The official indulgence of Islamism in East London

This essay, by Nick Cohen, was published by The Spectator, on Dec.5. Cohen, it should be noted, represents the very best of the anti-totalitarian left – in the tradition of George Orwell and Albert Camus.  His courage in speaking out, bravely and without qualification, against the twin pathologies of the modern hard left – both anti-Americanism and the appeasement of radical Islam – sets him apart from his ideological peers.  Anyone wishing to gain inspiration from his ideological journey would be wise to read his book, “What’s Left: How Liberals Lost their Way.

Imagine that the British National Party controls a church and community centre in the East End of London. Imagine that it receives respectful visits from politicians, and grants from local and national government. Imagine that Prince Charles extends his already unhinged beliefs in pseudo-science and homeopathic quackery to include neo-fascist race theory, and signals his approval of the BNP by visiting the church. Imagine that Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson follow him. Imagine that the Lord Chief Justice chooses a BNP church of all places to demand restrictions on the rights off immigrants. Imagine finally that the liberal media stay silent because the BNP has convinced them that it was the authentic voice an ethnic group called the “whites,” and anyone who criticised its political programme was guilty of the irrational hatred of “whiteophobic” racism.

Substitute Jamaat-i-Islami for the BNP and you have a precise description of the official indulgence of Islamism at the East London Mosque. The idiot prince and the alternately sinister and cynical Livingstone and Johnson can’t stay away. In 2008, the then Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips had the extraordinary bad taste to announce that he favoured applying Sharia law to British citizens at the Jamaat dominated mosque, and ignored all the grim evidence that it is “discriminatory against women and children in particular”.

I go too far? Perhaps I do. I need to row back and admit that my comparison is unfair to the BNP. In Bangladesh, the local leaders of Jamaat face allegations of complicity in the mass rapes and mass murders inflicted by the Pakistan army during the War of Independence of 1971. (I probably need to tell younger readers, that the crimes were so vicious they shocked a late 20th century, which thought it had seen it all. George Harrison, the Bob Geldof of his day, organised the Bangladesh concert to help the millions of victims.)
Say what you will about the BNP, prosecutors have never accused its members of involvement in the mass murder and mass rape of British citizens. Not that they would hold back if they had the chance, I am sure.

Read the rest of the essay, here.

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