Bastardisation of the East: We are all extremists now

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

We are all extremists now

Looks like the suppresion of Geert Wilders' freedom to talk crap last week was only a stay of execution for our purportedly untouchable community togetherness. According to The Guardian and the BBC's Panorama, the government is looking to incorporate new measures against what they deem radicalism into is counter-terrorism strategy.

This strategy is known as 'Contest 2'. An obscure name, yet we know that Britain's top men do 'mysterious' much better than their counterparts across the pond, where it would be baptised something glitzy and melodramatic like the 'Annihilating Muslim Extremist Radicals and Isolating Covert Attackers' [AMERICA!!] strategy. The aim of this video-game-titled plan will involve leaving Muslims cleaving to retrograde beliefs against homosexuality and democracy "isolated and publicly rejected". How exactly this will be achieved is not detailed.

The aim is to put an end to the perceptions many Muslims have of being Muslim first and British second. It is very much in the mould of of Gordon Brown, who in one of his premature Dear Leader moments floated the idea of a 'British Day' and other gimmicks to reinforce the British identity in our hearts. But many Muslims risk being bracketed as extremists and pushed to the fringes of society for holding views that are despicable yet capable of being challenged in an open society. Admittedly this ruling implies I will never have to sit through another tedious dredge of a debate that Sunday mornings seem to specialise in showing. You know, the sort where an indignant atheist tries repeatedly to force some stubborn Muslim to admit that his religious texts do not allow a warm welcome for women, homosexuals and apostates. But civil liberties being further eroded is too big a price to pay, especially since this plan makes me and many other non-Muslims extremists too.

Firstly, because those who "fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan" are included. Well, yesterday the 145th soldier from my forces died in Afghanistan, as part of Operation Herrick (again, compare with the US name for the main offensive, Operation Enduring Freedom; not only bombastic but emphatically inaccurate...) in Helmand province. I didn't think to condemn that death, but then again, when I heard about it there was nobody about to condemn it to. Days earlier the 149th died in Operation Telic (Iraqi Freedom. Need I say more..?) I didn't condemn this either, but then again, I didn't want British soldiers to be packed off to Iraq in the first place, one of the reasons being that the war would serve to generate more bloody extremists. And given that most of the early British casualties were caused by helicopter crashes and friendly fire, and that they have on occasions been left without appropriate equipment for a hostile environment, I'm not sure who these stiffs want me to condemn when British soldiers are killed.

Secondly, because the plan also makes extremists of those who "believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world. This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military." (This is the wording in the Guardian article at least). I gave up on defining 'jihad' a long time ago, but I won't have what the government thinks it is equated with "armed resistance". In the unlikely event that Britain were attacked by a conventional military, it would need to employ "armed resistance" to keep the invaders at bay. As far as I'm concerned, Palestinians firing at peoples' homes are not resisting - they are terrorising civilians. But if the IDF rolls into Gaza or a West Bank refugee camp and starts bulldozing homes then they are dead meat for not disobeying these obscene orders. This is certainly no radical position in a land where those who shoot and kill unarmed burglars in the back are celebrated by a good proportion of the people as heroes. Armed resistance is the only weapon the weak and helpless have when the powerful decide to close ranks.

Regrettably in Britain we have to contend with a powerful elite magnetically drawn to bad choices, producing masterful combinations such as banning anti-Muslim MPs who might disturb community relations while toying with plans to force pariah status on this same society. With these fools in charge I genuinely fear the potential these new measures have to become reality and give us the worst of both worlds.

¶ posted by the leech at 2/17/2009

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