The anonymous author - whose affinity seems superficially to be with the great sweep of Western Civilization in general - though a closer reading, and we should be reading everything closely now, will show that while he seems to distinguish between Islam as a religion of substance and moral integrity that deserves as much respect as its counterparts in the Judeo-Christian family, and the more fanatic and irrational outgrowths of it, he doesn't - is a lot more narrowly focused than that superficial reading reveals.the monkeys are suing for peace
Instead of its muddled policies, the government must tackle this problem at source with both stick and carrot. It needs actively to espouse the good in western and British culture, to engender pride, to abandon misguided multiculturalism, to provide better education and proper training and jobs for young Muslims. They must come to believe that their interests lie in and with Britain and not with a deranged creed that will bring death and despair to them and their many victims. This is a huge challenge for any government, but the consequences of failure are too great to contemplate.
Sunday Times (London) 31.07.05
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This is the "They hate us for our freedom" song-and-dance. Lots of us have woken up to the oddness in someone using that as a justification for taking away our freedom.
The schizophrenic irrationality of insisting there is no deeper cause to militant Islamic violence against the West than their hatred of our freedom, then using that as an excuse to undercut every last freedom that we once had - a lot of us would say that sort of means they won, eh?
They hate our freedom, so the government's taking away our freedom.
Point al-Qaeda.
Someone whose bias is bigoted and anti-Islamic entirely will feel confirmed and agreed-with by this Comment, which is closer to a letter to the editor than an editorial.
The Times' headline is "The Source of Terror". The only source alluded to is the tolerant welfare-distributing British governments of past years.
Nothing about Palestine, nothing about Israel, nothing about poverty in the Muslim world, only poverty in the UK. Poverty and the dole. The "source of terror".
A shorter version of this position:
We've destroyed your temples and killed your children right in front of you, now stop fighting us - not because we're right, but because you can't win - and then we'll give you a place at the table with the rest of the servants.
