Robert Henderson
Seventeen people have been murdered in the two terrorist attacks in Paris (between 7-9th January 2015). Ten were journalists, including some of France’s leading cartoonists, working for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. To them can be added two policemen, one policewomen and four members of the general public who happened to be unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attacks were made on the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Jewish supermarket Hyper Cacher. The policewoman was shot in a separate incident.
The terrorist acts were coordinated to produce maximum effect. That on Charlie Hebdo was by the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi , who were of Algerian ancestry. A third brother Mourad Hamyd aged 18 was at school at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attack and has spoken to but not been detained by the police. The attack on a Jewish supermarket was undertaken by a Mailian Amedy Coulibaly. He also killed a policewoman before his attack on the Jewish supermarket. Coulibaly’s wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, who is of Algerian ancestry, is thought to be another Muslim fanatic with homicidal tendencies. She is believed to have fled to Syria after the shooting of the policewoman.
Those who died at the Charlie Hebdo office were slaughtered by men shouting Allahu Akbar (God is great), “We have avenged the prophet!” [for cartoons of making fun of Mohammed published by Charlie Hebdo) and just to make sure the message got across “Tell the media that this is al-Qaeda in Yemen” . Cherif Koachi also said in a telephone interview with a magazine after the killings that the plot was financed by al Q aeda The Jewish supermarket killer introduced himself to frightened hostages with the words ‘I am Amedy Coulibaly, Malian and Muslim. I belong to the Islamic State’. All three killers either expressed a wish for martyrdom or behaved in a way in which was guaranteed to get them killed. All three were shot and killed by French security forces.
Unless you are a particularly stupid and self-deluding liberal and have either persuaded yourself that this was a black op and the killers were agents of the wicked old West or have fallen back on that old liberal favourite that the killers are not true Muslims – congratulations to the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley for being so quick off the mark with that piece of shrieking inanity – you will think these are Muslim terrorists. (The next time you encounter someone spinning the “not true Muslims” line ask them whether the Crusaders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were Christians).
Sadly there are many liberals who have not learnt the lesson dealt out by these atrocities. It is true that there has been almost complete condemnation of the killings by the liberal elites around the Western world, but one wonders how unqualified and sincere their regret and anger is. Apart from the liberal apologist mantras “not true Muslims”, “Just a tiny minority of Muslims” and “Islam is the religion of peace” being much in evidence, there has been a disagreeable media eagerness to portray the killers as sophisticated military beasts. Here is a prime example from the Telegraph:
“They wear army-style boots and have a military appearance and manner. One of the men wears a sand-coloured ammunition vest apparently stuffed with spare magazines. Some reports suggest that an attacker was also carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
“The men attacked the magazine’s headquarters with clinical precision, killing their victims and then shooting two police officers in the street outside.
“Amateur footage shows them using classic infantry tactics. They move along the street outside the office working as a pair: one advances while the other gives cover.
“Instead of spraying automatic gunfire, they fire two aimed shots at each target – a pattern known as “double-tap” firing – thereby conserving their ammunition.”
Shades of white liberals in the 1960s drooling over the Black Panthers in the USA .
The truth is that the attackers did not behave like highly trained soldiers, and some of the reporting was simply wrong, for example, after the slaughter the killers, as was widely reported , did not walk calmly back to the stolen car they were using but ran. When they abandoned the car one of the killers left his identity card behind. After the murders at Charlie Hebdo the two killers drove around like headless chickens hijacking cars and holding up petrol stations to obtain food and water. If they had really been cold, calculating beasts they would either have stayed where they were after the Charlie Hebdo killings and died in a firefight with the French police or arranged matters so that they had a hiding place to go to and would carried things like a little food and water with them. The widespread media depiction of them as quasi-military figures glamourized and sanitised what they were.
The British political mainstream response
But it would be wrong to say nothing changed in Britain after the attacks. The Ukip leader Nigel Farage broke new ground for a mainstream British politician in modern Britain by speaking of a fifth column of people who hate us within Britain.
“There is a very strong argument that says that what happened in Paris is a result – and we’ve seen it in London too – is a result I’m afraid of now having a fifth column living within these countries.
“We’ve got people living in these countries, holding our passports, who hate us.
“Luckily their numbers are very, very small but it does make one question the whole really gross attempt at encouraged division within society that we have had in the past few decades in the name of multiculturalism.”
This was predictably condemned by David Cameron, a man who incredibly still believes Turkey within the EU would be of great benefit to all concerned, despite the anger and dismay in Britain about mass immigration generally making the prospect of 70 million Turkish Muslims having a right to move freely within the EU certain to be utterly dismaying to most native Britons. Interestingly, a would-be successor to Cameron as Tory leader, Liam Fox, edged a long way towards reality in an article for the Sunday Telegraph:
“All those who do not share their fundamentalist views are sworn enemies, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, Arab or non-Arab. It is the first lesson that we must understand – they hate us all because of who we are, our views, our values and our history. Western liberal apologists who tell us that the violence being directed at us is all of our own making not only fail to understand reality, but put us at increased risk.
“We must understand that there are fanatics who cannot be reconciled to our values and who will attempt to destroy us by any means possible. They are at war with us. They do not lack the intent to kill us, merely the means to do so, and our first response must be to deny them that capability. Sometimes that will require lethal force.”
The fact that Farage also condemned multiculturalism in no uncertain terms provoked an automated politically correct response from the leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg:
“The Deputy Prime Minister hit out after Mr Farage suggested the attack on the offices of a satirical magazine should lead to questions about the UK’s “gross policy of multiculturalism”.
“I am dismayed that Nigel Farage immediately thinks, on the back of the bloody murders that we saw on the streets of Paris yesterday, his first reflex is to make political points,” Mr Clegg said during his weekly phone-in on LBC radio.
“If this does come down, as it appears to be the case, to two individuals who perverted the cause of Islam to their own bloody ends, let’s remember that the greatest antidote to the perversion of that great world religion are law-abiding British Muslims themselves.
“And to immediately … imply that many, many British Muslims who I know feel fervently British but also are very proud of their Muslim faith are somehow part of the problem rather than part of the solution is firmly grabbing the wrong end of the stick.”
Such condemnations are of little account because Farage has spoken an obvious truth and the general public will understand that. The promotion of multiculturalism has been generally pernicious because it wilfully creates serious divisions within a society, but is unreservedly toxic in the case of Islam because Muslims, violent and non-violent, believe in the supremacy of their religion.
The change of language by public figures particularly politicians is of the first importance because the general public need a lead to be given where a matter is contentious. In these politically correct times it is particularly necessary because the native population of Britain have been thoroughly intimidated by the totalitarian application of political correctness which has resulted in people saying non-pc things losing their jobs, being arrested and, in a growing number of cases , being brought before a criminal court to face charges.
Once things forbidden by political correctness are said by public figures change could be very fast. More and more people will embrace the forbidden words and ideas and, like a dam bursting, the flood of non-pc voices will overwhelm the politically correct restraints on speech and writing.
A tiny proportion of Muslims
The claim is routinely made by the politically correct Western elites and “moderate” Muslims that those committing terrorist atrocities are a tiny proportion of Muslims. That is pedantically true but unimportant, because it is to misunderstand the dynamic of terrorism which rests on a pyramid of commitment and support for the cause. At the top are the leaders. Below them are those willing to carry out terrorist acts. Supporting them will be those who make the bombs, acquire guns and so on. Below them will come those who are willing to raise funds through criminal behaviour such as extortion and drug dealing and administer punishment – anything from death to beatings – to those within the ambit of the group who are deemed to have failed to do what they were told or worse betrayed the group. Next will come those willing to provide safe houses for people and weaponry. Then there are those willing to provide information and come out on the streets to demonstrate at the drop of a hat. At the bottom of conscious supporters will come the “I disagree with their methods but…” people. They say they support the ends of the terrorists but do not support terrorist acts. This presses the terrorist demands forward because the public will remember their support for the ends and forget the means because it is the ends which engage the emotions . Those who are familiar with the Provisional IRA during the troubles in Northern Ireland will recognise this character list with ease. Moreover, even those from a community from which terrorists hail who refuse to offer conscious support will aid the terrorists’ cause by providing in Mao’s words “the ocean in which terrorists swim”.
There are differences in the detail of how terrorist organisations act, for example, PIRA operated in a quasi-military structure with a central command while Muslim terrorism is increasingly subcontracted to individuals who act on their own. But however a terrorist movement is organised the general sociological structure of support described above is the same whenever there is a terrorist group which is ostensibly promoting the interests of a sizeable minority and that minority has, justified or not, a sense of victimhood which can be nourished by the terrorists . Where the terrorists can offer a cause which promises not merely the gaining of advantages by the group but of the completion of some greater plan its potency is greatly enhanced. Marxism had the communist Utopia and the sense of working towards final end of history; the great religions offer, through the attainment of some beatific afterlife, the favour of God’s will for their society and the completion of God’s plan. Islam has those qualities in spades.
All this means that though the active terrorists may be few , the effectiveness of the terrorist machine relies on large numbers who will offer some degree of support. Consequently, the fact that the number of Muslims committing terrorist acts may be a tiny proportion of the total Muslim population is irrelevant. What matters is the pyramid of support which at its broadest will include all Muslims because it is the total population which provides “the ocean in which the terrorist may swim”.
There is also good evidence that large minority of Muslims in Britain support the methods of Islamic terrorists, for example an NOP Poll in 2006 found that around a quarter of British Muslims said the 7/7 bombings in London in July 2005 were justified because of Britain’s involvement in the “War on Terror”. There is also plenty of British Muslim support for the imposition of Sharia Law on Britain and some Muslim children are confused as to whether it is Sharia Law or British Law which is the law of the land. There are also growing numbers of Sharia Courts in Britain which allow disputes between Muslims to be decided outside of the British legal system.
Importantly, it is not a case of just the poor and the ignorant only holding such views. Young educated Muslims are if anything more enthusiastic than the average British Muslim to have Sharia Law with 40% in favour and no less than 32% favouring killing for Islam if the religion is deemed to have been slighted in some way. All of this points to a considerable reservoir of support for the ends of Muslim terrorists if not always the means. Many Muslims in the West would not be prepared to engage in violent acts themselves , but they would quite happily accept privileges for their religion and themselves won by the sword.
How should the West react to Muslim terrorism?
How should the West react? In principle it should be simple. There is no need for gratuitous abuse, no need for laboured reasons why Islam is this or that. All that needs to be recognised is that Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy because in its moral choices it is a belief system which runs directly counter to liberal democracy and has as its end game the subjugation of the entire world.
What effective action can Western governments do to prevent the gradual erosion of the values upon which their societies are built? ? There are three general possibilities. These are:
- Logically, the ideal for any Western government committed to their country’s national interest would be to expel all Muslims from their territory as a matter of policy with no legal process allowed. That is because (1) there is no way of knowing who will become a terrorist; (2) a large population of Muslims provides the “ocean in which the terrorist swims “ and (3) any action disadvantaging Muslims short of expulsion will breed terrorists.
- A less comprehensive programme would be to block all further Muslim immigration, ban all Muslim religious schools, cease funding any Muslim organisations, deport any Muslim without British citizenship, remove the British citizenship of any Muslim with dual nationality and deport them back to the country for which they hold citizenship. The question of legal aid would not arise because their would be no appeal allowed as the policy deals in absolutes: you are a Muslim either without British citizenship or with dual nationality and you qualify for deportation . The difficulty with that set of policies is it would allow a large population to remain within the West and would create resentment amongst that population which could lead to terrorism.
- The least dynamic government action would be to implement programme 2 but allow any Muslim with British citizenship or long term residency to appeal expulsion through the courts. That would have the disadvantages of programme 2 plus the added opportunity for endless delay as appeals are heard and re-heard. Such a system would also require legal aid to be given if the judicial process was to be sound.
Will anything like this happen? Most improbable at least in the short term. The West is ruled by elites who worship at the altar of political correctness. Theirs in a fantasy world in which human beings are interchangeable and institutions such as the nation state are seen as outmoded relics as homo sapiens marches steadily towards the sunlit uplands of a world moulded and controlled by the rigid totalitarian dicta of political correctness .
For such people the mindset of anyone willing to die for an idea is simply alien to them. Even more remote to these elites is the belief that there is an afterlife which is much to be preferred to life on Earth. Most damaging of all they cannot conceive of people who have no interest in compromise and consequently will be remorseless in their pursuit of their goal. The liberal mistakenly believes that simply by contact with the West will the values the liberal espouses be transferred to the rest of the world. This incredibly arrogant fantasy can be seen at its most potent in their attitude to China, which is quietly but efficiently creating a world empire by buying influence, and in the Middle East and North Africa where the attempt to transfer liberal values by a mixture of force and material aid has been a shrieking failure which mocks the liberal every second of every day.
Because of such ideas Western elites are only too likely to keep fudging the issue and conceding, not necessarily right away, more and more privileges to Muslins within their societies. They will also probably greatly increase funding for “moderate” Muslims to enter Schools and Mosques to teach Western values. This will drive many young Muslims towards extremism not away from it because however the teaching of British or Western values is conducted it will inevitably be seen as a criticism of Islam. Older Muslims will also be angered at such teaching of their children. Anything the liberal is likely to do will simply be throwing petrol on the fire.
What is required is the replacement of the present elites either by removing them from power or by them changing their tune utterly. The first is improbable in Britain because of the structure of the voting system which hugely protects the status quo and a complicit mainstream media which shares the devotion to political correctness and manipulates access to favour parties and politicians which play the politically correct game.
But the changing of political tune is a real possibility because liberals are starting to get truly frightened as they realise things could get seriously out of control if Muslim terrorism continues to occur. There is also the fact that white liberals recognise in some part of their minds that what they ostensibly espouse – the joy of diversity – is bogus. This can be seen by how they so often arrange their own lives to ensure that they live in very white and in England very English circumstances. The massive white flight away from places such as inner London and Birmingham bears stark witness to this. Being capable of the greatest self-delusion they explain their hypocrisy by telling themselves that this is only because the great project of producing a country, nay a world, fit for the politically correct to love in, has tragically not been fully realised yet because the outmoded non-pc ideas and emotions still exists as people have not yet been educated to see the error of their primitive ways such as believing in the nation state and a homogenous society. But in their heart of hearts they know they would dread to live in the conditions to which they have sanguinely consigned the white working class.
Liberals may also have the beginnings of a terror that their permitting of mass immigration, the promotion of multiculturalism and the suppression of dissent from their own native populations will soon come to be called by its true name, treason. All these fears will act as a motor to drive the liberal elites to become more and more realistic about what needs to be done.
The question every non-Muslim in the West needs to answer is this, do you really believe that if Muslims become the majority in a Western country they will not do what Islam has done everywhere else in the world where they are in the majority and at best place Islam within a greatly privileged position within the state or at worst create a Muslim theocracy? Even Turkey, the liberals’ favourite example of a Muslim majority secular democracy, is rapidly moving towards a position when it cannot meaningfully be called a democracy or secular as Islamic parties gain more and more leverage and the Prime Minister Erdogan becomes ever more autocratic.
If a person’s answer to the question I posed is no, then they need to answer another question, do I want to live in such a society? If their answer is no then they must be willing to fight for their way of life or the “religion of peace” will change their society beyond recognition.
When I hear someone describing Islam as the “religion of peace” I am irresistibly reminded of the aliens in the film Independence Day emerging from their spaceship yelling “We come in peace” before blasting every human in sight. The white liberals who peddle into the “religion of peace” propaganda should be constantly called upon to explain why it is that a “religion of peace” can be so unfailingly successful in attracting people who say they subscribe to it yet are unremittingly cruel and violent.
