Abu Qatada and the Isle of the Dead

In April 2008 a British judge ordered that Al Qaeda honcho Abu Qatada not be deported to Jordan because he might receive harsh punishment there. In May 2008 the British authorities released Abu Qatada on bail. He’s, like, a free man in Britain. Melanie Phillips asks, instead of being released, why wasn’t he tried on violations of Britain’s own anti-terror statutes? She then presents numerous quotes from his own statements calling for the terrorization and murder of non-Muslims.

So you have a Muslim terrorist leader telling his fellow Muslims to murder non-Muslims, and the British will neither deport him back to the dar al-Islam nor put him in jail in Britain.

And people think I’m overstating the case when I say that the British are dead!

(Listen, I devoutly hope that they come back to life; but as they are, they are dead. There is no hope of their coming back to life unless they recognize that they are dead.)

- end of initial entry -

Adela G. writes:

Another twitch from the corpse.

One of the “Asian youths” accused of attacking an Anglican clergyman last March just went free.

Perhaps the only thing still alive and well in the UK is the British genius for understatement. Though the attack was originally described as a “faith hate” crime, with one of the attackers yelling, “f***g priest!,” the prosecutor merely referred to the crime as “an unprovoked attack on somebody serving the public at his place of work.”

LA replies:

Makes sense. In the new world order, a priest is a “faith worker,” just as prostitute is a “sex worker.”

Adela G. replies:

Actually, in the new world order, your analogy only goes so far. When “sex workers” are targetted for criminal attack, as were the victims of the Ipswich serial killer, the British at least admit that the prostitutes are, in fact, the targets of their attackers.

When British “faith workers” are attacked, it’s just a random work-place event that has nothing to do with the hostility that their “Asian” attackers openly express toward Christian clergymen.

Jeff in England writes:

WHY IS MELANIE PHILLIPS NOT PROSECUTED FOR IMPERSONATING A SERIOUS ANALYST OF ISLAMIC AFFAIRS….

THAT SHE CAN’T CONTEMPLATE STOPPING MUSLIMS COMING IN SHOULD BE GROUNDS FOR PROSECUTION….

LA replies:

I can’t see bringing up the general question of Muslim immigration in the context of this column. This Qatada is so extreme that he cannot be made a symbol of Muslim immigration generally Here is a man openly calling for Muslims to terrorize and kill non-Muslims, and the authorities let him go.

Jeff replies:

Qatada has credibility because a significant number of Muslims either support him or tolerate him. If immigration of Muslims had remained small, Qatada would not have had the platform he has.

Anyway my point was not really about Muslim immigration or even Qatada as such but a “joke” to make the point that Melanie’s lack of logic and guts over stopping Muslims was also deserving of prosecution so to speak.

In other words, she should be concentrating on the task of stopping Muslim immigration, not worrying about prosecuting the individual Qatada.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 24, 2008 11:31 PM | Send