This from the BBC’s head of religion who just happens to be a Muslim:

‘Aaqil Ahmed, a controversial executive whose appointment last year prompted more than 100 complaints, said: “I think all the faiths should be treated in the same way. I don’t believe in treating any faith differently.” ‘

‘Mr Ahmed’s comment that Christianity should not receive preferential treatment comes despite nearly three-quarters of the population describing themselves as Christian in the last census.’

Source: Church of England is ‘living in the past’, says BBC’s head of religion

http://tinyurl.com/y86lohs

This is not so much a “drift into absurdity” as a headlong rush to national sucide.

All writers, all worth reading for the illumination and true passion they bring to a subject mired in threat or political correctness.

(As an aside, Hirsi Ali and also her protege, Geert Wilder get the double whammy of both state persecution and Muslim death threat all rolled into one in the freedom loving, spliff toking, oh so liberal coffee house society of the Netherlands.)

Londonistan is impeccably researched and was quite a breakthrough when published. I believe that even to get it to print took some doing in the atmosphere of intimidation which brings me to Andy Gill’s point.

“Melanie Philips is scrupulous in distinguishing between violent Islamic extremists and ordinary Muslims. She brings the issue of extremism into the light where it can be addressed, and thereby does a great service to the Muslim community.”

Melanie does not quite fit into the nice little fantasy woven here.

The banners of books and cartoons, the agitators, the movers and shakers in the quest for Shariah are not ‘violent extremists’ who would kill us in the war against the West. They adopt the more subtle and subversive route paved by the likes of Inayat Bunglawala, Tariq Ramadan and others with the ear of government and academia and far more dangerous in the grand scheme.

Read what Melanie has to say about that viper like bunch. She is not stupid and certainly does not hold back from exposing the truth.

Violence is but one path and the multi headed hydra exploits any avenue in its insatiable desire to infiltrate our societies.

Mohammed stated ‘War is deceit’ and as he is the one who must be obeyed as channeler of the word of God, there’s no argument in the world which can counter this and his many other edicts.

There are moderate Muslims, there must be but where are they? It seems to me that most insiders who do spill the beans are actually apostates who decided enough was enough.

Even secular Turkey, once a model of Kemal’s drive to modernism is reverting to the same old, same old which drove those Moors and Ottomans right to the gates of Vienna.

As for Muslim ‘community’? What’s that, apart from a false construct designed by Islamists and politicians to offer the immpression of one homogenised mass who happen to worship the same God?

They’re all different and a cut off point between moderate and fundamentalist is again a fallacy. It’s shades of grey, nuancing, opportunism and within one grouping there be may be shahids, those merely desirous of Shariah and ones who hardly visit the mosque at all.

That is our wheat and chaff problem. How it is solved only time will tell.

I think that’s a benevolent assumption.

For Robert Lambert at the University of Exeter, the well-known web phrase “cone-head surrender-monkey” comes to mind.

After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies.. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.

Good luck to British society in trying to overturn its own misconceptions. It seems it is taking far more than three days to correct them.

To wit, if Britain reacts irretrievably self-destructively toward Islamism, how can it not expect the same reaction from Israel? To praise Israel or at least remain neutral would imply that it needed to reassess its own stand on the much closer to home destruction that is taking place. It is a cognitive problem the government and the press solve by condemning Israel at every turn, thereby justifying their own views. Thus, British anti-Semitism is a reflection of its own impotence to deal with its problems. When British dependence upon Middle East oil is reversed, anti-Semitism will disappear as if by magic and so will tolerance for Islamism.

Melanie Philips is scrupulous in distinguishing between violent Islamic extremists and ordinary Muslims. She brings the issue of extremism into the light where it can be addressed, and thereby does a great service to the Muslim community.

The University of Exeter seems to think that not talking about fundamentalism will make it go away. It is a little late for that.