Author: Editorial
Publication: The Telegraph, UK
Date: March 15, 2009
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/4992240/End-this-craven-indulgence-of-the-religious-fanatics.html
By not confronting the extremists who protest
against our soldiers, ministers have helped them to flourish.
The sight of British troops recently returned
from Iraq being viciously insulted by a group of Islamist radicals as they
marched through Luton on a welcome home parade has rightly angered and offended
many people. This includes the majority of British Muslims, who have been
at pains to stress their loyalty to this country and its institutions. The
disgraceful protest represented no-one and nothing except the Islamists and
their bigoted vision of a Britain in which democracy is replaced by the rule
of mullahs and Sharia law, and in which the personal freedoms which define
our society - and which most Muslims prize - have been extinguished.
Anger at the Islamists' behaviour has led
one Tory MP to propose extending the Religious Hatred Act - which makes it
an offence to insult Muslims or to make derogatory and insulting comments
about Islam - so that insulting a British soldier on active service would
also be an offence. While we sympathise with the emotion behind that proposal,
we do not think that further restrictions on free speech are called for. The
British Army is not an institution in need of special protection, and it has
a venerable tradition of being able to defend itself against, indeed to shrug
off, concerted protests against it. It would in any case be difficult to frame
a law that would not also have the effect of curbing the legitimate and traditional
right of British citizens to demonstrate against wars they do not support.
If consistency is to be achieved in the law, then we believe that the best
way to do it is to repeal, or at least to diminish, the provisions of the
Religious Hatred Act - not to extend them so as to make martyrs out of a few
offensively stupid fanatics.
In the battle against Muslim extremism in
Britain, there are anyway more urgent, and more important, tasks for the Government.
As Ed Husain points out in these pages today, Labour's strategy for opposing
violent Islamic extremism has failed in its central task: to diminish the
appeal of fundamentalism to a small, but apparently growing, minority of young
men who, far from conforming to the stereotype of being "marginalised
and disadvantaged by British society", are often well educated and from
privileged backgrounds. Part of the reason for that failure has been the mistaken
belief that it is possible to "engage" with the penumbra of groups
who do not directly advocate terrorism in Britain, but who call for the destruction
of Israel, who support jihad against British troops abroad, and who insist
that laws passed by a secular government can never have the same authority
for a Muslim as the commands of religion. By not confronting that extremist
ideology, but rather tolerating it - indeed almost recognising it as a "legitimate"
point of view - ministers have helped it to flourish.
There is a battle being fought within Government
on whether that strategy - which Mr Husain, who knows the extremist movement
from the inside, believes to be a form of appeasement - should be replaced
with a more aggressive and more robust defence of British values. That defence
begins with an insistence that a condition of "engagement" with
any Islamist group must be its recognition that an acceptance of the rule
of democracy and secular law in Britain is not negotiable. Hazel Blears, the
Communities Secretary, is apparently lobbying for precisely that change to
be a central part of Contest 2, the White Paper which will set out the Government's
new strategy for dealing with Islamist extremism in Britain. But she is being
opposed by some of the more timid officials in Whitehall, who wish to continue
with the failed policy of pretending that if we talk politely and show respect
to the extremists, they will go away. That is a dangerous delusion. Miss Blears
must win her battle with the appeasers inside Whitehall. If she does not,
the Government will never win the war with the Islamist terrorists outside
it.
