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COMMENTARY
July 13, 2005
Re-awaking
One of the cheaper postures, among those about to challenge reason, is the “I am a Londoner” performance. We had enough of this on behalf of Manhattan after 9/11. But since my opposition to rhetorical poses is selective, let me indulge my own.My mama could tell you, that when I had my first real fill of London, at the age of eight, I declared to her, “This is my city.” Next only to the city of my birth, I have loved London, my Athens, the mistress of my youth -- and had my heart lifted at every return to the Great Wen: To mery London, my most kindly Nurse, That to me gave this Lifes first native source: Though from another place I take my name. I have walked, I should think, every lane and mews of the inner city (a lifetime would not suffice for the rest), and my memory is stocked with myriad fine details of “those bricky towers, / The which on Themmes brode aged back doe ryde”. I shall long to revisit them in my old age. Moreover, should I become an exile from my own country -- which becomes the more possible as Canada falls under the control of evil men, leading complacent masses -- it is to London I would instinctively fly. (“Sweet Themmes run softly, till I end my song.”) And what is done to my mistress is done to me. It is right to respond to an act of horrific vandalism, such as the Islamist bombings in London, by returning soon to business as usual. But it is also right to expect all conspirators in such an act to be punished, by the duly constituted authorities. For if they are not, we have no justice, and are no better savages than our assailants. Londoners have responded well in the first instance, proving unflappable, but may be deficient in the follow-through. The Americans more fully grasped that “something must be done”; and must be done regardless whether the world approves. But the battle cannot be limited to any specific terror network or cell, for each is part of something larger. We did not fight Germany, per se; we fought Nazism, then restored Germany to its better self. The “war on terrorism” is no different in principle. We are not fighting the Umma -- the whole “nation” of Islam -- but we are certainly at war with the tyrannical “Islamist” ideology within it, which flourishes today almost as Nazism flourished within Germany. (The comparison can be defended: for many millions of outwardly “moderate” Muslims side, emotionally, with the Islamists against the West; and Islamism could not flourish were this not the case.) We cannot afford to pull punches in war. The power of the Islamists is not great enough to defeat us, or come even close; but our ability to defeat ourselves, with their help, is profoundly worrying. This came home to me yet again in reading a secret Whitehall cabinet briefing, about Islamist recruitment in Britain, exposed on the weekend by the London Sunday Times. It gave little information that could not be inferred from an extensive Internet search. So what struck me was the over-cautious tone, as if the worst thing imaginable were to give offence to any member of Britain’s Muslim minority. That is not the worst that can happen. Being aboard an exploding omnibus is much worse. Britain and the West are in serious trouble when senior Home Office staff feel the need to pretend, and weave fairytales, when writing confidentially on a matter of life and death. Turn from that document to another: the transcript of remarks by Dr. Hani Al-Sibai, director of London's Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies. This was from an interview with Al Jazeera TV, after the London bombings (available in translation with clips of the original broadcast in the MEMRI website). “Doctor” Sibai says there are no “civilians” in Islamic law; that the London bombings were a great victory. “It rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud.” He tells his viewers there is nothing wrong with slaughter; and reminds them that the Prophet Mohammad slaughtered many. This was not an anti-Islamic rant. It was the considered view of someone claiming Islamic scholarly authority, broadcast respectfully into every Arabic-speaking home. And this man continues to enjoy the safety of London, and the protection of British police. The failure to immediately arrest and imprison men like Sibai does not convey a “message of tolerance and understanding”. It rather conveys the message, “Come and get us!” to every Islamist fanatic in the world. It is in the Muslim interest, as well as our own, that we change this suicidally “liberal” attitude to the defence of the West. For innocent Muslims will be the first victims when the façade of “political correctness” disintegrates under the barometric pressure of a few more bombs. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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