Between the fear of Islam / And the love of liberalism / Falls the Shadow

Below is the closing section of Melanie Phillips’s article in today’s Daily Mail, “The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared Britain”:

The Iranian-born foreign affairs specialist Amir Taheri has pointed out that the Mumbai attacks embody the plan outlined by a senior Al Qaeda strategist after the U.S. decided to fight back following 9/11—a decision that the Islamists had not expected.

This new strategy entails targeting countries with a substantial Muslim presence for ‘low-intensity warfare’ comprising bombings, kidnappings, the taking of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, beheadings and other attacks that make normal life impossible.

Such a simultaneous, multi-faceted onslaught quickly reduces a city and a country to chaos. It can be repeated anywhere—and British cities must be among the most vulnerable.

This is because—astoundingly—Britain now harbours the most developed infrastructure of Islamist terrorism and extremism in the Western world.

The security service has warned that it is monitoring at least 2,000 known terrorists, and has said repeatedly that although many outrages have been averted a major attack may not be preventable.

Indeed, British security officials have sleepless nights about the various ways in which the Islamists are trying to cause mass casualties in Britain—and the fact that even now this threat is not taken seriously.

This point was made yesterday by the former head of Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command, Peter Clarke.

As an example, he noted that Kazi Nurur Rahman, a convicted terrorist who was arrested shortly after 7/7 with a machine-gun and 3,000 rounds of ammunition, had been trying to buy machine-guns, rocket-propelled grenades and missiles—undoubtedly for use against British targets.

Far from the popular caricatures of bumbling, impressionable and socially alienated misfits, he said, there was a capable and motivated enemy spanning the globe which would try to replicate the Mumbai atrocities in Britain.

That’s the end of the piece.

Let’s look again at the key paragraph:

This new strategy entails targeting countries with a substantial Muslim presence for ‘low-intensity warfare’ comprising bombings, kidnappings, the taking of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, beheadings and other attacks that make normal life impossible.

So, al Qaeda, according to Phillips, plans to target countries with a substantial Muslim presence for low-intensity terrorist warfare along the lines of the Bombay attack that would make normal life in those countries impossible. Isn’t that phrase, “substantial Muslim presence,” uh, telling us something? Something connected with the non-discriminatory immigration policies that have brought into existence the substantial Muslim presence in Western countries?

Phillips writes that Britain is highly vulnerable to the threat of Bombay-type attacks, and she expresses great anxiety about it, but she ends the article without a single mention of what to do about it. The thought evidently doesn’t even cross her mind: “Shouldn’t we at least stop further Muslim immigration into Britain? And those 2,000 known terrorists currently under surveillance by the police—shouldn’t we just … remove them?” Such thoughts are of course impossible to her. Her brain—one half of which is consumed with a rational horror of Islam, the other half of which is rigidly and unthinkingly devoted to modern liberalism and its core imperative of non-discrimination—is in a complete lock. Thus, while she repeatedly said in her 2006 book Londonistan that Muslim immigration into Britain had been a “lethal” development, she has never proposed that Muslim immigration be reduced by so much as a single Muslim per year. Brain-locked Melanie fears and loathes the lethal, but her liberalism won’t let her do anything to stop the lethal.

Now let’s look once again at that key sentence:

This new strategy entails targeting countries with a substantial Muslim presence for ‘low-intensity warfare’ …

What have I said a hundred times?

Muslims do not belong in significant numbers in any Western society, period.

If my policy were followed, there would not be a single Western country that would be suitable for targeting by al Qaeda’s low-intensity terrorist warfare, because there would not be a single Western country with a substantial Muslim presence.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

Isn’t that phrase, “substantial Muslim presence,” uh, telling us something?

Yes: “Time to thoughtstop!”

Rick Darby writes:

Today I sent the following e-mail to Melanie Phillips:

As long as Britain keeps admitting more Muslims and allowing the Muslims already in the UK to have their own state-within-a-state, no amount of preparation and intelligence gathering can possibly make it safe.

When will you outgrow your inner Guardianista and call for an end to Muslim immigration?

I have not received a reply, but I know she is busy, and I don’t expect one.

December 2

Jeff in England writes:

It is liberal to encourage Muslims to come here or to ignore their immigration buildup; that I understand. But once Muslims are here is it liberal or conservative to treat them (with decency and respect) as you would you would anybody else. Or would conservatives not do that?

LA replies:

It’s not a matter of decency and respect. There’s nothing in what I’ve said that implies treating individuals indecently and disrespectfully, and you won’t find anything in what I’ve written that treats or suggests treating individuals indecently or disrespectfully. It’s a matter of seeing that Muslims in significant numbers do not belong among us, should not have been allowed in, and should leave.

If in a moment of hippie élan you invited all your neighbors to move into your house, and later you snapped out of it and realized that this was a big mistake, this wasn’t viable, and you told them that they had to leave and go back to their own homes so that you could have your home back, would that mean that you were treating them indecently and without respect? That’s what we have to do with Muslims in the West. They don’t belong here. They belong in their home, not in our home.

LA continues:

And by the way I think that Jeff’s comment strongly suggests that his frequently stated opposition to my separationist proposal is based on the belief, not that it would be practically impossible to make Muslims leave, but that it would be morally wrong to make them leave.

Jeff replies:

Wrong on the Muslim thing. It’s not a matter of morality, it’s a matter of the fact that it will never happen. Zero chance of happening.

LA replies:

Ok, thanks for clarification of your position. However, it must be said that with your constant repetition of your fondness for individual Muslims, and of their moral superiority to today’s British, and (in the context of my separationist proposals) of the paramount need to show kindness and respect to all human beings, you do give the impression that your staunch opposition to a reversal of Muslim immigration is driven at least in part by the view that it would be morally wrong.

Jeff replies:

It is one thing not letting in Muslims to begin with (a policy which I support). But once they legally apply to enter here and are accepted, I do not support removing them. People of any sort need to be treated equally once they are here. Not only won’t removal happen, I do feel it is morally wrong.

Get the L word out and start accusing.

LA replies:

It was useful to pin you down on that point. But I won’t accuse you of anything, except of honestly admitting where you’re coming from.

* * *

The title of this entry, “Between the fear of Islam / And the love of liberalism / Falls the Shadow,” is a paraphrase of T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, “The Hollow Men,” the concluding part of which goes:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 01, 2008 07:47 PM | Send