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• Stop “honour” killing
  
• Agree that it’s ok to pay interest
• End teaching that women are inferior to men; ban the Hibab
  
• Stop forced marriages
  
• Embrace democracy and equality for all before the law
  
• End Halal killing of animals
  
• Accept the division of church and state
  
• Eschew anti-Semitism
  

The suicide bombing of London must finally prove to the British that it is time to act. No more Mr Nice Guy. Despite the lame posturing of organisations like the Muslim Council of Great Britain, and hand wringing by usual suspects like the cowardly fool Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, (if we'd listened to Kennedy, mass murderer Saddam Hussin would still be in power) and the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is clear that Islam has been hijacked by the violent and medieval. Britain must demand action from the Muslim hierarchy here and across the world that is effective and to the point. I’d like to suggest two policies for starters.

Britain and its allies must insist that mullahs, imams, muftis or whatever, stand up and declare that suicide bombers, far from being handed the keys to heaven, will burn in hell for eternity. Secondly, Muslims in Britain must acknowledge that many aspects of Islam are incompatible with Britain’s tradition of free speech, separation of state and religion, and individual self-determination, and must be reformed. Only Mosques which agree to the reformed, modernized Koran will be allowed to operate. Those that don’t will simply be closed down. The guidelines for acceptable Islam will be based on Irshad Manji’s “The Trouble With Islam” (St Martin’s Press) (www.muslim-refusenik.com). Only the English language for Mosque services will be tolerated.

Demented, Ignorant Creatures
Muslim suicide bombers are demented, ignorant creatures who consign the innocent to death or awful injury only because they believe that by their action they will go to heaven. It is impossible for us brought up as Christians to believe that a religion could lead to beliefs like this, but it is true. The demented ones believe not only that they will go to heaven for killing so-called “infidels”, even if they are innocent women and children, but they will be serviced by 72 virgins (or white raisins depending on the translation used). I’ve just discovered that these degenerates also believe they can guarantee that 70 people whose name they provide will also be admitted to heaven.

Now this might seem like a childish fairytale, but is believed by some Muslims and justifies their actions. There is a simple way to stop this. Western politicians must demand of Muslim leaders, here and in the Middle East, that they make absolutely clear suicide bombing is against the teachings of Islam. Far from being admitted to heaven, it must be spelled out that suicide bombing is an abominable act and will consign perpetrators to hell fire. If this message is repeated often enough and loudly enough across the world, no more Muslims will step forward to die.

Dump Medieval Islam
And if I hear Iqbal Socranie, leader of the Muslim Council of Great Britain say one more time how he abhors the July 7 bombing, how Islam is a peace-loving religion, and all Muslims agree with him, I will throw my fridge at the TV. This is not enough. Anyone with the whit to watch the TV news knows this is not so. Traditional or fundamental Islam is none of the above. Unique among the world’s religions it uses violence to pursue its aims and cower those standing in its way. Sure it is tough on the majority of Muslims in Britain, but they have to be given the chance to dump the old, medieval Islam which is about 500 years out of date, and embrace the new.

ON BBV TV’s Newsnight recently the wonderful, brave and clever Irshad Manji told the Muslim Council’s Socranie that leaders like him were in denial if they believed that no change was needed.

Iqbal Sacranie

In “The Trouble With Islam”, Manji said Muslims are trapped in a medieval, authoritarian and contradictory religion which enslaves women and encourages violence against Jews. Only root and branch reform can make Muslim life styles compatible with the freedoms and openness of the West, and this means confronting the rotten “desert Islam” which, by its mindless and literalist adherence to the Koran, condemns hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world to lives of poverty, ignorance, and exploitation by dictatorial regimes, and led to the final obscenity, suicide-bombers.

Operation Ijtihad
Manji, wants to start a campaign called “Operation Ijtihad”, named after a lost Muslim tradition of independent thinking.

Her book is especially welcome because as a Muslim herself, she is able to spark a debate about the problem without the knee-jerk abuse of “racism” which always greets those pointing out the often ludicrously counterproductive, and down-right cruel nature of unreformed Islam.

Another brave contributor to the debate has also been Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who in a speech in Rome last year denounced moderate Muslims for failing to condemn unequivocally the “evil” of suicide bombers. Lord Carey pointed out the lack of democracy in Muslim countries, and wondered why Islam had stagnated for about 500 years, when its undoubted cultural and scientific leadership hit a wall. According to Carey, Islamic thought has been in a straitjacket since, because Muslim leaders refused to allow any changes in a code of living that was designed for drastically different times.

“In the first few centuries of the Islamic era, Islamic theologians sought to meet the challenge this implied, but during the past 500 years critical scholarship has declined, leading to strong resistance to modernity,” Lord Carey said.

This has hamstrung the development of Islamic societies.

Weasel Words
It is no coincidence surely that the Muslim world’s loss of leadership in culture and science happened as western societies were shedding their top-down structures and embracing the rights of man. This became an ideal atmosphere in the west for developing the talents of all the people, women included, and which has given the west its huge superiority in standards, both spiritual and material.

Manji, in confrontation with Socranie, pointed to weasel words in the Koran which allowed the violent to justify their actions.

“….. whoever killed a human being, except (my italics) as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind”, the Koran says according to Manji in her book.

“Sadly, the clause starting with “except” can be deployed by militant Muslims to fuel their jihads,” said Manji.


Sharpen Up The Language
Another example of hard rules, followed by phrases which water down the edict, allows Muslims to insist on the Halal ritual for killing animals for meat, a barbaric and inhumane method. The justification for this – animals must have their throats cut while facing Mecca - is based on a section of the Koran which is as contradictory as it is opaque and which suggests to me that vegetarianism was the preferred lifestyle choice.

“Forbidden to you (for food) Are: Dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which hath been invoked the name of another than Allah”.

That seems clear enough, at least if you ignore the last clause. But it then goes on to say that if you are hungry it doesn’t matter anyway and you can eat whatever meat you like. The Koran doesn’t actually spell out how animals should be killed. Perhaps the Halal treatment has been dreamed up to get around the idea that “dead meat” is forbidden, and that killing in this way means that you are not somehow eating “dead” meat.

In the face of all this evidence that Islam is often incompatible, even an affront, to western values and culture, it must be right to suggest to Muslims living in Britain that they modernise their religion.

Can I suggest a few changes for starters –

• Stop “honour” killing
  
• Agree that it’s ok to pay interest
  
• End teaching that women are inferior to men; ban the Hibab
  
• Stop forced marriages
  
• Embrace democracy and equality for all before the law
  
• End Halal killing of animals
  
• Accept the division of church and state
  
• Eschew anti-Semitism
  

If British Muslims will agree to reform their religion in this way, the future of community relations will be bright. There doesn’t seem much chance of this because the British government, far from insisting on modernisation and change for Islam, is doing its best to ingratiate itself with Muslims by offering to curb free speech, allow Muslims to have special mortgages which allow them to pretend they’re not paying interest, and to set up separate schools. All these actions are likely to make things worse and put off the day when the watchword is integration not the current separation of cultures.

No Mistakes For 1,400 Years
I fear that there will be a lot of opposition from Muslim officials, if they are anything like the cleric Abdul Kalam. Kalam was quoted by the Daily Telegraph last year as saying that Muslims had been criticised for many years but everybody else was wrong.

“In every religious book you will find mistakes except the Koran. No one has found a mistake in the Koran in 1,400 years,” Kalam told the Telegraph.

Neil Winton – July 15, 2005

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