It's a long time since my last post on here, but a lot has happened; late at night on the date of the last post my Ma-in-Law died in her Nursing Home, since when we've been dealing with the fall-out, not forgetting Christmas, New Year, and loads of snow. But I've been stung to publish again by an idiot (on a forum I belong to) who said that immigrants were all Muslim benefit scroungers who sought to destabilise British society, all on the strength of one anecdote supposedly from his wife. It prompted me to this response, of which I'm quite proud:
I find it interesting that the outraged Brits seemingly need to exaggerate in relating their anecdotes just as much as the radical Muslims who are outraged by the "baby killer" British Soldiers. It does no-one any good to quote bar-room anecdotes like the one about the pram. Those sort of stories have always gone round about any minority group. My Father (bless him) used to tell me "there's no such thing as a poor Jew. They always look after their own." He firmly believed this, despite the fact that the man over the road, to whom he spoke every day, was a poor Jew.
I happen to think that radical Islam is very dangerous to the western world because it operates a completely different morality from the rest of us. Its world view is so perverted that it thinks indiscriminate killing is all right because Allah will sort out the good from the bad after death. If you're an unjustly killed good person Allah will see you right. It's not the responsibility of the killer. He won't burn in hell for killing an innocent.
But of course Christians thought that too, for many centuries. Hence the Crusades. Hence the Inquisition where, in its later stages, it was OK to torture someone to death slowly and horribly because it might cause them to recant their sinful views, and if it sometimes killed a "good" man, it didn't matter, because God would see him all right in the afterlife. It's not the responsibility of the killer. He won't burn in hell for killing an innocent. Snap.
The good thing about Western liberal society is that it's now largely secular. Most of us don't buy that old religious mumbo-jumbo. So we no longer torture people to death. We no longer stone adulterers. We don't lock up homosexuals any more (or stone them to death). We know, deep down, that this life is all there is and we'd better make the best of it.
Empathetically we know that this is also true for the RadMus suicide bomber. He (or she) is not going to hell. Nor heaven. They're just dead and gone. For ever. Their degree of self-delusion is heartbreaking, just as the bomb victims' deaths are heartbreaking.
So let's expel the rad Islamists - or lock them up properly. And let's not allow anyone else of that ilk in - ever, for whatever reason. And let all Muslims understand that the more they look like and sound like their radical, suicidal brethren, the greater risk they run of being treated like them.
But let us not forget that most normal British Muslims live decent lives like the rest of us; that they want to see their children grow up in health and safety; that they are as scared of death as the rest of us; and that they are the victims of RadMus as much as we are - if not more. Don't marginalise them - that wins the RadMus' battle for them.
Friday, January 15, 2010
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2 comments:
I suspect the difficulty in implementing this lies in the definition of "radical" and precisely what actions fall under the term. And, for me, the repeated references to Islam rather than the broader focus of extremism in whatever form it takes (but then you know that over-specificity is a bugbear of mine!)
Just out of interest, did you get responses? Link to forum?
Ed xo
Approving responses on the Difflock forum,but that can be a surprisingly liberal site considering it's used by a load of hairy off-roaders!
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