Lawyer-speak

Entirely á-point as usual J&M exposes the fallacy inherent in the comments of many of our politicians and media outlets in refusing to acknowledge and discuss the real motivation for the Jihadists in our midst, i.e. Islamism.

For example, Andy Burnham said after the Manchester attack, "the bomber no more represents Muslims as the killer of Joe Cox represents white British people". Whilst factual (in a lawyer-speak kind of way) we need to unpack that comment slightly to get at the root of my assertion. Burnham neglected to mention that Salman Abedi did in fact represent (even if it was only in his own head) an Islamic ideology called “Islamism” and was most certainly not a “lone-wolf”. Of course, not all Muslims are Islamists, but many millions of them are and hundreds of millions more have sympathies toward Islamist goals, because of common upbringings, beliefs and cultures. These Islamists and their sympathisers have the structure, backing, money and influence to reach many people and recruit them, and they mainly utilise religion to achieve this. To say or imply that these kinds of terror attacks are nothing to do with Islam is false, they have something to do with Islam since all Islamists are Muslims. Islamism is simply one kind of literal interpretation of Islam for political ends, replete with imperialist ambitions justified and motivated by scripture and “revealed commandments”. Thomas Mair (the killer of Joe Cox) on the other hand was most definitely a “lone wolf” and did not possibly “represent” anything because the ideology (Nazism/Apartheidism) he obsessively followed is long since defeated and the ideas contained within it only remaining alive in a relative handful of losers, loners and people with mental health issues. We can all abhor and reject the objectives and/or mental-states of both these killers but to directly equate these two positions is not really comparing apples with apples.

I believe the issue with not acknowledging the true nature of the challenge is that it dis-empowers the moderate Muslim majority in their attempts to reform and expunge the literalist elements in their communities and traditions. This space gives oxygen and “cover” to the extremists allowing them to operate under the cloak of political correctness and liberal paranoia about being seen to be racist, divisive or persecutory. Challenging the ideas and goals of Islamism is NOT racist, divisive or Islamophobic in the same way that challenging the burning of witches is not Anti-Catholic. Our goal should absolutely be to drive a wedge between moderate Muslims and Islamists, all the while walking the obvious religious tight-rope that one is a sub-set of the other, in the end it’s going to be decent, moderate and secular Muslims that defeat these literalist barbarians, not “crusader” bombs and missiles.