Tony Blair's Dangerous Delusion

In a recent entry, I made the case that Tony Blair is a very bad prime minister for the UK, and that to the extent that he weakens America’s staunchest ally Britain, he is very bad for the US. Americans, especially right-of-center Americans, have largely turned a blind eye to the seriously flawed domestic policies of Mr. Blair because of his willingness to stand behind George Bush both in Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter much to the dismay of his own voters. Blair’s greatest flaw is his unswerving devotion to multiculturalism, which seems to stem from his inadequate acquaintance with the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization, whose core tenets he seems only too happy to sacrifice on the alter of politically correctness. This shocking disregard to basic Western values was most recently displayed when Blair and his New Labor party tried to ram through Parliament a bill that would have made it a criminal offense to offend anyone’s religion. Offend being defined as anything that an adherent of that religion decided was offensive, which in practice would squelch humor, and ultimately any form of criticism, not matter how scholar - what could be more offensive that reading someone argue that your religion is false?

Though no specific religion was cited in the bill, Islam would have been the law’s main beneficiary, legally insulated from any critique. Muslim activists and clerics were all but unanimous in their support of the bill. Fortunately, a last minute maneuver killed the most draconian part of the legislation. But the fact that the British prime minister would have attempted such a severe bit of legislative legerdemain should serve as ample warning of his true ideological inclinations and his fawning appeasement of the Muslim minority that is slowly subverting Britain.

According to Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, a respected British scholar and former Muslim, the Blair’s pandering to Muslims, and his embrace of multiculturalism are premised on a complete misunderstanding of Islam and the danger it poses for Britain.

The Prime Minister's ignorance of Islam, Dr Sookhdeo contends, is of a piece with his unsuccessful attempts to conciliate it. And it does indeed seem as if the Government's policy towards radical Islam is based on the hope that if it makes concessions to its leaders, they will reciprocate and relations between fundamentalist Muslims and Tony Blair's Government will then turn into something resembling an ecumenical prayer meeting.

Dr Sookhdeo nods in vigorous agreement with that. "Yes - and it is a very big mistake. Look at what happened in the 1990s. The security services knew about Abu Hamza and the preachers like him. They knew that London was becoming the centre for Islamic terrorists. The police knew. The Government knew. Yet nothing was done.

"The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work - yet it is still being followed. For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly available in Muslim bookshops.

"It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them. The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book.

"Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both."

Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.

Dr. Sookhdeo warns that radical Muslim clerics have long understood the West’s weakness – its own self-loathing and guilt over its colonialist past – and know exactly how to exploit it.

"For example, one of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.

'Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion - and it is their aim to achieve this.

"That is why they do not believe in integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future - and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.

"Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on."

That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or "violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia law.

"There's already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions.

"Some Muslims are now pressing to be allowed four wives: they say it is part of their religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time - and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.

"The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government's record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that."

The policy of cultural subversion of incremental and subtle, but each success emboldens the Islamic agitators and convinces them that their ultimate goals are attainable. This, Dr. Sookhdeo, says explains the worldwide Muslim temper tantrum over the Danish cartoons. Muslim clerics and leaders have realized that a show of violence and outrage, backed by accusations of racism, can thoroughly rattle Western leaders, causing the to cringe and offer appeasement. It’s a strategy that has proven so remarkably successful, that Muslims are increasingly willing to employ it even over particularly trite issues. Why? Because they have learned that the west always conceeds. Whether the issue is terrorism, the rights of women, the murder of homosexuals (Iran), freedom of speech within Western nations, immigration or foreign policy, the West will always kowtow to an angry mob. If an Arab mob had burned a European embassy in 1920, the reprisal would have been quick and bloody. Today, there is no reprisal: the European country apologizes for offending the Muslim mob. The demonstrations continue, Dr. Sookhdeo, says, because Muslims see the West bending over backwards appease Muslim anger. He surveyed Muslim clerics in Britain with regard to their reaction to the cartoon controversy and saw his worst fears confirmed.

"They think they have won the debate," he says with a sigh. "They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not.

"The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's a clear victory.

"It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent."

Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.

"It is already starting to happen - and unless the Government changes the way it treats the so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue."

Dr Sookhdeo calls for the reversal of multiculturalism in Britain and a re-affirmation of British culture. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen in the absence of even more violence on British soil. The self-hatred encouraged by multiculturalism – and the leftists who have birth to it – was become deeply engrained in the British and European mindset. It will take a severe shock to the system to excise it. The July 7 bombings and their failed copycat echo, I fear, unnerved Britons, but did not wake them. iSadly, it will likely take much worse to purge them of the intellectual poison they’ve been fed.

But ultimately, simply abandoning multiculturalism won’t be enough. Muslims will always be strongly attached to their religious culture, a culture whose values are sufficiently alien to Western civilization as to permanently isolate them if their communities within the West are allowed to become large enough. It is an inherent rule of human behavior that, on average, people like to associate with those like themselves – culturally, religiously, racially. Where significant numbers of like-charactered individuals exist they can form communities resistant to the outside, dominant culture. If the minority culture is hostile to the dominant culture, and prone to violence, clashes and bloodshed are inevitable. If the minority culture is growing in number, while the dominant culture’s numbers are static or declining, then the conflict will only escalate. Britain – and Europe in general – needs not merely to end Muslim (and all other non-Western) immigration to its shores, but to find a way to repatriate a substantial number of those Muslims who have already immigrated. Steve Sailer has proposed a system of monetary payments to induce immigrants and their families to leave Europe. But the political will isn’t there yet – and even the suggestion would provoke feverish cries of "racism!" (Which would send the politicians scrambling for cover.) But as the dire nature of Britain’s (and Europe’s) situation vis a vis its Muslim minority grows clear – and bloodier – it is possible that desperation may wipe the multiculturalist fog from European eyes and prod them toward a common-sense based response.