equally predictably, this anger is not focused on the nine suspected terrorists for sullying the reputation of their religion by plotting to commit murder and distribute the gruesome footage of it afterwards. No, this anger is focused on the police and the British government for “unjustly persecuting” the Muslim community.

One wonders if these people have any sense of reality left in them?

Religious leaders are calling for calm among Birmingham’s Muslims as police investigate an alleged kidnapping plot.

I suppose that’s an improvement of sorts — if nothing else, it is at least better than, say, rallying the people into loud protests with signs that read “Behead those who insult Islam!”. But as positive a result as this message at least intends to achieve, it’s bound to be lost in the din of people crying “persecution”…many of whom are likely the same people vainly urging calm and patience in the mosques.

Chairman Dr Mohammed Naseem said Muslims felt “persecuted unjustly” by the government for political ends but urged them to control their anger.He said some in the community resented the way the raids were carried out and opposed laws allowing terror suspects to be held for up to 28 days without charge.

One would at least hope that people in the community would be more concerned about the fact that the police were able to break up another plot to commit atrocities in the name of the supposedly merciful Allah. One would hope that people in the community would be more concerned about the fact that they had more or less missed the presence of such murderers right under their own noses, in the same blocks of houses and the same congregations at mosques (we can assume). One would think that people in the community would expend their collective vocal energies on denouncing such folks as these nine arrested men, and on denouncing the terrorist ideology and agenda.

But instead, it would seem that the more important protestations that need to be made concern the way that these kaffir policemen entered the homes and shops of the suspects and arrested them. Those nefarious police! They probably didn’t take their shoes off when they entered the homes, and you just know that they didn’t wear gloves when they grabbed hold of the suspects! The might even have exhaled in the houses, and some of the polluted vapour of their breath doubtless sullied the pages of a Koran.

I exaggerate, of course, but only to a point; the hysteria feigned above is not particularly excessive in comparison to some of what we’ve seen before from the British Muslim community.

Speaking outside the mosque, he said the arrests were an example of the government justifying its political agenda.

Er…no? It seems more reasonable to assert that the arrests were an example of the government attempting to prevent the commission of atrocities and acts of terror on its soil, and against its citizens and those who elect to serve queen and country in the armed forces. The only agenda at work here is what should hopefully be an interest shared in common between the government and the people who live in the nation it governs: the removal of murderous barbarians from civil society, and their eventual incarceration or deportation after due process of law has been observed.

“They have invented this perception of a threat,” he said. “To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on.”There is dismay and people feel they are being persecuted unjustly.”

The worrisome part is, he’s serious.

There has always been this sort of disconnect in Muslim thinking, though, a peculiar sort of double-think that leads apparently sane people to, for example, believe that the Israeli Mossad planned and executed the 9/11 attacks, and yet also believe that the 9/11 attacks were a “great victory for Islam” (despite, remember, being supposedly perpetrated by Jews).

The above statement is a little different, but it speaks to the same impairment in reasoning. Muslims have committed terrorist acts in Britain before, and continue to do so. It is certainly possible that the government is cleverly orchestrating these incidents, inasmuch as anything is possible (and it is in this spirit that I charitably disclaim as I have in this sentence). But inasmuch as anything is possible, it is equally possible that there are people within the Muslim community — encouraged by, shall we say, rather violent incitements to holy war contained in the Koran, and goaded into action by preaching from radical imams, in mosques funded by the Saudis — who are actually planning, attempting, and (every now and again) succeeding in carrying out acts of terror. I trust the reader, in the aforementioned spirit of charity, can grant this point.

Taken on face value, and subjected to whatever form of rational reductionism one prefers, the simpler (and thus, in a general sense, much more likely) truth is that individuals occasionally plan and perpetrate acts of terror (as opposed to being government fall-guys). And instead of getting angry that the police have the temerity to arrest such people, the Muslim community in Britain would do well to drop the “we’re being persecuted!” act and instead condemn the would-be murderers in their midst, and condemn as well those who might incite such feelings in the community (the imams, teachers, and leaders who teach and preach hatred and violence, of which there are more than a few if recent videos are any evidence).

It’s not persecution to arrest the murderer in the midst of the community. And it’s a stern indictment of the community’s morals, principles, and intentions if they complain too loudly about the police and say nothing in turn about their opposition to the murderer’s goals. An exterior observer to such a spectacle might begin to suspect that, to some degree, the community largely agrees with the murderer’s stated goals.

How far from the truth would such speculations be in this case, O Reader?

~ by Kenneth on February 2, 2007.