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Wintonsweek
Are You With Us Or Against Us?
British Muslims Must Accept Koran Reform
Koran Edicts Incompatible With British Culture Must Go
Politicians Must Be Focused, Tough In Defense Of Our Values 

“Clamp down on Islamofascism and make clear that our culture, democracy and hard-won freedoms are not up for negotiation”

  “This might be unfair on the majority of Muslims, but it does mean that they need to take urgent action to show whose side they are on”

British Muslims have a tough choice to make. They must stand up against the Islamofascists who are perverting a peace loving religion into a mad lurch back to the dark ages. Step one - reform the Koran to make it compatible with our values.

As the dust settles on the latest Islamic alleged atrocity attempt, (thank God we can call it an attempt) the time for action is overdue. The first thing we all have to do is face the truth. Unreformed Islam is often incompatible, even an affront, to western values and culture, and Muslims living in Britain must acknowledge this and change.

This isn’t some arcane dispute about a religion which hasn’t kept pace with the times, and retains some loony ideas which don’t make sense. This is a matter of life and death. We have to root out the cancer within Islam, at least in Britain for starters and hopefully Europe too. Otherwise there will be more 9/11s and 7/7s, where the innocent are maimed and killed. It is also a matter of the strength of our belief in the supremacy of western culture over a childish and ignorant one. British and European leaders must act to clamp down on the instigators of Islamofascism, and also make clear that our culture and democracy and hard-won freedoms are not up for negotiation.

This is the bottom line. British Muslims are welcome here, but only if they modernise their religion.

Cowardice, appeasement
Michael Gove, Tory MP, newspaper columnist and broadcaster, warns in his book Celsius 7/7 that the British government has made the success of Islamofascism more likely by its cowardice and appeasement of the threat here, although he applauds the U.S. led decision to depose Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq (as I do). The Islamofascists are engaged in a war against the West, according to Gove. He rails against the unintended consequences in Britain of the Human Rights Act, which often makes sure aliens who intend harm to us are protected, instead of the other way round.

Our political leadership must be uncompromising.

“Leadership (must be) prepared to recognise the essential link between the display of weakness in the past and the Islamist advance we face today. We also need to rediscover and reproclaim faith in our common values. We need an ideological effort to move away from moral relativism and towards moral clarity, as well as a commitment to build a truly inclusive model of British citizenship in which divisive separatist identities are challenged, and rejected,” said Gove.

According to an opinion poll in The Spectator magazine, British citizens are clearly determined to fight the Islamic menace. In the wake of the alleged plot to blow up airliners across the Atlantic, the poll showed that far from making concessions, 75 per cent of Britons want foreign policy against the terrorist threat to be tougher or remain the same. 55% think airline passenger profiling (which would target Muslims) at airports is a good idea. Nearly 70% want to let the police hold terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

Healthy robustness
This shows a healthy robustness amongst Britons, and means, presumably, that they are looking sideways at British Muslims as a potential danger to their safety. This might be unfair on the majority of Muslims, but it does mean that they need to take urgent action to show whose side they are on.

 Reforming the Koran is the key. Muslims must drop medieval nonsense like refusing to pay interest on loans, start eating pork, ditch teaching that women are inferior and must cover up from head to toe, ban forced marriages, admit that halal killing of animals is cruel, and end the institutionalised hatred of Jews. “Honour” killing will be an oxymoron to them too. Dumping some of the ridiculous clothing that marks them out as different would help.

Above all, Muslims must say loud and clear that suicide bombing is an affront to Islam. Even now, some Muslim leaders say things like “suicide” bombing which kills infidels (i.e. you and me) and Jews isn’t really suicide bombing, but an act of war on behalf of Allah which will be rewarded by a direct route to heaven.

The Koran is often loosely worded and contradictory. Imams can, and do, twist the Koran’s ban on suicide into a route to heaven. And look at this gem.

 “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”.

Murderous jihads
The clause starting with “except” can be deployed by militant Muslims to fuel their murderous jihads. That’s precisely how American civilian Nicholas Berg’s executioners justified their action in 2004.

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.
What starts out as a clear mandate for action is watered down or neutered by convenient weasel words.

“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”.

The first part of that is clear enough. 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 was dreamed up to get around the idea that “dead meat” is forbidden, and that killing in this way means that you are somehow not eating “dead” meat.

Pork is good for you
Also the ban on eating pork made perfect sense back in the days when nobody knew why people became ill after eating undercooked meat. Now, science has demonstrated that this is perfectly safe. Why can’t Muslims, and Jews for that matter, face this fact? If they live in the West, why can’t they make a concession to the host culture and ban Halal killing because it is so offensive to us?

Although everybody agrees that respect for all religions is a good thing, it makes sense to examine in detail what each religion stands for. Islam doesn’t shape up well to closer examination. Islam, although calling itself the religion of peace, uniquely is used to justify all kinds of evil. Unlike other religions, it has never been reformed to take on board progress in civilization and learning. That’s why Muslims in Britain will only be allowed to use a modernized version of the Koran.

Any Mosque that refuses will simply be closed.  

Leaders of Muslim organisations in Britain are in denial about the implications of their medieval religion. Just look at the reaction to the “alleged” plot by Islamic community leaders – the likes of the Muslim Council of Britain and three Labour MPs – with their outrageous distaste for the liberation of Iraq. They effectively said, yes, terrorism is wrong, but we can’t rule it out if the British government initiates a foreign policy we don’t agree with.

 The Muslim “leadership” is forever using weasel words to avoid responsibility. Stephen Schwartz, a Muslim convert, put it this way in The Spectator.

Truculence, Obstruction
“The leaders of British Islam – exemplified by the Muslim Council of Britain – have assumed a posture of truculence, obstruction and indignation when any suggestion is made that jihadist sympathies infect their ranks,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz also makes the point that British Muslim youth has turned to violence not because of any negative experiences of British culture or politics, but as “tools in a deliberate process of indoctrination, carefully pursued by imams and agitators mainly imported from Pakistan with Saudi backing.”

Schwartz agrees with me in calling for a reform of the Koran in Europe and the licensing of its practitioners.

“Britain need not and must not permit Pakistani religious gangsters to continue their control of British Islam. Britain should require that Muslim clerics be at least trained and certified in Europe, if not in Britain, according to a classical, anti-radical Muslim curriculum that reinforces loyalty to the legitimate authorities,” Schwartz said.

I would bet my house that the vast majority of Muslims in Britain would agree with my ideas. Most Muslims aren’t fanatical. Most British Muslims seek emancipation from an often outdated religion, which insists on taking medieval writings literally and clashes with many basic British cultural and political standards. Most British Muslims came to Britain to embrace our ways as well as seeking to better themselves materially.

It is time they spoke out.

Neil Winton – August 25, 2006

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