Londonistan rules!

Submitted by Saikat Biswas (United Kingdom), Jul 11, 2006 at 11:37

It is not only a significant majority within the British Muslim community but also the overwhelming liberal middle-class who are still in denial about the threat from Islamism.

The results of the aforementioned surveys are hardly surprising, but elucidates very little on the failure of British multiculturalism to defend the values of liberty, tolerance and free speech. The phenomenon of Londonistan has been extensively studied, analysed and even defended passionately by its proponents over the years. Yet events like 9/11 or 7/7 or even the protests against the Mohammad cartoons have failed to put an end to the policy of brazen appeasement towards the lunatic fringe of Islam from the liberal intelligentsia.

You only have to turn the pages of the Guardian or the Independent to see how Londonistan continues to be a disturbing reality. Commentators such as Polly Toynbee or Melanie Phillips notwithstanding, the predominant view among the liberal class is that it is the West that bears the moral responsibility for extremism among Muslims, that the onus is on Western governments to remove the hatred and paranoia afflicting Islamists and that if governments comply with the demands of the terrorists they will somehow renounce their violent methods. No sooner had Tony Blair called upon the 'moderate majority' within the Muslim community to stand up to the extremists in their midst, the liberal press denounced his statements and proposed instead that British foreign policy should accomodate Muslim grievance.

There is a persistent belief among neutral observers that the bizarrely subservient attitude of the liberal British class towards Islamism should be attributed to the collective sense of guilt they hold towards their imperial past. It is not. Their attitude is engendered by feebleness and feebleness alone. They grant concessions towards their enemies not out of charity but out of moral weakness. The chastity of impotent men is never convincing.

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