Dogs in street vindicated – Muslim Brotherhood not our friends

In a stunning acknowledgment of what everyone else has known for a long time, the government has declared that “aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security”.

That is the final paragraph of the long awaited Government Report into the Muslim Brotherhood, in fact only that part of the report which the government thinks you need to see. It has been issued along with David Cameron’s Statement.

The report also informs us that:

The MB was set up to bring about the Islamisation of Muslim societies and their eventual political unification in a Caliphate under sharia law.

From its foundation the MB organised itself into a secretive ‘cell’ structure…This clandestine, centralised and hierarchical structure persists to this day.

The key MB ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, promoted the doctrine of takfirism (declaring other Muslims to be infidel or apostate, and existing states unIslamic) and the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society…Jihad was neither solely spiritual nor defensive.

Qutb’s views remain central to the MB’s formational curriculum and have inspired many terrorist organisations, including the assassins of Sadat, Al Qaida and its offshoots.

The MB have preferred non violent incremental change on the grounds of expediency but they are prepared to countenance violence, including terrorism, where gradualism is ineffective.

In the 1990s the MB set up national organisations in the UK to promote their views. None were openly identified with the MB and membership of the MB remained (and still remains) a secret.

MB groups have set up a complex network of charities, some of which have been linked to Hamas (which refers to itself as the Palestinian chapter of the MB} and whose military wing has been proscribed in the UK as a terrorist organisation.

The two most prominent MB offshoots in Britain, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain, have consistently opposed programmes by successive Governments to prevent terrorism.

All this will come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the activities of the MB and their various fronts. What is surprising is that HMG should be so frank, and diverge so markedly from the Obama administration under which the MB, in the guise of CAIR and ISNA, have ready access to the White House. The Obama administration regards the MB as “moderate Islamists” and has responded to the report with the comment that “political repression of non-violent Islamist groups has historically contributed to the radicalization of the minority of their members who would consider violence.”

Why has the government published the report? Some commentators have suggested that the primary reason (and also for the long delay in its publication) lies in the Great Game of Middle Eastern politics with Britain currently aligning itself with Saudi Arabia and the UAE which regard the MB as enemies, and with which Britain has extensive trade links.

On the domestic front, it can be seen as another incremental move towards recognising the danger which various Islamist groups represent, bringing the foremost of them within the reach of the government’s new Counter Extremism Strategy.

As to the content of the report, there is nothing in it that the authors could not have learned from any number of counter jihad authors. Nevertheless, for those who already regard the MB as the very definition of a fifth column the report represents a welcome and important step in the right direction.

At the heart of the report is the MB’s very dubious commitment to democracy. Personally I find the report decidedly understanding on that issue, as though lamenting a tiger’s difficulties in learning to eat with a knife and fork:

“…the Egyptian MB did not do enough to demonstrate political moderation or a commitment to democratic values, had failed to convince Egyptians of their competence or good intentions, and had subsequently struggled to draw lessons for what its failure in Egypt meant for its future.”

Do you know the difference between a Muslim Brother and a Salafi? A Salafi will tell you that he does not believe in democracy. A Brother will tell you that he does, but he actually means shura, the limited consultative process allowed within Islamic law. In fact the MB also venerate the Salaf, the first three generations of Mohammed’s followers. They just think they can operate more effectively in the West without the Middle-Eastern dress and the beards. Their ultimate goal is to bring us all to the theocratic utopia of 7th century Medina just like the more commonly recognised Salafis, only by a different route.

The report quite rightly states that the MB’s aim is eventual political unification of Muslim societies in a Caliphate under sharia law. Only Muslim societies though? Is that what they told the Government in the Londonistan days of the 90’s? It would fit in with what we are told, that HMG allowed them to set up headquarters as long as they did not pursue their agenda within Britain.

In fact, statements by the MB’s founders clearly show that their ambitions always went beyond existing Muslim societies. Their aim was to bring the entire world under Islam, just as with any other self respecting Islamic supremacists:

Hassan Al-Banna, founder of the MB:

“It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet“.

Sayyid Qutb, MB ideologue:

“We understand the true character of Islam, and that it is a universal proclamation of freedom of man from servitude to other men, the establishment of the sovereignty of God and His Lordship throughout the world, … and the implementation of the rule of the Divine shari’ah in human affairs.”

And in case you thought the MB might have mellowed over the years here is an ‘Explanatory Memorandum’ of the North American Brotherhood, as late as 1991, stating that the goal of the Brotherhood movement is to engage in:

“…a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their [own] hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

For a definitive view on the Brotherhood’s core attitudes we really need look no further than their own mission statement:

“Allah is our objective; the Qur’an is our Constitution; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our highest wish”.

Do the experts at the Foreign Office not know all this? One would like to think that they do, and that their previous indulgence of the MB was just part of some Machiavellian strategy of pitting various groups against each other in order to further our geopolitical aims in the Middle East. But this report gives the distinct impression that HMG really have been naïve about the Brotherhood and are only now slowly and painfully waking up to the awful reality.

There are two other reasons to believe this might be the case. One is the clear ignorance of Islamic teachings and attitudes shown by Theresa May and the other is David Cameron’s unfortunate forays into theology.

Theresa May the Home Secretary once said “I never thought I would see the day when members of the Jewish community in the United Kingdom would say they were fearful of remaining here.”

In that case she can never have thought at all about the likely consequences of the presence in Britain of millions of people whose religion teaches hatred for Jews. Perhaps she does not know that the Koran refers to Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs. More particularly, perhaps she does not know about the genocidal Charter of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the MB, which incorporates a famous hadith looking forward to the slaughter of Jews by Muslims before the last day.

On the other hand David Cameron, in declaring who or what is or is not Islamic, has strayed into areas usually considered more appropriate for imams than Prime Ministers.

The report correctly points out that the doctrine of takfir is at the heart of Qutb’s thought and therefore MB ideology. It means declaring Muslims or organisations unIslamic and therefore apostate, after which murder or waging war are justified in the mind of the takfiri.

When David Cameron says that ISIS is “nothing to do with Islam” and “a sick perversion of Islam” not only is he is denying the obvious fact that ISIS is very Islamic indeed but unwittingly he has also come to sound very like a takfiri himself. Likewise when, after the Leytonstone attack, he endorsed a passerby’s comment to the throat cutter “You ain’t no Muslim bruv”.

Cameron is not actually a takfiri of course because he is not a Muslim but he has found declaring ISIS unIslamic useful as part of his justification for waging war on them. He could hardly say we are waging war on ISIS because they are so Islamic but the reality is that we have to recognise ISIS as our enemies precisely because they follow Mohammed’s supremacist agenda so faithfully. But so do the Muslim Brotherhood, just with less blood and more subversion – for the moment.

Who is my enemy?

Well, Allah for a start.

He has made it very clear that he “loveth not the unbeliever”. In fact he has created a purpose built torture chamber called Jahannam where all unbelievers, and a fair few believers, are to be treated very unpleasantly for a very long time, for eternity in fact. It has seven levels and seven gates. The gatekeeper is called Malik. He will show you to your quarters – Christians at the top, hypocrites at the bottom.

The basic routine is fire and lots of it, molten metal, beating with hooked rods of iron, branding of foreheads, flanks and backs, garments of pitch and hanging by the breasts. I’m lucky with that one since I don’t have any but women, who are the majority of the residents, deserve it because of their ingratitude to their husbands.

There are special dietary arrangements in place. Meals consist of “bitter thorns which neither nourish nor release from hunger” and the fruit of the mysterious Zaqqum tree, “a tree that springs out of the bottoms of Hellfire; the shoots of its fruit-stalks are like the heads of devils and which boil in the belly”.

This is to be washed down with “boiling water which tears the bowels” and pus. There is also “water like molten brass” on offer. This, of course, means it has been superheated which seems like a lot of extra trouble to go to just to be nasty.

Let’s just stop a moment and reflect on the enormity of what Muslims actually believe, what they are obliged to believe since this is Allah speaking. Remember how appalled everyone was, even Muslims, when ISIS burned that Jordanian pilot for two minutes? Two minutes….he had it easy! Allah promises to do the same to you and your kids and everyone you ever cared about forever. This is not metaphorical. Allah doesn’t do metaphor.

Can this be the same being who designed the Higgs Boson and put the music into Bach’s brain? I think not, more like the kid who sat behind me in chemistry lessons who liked to put insects in the bottles of sulphuric acid.

And why? Just because I don’t believe in him, apparently. Jeez….talk about insecure!

And yet there are those who try to pass him off as a just and merciful god with benign intentions even toward me, a kaffir. All I can say is “Don’t pour molten brass down my leg and tell me it’s raining”.

Surprisingly, or maybe not, some non-Muslims buy it. They are the practitioners of interfaith dialogue. What can they possibly be thinking when they discuss life, religion and everything with the representatives of the ogre described above?

Is it not remarkable that academics, churchmen, politicians and heirs to the throne are happy to discuss Islam with people who look forward to observing these horrors from their couches in paradise (1)….with guess who on the receiving end?

Personally, if I was having tea with people who thought it just fine that their god intends to fricasee me forever with regular changes of skin just to add a little zest to the proceedings, I’m sure it would quite put me off my cucumber sandwiches.

What about Mohammed?

Well, since Allah is merely the creation of Mohammed, what goes for Allah goes for Mohammed. If I believed otherwise I would have to be a Muslim wouldn’t I?

Even if you think that Allah is more than just Mohammed’s sock puppet, Mohammed clearly had no problem with publicising his boss’s sadistic fantasies so he is equally culpable. In return Mohammed got a little help keeping order in the harem (2), among other perks.

Not only that, but Mohammed said some very spiteful things about unbelievers and gave his followers very clear instructions about how to deal with them…striking necks, cutting off of fingertips, crucifying trouble makers, extorting the jizya etc. I have been searching through the instruction manual and can find no expiry date for them. Nor have the great Muslim scholars down the ages been able to. That means that Mohammed was not only the enemy of any unbeliever in Arabia in 630 AD and of any unbeliever between India and Spain for the following 100 years, but of any unbeliever anywhere, until the Day of Judgment.

And Muslims?

This is where it gets tricky. ISIS and Al-Qaeda are obviously my enemy, but then so are the (currently) less violent but equally supremacist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and their myriad front organisations. Just because a pickpocket does not carry a lead pipe it does not mean that he has my welfare at heart.

Which wing of Islamic supremacism is my greater enemy? I contend that the stealth jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood type are by far the more dangerous. They operate by demographics and sedition, infiltrating our institutions and introducing sharia bit by bit. If you think that laughable, consider the halal food which you eat unknowing and the blasphemy law which is imposed on non-Muslims by the threat of violence…even against a previously unendangered species, cartoonists.

It could even be argued that the ISIS variety of Islamic supremacism is acting in our best interests. While the Muslim Brotherhood approach is to boil the frog slowly so it does not notice until it is too late, the “chop their heads off” dramatics of ISIS may serve to wake us up to the reality of our situation in time for us to take the necessary steps.

It appears that not all Muslims want to bring the world under Islam by violent or underhand methods but how do you tell who is a “moderate” and who is an “extremist”, and whether they are even the correct words to use? Take the case of this recent demonstration in Ireland against ISIS:

“ISIS does not represent Islam”. That’s nice isn’t it, just what we want to hear. But who does represent Islam, the eight people in the picture or the thousands who did not turn up to disavow ISIS? Or perhaps the Muslims who reportedly threatened the organisers.

Looking a bit closer we see firstly that the demonstrators could not resist the old “It’s the fault of Western foreign policy” line. Never any question of it having something to do with Islam, the Koran, Mohammed’s example, the parents, the community or the mosque.

Secondly, notice the usual doctored excerpt from 5:32 on their banner “If anyone kills one person…etc”. No one uses that except with the intention of deceiving (3).

Thirdly, it appears that the loveably moderate imam in the picture is not quite so moderate after all. While condemning one Islamic terrorist outfit, ISIS, he supports another, the genocidal Hamas which has taken the hatred of Jews to be found in Islamic scriptures to a demented level of intensity.

Moderates and extremists – they go together don’t they….like cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, tarts and vicars. They might be a pairing devoutly to be wished but is the distinction grounded in reality or just the wishful thinking of Westerners? Take Mohammed for instance, was he a moderate or an extremist?

Here is the standard view of things with various groupings spread along a spectrum. Moderates are closest to Mohammed and extremists are naturally at the extremes, furthest from Mohammed:

Mohammed

Moderate

Muslim

ISIS

Brotherhood

Muslims

 

 

I suggest that the spectrum is the wrong way round. It should be transposed with the people we call extremists actually closest to the centre of Islam, the example of Mohammed. That is why they should be called centrists rather than extremists:

Mohammed

ISIS

Muslim

Just

Nominal

Muslims

Muslims

Brotherhood

 

 

Closest to Mohammed are of course ISIS. There is nothing they do which was not done by Mohammed and his companions. Next along are the Muslim Brotherhood type groups, sometimes called “moderate Islamists”, still doing their bit to bring the world under Islam by stealth.

At the furthest extreme from Mohammed, therefore the real extremists, are those we call nominal Muslims. Mohammed had a word for those who don’t answer the call, hypocrites, and you know where hypocrites go – right at the bottom of hell where it is 70 times hotter than at the top. Better shape up guys, your future doesn’t look great as things stand. Are you real Muslims or actually ex-Muslims who quite sensibly take the threat from genuine Muslims more seriously than that from Allah?

But where have the moderate Muslims gone? Muslims regularly tell us there are no such people, just Muslims so they have been replaced by “Just Muslims”. Are they my enemy? There is just no telling for sure, but there is a guiding principle. The more devout a Muslim is, the closer to Mohammed, the more potentially dangerous he is. How often have we heard after some atrocity that the perpetrator became increasingly devout in the preceding months?

Anyone else?

Well, there are the people who destroyed the community cohesion I grew up in by inviting ever more disparate groups to the multicultural party, culminating in one group with a tendency to go decidedly monocultural as soon as it is in a position to do so.

There are the enablers of Islamisation who somehow have come to command the cultural heights – Saudi funded academics who prate about Orientalism; leftist ideologues who see Islam as an ally in their hatred of Western civilisation; journalists who call Muslim rape gangs “Asians”; churchmen who refuse to name who is slaughtering Christians from Nigeria to Pakistan; the Labour Party which opened the flood gates to Muslim immigration in order to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity” and then studiously looked the other way in Rochdale and Rotherham; and the politicians who laughably tell us that the monstrosity of ISIS has nothing to do with Islam.

And there are the elite who do not have to live with the consequences of their folly. That is left to Joe Bloggs who cannot escape to the leafy suburbs or the shires. What would have happened if jihadis had attacked Henley Regatta or if Muslim rape gangs, acting with the sanction of the Koran, had targeted Cheltenham Ladies College instead of the throwaway children in care? Imagine how the public discourse would have changed if it was the offices of the Guardian or the BBC that were bombed in 2005 rather than random Tube travellers.

But soldiers, grannies, package tour holidaymakers….who cares? There are plenty more where they came from. The important thing, after each atrocity, is to prevent an anti-Muslim backlash.

Our leaders are unlikely to admit that we are in a war, that of global jihad, until the establishment start to take the hit. Sadly, it will take more sacrificial victims, and many of them, before they come to their senses and realise what they have allowed to take root in the land. We can only hope, in the name of justice, that those who brought us to this sorry pass are properly represented in future losses.

Here is a guesstimate of the number of casualties from various sections of society, any one of which might produce a sea change in public awareness and force the government to seriously address the question “Who is our enemy?”

1000 ordinary Joes
500 soldiers (squaddies that is, or 50 officers)
200 police officers
100 academics
70 churchmen
30 journalists
20 celebrities
10 MPs
5 Government ministers
3 moneymen
1 Prime Minister or the Queen

Where will the next blow land? Place your bets now.

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(1) And the dwellers of the Garden cry unto the dwellers of the Fire: We have found that which our Lord promised us (to be) the Truth. Have ye (too) found that which your Lord promised the Truth ? They say: Yea, verily. And a crier in between them crieth: The curse of Allah is on evil-doers (Koran 7:44)

(2) O ye wives of the Prophet! Whosoever of you committeth manifest lewdness, the punishment for her will be doubled, and that is easy for Allah.
And whosoever of you is submissive unto Allah and His messenger and doeth right, We shall give her her reward twice over, and We have prepared for her a rich provision. (33:30-31)

(3) For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah’s Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth. (5:32)
The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom. (5:33)

Just in case you have not come across this old chestnut, in 5:32 Allah is chiding the Jews for failing to follow the instruction he gave them in his Yahweh days. Taken in conjunction with 5:33 the two verses constitute a blood chilling warning to anyone, particularly Jews, who plan to commit corruption in the land (ie cross Mohammed/Allah).

Obviophobia

Let’s welcome a new addition to the lexicon of Islamology – Obviophobia. It is defined as a morbid, irrational fear of the obvious or, as they say where I come from, the “bleeding obvious”.

It is obvious:

That Mohammed was a blood soaked megalomaniac whose genius was to promise heavenly rewards for the worst of human behaviour and cruel punishments for independent thinking. Anyone who takes him as an exemplar of decent behaviour is morally sick.

That Allah, Mohammed’s unfettered alter ego, knows nothing about his own universe and his main interest lies in torturing forever those who do not believe in him.

That the ferocious instructions to be found in the Koran regarding the propagation of the faith are without an expiry date.

That Islam is the Bully Religion. It has always been predatory or parasitic; it crows when it is up and whines when it is down.

That there is no moral equivalance between a religion created by a man who was crucified and one created by a man who ordered crucifixions.

That Islam is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog (oh yeah, someone said that already didn’t they?)

That a religion which inspires its adherents to murder those who criticise it needs more criticism not less.

That a Muslim is one who submits to the will of Allah, and the will of Allah is that everyone submits to the will of Allah.

That since the astrolabe Muslim societies have produced nothing but blood and more Muslims.

That there is no possibility of the slaves of Allah reforming their religion because their slave master declared it perfect a long time ago.

That female circumcision is indeed sanctioned or mandated in the Hadiths (1) and in Shariah Law (2) despite strenuous attempts to kid us that it is “only cultural”.

That ISIS and jihad in general are very much Islamic, and our leaders who insist otherwise are either lying to us or in a state of profound ignorance.

That Islamism is no more than an Islamic resurgence.

That moderate Islam is not the solution to radical Islam but its cover.

That Western feminists have abandoned Muslim women to their fate because “it’s their right to choose to be oppressed”.

That Islam is full of bigotry (Jews, women, homosexuals….you name it) but it is bigoted to point it out.

That those who deride the fear of creeping shariah should consider the Islamic blasphemy law posing as hate speech legislation which prevents them from saying truthful things about Islam, and the halal meat which they unknowingly eat (and pay for, thereby funding jihad via zakat).

That moderate Muslims are the people who say nothing about the murder of cartoonists but who protest in their thousands against their cartoons.

That Muslim militancy is largely a function of the proportion of Muslims in any given society.

That Muslims are not the new Jews; Jews are the new Jews and Muslims are the new Nazis.

That when Pope Francis said “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” he showed himself to be the world’s biggest fool.

That Islamic apologists routinely dissemble when talking to the kuffar, relying on our ignorance of Islamic scriptures to bamboozle us.

That Mohammed fully intended his religion to rule the entire world (it is apostasy to deny it (3)).

That beneath the respect paid by non-Muslims to the religion which demands respect lurks a fear which dare not acknowledge itself.

That politicians who give free rein to the fifth column of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir, both of which have made abundantly clear their intentions towards Western civilisation, are most likely condemning their children or grandchildren to civil war.

And yet there are people who react to the obvious the way vampires react to the light, covering their eyes in horror. Unable to break through their comforting bubble of groupthink they grasp at any passing fad to explain away the slaughter of non-Muslims around the world and increasingly on our streets. Are they mad? Not exactly – they’re just obviophobes.

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(1) https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur%27an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Female_Genital_Mutilation
(2) Book E, section e4.3 https://reliancewp.wordpress.com/
(3) Book O, section o8.20 as above.

20 years from now

(Written in 2014 – some minor deviations already!)

Version 1.

2034. There are whole cities officially under sharia where the police and non-Muslims do not venture. In the rest of the country a blasphemy law prevents criticism of the one true faith yet in the semi-autonomous region of Deenistan, formerly known as Lancashire, it is illegal to repair churches and Christians have to pay a special tax. The first stoning takes place in the Old Trafford football stadium. Naturally there are no Jews left in the country. Armed militias battle it out with other kinds of Muslims and the Kuffar, just like on the other side of the Channel. Whole neighbourhoods are regularly ablaze. After the Italian Navy set up an EU funded ferry service from Libya, and Italy and France co-operated on the high speed Brindisi to Dover rail link, the Muslim population has swollen to 23%, officially. White flight continues apace but in the Celtic fringes they say “What did you ever do for me, Englishman?”.

Multiculturalism has become Balkanization. The puzzle of the “moderate Muslim” has been solved. The King Faisal Stock Exchange is the centre of world Islamic finance. The young King George, a recent revert, and his beautiful Queen Ayesha (though it’s hard to tell behind that niqab) have turned Buckingham Palace into a centre for the propagation of the faith. Tony Blair and Anjem Choudary sit in the House of Elders, both bearing the title “Hero of Islam”. After numerous blue on blue incidents it has been decided to set up two independent armed forces. The Muslim Brotherhood, the third largest political party, whose offices occupy the top six floors of Canary Wharf, have joined a coalition with the United Kingdom Survival Party in return for a guarantee of free passage in and out of the country for forces of the Caliphate.

A goup called the UAF, having served their purpose, have succumbed to a short campaign of throat cutting. Those who once read the now defunct newspaper “The Guardian” wring their hands and say “It wasn’t meant to be like this”. Old men who tell tales of the Tower Hamlets demo of 2013 look their grandchildren in the eye and say “I tried”.

Version 2.

2015. After a string of low level attacks from the Syrian returnees, MI5 admits there are more extremists than they can possibly monitor. David Cameron insists that the situation has nothing to do with Islam. Boris Johnson, spotting his opportunity, suggests it might have something to do with Islam. Nick Clegg witters about a great salvation religion.

2016. The mood of the country turns ugly after the Bluewater shopping centre massacre but the tide really begins to turn when jihadis plant a bomb outside the offices of the Guardian (the ungrateful swine!). The truth of the old saying “a reactionary is a liberal who’s been blown up” is borne out. An article appears in the Guardian with the title “Diversity bad, Unity good” and another one suggesting that the British Empire did some useful things.

The Pact of Umar is sometimes mentioned at Hampstead dinner parties. It is no longer considered smart to say that Britain has been multicultural since the Jutes. Solicitors who coach asylum seekers through the regulations no longer find “I’m a human rights lawyer” serves as a good chat up line.

EDL demonstrations attract tens of thousands. The occasional journalist and MP start to refer to them as “patriots”.

Mo Ansar, who has not appeared on TV since it was discovered that he was not actually a lawyer and Imam, and Fiyaz Mughal, a mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya artist, also down on his luck, complain to anyone who will listen that it’s all so unfair.

The BBC stop pretending that IS and Boko Haram are unIslamic.

It becomes widely known that there is more Jew-hatred in the Koran than in Mein Kampf.

The “Ibaana” programme intended to deradicalise extremist prisoners is suspended when one of the Imams involved is found to be teaching his charges bomb making.

2017. The Cameron government falls and the new prime minister Michael Gove announces a state of emergency, declaring “Both sides know there is a war on now”. He recants on his earlier view that the problem is not Islam but “the specifically 20th century phenomenon of Islamism”.

As an experiment Ed Miliband takes a stroll through Tower Hamlets one evening wearing his skull cap. After he recovers the Labour Party gives limited support to the government. Alas, there are no more Liberal Democrat MPs to give anything to anyone.

Individual liberties are sharply curtailed, as in any time of war:

Plans are put in place for a national identity card programme.

Sharia courts are banned along with sharia compliant legal and financial instruments.

The hate speech legislation, widely seen as a de facto blasphemy law, is revoked.

New, tighter restrictions are placed on the building of mosques, incuding the banning of foreign funding. All sermons have to be given in English. Mosques found encouraging jihad are to be demolished.

A Royal Commission is set up under the chairmanship of ex-Muslim scholar IQ al Rassooli to consider such questions as whether the Medina suras of the Koran should be banned completely and whether religious scriptures should lose their exempt status regarding the crime of incitement to murder. Critics claim that there are also calls to genocidal violence in the Bible but after research is carried out it is found that there are no more Amalekites to be concerned about it either way.

Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are asked to give evidence and are invited to tea at Buckingham Palace where Theresa May offers a fulsome apology for banning them in 2013.

Halal meat has to be clearly labelled. It is made illegal to serve it to diners in restaurants and public institutions without their knowledge and consent.

The Charity Commission draft in a team of forensic accountants to ascertain where all that zakat is really going.

Schoolchildren are taught the truth about Mohammed the bloodthirsty warlord. A core syllabus is set up emphasising British values and history.

2018. The government sends the Muslim Brotherhood packing, along with all the other factions they got so chummy with in the old Londonistan days.

Changes are made to the welfare system designed to halt dangerous demographic trends. Sikhs and Hindus say that if indigenous Brits can’t be bothered to reproduce then they will do their best to step into the breach.

There is a five year moratorium on all immigration from OIC countries apart from persecuted non-Muslim minorities.

2019. Ken Livingston and George Galloway decamp to Sweden where they are still welcome.

Translation facilities in public services are slashed and the money saved is put into English language teaching.

2020. Identity cards are issued to everyone entitled to be in Britain. Those who do not qualify are deported. Work starts on the backlog of illegal immigrants.

The government declares Islam a special case because of its dual nature; the private devotional religion (which is welcome) and the political aspect of supremacism, sharia and jihad (which is not). Muslims are required to swear an oath of loyalty to Britain superseding their loyalty to Islam. If they do not accept they have their citzenship revoked and are deported, along with their dependants, to any country which will have them or, as a last resort, Sudan with which Britain has come to an arrangement.

2021. After an economic version of cold fusion is perfected the price of oil falls by 70%. Bloody riots ensue around the Gulf and rulers leave for Switzerland to be near to their money.

2022. Young Muslims start to look at the Koran and ask “What is this bollocks?”

Mehdi Hasan becomes a Seventh Day Adventist, saying “Thank God I stepped into the light. The cognitive dissonance was killing me”.

2024. Matthew Goodwin, the social scientist who once called for the censoring of polls which could provide support for Islamophobes, publishes a book proving that the only way to coexist with Muslims is to limit their proportion in any given population to no more than 2.5%.

2026. Muslims publicly apostasize in such numbers that the fear of reprisals loses its force. They march with placards saying “Mohammed was a monster”. Death threats from the Muslim community dry up.

2028. Sufism becomes the dominant branch of Islam in Britain.

2029. Muslims begin to display a rudimentary sense of humour.

2030. Members of the UAF drift away, embarrassed at their former foolishness. Some of them get proper jobs.

2032. Geert Wilders is awarded the Nobel Peace prize for helping to avert in Europe the horrors we see in the great Sunni/Shia convulsions of the Muslim heartlands.

2033. The proportion of self identifying Muslims stabilises at 2%. They are once again seen as an exotic and welcome addition to the life of the country.

2034. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Islamism or Islam?

We all heard our leaders say after the Woolwich murder:

“There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act” (David Cameron)
“It is completely wrong to blame this killing on Islam” (Boris Johnson)
“…the distortion of a great salvation religion” (Nick Clegg).
Before them Tony Blair said “Anyone who knows anything about Islam, knows it is a religion of peace”.

Were you surprised that they all had the theological knowledge to make such definitive claims? Did you wonder what their justifications were? They never told us.

Boris Johnson’s case is particularly interesting because he appears to have had something of a Damascene conversion. After the 7/7 bombings in 2005 he said:

“To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers….That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem”

In 2008, while campaigning in the London mayoral election, he said he now believed, after having researched the Koran more in depth, that it is “a religion of peace”.

What did he find in the Koran that changed his mind? Sadly, he did not share that with us. Until he gives us chapter and verse, that is sura and ayah, we may suspect that his epiphany came not so much from reading the Koran as from realising the importance of the Muslim vote in London.

After the Woolwich murder Johnson wrote that:

“There is no sense in blaming Islam, a religion that gives consolation and enrichment to the lives of hundreds of millions of peaceful people…we need to make a hard and sharp distinction between that religion – and the virus of “Islamism”.

So there we have it – Islam is the otherwise healthy organism afflicted by an illness, Islamism, which has to be treated. I am grateful to Boris for making the establishment view so clear with his image.

This division is also at the heart of government policy. In December 2013 Her Majesty’s Government produced a report called Tackling extremism in the UK.

It says “As the greatest risk to our security comes from Al Qa’ida and like-minded groups, and terrorist ideologies draw on and make use of extremist ideas, we believe it is also necessary to define the ideology of Islamist extremism. This is a distinct ideology which should not be confused with traditional religious practice. It is an ideology which is based on a distorted interpretation of Islam, which betrays Islam’s peaceful principles, and draws on the teachings of the likes of Sayyid Qutb.”

(As an aside, if Sayyid Qutb is the evil genius behind all this, why is the organisation which reflects his ideology like no other, the Muslim Brotherhood, welcome in Britain? The MB has a record of engaging in terrorist violence or political infiltration according to circumstance, as do its offshoots for instance Hamas in Gaza (the former) and CAIR in the US and myriad organisations in Britain (the latter) and yet it operates openly from an office in Cricklewood. Conversely, if the MB is acceptable why is their great ideologue held up as the inspiration of our enemies?)

One intriguing development is referred to in the report:

“Appropriately recruited Muslim Prison Chaplains are already employed to challenge the extremist views of prisoners and to provide religious direction for Muslim prisoners. Using their experience, they are developing the ‘Ibaana’ [ie “clarify”] programme designed to target the small number of prisoners with the most entrenched extremist views. One-to-one sessions over several hours with a trained chaplain will be used to challenge the theological arguments used by these prisoners to justify their extremist views.”

There is of course the possibility that state backed theologians will just be dismissed by Muslim prisoners as “Uncle Toms” trying to create suitably docile Muslims.

But let us take a more positive view. If our leaders cannot provide the theological justifications for a peaceful Islam perhaps these appropriately recruited chaplains can. Whatever they are telling their charges, let them write it down so we can all see it and have our minds put at rest. I for one would be massively grateful for such justifications because whenever I go looking for them I find either comically blatant deception as in Tahir-ul-Qadri’s famous fatwah against terrorism or what could charitably be called wishul thinking as in Quilliam’s arguments.

No such document being planned? No, I thought not, but if HMG really think their Muslim chaplains can provide sound arguments to counter jihadi attacks against us then surely it has a duty to get them out into the world.

If you want to explore the intellectual underpinnings of the government’s stance then Michael Gove’s excellent book Celcius 7/7 would be a good place to start. It is heartening to know there is someone in the government with such an understanding of the Islamist threat and who is (or was) willing to speak out about it. Nevertheless, it seems to me that his attempt to separate Islamism from Islam does not hold water. He asserts that:

“The distinction is the difference between Islam, the great historic faith which has brought spiritual nourishment to millions, and Islamism, the specifically twentieth-century ideology which twists the religious impulse into submission to a new totalitarianism.”

and

“Islamism is not Islam in arms; it is a political creed that perverts Islam…”

but look at some of his supporting statements (I hope not misrepresented by taking them out of their context):

“…Islamism is driven by a divine mission to ensure that the whole earth, in due course, learns to submit to Islamist rule.”

“For Hassan al-Banna and his followers in the Muslim Brotherhood the roots of decline lay in the abandonment of a pure and unpolluted Islam. Revival could only come through a return to a society ordered on the basis of the literal, and unalterable, truths of the Koran.”

“His [ie Abul ala Mawdudi’s] group, Jamaat-i-Islami [closely related to the MB], was dedicated to the fundamental Islamist proposition that Islam was not so much a religion for private devotion as the source of a complete political system capable of competing with rival totalitarianisms for the minds of men.”

“…Mawdudi’s belief that ultimate sovereignty rested with God alone. It was by his unalterable rules and in accordance with his perfect revelation that society was to be ordered. Down to the last detail.”

Where is the specifically twentieth-century ideology there? I see nothing that could not be described simply as a return to Mohammed’s original religio-political ideology. Surely we must agree that Mohammed’s Islam, as developed in Medina at least, was not just “a religion for private devotion” but absolutely a complete political system.

Then, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, there are the Salafis and the Khomeiniites and Al-Qaeda. Is that one ideology or four? Quite different from each other, they share only one thing – the intent to spread Islam using peaceful or violent means as necessary. It seems to me that these four groupings do not represent a new totalitarian ideology but are simply new varieties of an old one. That is why I would reverse Mr Gove’s statement:

“Islamism is not a political creed that perverts Islam, it is simply Islam in arms.”

I hesitate to challenge Mr Gove’s view but I do have some scholarship on my side. Here is the historian Mervyn Hiskett writing twenty years ago when the terms “Islamism” and “Islamic fundamentalism” were used interchangeably:

“But the truth is, Islamic “fundamentalism”, as the world has understood it…adds little, if anything, to what has always been inherent in Islam since the Koran was revealed. The collapse of [Western European] imperialism and the rise of the liberal ethic have simply removed the barriers that once so salubriously contained it.”

One problem is that the groups we call Islamist are not so obliging as to refer to themselves as such. They see themselves simply as Muslims carrying out instructions laid down in Mohammed’s teachings, and supported by all four of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence and the Shiite equivalent. Look at these expressed views of Muslim scholars among others.

Can you tell the Islamists from the mainstream? For instance, what about the modern Syrian scholar Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Bouti in his major work “Jurisprudence in Muhammad’s Biography”:

“The concept of Holy War (Jihad) in Islam does not take into consideration whether defensive or an offensive war. Its goal is the exaltation of the Word of Allah and the construction of Islamic society and the establishment of Allah’s Kingdom on Earth regardless of the means. The means would be offensive warfare. In this case, it is the apex, the noblest Holy War.”

In fact he would not be considered an Islamist, yet see how exactly he chimes with Osama bin Laden:

“It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah’s Word and religion reign Supreme.”

The views of al-Bouti, “the scholar’s scholar”, are particularly interesting, even ironic, since he reverses our current ideas about the distortion of Islam. Expanding on his theme of offensive jihad he writes:

“…This is the concept which professional experts of thought attempt to conceal from the eyes of Muslims by claiming that anything that is related to a holy war in Islamic law is only based on defensive warfare to repel an attack…It is no secret that the reason behind this deception is the great fear which dominates foreign countries (East and West alike) that the idea of Holy War for the cause of God would be revived in the hearts of Muslims, then certainly, the collapse of European culture will be accomplished.”

Perhaps our Muslim chaplains will hear him quoted in their conversations with the Islamist prisoners.

It is not that I deny that there is a distinction to be made between Islam and Islamism but I suggest that it is of very limited use. Islamism just refers to those strains of Islam whose adherents are willing to use violence to spread the influence of their religion. That sounds just like the Mohammed of Medina to me. I do not see any distortion of his teachings there at all. In fact I venture to suggest that if Mohammed came back today he would say “Well done boys, keep up the good work”. Presumably he meant it for all time (and this is how Islamic tradition has understood it down the ages) when he said:

“Not equal are those believers remaining [at home] – other than the disabled – and the mujahideen, [who strive and fight] in the cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred the mujahideen through their wealth and their lives over those who remain [behind], by degrees. And to both Allah has promised the best [reward]. But Allah has preferred the mujahideen over those who remain [behind] with a great reward” (sura 4:95).

So was Mohammed an Islamist or just a Muslim? The historian Daniel Pipes calls this the killer question of those who see Islam itself as the problem and answers it in a worryingly facile way. He says “Muhammad was a plain Muslim, not an Islamist, for the latter concept dates back only to the 1920s”.

Is this not just playing with words? If you put the question another way, “Who in the modern world most closely follow Mohammed’s Medina teachings and example?” surely the Islamists come out tops. Why shouldn’t they be murderous fanatics? That is exactly what Mohammed was. If they are Islamists then so was Mohammed. If Mohammed was just a Muslim then so are they.

Suppose there was an Islamic version of the rapture tomorrow and all those Muslims commonly referred to as Islamists were taken to paradise. Would that solve our problems? According to HMG it must. The ideology which is a distortion or a betrayal of Islam would have disappeared, leaving only peaceful Muslims to live harmoniously with non-believers according to their traditional religious practice. I suggest that before too long some Muslims would start to scratch their heads and say “Hey, look what it says here. Why aren’t we doing it?” Then new groups would spring up with sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, just as has always happened since the 7th century (apart from a relatively short spell of containment under European colonialism).

This is why I say that, while Islam and Islamism can be distinguished, the relationship between them is not that of an organism and an infection but more accurately that of a fire and the flames that it inevitably produces. If you doused the flames currently burning up so much of the world they would soon be replaced by others.

Is it not patronising and futile to imagine we can convince aspiring jihadis that they have misunderstood Mohammed’s demands? It appears obvious to most newcomers to Islam, as it does to so many learned scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim, that supremacism and jihad are utterly inherent in the Islam of Mohammed, not just of Sayyid Qutb. Instead of trying to convince jihadis that they have it all wrong should we not accord them the dignity of regarding them genuinely as our enemy?

Let us close with a quote, taken from a comments section of the Guardian, from an unknown Salafi with whom I would not try to argue:

“As for how I define myself, I am merely a Muslim. If I have to expand on that further then I am also a Sunni. If I need to expand on that even further then I am a Salafi too. I don’t give credence to labels that are thrown around by the infidels. I believe that as a Muslim one should understand the religion by the apparent (i.e. literal) meaning of the texts which would no doubt render me a ‘devout Fundamentalist’. Thus I also believe in the concept of jihad which would also render me a ‘Jihadist’. The usage of these titles is a major bugbear of mine because there is no such thing as a fundamentalist or moderate Islam. There is simply Islam and Muslims may choose to be sincere and accept it in its entirety or on the other hand pick and choose from it to please their desires and others.”