By Ed West There’s a truly awful piece in Telegraph blogs by, no not Damian Thompson, but Ed West, entitled “Here’s an inconvenient truth: the Islamisation of Europe”.
West tries to rationalize what is nothing more than a racist diatribe against Muslim immigration and Muslim citizenship in Europe. While he tries to couch his article in language that conveys anxiety over mass immigration and the costs to social cohesion, he betrays his barely concealed Islamophobia by singling out Islam and Muslims as the scourge of Europe.
Reading West, one would think the BNP and associated far right racist parties in Europe were merely filling the void left by mainstream parties unwilling to bring the debate on the effects of Muslim mass immigration to the centre stage. Perhaps because to do so would reveal one’s patent anti Muslim prejudice, Mr West?
The point of the article was that immigration into Europe is at historically unprecedented levels, and that this will at best make for less happy and less equal societies, and at worst cause serious unrest and violence.
I sat on that blog post for almost a week because I was worried about the reaction; it was an unpleasant truth and sometimes unpleasant truths attract unpleasant words and people, but someone had to say it.
I wanted to call it “Immigration, an Inconvenient Truth”, but that title had already been taken by Rageh Omaar’s non-hardhitting documentary last year.
Islam has become something of a scapegoat for both decent people concerned about immigration, and outright racists. This is primarily because the other problems associated with immigration – specifically the moral collapse of black culture and the crime caused by it – are utterly verboten: far easier to attack “the Islamics” since liberals also despise their culture and loonies like Anjem Choudary or Abu Hamza make such good pin-ups. But the title was still honest, 90 per cent of non-white immigration being Islamic.
Actually I admire Islam far more than most lefties do. I admire its respect for family and old people, I admire its sobriety and sense of charity and honesty.
I find Mohammed a strange character to follow and the Koran full of violence, but that doesn’t neccesarily produce violent societies. Mormonism is by far and away the dumbest-sounding religion in theory, based on the words of a convicted fraudster, but Mormons are overwhelmingly decent, upstanding people and Mormon areas have almost zero crime.
Islam and the West don’t necessarily have to clash forever, although they probably will – much depends on Turkey, the great secular hope.
But I also recognise that Islam fell behind Christianity a long time ago, and at the moment, far from catching up, it’s going backwards in terms of cultural and political progress. Religions are like viruses – they are often beneficial, but sometimes a strain will become dangerous, and many variants of modern Islam are a threat to world peace (and would still be if there was no Israel, no American interference, and no Indian occupation of Kashmir).
As well as the fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran, which can justify all sorts of horror, Islam has become a lightning rod for all the world’s embittered, angry losers, anyone with a grudge against capitalism, America, the West, white people in general and Jews in particular.
Look at the pathetic specimens who convert to extreme Islam in England.
This, coupled with unrestricted levels of immigration to the West, is a dangerous combination.
I don’t hate or fear Muslims or Islam – in a more rational world I wouldn't even feel the need to say that – but I do despise the western liberals who want to whitewash Islam of all its faults and who, by so dishonestly calling it a “religion of peace”, only encourage many people to believe it is a religion of war.
Source: Telegraph
Posts
