Finally, it would undertake a major educational exercise for both Muslims and non-Muslims. It would teach Muslims what being a minority means, and that certain ideas to which they may subscribe are simply unacceptable or demonstrably untrue. It would say loud and clear that the double standards from which Muslims think they suffer are actually a form of doublethink. Any administration that was really concerned to fight racism would educate the nation in the historical truths about Israel and the Arabs, and would tell Muslims that they have systematically been fed a diet of lies about Israel and the Jews.
If Britain really understood the threat to the West, this is the kind of program it would now be introducing. Unfortunately, there is very little chance of any of this happening. Britain is currently locked into such a spiral of decadence, self-loathing and sentimentality that it is incapable of seeing that it is setting itself up for cultural immolation. In the short term, this is likely to lead to the increasing marginalization of British Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities caught in a pincer movement between radical Islamists on the one hand and, on the other, a craven establishment that is pandering to Islamist extremism. So much for the multicultural nirvana.
America’s principal ally is currently at a crossroads. With Islamist terrorism having erupted in London and still worse atrocities feared to be in the offing, the British government has even now only tightened up a few procedures. If there were to be more attacks, it is possible that it would finally be forced to take a more tough-minded approach. But to date, Londonistan still flourishes. Yes, a few more extremists have been locked up. Yes, a few thinkers have now questioned the wisdom of multiculturalism. But the push for Islamization continues, British Muslims are still being recruited for the jihad, and the country’s elites are still in the grip of the nation-busting, universalist mindset that has hollowed out Britain’s values and paralyzed it in the face of the assault by Islamism. A liberal society is in danger of being destroyed by its own ideals.
The emergence of Londonistan should be of the greatest concern to America, for which it poses acute dangers. Clearly, the fact that Britain has become Europe’s Islamist terror factory presents immediate and obvious risks to America’s physical security. On another level, there is the danger that Britain might cease to play such a staunch role in the continuing defense of the West. Tony Blair has said he will not stand again as Labour’s leader. Given the hostility of his party towards America, Israel and Iraq, his successor is unlikely to share his passion for the cause. As for the Conservative party, which might come to power instead, it has lost its ideological way, with many in its ranks having come to share the shrill prejudices of the left and with a new leader, David Cameron, who has announced that he “loves Britain as it is, not as it once was.”
At a deeper, cultural level there is now a risk of the special relationship between Britain and America fracturing as Britain slides further into appeasement. But there is a more subtle peril still for America. After all, if Britain slept on its watch, so too did America and for similar reasons. Like British politicians and British intelligence, successive American administrations along with the CIA and the FBI similarly failed to pay attention to or understand the rise of fanatical Islamism and what this meant for the world. Like their British counterparts, American officials dismissed the warnings they were given by occasional farsighted officials and other players who did understand that a religious war was brewing. Indeed, America has an even greater horror than Britain of encroaching on religion’s private space. It too has gone to great lengths to avoid referring to the religious nature of the war declared on the West, calling the struggle instead—absurdly—a “war on terrorism.” As a Pentagon briefing paper observed, “America’s political leaders still think Muslim terrorists, even suicide bombers, are mindless ‘criminals’ motivated by ‘hatred of our freedoms’ rather than religious zealots motivated by their faith. And as a result, we have no real strategic plan for winning a war against jihadists.”12
The cultural deformities of moral relativism and victim culture that have done such damage in Britain are present in American society too. At present, they are locked in conflict with traditional values in America’s culture wars. But it doesn’t take too much imagination to envisage that, if a different administration were installed in the White House, Britain’s already calamitous slide into cultural defeatism might boost similar forces at play in the United States.
Britain is the global leader of English-speaking culture. It was Britain that first developed the Western ideas of the rule of law, democracy and liberal ideals, and exported them to other countries. Now Britain is leading the rout of those values, allowing its culture to become vulnerable to the predations of militant Islam. If British society goes down under this twin assault, the impact will be incalculable—not just for the military defense of the West against radical Islamism, but for the very continuation of Western civilization itself.
The West is under threat from an enemy that has shrewdly observed the decadence and disarray in Europe, where Western civilization first began. And the greatest disarray of all is in Britain, the very cradle of Western liberty and democracy, but whose cultural confusion is now plain for all to see in Londonistan. The Islamists chose well. Britain is not what it once was. Whether it will finally pull itself together and stop sleepwalking into cultural oblivion is a question on which the future of the West may now depend.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1 Draft Report on Young Muslims and Extremism, Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Home Office, 2004; Robert Winnett and David Leppard, Sunday Times, 10 July 2005.
2 Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (Doubleday, 2006); Claire Berlinski, Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too (Crown Forum, 2006).
3 Tony Blair speech, 16 July 2005; Tony Blair, Downing Street press conference, 21 July 2005.
4 Dundan Gardham and George Jones, Daily Telegraph, 8 February 2006.
5 Sean O’Neill, Daniel McGrory and Philip Webster, The Times, 9 February 2006.
6 John Steele and George Jones, Daily Telegraph, 9 February 2 0 0 6 .
7 David Blunkett, Sun, 9 February 2006 .
8 Paul Reynolds, BBC News Online, 6 February 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4686536.stm. ; Hjörtur Gudmundsson (with Filip van Laenen), Brussels Journal, 1 4 January 2006, http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/668
9 Amir Taheri, New York Post, 9 February 2006.
10 David Rennie, Julian Isherwood and Jack Barton, Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2006.
11 BBC News Online, 9 February 2006.
12 U.S. State Department press briefing, 3 February 2006.
13 Press Association newswire, 3 February 2006.
14 Steve Bird and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 4 February 2006 .
15 Press Association newswire, 9 February 2006.
16 Ibid.
17 Prince of Wales, “Islam and the West,” speech at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 27 October 1993; text, MSANEWS, Ohio State University .
18 Tony Brooks, Daily Express, 24 October 2005.
19 Steve Doughty, Daily Mail, 18 October 2005.
CHAPTER 1: THE GROWTH OF LONDONISTAN
1 Trevor Phillips, speech to Manchester Council for Community Relations, 22 September 2005.
2 Stephen Ulph, “Londonistan,” Terrorism Monitor (Jamestown Center), vol. 2 , no. 4 (26 February 2004).
3 Rachel Ehrenfeld, FrontPageMagazine.com; July 20, 2005.
4 Reda Hussaine, interview with author, 2005.
5 Jonathan Spyer, Ha’aretz, 15 July 2005.
6 Reda Hussaine interview.
7 United States of America v. Usama bin Laden, et al., U .S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 2001.
8 Maureen O’Hagan and Mike Carter, Seattle Times, 29 December 2004.
9 Interview with Navid Akhtar, BBC Radio Five Live, 7 March 2004.
10 Michael Whine, “Th
e Penetration of Islamist Ideology in Britain,” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology (Hudson Institute), vol. 1 (April 2005).
11 Alex Alexiev, “Violent Islamists in the UK and Europe,” Internationale Politik (Berlin), September 2005.
12 BBC TV Panorama, 21 August 2005.
13 Alexiev, “Violent Islamists in the UK and Europe.”
14 Sue Reid, Daily Mail, 3 September 2005 .
15 Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, interview with author, 2005.
16 Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, interview with author, 2005.
17 Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui interview.
18 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (Penguin, 2004).
19 Globe and Mail (Toronto), 9 December 1992.
20 Stewart Tendler, Andrew McEwen and Nicholas Beeston, The Times, 1 5 February 1989 .
21 Amit Roy, Sunday Times, 22 October 1989 .
22 Ibid.
23 Joanna Coles, Guardian, 14 February 1990.
24 Amit Roy and Greg Hadfield, Sunday Times, 1 2 March 1989 .
25 Independent, 3 June 1989.
26 Prospect, October 2005.
27 Independent, 5 June 1989 .
28 BBC News Online, 26 November 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1564626.stm
29 Reda Hussaine interview.
30 Ian Bruce, Herald (Glasgow), 9 July 2002.
31 Ulph, “Londonistan.”
32 Mail on Sunday, 12 November 1995.
33 “Insight,” Sunday Times, 7 August 2005.
34 Daily Mirror, 7 September 1996.
35 Robert Leiken, Bearers of Global Jihad: Immigration and National Security after 9 /1 1 (Nixon Center, 2004).
36 Ulph, “Londonistan.”
37 Leiken, Bearers of Global Jihad.
38 Sean O’Neill, Daily Telegraph, 21 January 2003.
39 Daily Telegraph, 18 October 2003
40 Jessica Berry and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times, 13 February 2005.
41 Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, interview.
CHAPTER 2: THE HUMAN RIGHTS JIHAD
1 Robert Leiken, Bearers of Global Jihad: Immigration and National Security after 9/11 (Nixon Center, 2004).
2 Cited in Reuven Paz, “Middle East Islamism in the European Arena,” MERIA, vol. 6 , no. 3 (September 2002).
3 James Slack, Daily Mail, 22 December 2005.
4 Abul Taher, Sunday Times, 20 November 2005.
5 John Fonte, “The Ideological War within the West,” Watch on the West (Foreign Policy Research Institute), vol. 3 , no. 6 (May 2002).
6 Lord Bingham, speech to Commonwealth Law Conference, 14 September 2005.
7 Ibid.
8 avid Selbourne, The Principle of Duty (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994; revised, Abacus, 1997).
9 Francesca Klug, Values for a Godless Age (Penguin, 2000).
10 Clare Dyer, Guardian, 9 March 2006.
11 Joshua Rozenberg, Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2005.
12 A [et al.] v. Home Department, Session 2004-05 [2004] UKHL56 (16 December 2004).
13 Ibid.
CHAPTER 3: THE SECURITY DEBACLE
1 Elaine Sciolino and Don Van Natta Jr., New York Times, 10 July 2005.
2 James Sturcke, Guardian, 19 July 2005.
3 Anthony Barnett and Martin Bright, Observer, 2 October 2005.
4 Vikram Dodd, Guardian, 26 October 2005.
5 Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, 11September 2001—An Updated Account, HMG, 2001.
6 Kathryn Knight, Mail on Sunday, 23 September 2001.
7 Rory Carroll, Guardian, 24 June 1999.
8 Marie Colvin and Dipesh Gadher, Sunday Times, 17 January 1999.
9 Ely Karmon, International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (Israel), interview with author, 2005.
10 Philip Johnston, Daily Telegraph, 28 September 2001.
11 Stephen Ulph, “Londonistan,” Terrorism Monitor (Jamestown Center), vol. 2 , no. 4 (26 February 2004 ).
12 BBC News Online, 2 6 September 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1564626.stm
13 Elaine Sciolino and Don Van Natta Jr., New York Times, 10 July 2005.
14 Richard Beeston and Michael Binyon, The Times, 10 August 2005.
15 Jimmy Burns and Stephen Fidler, Financial Times, 12 July 2005.
16 James Woolsey, interview with author, 2005.
17 Kathryn Knight, Mail on Sunday, 23 September 2001.
18 Anthony Glees and Chris Pope, When Students Turn to Terror: Terrorist and Extremist Activity on British Campuses (Social Affairs Unit, 2005).
19 Oliver Revell, interview with author, 2005.
20 Lord Carey, interview with author, 2005.
21 Marquess of Salisbury, interview with author, 2005.
22 Interview with official, 2005.
23 David Blunkett, interview with author, 2005 .
24 Reda Hussaine, interview with author, 2005 .
25 Sue Reid, Daily Mail, 3 September 2005 .
26 Reda Hussaine interview.
27 Jason Burke, Observer, 26 January 2003 .
28 Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 22 August 1998.
29 Bishop of Rochester, interview with author, 2005.
30 David Blunkett interview.
31 Marquess of Salisbury interview.
32 Oliver Revell interview.
33 Interview with official, 2005.
34 David Blunkett interview.
35 Nicole Martin, Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2005.
36 Ian Herbert, Independent, 8 July 2005.
37 Jasper Gerard, Sunday Times, 6 February 2005.
38 BBC News Online, 12 August 2005.
39 Daily Express, 1 August 2005.
40 Daily Mail, 2 December 2005.
41 Daily Express, 1 September 2005 .
42 Interviews with participants, 2005.
43 Memo by Mockbul Ali, Foreign Office, 14 July 2005.
44 John Mintz and Douglas Farah, Washington Post, 11 September 2004.
CHAPTER 4: THE MULTICULTURAL PARALYSIS
1 Lord Swann, Education for All: The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups, HMSO, 1985 .
2 Fred Naylor, Dewsbury and the School above the Pub (Claridge Press, 1989).
3 Andrew Norfolk, Sean O’Neill and Stewart Tendler, The Times, 2 0 July 2005.
4 Office for National Statistics.
5 The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain: The Parekh Report (Profile Books, 2000).
6 Richard Ford, The Times, 12 October 2000.
7 Leo McKinstry, Spectator, 24 September 2005.
8 Sun, 1 October 2005.
9 Steve Kennedy, Sun, 16 September 2005.
10 Martin Evans, Daily Express, 16 November 2005.
11 Sarah Harris and Laura Clark, Daily Mail, 9 April 2002.
12 Dalya Alberge, The Times, 24 November 2005.
13 Trevor Phillips, speech to Conservative Party conference, September 2005.
14 Dave Walker, Humanities Resource, Spring 1995/1996.
15 John Beck, “Nation, Curriculum and Identity in Conservative Cultural Analysis: A Critical Commentary,” Cambridge Journal (University of Cambridge Institute of Education), no. 2 (1996).
16 Bruce Carrington and Geoffrey Short, “What Makes a Person British? Children’s Conceptions of Their National Culture and Identity,” Educational Studies, vol. 21 , no. 2 (1995).
17 Bernard Barker, Anxious Times: The Future of Education (Stanground College, Peterborough, 1995).
18 Tom Leonard, Daily Telegraph, 14 July 2005.
19 FaithWorks case studies, 2005.
20 Steve Doughty, Daily Mail, 18 October 2005.
21 Stephen Bates, Guardian, 16 November 2005.
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