Letter From the UK (About a Clarion Call)

A Belly Full of Laughs

The New Statesman has published an article by David Selbourne.  It is a warning about the rise of Islam, but also a critique of the effete self-censorship of the Commentariat on Islam.  Some excerpts:

A beheading in Woolwich, a suicide bomb in Beijing, a blown-up marathon in Boston, a shooting in the head of a young Pakistani girl seeking education, a destroyed shopping mall in Nairobi – and so it continues, in the name of Islam, from south London to Timbuktu. It is time to take stock, especially on the left, since these things are part of the world’s daily round. . . .

To the aid of Islam has also come the betrayal by much of today’s left of its notionally humane principles, as Christians are assaulted and murdered (shades of what was done to the Jews in the 1930s) and their churches desecrated and destroyed from Egypt to the Central African Republic, from Iran to Indonesia, and from Pakistan to Nigeria. Islam can kill its own apostates, too; in many Muslim countries denies reciprocity to other faiths in rights of worship; and seeks to prevent reasoned discussion about its beliefs by attempted resort to blasphemy laws.

So where is the old left’s centuries-long espousal of free speech and free thought?
Where is the spirit of Tom Paine? The answer is simple. It has been curbed by frightened self-censorship and by the stifling of debate, in a betrayal of the principles for which “progressives” were once prepared to go to the stake. And just as some Jews are too quick to call anti-Zionists “anti-Semites”,  so some leftists are too quick to tar critics of Islam as “Islamophobes”.

To add to such falsehoods come the illusionists of every stripe, with their unknowing, simplistic or false descriptions of Islam as a “religion of peace”. Even today’s Pope – as the Christian faithful were being harried, persecuted or put to the sword in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq and beyond – told the world in November 2013 that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence”. But read the text yourself, and you will see that jihadists can find plenty justification for the acts they commit, even if most Muslims are pacific.

Karl Marx was wiser than the Pope. In March 1854, he wrote that for “Islamism” – the word was already in use – “the Infidel is the enemy” and that the Quran “treats all foreigners as foes”.

The present renaissance of Islam, additionally provoked, as ever, by western aggressions against its lands, is an old story of swift movement and conquest, as in the 7th century. Is something like it stirring again? Perhaps; you decide. In 50 years’ time the world will know for sure.

David Selbourne is a political philosopher and commentator. “The Losing Battle With Islam” is published by Prometheus Books

To which a columnist, Bob Pitt pens a rejoinder:

There is little to distinguish Selbourne’s diatribe from the sort of thing that appears on “counterjihadist” websites. Islam and “radical Isam” are used interchangeably, it is a faith that inspires violence, terrorism is a product of its religious texts, Muslims fail to condemn atrocities carried out by their co-religionists, demographics and conversion will result in Islamic domination of the West, and the political correctness of the left obstructs a recognition of these realities. Yet Selbourne’s article hasn’t been published at FrontPage Magazine but by a leading journal of the left – and in an atmosphere of rising anti-”Islamist” hysteria that it can only serve to exacerbate.

True, the New Statesman has also published a reply to Selbourne by Mona Siddiqui. But she is far too soft and accommodating, and concedes that conservative interpretations of Islam are partly responsible for terrorism. This is hardly an adequate response to Selbourne’s Islamophobic rant. In any case, would the New Statesman think it acceptable to publish a comment piece by a raving antisemite, as long as this was accompanied by an article stating that not all Jews are trying to take over the world?

. . . which proves Selbourne's point so neatly, it provokes a belly-aching laugh.