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Forwarded this site by Mr. David Littman, Representative of the Association for World Education (no link):
Pandering to religious demands is destroying our national identity
Leo McKinstry Daily Express columnist
918 words
22 January 2007
The Daily Express (page 12)
(c) 2007 Express Newspapers
LEADER
DURING the dark days of 1938, as Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, Winston Churchill spoke of his despair at the government's enfeebled response to the threat of Hitler.
"I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf, " he said.
He went on to warn that "if a moral catastrophe should overtake" Britain, then future historians would be baffled as to how a great nation allowed itself to be destroyed so easily.
Thanks to Churchill's magnificent leadership, the end of our civilisation under the German jackboot was averted.
Yet if he were alive today, he would surely be despondent at the collapse of our sense of nationhood in the face of the twin forces of multiculturalism and mass immigration.
Churchill spoke in 1938 of a "terrible transformation" having taken place in the spirit of the political classes, whose patriotic self-confidence evaporated when confronted with the brute force of Nazi ideology.
The same is true today as our rulers dilute their allegiance to our traditions in desperation to accommodate other cultures.
A "terrible transformation" has indeed taken place. A mood of self-loathing hangs over our institutions. Our past is seen as a cause of shame rather than pride. Throughout our public services, diversity is to be celebrated, whereas Britishness must be derided, ignored or mocked.
THIS mood of self-abasement can be seen at its most repellent in the reaction to the endless litany of Muslim so-called grievances.
The official dogma of multiculturalism encourages hardline Muslims to believe that they can refuse to abide by the rules and customs of this country, even where their own superstitious, often oppressive, practices are in direct conflict with Western liberal traditions of democracy and tolerance.
A classic example occurred in the case of a newly recruited Muslim female police officer who refused to shake the hand of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair during her passing-out parade.
Justifying her decision, she said that it was contrary to her religion to touch a man. Well, it is also contrary to the Met's operational efficiency to have such an apparent zealot in its ranks. If she cannot have any physical contact with a man, how on earth is she going to carry out an arrest, given that more than 90 per cent of serious offenders are male?
In its desperation to parade its multicultural credentials, the Met, like many of our state institutions, has lost sight of its duty towards the wider public.
The police exist to protect society. Whilst there is no suggestion this WPC is anything other than a faithful Muslim, it is absurd of the Met to take seriously this nonsense, which, in my view, is no more elevated than ancient paganism.
Apart from anything else, the refusal to return a handshake is the height of bad manners, implying that the other person is so unclean or so dangerous that he cannot even be touched. But in our climate of political correctness, traditional Western manners count for nothing compared to the sensibilities of Muslims.
What is particularly depressing about this saga is that Sir Ian did nothing about it.
According to reports from inside the police, when he was informed of the officer's request to avoid a handshake:
"He was bloody furious. But he agreed to go along with it so as not to cause a scene." Sir Ian's behaviour could be a metaphor for modern Britain.
At every turn, we have surrendered to Muslim protests, whether it be over freedom of speech or the wearing of the veil. Our Christian heritage is being dumped for fear of "giving offence" to radical Muslims, while new religious discrimination laws force employers to bend over backwards to meet Islamic demands.
A PERMANENT soundtrack of Muslim grievance plays in our society, exploding into full volume at the hint of any challenge to Islam. This climate of appeasement is dressed up as religious tolerance but is really just cowardice. Our institutions are terrified of radical Islam because of the threat of violence. The shadow of the bullet and the bomb lurks behind wails about Islamophobia.
The great Trinidadian writer Sir Vidia Naipaul once described Islam as "sanctified rage" and that has been the bitter experience of countries throughout the world over the past 30 years, as the death toll mounts from the atrocities perpetrated by fundamentalists.
Yet, even as their grim catalogue of murder lengthens, radical Muslims present themselves as the victims of Western imperialistic discrimination, oppression or neglect.
Shamefully, too many Westerners and Western governments have colluded in this process.
Instead of confronting the menace of radical Islam, they try to appease it with endless concessions, even compromising basic democratic issues such as women's rights and liberty of expression. They will do anything for a quiet life. But cowardice does not lead to tranquillity. It emboldens those who wish to exploit our weakness.
The late Thirties showed the disastrous consequences of trying to appease a violent, intolerant ideology. Just as today, there was an institutional reluctance to defend British values in the face of this threat.
Opponents of Nazism were often treated as dangerous cranks; Churchill was all but banned by the BBC for being too anti-German. But as he so rightly warned, appeasement is the road to national suicide. We cannot save our civilisation by continually weakening it.
