High life
Out of control
Taki
Iwas on a fast beam, sailing under high winds and a choppy sea off the north coast of Corsica, when the bombs went off in London. We heard about it when George Duffield called his mother, Vivien, to tell her he was fine. Political correctness forbids me to repeat the conversation which ensued with my guests and crew; suffice it to say that my half-Corsican captain’s remarks made a lot of sense. ‘We welcome Muslims on the island,’ he said, ‘but they have to try to act like Corsicans. No veils, no preaching against our faith, and, if they do, we handle it ourselves. The police are never called in. Muslim criminals are almost non-existent.’ Hear, hear! Multicultural pieties aside, the Corsican model of Islamophobia seems to be working. For both sides. In fact, London’s Mayor could learn a thing or two, when he’s not busy welcoming people with lotsa blood on their hands like Gerry Adams and this al-Qaradawi cleric, that is. Let’s face it. Extremists like Omar Bakri Mohammed — yes, another cleric — have been playing to ever larger audiences while he calls for holy war against Britain and America and exhorts young Muslims to join the fight in Iraq. He even went so far as to announce in 2004 that a Londonbased group was ‘on the verge of launching a big operation’ here.
But my bone is not with these ‘clerics’. It is with the politicians and the puffed-up pundits of the Left who defend such people. Throwing Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana into jail was not Winston Churchill’s finest hour. The Mosleys were as likely to aid England’s enemies as I am to embrace Islam. But it was politically correct at the time. This bunch of yo-yos, starting with Tony Blair, want it both ways. They show off their tolerance, while refusing to extradite terrorist suspects; allow terrorist networks to flourish inside Britain; and then make brave pronouncements how terror will never win etc., etc., etc.
Part of the reason Britain is suffering from these attacks is that her leaders are completely out of touch with the facts on the ground. Blair, Prescott, Brown, the egregious Strawman, do not ride on the Underground or take buses. They do not live in ethnic areas and are protected at all times by bodyguards. What they do is to use their flunkeys and spin-masters to aggrandise themselves, with soundbites telling the world how civilised we are and how united we are with our Muslim brethren. What bullshit! There are 500,000 illegal immigrants on the loose, and these clowns are telling us how civilised we are. The Toynbee woman is going around pontificating about how wonderfully multicultural London has become, and piles on the bull by saying how clean, safe and almost Utopian the place is. Crime is out of control, as is alcohol, drug abuse and uncivilised behaviour, and this Blair groupie is telling it like it ain’t.
To be fair, Britain did not start this war. Indirectly, the Saudis did. Then Bush and Blair made their colossal blunder by attacking one of the few secular powers in the Middle East, and the rest is very bad history in the making. In the years since 9/11, I have heard many Muslims whispering approval of Osama bin Laden, and these were not poor Muslims in the slums of Indonesia or Pakistan, but in places like Geneva, Paris, London and Los Angeles. These people were not zealots. They saw Bush and Blair as being obsessed with soundbites and with crafting shortsighted policies to serve big business rather than the citizenry at large. They happen to be well-to-do and Muslim, but are not extremists. Yet most of them believe that the war on terror is a war on Islam. Go figure, as they don’t say in Mecca.
Imagine, then, what the less privileged are thinking. Starting with London. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, Ahmed Omar Sheik, who murdered Daniel Pearl, Abu Issa al-Hindi, who plotted attacks against both Britain and America are all British citizens. There are estimated to be 15,000 British Muslims who support al-Qa’eda or related groups. I say there are many more. Britain has been a soft touch for more than 20 years, and British-born men are being drawn to the cause of fundamentalism as I write. Blocking Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya would be a very small step but a good starting point. Don’t hold your breath. It would be politically incorrect to do so.
What is to be done? Easy, but I will not write it down because the editors will not publish it, so why waste the time? Just keep in mind that to this day no major Muslim cleric or religious body has issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden, and also keep in mind that what many Muslims say about Islam being a ‘kind’ religion is hogwash. Only the Muslim world can root out terror, and it’s as likely to do this as the House of Saud is to give up paying protection moolah to murderers.
Previous page
