False equivalences

There's a lot of meme's flying around at the moment (after the horrific attack in London yesterday). 

From the Right we have statements about travel bans, curtailments of freedom and general downers on Muslims. From the Left we have relativist statements, comparing the attack to the IRA bomb in the City in 1993 as well as various lame attempts to divert attention from ethnic and religious elements of this crime under the usual cover of "it's only a few bad apples". Both positions are inadequate of course. The Right is daft if it thinks a travel ban would have made a difference, the murderer came from Kent! The Left is wrong about the IRA, the IRA did not represent an ideology that wished to fundamentally change our "secular-liberal" way of life as Islamism does. This country is no more permeable to theocracy than it is to terrorism; our ancestors have been there, done that, got the tee-shirt, doesn't work, move along.

The Right need to get used to the fact that the world is on a path to 10 billion Human beings; people that are different from us are going to get a whole lot closer a whole lot quicker in the decades to come. Especially as the planet heats up and the crops start failing. We have much bigger fish to fry than petty parochial squabbles about the shape of bananas and whose invisible friend is bigger. It's blindingly obvious that we are much stronger acting together than when divided; this is true about Europe as it is about the rest of the world. There will come a time when we will need their natural resources and them our technology know-how, we had better start laying the foundations for that cooperation before it's too late. 

The Left need to get over this childish notion they seem to have that all ideas are equal; they are not. Taken literally, Islam is a harmful and ridiculous set of beliefs, just as Christianity and Judaism are and some "cultures" just suck. If you are pro-gender equality then you are by definition anti-Sharia law (as practiced in Islamabad or Solihull, regardless) If you support free-speech then you are by definition anti-blasphemy (see picture above) and so on. When people criticize religion and in particular Islam they are not automatically racist or "Islamophobic". Not speaking out about the oppression of Women and minorities in Islamic countries (or any country) IS however bigoted, it's tantamount to saying we demand equality and freedom for ourselves but the same Human rights don't matter for those "others".