no butter in hell

Appealing to the Muslim family

This editorial in the Telegraph notes the responses of some representatives of Muslim organizations to the recent foiling of a terror plot in Britain and opines that there is really no "single Muslim community" that any one Muslim organization might represent or to whom the British government might appeal for help in preventing more terrorist plots.

While no one Muslim organization can represent the views of all Muslims, it should be alarming if, in fact, there is not even one Muslim organization that might have influence in the British Muslim community and with whom the British governmemt might work to "foster a climate that would prevent young Muslims becoming so radicalised that they are prepared to blow themselves and their fellow citizens to smithereens."

The editor seems to gloss over that conundrum and shifts the focus to where presumably the real help can be found: the Muslim family. On the face of it, that sounds sensible, but it may be unrealistic. Just as there is no one Muslim organization that represents all Muslims, there is also no ideal "Muslim family" to which all actual Muslim families correspond. Some Muslims families in Britain may actually do the hard work of confronting the jihadist beliefs of their "disaffected" sons and defying the dictates of those Muslim clerics who influence them. Some may even be willing to turn in their sons or daughters, brothers or sisters, if they knew them to be involved in plotting the next terror attack. But is it likely that this would occur on such a scale as would be required to seriously reduce, never mind effectively eliminate, the threat?

Rooting out the evil within cannot be left primarily to the Muslim families to solve. Clearly, not every Muslim family is unsympathetic to the jihad and as everyone knows, it only takes a few "disaffected" youths to blow up a bus or a train.

What those British Muslims who have assimilated into British culture and think of themselves with pride as British citizens need - what of course all British citizens need - is the support of law. At least one area where that support appears to be failing is in the overly-tolerant approach of British law enforcement to a murderous minority that poisons the minds of the susceptible and openly advocates terrorism, as this piece by Diana West illustrates.

posted by PseudoSav @ 10:37 AM