Another day, another round of outrage from the self-declared ‘progressive’ paragons of virtue – though not meritless.
Conservative MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, said during an interview with GB News over the weekend, “I don’t actually believe that these Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London”. A little over a minute later, referring again to Sadiq Khan, he said “He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates”.
This was a stupid thing to have said, particularly irresponsible from an elected politician who until recently held a very senior role as Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party. That he also said, “and they’ve got control of Starmer as well”, who is not Muslim, has been ignored – though ultimately doesn’t matter. Claiming that a senior Muslim politician was “mates” with Islamists and controlled by them is obviously false and very easy to construe as racist – by both those who abhor racism and those who are. He’s now been suspended from the Conservative Party after refusing to apologise.
It’s worth watching the interview in full:
A Useful Distraction
Lee Anderson’s comments have meant we’re now not talking about what we should be talking about.
The chaos caused by the change in parliamentary procedure last week was explained by the Speaker Lindsey Hoyle as largely motivated by his fears for the safety of members of Parliament, after he had been told of “absolutely frightening” threats against them if the Labour motion were not debated. He didn’t explicitly state exactly where the threats were coming from, but it was clear who he was referring to: “I never ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend, whatever side, has been murdered by terrorists”.
At the rally outside as parliament was sitting, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign who organised it told demonstrators that he wanted “parliament to have to lock its doors”. Meanwhile, “From the River to the Sea”, a slogan which is at best knowingly inflammatory if not antisemitic, was projected on to Big Ben. In January, Mike Freer MP announced that he would be quitting parliament at the next election after years of death threats because of his support for Israel, culminating in the firebombing of his Finchley office in December last year. In the last few days, a meeting of Walsall Council – because of course, Walsall Councillors are the people to talk to about foreign policy – was hijacked by protestors, forcing its abandonment; and a Conservative fundraising event in Stoke-on-Trent was disrupted by a mob that included an organiser for Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organisation criminally proscribed in the UK.
Since October, there have been weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations, not only in London but across the country, that have become intimidating and out of hand. Just this weekend, we saw Tower Bridge shut down after protestors blocked traffic and set off flares. We have seen protestors occupying train stations, protestors climbing up war memorials, protestors forcing high street shops to close, protestors targeting synagogues, abusing members of the public, and harassing MPs – even at their homes. There is no end to these protests in sight nor even a particularly clear and realistic aim for their desired outcome.
Many of those attending the demonstrations are motivated by a sincere belief in the need to end the violence and to protect civilian lives in Gaza.
However, several organisers of some of the protests have links to Hamas. There has been an antisemitic undertone present at some of these protests (and much of the online discourse), which organisers have not made clear is not welcome, and a small number of people expressing outright support for terrorism, as below:
This sort of hostility has not been present at ANY of the much smaller number of rallies in support of returning Israeli hostages.
A Detachment from Reality
This is not politics as usual.
Yet, instead of addressing this, Lee Anderson’s comments have given the ‘liberal’ left an excuse to talk about anything but.
The latest diversion has been Conservative MP Paul Scully’s BBC Radio interview in which he awkwardly said there were “No go areas” in Birmingham and London. Why politicians struggle so badly to articulate their point on this I really don’t know, “No go areas” is a stupid thing to say – though incidentally, there are obviously places, not necessarily related to any particular demographic group, that many people would tend to avoid, certainly at night, because of a higher level of anti-social behaviour and relative risk of violence. However, it shouldn’t be controversial to notice that there are some parts of the country that have undergone significant demographic change and that some of these areas are very socially segregated.
Predominately middle class white politicians and social media commentators smugly guffawing at the thought of other people expressing anxiety about areas they don’t and wouldn’t actually choose to live in themselves sound just as silly as those who make hyperbolic and racist claims about London being a “third world country” or calling it “Londonistan”.
What the narrative now seems to have become entirely about is a problem of Islamophobia – specifically within the Conservative Party, as Tory MP after Tory MP gets lined up by the media with demands to pay penance by condemning Lee Anderson’s comments. This might make for a good story, but it’s not very helpful to anyone. Lee Anderson is a deeply inarticulate politician, and Sadiq Khan, at least, has every right to feel offended by his comments. But his comments are a consequence, not the cause, of the issue.
What’s been most alarming is the outright denial from some that Islamism holds any meaning as a descriptive term to be applied to anybody at all.
When some people use the term Islamists, they do actually mean Islamists. Call it Islamic extremism, Islamic fundamentalism, or Radical Islam, if preferred, but it describes a religious based political ideology that is incompatible with liberal democracy and has nothing to do with race. Most people of the Muslim faith are not Islamists, but It is very much in the interests of the latter to confuse the two.
Islamism does have something to do with Islam – in the same way that the Westboro Baptist Church has something to do with Christianity. Even by any usual religious standard, Islam is particularly archaic, repressive, and doctrinal – and it is shielded from criticism or mockery in a way that other religions simply are not. We do nobody any benefit by conflating criticism of Islam, a set of ideas, with Muslims as people – or confusing hatred or bigotry against Muslims with an entirely rational fear or dislike of the types of attitudes and behaviour sometimes motivated by those ideas.
There is a problem with Islamism in this country – and presently, a particular problem of intimidation against MPs and others because of the situation in Gaza. It is not a problem with British Muslims, but a problem with some elements within the British Muslim community.
Solutions to this problem are impeded by people fearing that acknowledging that it is in fact a problem is to be somehow racist or ethnocentric. All this does is to embolden both Islamism and racism. Leaving a vacuum fuels frustration, resentment, and anger – it doesn’t lessen it. It’s something of a vicious circle.
Rather than helping ordinary British Muslims and indeed ex-Muslims, shutting down conversation abandons them to face Islamism without support on the one hand, and to be used as convenient caricatures for genuine bigots on the other.
The chattering classes now so animated in signalling their belief in openness and tolerance after Lee Anderson’s comments have said absolutely nothing about any of the following incidents:
In 2021, a teacher at Batley Grammar School was suspended and forced to go into hiding because of threats to his life after showing a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Muhammed in an educational context. In 2022, Cineworld cancelled all showings of Lady of Heaven, a film made by a Muslim about the daughter of Muhammed, “to ensure the safety of our staff and customers”, after protests which called it “blasphemous”. Last year, in Wakefield, the mother of an autistic 14-year-old boy was forced to make a grovelling apology in front of cameras at the local mosque for her child’s “disrespectful behaviour” after a copy of the Quran was very slightly scuffed. This year, Michaela Community School in London, a secular school, has been taken to court by a Muslim pupil after stopping prayer rituals when some pupils started them “against a backdrop of events including violence, intimidation, and appalling racial harassment of our teachers” (including a bomb-hoax).
This wilful detachment from reality is laughably (or not, I suppose it depends on how dark your sense of humour is) exemplified in a 28-page report on the abuse and intimidation faced by politicians published by the Jo Cox Foundation earlier this month (Jo Cox MP was murdered by a far-right extremist in 2016) and widely disseminated in the media. The report completely ignores the intimidation of politicians by Islamic extremists, as well as the other clearly too difficult problems of the intimidation of Jewish politicians, and the intimidation of female MPs by trans activists – but I’m sure its authors felt good about themselves, and that’s obviously what’s important.
Islamic Terrorism in Britain
The report does contain one reference to Sir David Amess MP, another MP who was murdered – this time by a man who described himself as a ‘soldier of Islamic State’. The report has no insight on this beyond that it “highlighted the risks that MPs face”. This is at least broadly more accurate an assessment than the reaction from much of the political and media class in the aftermath of the murder, where they instead talked about social media abuse as if he had been killed by a tweet.
Sir David Amess MP’s murder has of course not been the only attack on British soil motivated by Islamic extremism: London Bombings (52 killed), The murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby (1 Killed), Glasgow Airport Attack, Manchester Arena Bombing (23 killed), Westminster Bridge Attack (4 killed), London Bridge Attack (8 killed), London Bridge stabbings (2 killed), Streatham stabbings, Westminster Car Attack, Whitemoor Prison Attack, Parsons Green Bombing, Manchester Victoria Station stabbings, Reading stabbings (3 killed). There have also been a number of prevented attacks that we know about, and there will be many more that have not been made public.
During the same period the number of people killed in attacks motivated by far right ideology has been three. There is a serious problem with far right extremism in the UK, but it is on nowhere near the same scale and it is nothing but a lazy deflection to pretend otherwise. As reported in 2017, an estimated 850 people from Britain travelled to Syria and Iraq to support or fight for jihadist groups, including ISIS. In 2020, the then counter terror chief said that around 90% of those on the MI5 terror suspect watchlist were Islamic extremists. The 2023 Independent Review of Prevent found key figures in several government funded organisations had actually been promoting extremist narratives, with a concerted effort from some “Islamist groups to undermine and delegitimise Prevent”.
This is What Islamism Looks Like
https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1760983239814946983
After the murder of Mahsa Amin at the hands of Iran’s religious morality police in September 2022, 17-year-old Nika Shakarami burned her head scarf in protest. A leaked judiciary document has just revealed how she was violently raped before being killed by security forces.
The term Islamism is not anti-Muslim – the biggest victims of Islamism are Muslims. Between 80-95% of victims of Islamic terror attacks are other Muslims. Thirteen Muslim-majority countries have the death penalty for blasphemy or apostasy. Nine have the death penalty for homosexuality. In Afghanistan, the Taliban once again oppresses women and girls, forcing them to wear the veil, banning them from secondary education and university, and prohibiting them from contact with the media.
Equality, Openness and respect for Diversity
Alongside Susan Hall, his Conservative opponent in this year’s London Mayoral election, Sadiq Khan has put out a statement of unity, a call to not let hate win. He said, “I know that the decent majority in our city and country believe in our British values of equality, openness and respect for diversity”. This is true – and these are values that Khan himself believes in. He holds no stock for Islamic extremism. Whether meant rhetorically or literally, Lee Anderson’s comments are not something he should have to accept.
Yet, adherents of Islamism do not believe in freedom of speech or belief, do not believe in the rights of women, gay people or other minority groups, do not believe in the British, modern, liberal, values of “equality, openness, and respect for diversity”. And some of these people are in our country.
We can’t wish this reality away with positivity. We have to be able to speak about it and challenge it. Or else we are failing those very values of “equality, openness, and respect for diversity” we claim to espouse.
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