Address to Indian Muslim Federation – How To Defeat Terrorism
In the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons on Monday 22 October, I was a principal guest speaker at a programme organised by the Indian Muslim Federation (UK). The following is the text of my remarks.
While I was thinking about what I could most usefully say this evening, Shamsuddin Aga (President of the IMF) sent me some background information. One document was titled The History of Islam and Muslims in Britain: A Brief Historical Overview. The last sentence of its opening paragraph is the following:
Britain’s contacts and connections with Muslims are older than often thought, and yet the Muslim impact on and contribution to Western civilisations is routinely overlooked.
I can and do endorse that statement but I go much further. The truth about the Muslim contribution to Western civilisations has not been merely “overlooked” by the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world. It has been suppressed. And the essence of what has been suppressed can be summarised in two sentences. In its Spanish glory days, Islam was the greatest and most enlightened civilisation in mankind’s history to that point. Second sentence – Much of what was best in other civilisations that followed was taken from that glorious Muslim way of being.
There are several reasons for the suppression of that particular truth of history, but in the time available to me this evening I will touch upon only one. It can be summed up in six words. The arrogance of the Western civilisation.
This arrogance was described with beautiful precision by the German historian and philosopher, Oswald Spengler. In the Introduction to his massive work The Decline of the West, first published in English in 1926, Spengler wrote this:
QUOTE The ground of West Europe is treated as a steady pole?.. and great histories of millenial duration and mighty far-away Cultures are made to revolve around this pole in all modesty. It is a quaintly conceived system of sun and planets! We select a single bit of ground as the natural centre of the historical system, and make it the central sun. From it all the events of history receive their real light, from it their importance is judged in perspective. But it is in our own West-European conceit alone that this phantom “world history”, which a breath of scepticism would dissipate, is acted out UNQUOTE
Spengler died in 1936. If he was alive today, I’m sure he would have something equally penetrating to say about the conceit turned to madness of the imperialism (or is it fascism?) of America’s neo-cons and their hardcore Zionist associates.
Now let me tell you why I thought it was appropriate for me to offer you some brief thoughts this evening on how to defeat terrorism. I decided I should do so after the publication of the YOU GOV public opinion survey which revealed that 89% of the British people are today “more suspicious” of Muslims than they were a decade ago. Simply stated the implication is that most British people fear that any Muslim anywhere – especially those in tube trains, on buses and at airports – could be a terrorist intent on blowing them to pieces?.. In other words, there is very fertile ground for the growth of Islamophobia.
If I was a Muslim citizen of the UK, and all the more so if I had a beard, I would be quite worried about my future wellbeing. More to the point is that I know from my engagement with Muslim communities up and down the UK that many Muslims are frightened.
I think it could and should be said that more manifestations of “Islamic terrorism” in the UK might well provoke a violent backlash ? violent Islamophobia. And that, surely, is a good enough reason for seriously addressing the question of what can be done to defeat Islamic terrorism.
I’ll begin my summary answer by saying there is one way NOTto defeat it, and that is the Bush-Blair wayThe so-called “war on terrorism” is totally counter-productive. It made Bush and Blair the best recruiting sergeantsfor violent Islamic fundamentalism in all of its manifestations.
In Volume Two of my book, Zionism: The
Real Enemy of the Jews, I explain in 147 words how terrorism canbe defeated. I would expect an averagely intelligent child to grasp the meaning of these 147 words and I will now read them to you.
Page 1 of 4 | Next page