Prof. Paul Eidelberg
A week after Israel did the world the favor of getting rid of Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, the founder of Hamas and murderer of innocent children, the British House of Commons devoted a minute of silence to his memory .
Bruce Baywer elaborates on England’s decadence: “In the wake of 7/7 [the July 7, 2005 terrorist attack in London] the House of Commons, to its disgrace, went ahead and passed the noxious Racial and Religious Hatred Bill—which sought to pacify Britain by making it a crime to criticize the very radicalism that had just taken fifty-six lives”. (Ironically, it took a non-democratic body, the House of Lords, to uphold democracy by rejecting the bill.)
The following month, Prime Minister Tony Blair named Tariq Ramadan (banned from the United States for his terrorist sympathies) and Inayat Bunglawala (who had called Osma Bin Laden a “freedom fighter’) to a task force responsible for tackling Muslim “extremism”. But to fully appreciate the extent of England ’s decay and demise, let us turn to Melanie Phillips, Londonistan (2006).
“According to British officials, up to sixteen thousand British Muslims are either actively engaged in or support terrorist activity, while up to three thousand are estimated to have passed through al-Qaeda training camps, with several hundred thought to be primed to attack the United Kingdom”.
Why did the government tolerate this development, which had been going on for more than a decade in London ? In fact, London had become the epicenter of Islamic militancy in Europe. Why was there no attempt to combat this evil by the governmental and intelligence agencies which were aware of what was happening?
Phillips probes beneath the surface: “Among Britain’s governing class—its intelligentsia, its media, its politicians, its judiciary, its church, and even its police—a broader and deeper cultural pathology has allowed and even encouraged Londonistan to develop, one which persists to this day”. This pathology—which is also evident in Israel , and which I have called “demophrenia”—is rooted in the university-bred doctrine of moral relativism. England (like Europe ) has been de-moralized, has become a moral wasteland stripped of any standards of right and wrong .
Islam is filling this moral vacuum. It is giving youth meaning and purpose and passion lacking in secularized Christianity—a Sunday religion, platitudinous, hypocritical and unexciting. Phillips sees in the Church of England that “faith in God and belief in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity have been replaced by worship of social liberalism”. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr . Rowan Williams, apologized for bringing Christianity to the world!
It is moral relativism that prompts Britain —as well as the United States and Israel —to negotiate with evil, with terrorists. Who has not heard the vulgarism, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”? This denial of evil is a tendency of democracy, where freedom and equality lack moral constraints. There freedom of speech is more a matter of self-expression than a means of seeking truth. There egalitarianism levels all moral distinctions. There permissiveness and pluralism or multiculturalism have opened the door to Muslim terrorists and sympathizers and are allowing Islam to subvert the West from within .
Throughout the West Muslims complain of being the victims of the majority. Britain, says Phillips, has been crippled by a “victim culture” in which Muslims use moral blackmail against the majority on the grounds of its alleged oppression of minorities. Instead of preventing offenses being committed, the police give priority to preventing offense being given—especially to England ’s hypersensitive Muslim population. The police—indeed, England ’s establishment—are fearful of being accused of “Islamophobia”
On the same day of the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London , the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner said on TV: “As far as I am concerned, Islam and terrorists are two words that do not go together . ” No wonder the BBC refrains from using the term “terrorists” to describe Muslims . To speak of “Muslim terrorists” is to denigrate Islam . Such judgmentalism regarding a particular culture is unfair and undemocratic.
Multiculturalism, says Phillips, has become “the driving force of British life, ruthlessly policed by a state-fancied army of local and national bureaucrats enforcing a doctrine of state-mandated virtue to promote racial, ethnic and cultural differences and stamp out majority values. Institutions have been instructed to teach themselves that they are intrinsically racist and to reprogram their minds in non-judgmentalism.”
(By the way, to stamp out Israel ’s majority culture is precisely the goal of its leftwing parties, which want to transform the Jewish state into “a state of its citizens”. In Israel the Left seeks to minimize the Jewish content of the public school curriculum.)
In Britain, some “politically incorrect” teachers complain that the common culture of pre-1940 England, based on the canon of English literature, the principles of English jurisprudence, and the liturgy of the Church of England, has died.
How tragic! Bad enough that the Archbishop of Canterbury, as mentioned, apologizes for Christianity . Prince Phillip, heir apparent to the throne of Great Britain , has become enamored of Islam!