Tolerating intolerance in the UK

Henry Porter:

Imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury or any senior Anglican clergyman giving a sermon which suggested that homosexual men should be thrown off a mountain; that they were no better than filthy dogs. Imagine another priest rising in another church to preach that children should be hit for not praying, that women were deficient, should walk behind men and only go out with their man's permission. Consider what the reaction would be if a third joined in by saying all Jews were born liars.

The media would be trembling with indignation for weeks. Questions would be asked in the House and the archbishop called to account for the state of his church. There would be demonstrations, commissions of inquiry and Baron St John of Fawsley would be summoned from retirement.

But when these statements are made in British mosques and recorded by a secret camera for a Channel 4 Dispatches programme, it seems nobody takes much notice. This might have been because Undercover Mosque was broadcast three weeks ago, as the nation was obsessed with Jade Goody's behaviour on Big Brother. While Goody has the power to cause an international incident, it seems that weekly attacks on women, gays and Jews raise little interest.

I suspect the lack of outrage has a lot to do with the degree of separate development that has taken place in Britain while so many of us were living the multiculturalist dream. Whatever Muslims say, the standards that most British institutions live by simply do not apply to the missionaries of Saudi fundamentalism who, as demonstrated beyond doubt by this documentary, are attempting to poison relations between Muslims, Christians and Jews in Britain and to establish what amounts to a separate community under Sharia law.

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Actually, the impact of this film did not come from any direct revelations about terrorism, but simply from the loathing and violence of the language used by these preachers about the 'kuffar' or infidel: i.e. the rest of British society. With the exception of the BNP, there is no grouping, community or party in these islands that permits itself to express such hatred. This hatred, so often accompanied by acute sense of persecution, has become a dangerous habit and a very great threat to our entire society.

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I first encountered this other truth on the afternoon of 7 July 2005 while in Edgware Road near where one of the suicide bombers had blown up the tube. Several young Muslim men I talked to could only accept that this was a fiendish plot hatched by MI5 to blacken Islam's names. Much the same is said of the Madrid bombings or the attacks on the United States in 2001.

There is no limit to the paranoia and fantasy to be found on Islamist websites and last week we heard it from the people of Bordesley Green in Birmingham, where Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi lived before being killed on active service in Afghanistan. The initial arrest of nine people in connection with a plot to behead a serving soldier was seen as a tactic to draw attention away from Iraq and to support John Reid's campaign to extend 28-day detention without trial for terrorist suspects. Any account, however bizarre, seems preferable to the one that suggests that these individuals may actually have been plotting to torture and kill fellow Muslims. We shall see what happens, but it seems to me that a reflexive sense of persecution is beginning to disable people's reason in these communities.

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This is not about cultural supremacy, but about defending reasoned discourse and our liberal traditions against a group of men who wish this society nothing but ill.

What is surprising is that he first discovered this religious bigotry on 2005 when it has been openly out there for much longer. When you examine bin Laden's statements about 9-11 his religious bigotry was on display. The Palestinian "cause" is one of religious bigotry and ethnic hatred. Why are the Brits just now waking up to it? I think the answer is liberalism has blinded them to the bigotry of groups they have sympathized with int he past. You see the same problem in this country when blacks make racist remarks that are excused or ignored by liberals.