The problem with Muslims in UK

Melanie Phillips:

The decision by the Blackburn mosque to cancel the planned visit by Condoleezza Rice is utterly unacceptable and deeply troubling. A mosque spokesman has said that it was cancelled not through dislike of Dr Rice but because of the threat by Muslim anti-war protesters to invade the mosque, thus compromising the safety of the visiting dignitaries.

What an appalling state of affairs where the safety of the Foreign Secretary and a distinguished overseas visitor cannot be guaranteed against the threat of violent disorder. Aren’t we all supposed to be engaged in a war against this kind of menace to life and liberty ?

If there are disagreements, however profound, the British way is to voice them in a civilised manner and never to resort to violence. It is essential that fanatics should not be allowed to disrupt our British way of life like this -- which, let it not be overlooked, is also pitching Muslim against Muslim -- and that we should not cave into this kind of intimidation.

But the response of both the mosque and the authorities has been worse than pusillanimous. If neither mainstream Muslims nor the British state has the courage nor the means to face down such a threat within the Foreign Secretary’s very own constituency, how can either the Muslim community or the British government purport to be fighting to defeat the violent extremism that threatens us all?

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The enemy within is as dangerous as the one in the cave.

In her Diary Phillips also weighs in on the treatment of Rice by her allies in the UK:

Here is a country which utters not a batsqueak of protest when Sheikh Qaradawi, who endorses and encourages human bomb terrorism in Iraq and Israel, speaks on a London platform – and indeed is actually embraced by the London Mayor Ken Livingstone as a hero of religious enlightenment – and yet is treating the US Secretary of State as if she is a major war criminal. Why? Because the US is apparently waging war against the innocent in Iraq. Excuse me?? The US is currently in Iraq at the express request of the Iraqis themselves to defend the innocent against the war being waged against them. The US went to war in Iraq to start unpicking the axis of terror that so threatens the world. The US remains in Iraq to help the Iraqis, at their express request, build the institutions of democracy, law and security. It is in Iraq to help protect innocent Iraqis against the forces of al Qaeda and the remains of the Ba’ath party who are determined to stop them and replace freedom by tyranny. It is in Iraq to help defend Iraqi lives and liberty against those who seek to destroy them.

Yet in Britain anti-war hysteria has institutionalised a Big Lie that the US is waging war not on behalf of the innocent but against them. One can make many justified and bitter criticisms of the way in which the US has prosecuted this defence of life and liberty and the terrible errors that have been made. But to say that it is waging war on the innocent is simply a gross inversion of reality. It is the big propaganda lie of the enemies of freedom and democracy, promulgated by those who have every interest in bringing about the defeat of the west – both radical Islamists and the extreme left, now in close and unholy alliance with each other – and now fast becoming the accepted unwisdom of those who opposed the war for more respectable reasons. The result is a madness which is consuming British public debate.

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She is right, but the idiocy is not restricted to that island.