Actually I'm Mildly Encouraged

Submitted by RT (United States), Aug 29, 2006 at 20:16

As far as the crude attempts at political blackmail go, I rather hope the "moderate" British Muslims keep up their overreaching behavior. In my view, anything that puts a dent in the idea that there ARE Islamic moderates' of any political significance, is a valuable and necessary development.

Ever since I saw a newsreel showing Tony Blair saying, "Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion", I have felt that sentiment, however widely held it is among the parties and leaders of significance in Britain, is the major roadblock to a full British understanding of what they are faced up against. As long as that idea prevails, the British will be vulnerable to political manipulation by their Muslim citizens.

Sooner or later, all societies with Muslim populations engaged in any political activities will have to face the fact that the religion of Islam is based on violence and intolerance, just the opposite of the self-delusion articulated by Tony Blair. In other words, the most rooted of all the "root causes" of chaos and violence in the Muslim world is the value system of Islam.

This is what the British Muslim actions and words are illustrating.

Blair was much better when he said a while ago that, "The Muslims have no JUST grievance (emphasis added) whatsoever against the West." Indeed, the truth is just the opposite - it is the West, and indeed the rest of the world which has increasingly just grievances against islam, which seeks to overthrow all norms of decent international conduct and replace them with the Totalitarianism of Sharia.

With all the looming violence between the Sunni and Shiite worlds, these two branches of Islam do not disagree on this totalitarian goal.

These are the thoughts - about who has a just and unjust sense of grievance - that should come to dominate the public mind throughout Europe and here in the US. Their adoption in a firm and explicit way, and including their application to Muslim hatred of Israel, offers, in a paradoxical way, the best chance of a solution to Islam's conflict with the rest of the world short of a steady ratcheting up of violence. For the Muslim political activists quite logically can only see subservience if we foolishly try to show respect for their threats and intimidation and make absurd comments about the nature of their religion.

And so I am less worried than Daniel Pipes about the pattern of crude threats amd blackmail by the British Muslim politicans, dangling the threat of potential violence by their young men before the British public. Whether Press and the British leadership, however belatedly, seeing these threats for what they are, I'm not sure Pipes is interpreting the poll results accurately.

I say, let the overreach continue. Ron Thompson

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