We’ve long argued here on HP in support of a multi-faceted struggle against political Islam and jihadist terrorism and a militant defence of liberalism and secularism. In fact we have never tired of pointing this out nearly every day for the past few years.
We’ve argued against those cretins on the now largely discredited Stopper left who believe there is something progressive in Islamist ‘resistance’ to modernity and progress.
And we’ve also argued against those on the right who conflate political Islam and violent jihadism with the entire Islamic faith or with Muslim communities in general. We’ve called those who talk of immigrant communities as ‘fifth columns’ what they are – conspiracy theorists.
What the pro-Islamist ‘left’ and the right-wing Islamophobes, such as the late Orianna Fallaci for example, share is their eagerness to paint Muslim immigrant communities as part of some sort of unified campaign against the West. For the psuedo-leftist cretins and their Islamist allies this of course is a ‘good thing’, the defence of Islamic garb, for example, is part of a resistance to the (non-existent) war on Islam – and their right-wing mirror-image differs only in regarding this as an offensive action rather than a defensive one and in considering it a ‘bad thing’.
We’ve also written on quite a few occassions about the failures of liberal multiculturalism, the encouragement of seperatism through race and religion based politics in communities across the UK and the dreadful mistake of empowering religious figures by making them ‘community leaders’. But those mistakes are best rectified by a careful and intelligent change in approach – a gradual shift towards politics that unifies communities rather than divides them.
The simplistic linking of the threat from political Islam with the failures of multiculturalism risks derailing in any attempt at such an approach. The current media hysteria about Muslims, from the very same media which has spent much of the past five years downplaying or ignoring the real threat from violent jihadism at home and abroad, does nothing to assist a break with the failed community policies of the past or to increase the awareness of a need for a strategy to isolate and defeat the Islamists.
Rejecting appeasement of Islamists and critiquing the failures of multiculturalist policies only points the way towards possible alternative strategies which have yet to be fully articulated. But the current mood of Muslim bashing in the media is hardly conducive to what is needed – a serious debate about what such strategies might be.
Besides, aren’t you bored with talking about Islam all the time? I am, so let’s have a week of talking about something else.
I also have the feeling that obsessing about Islam is exactly what the loons want us to do. Regardless of whether that is the case, it’s Islam-free week on Harry’s Place starting now.
Update: If you want to a website which really is utterly obsessed with Muslims and with those who are obsessed with them, I recommend this one. It’s utter crap of course.