Islam, Not ‘Islamism,’ Is Running Britain

After a week in which the UK Parliament was effectively held to ransom by the pro-Palestine mob, Big Ben illuminated with calls for genocide against the Jews, and MPs feared for their lives should they vote ‘the wrong way’ vis-à-vis a conflict 2,000 miles away, you’d be forgiven for thinking the story on the lips of the mainstream media would have been Islamic extremism, but you’d have been wrong. ‘Islamophobia’ instead was the order of the day, thanks to the comments of former Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson, who waded conveniently into the topic of who exactly is running Britain these days. Fair’s fair—it certainly isn’t the Conservative Party.

The issue was initially raised by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman in her piece from Thursday’s Telegraph, where she argued: “This is no longer the great country I knew. Islamists are bullying Britain into submission.” Asked for his opinion on GB News, Anderson watered down Braverman’s assertions and spoke specifically of the capital under Mayor Sadiq Khan’s stewardship: “I don’t actually believe that the 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, and they’ve got control of Starmer as well.” (N.B. his choice of the verb ‘believe’).

https://x.com/AdamBienkov/status/1761102075167953197?s=20

The response from the great and the good was predictably formulaic. Keen to deflect from accusations that the Labour Party is still antisemitic (alongside accusations from within that it isn’t nearly antisemitic enough), Keir Starmer chose to accuse Rishi Sunak of harbouring ‘extremists,’ which could only have been more hypocritical had he done so while kneeling to the Palestinian flag. Prime Minister Sunak meanwhile withdrew the whip from Anderson (i.e., essentially expelling him from the Conservative Party, meaning that he can sit in Parliament but as an independent MP), deeming his comments “wrong and unacceptable,” although he appeared to take no issue with Braverman’s original assessment of the situation. Sadiq Khan, however, topped them all, taking just seven seconds of ill-disguised glee to unleash the trifecta verdict of “racist, anti-Muslim, and Islamophobic”:

https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/1762169707585577076?s=20

The question as to whether Sadiq Khan is being controlled by his extremist coreligionists is an interesting one and surely one worthy of an answer. Undeniable is the fact that Khan has repeatedly represented and shared platforms with extremists over the years. The London mayor has expressed ‘regret’ for this, explaining: “I regret giving the impression I subscribed to their views and I’ve been quite clear I find their views abhorrent.” Nonetheless, the extremists were of sufficient notoriety that David Cameron was happy to lambast Khan during a 2016 Prime Minister’s Questions’ session without the need to remove the whip from himself. Khan has also been known to use the offensive slur ‘Uncle Toms’ when speaking of ‘moderate Muslims.’

In terms of London (for which Khan is actually responsible), that two-tier policing is now the status quo is hard to contest. Under Chief Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police has done its best to squirm out of policing Muslims altogether of late. First, the Old Bill pretended they didn’t have the power to stop the pro-Palestine marches. When it was pointed out that they did in fact have the authority, the police changed tack, equivocating over the precise meaning of the word ‘jihad.’ Officers on the ground were slightly more honest, admitting that there are “more of them than there are of us.” The closest the Met got to laying down the law was the pleading it did with pro-Palestine activists to call off the Armistice Day march back in November last year.

Downing Street has already visibly surrendered to Islam; Parliament under Lindsay Hoyle has surrendered; and MPs themselves are also now surrendering their posts over death threats. In terms of Sadiq Khan therefore, he is either (to use Braverman’s pithy phrase) in hock to extremists, duped by them, or merely negligent; choose your poison.

For what it’s worth, my personal suspicion is that Khan’s anti-Britishness trumps his Islamic fervour. He may well believe that a successfully waged woke war will reduce the nation to rubble far quicker and prompt less resistance than full-out jihad; he (like I, of course) could be mistaken.

Curiously, I have not heard anyone on either side of the argument merely come out and state that Anderson is factually wrong—without the prior need to vehemently dissociate themselves or simply to offer him up for a metaphorical lynching. And yet, all he did was offer his opinion as requested—the verb ‘believe’ is a giveaway in this matter, and in a nation which still pretends to operate free speech, that ought to be the end of the matter.

The only issue I would take with Anderson is his endorsement of the enemy’s terminology. ‘Islamism’ much like ‘Islamophobia,’ is a meaningless term beyond its obvious political motives. In a rare moment of sanity, the Conservative Party refused to accept the definition of ‘Islamophobia.’ ‘Islamist’ is yet another attempt to provide Islam with a get-out-of-jail-free card, the ludicrous implication being that those who genuinely ‘believe’ in Islam have nothing to do with Muslims as a whole. Perhaps we should coin the term ‘Christianist’ in a bid to explain all those suicide bombings committed to the cries of ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’?

Even if we would rather not acknowledge it, we all know what Anderson is on about: Islam is dictating the narrative in Britain to an increasing degree, with obvious ‘consequences’ when it does not get its own way. It was not ‘Nazi’ Brexit voters, ‘Covidiots’ or ‘far-right’ bogeymen responsible for 7/7, Manchester, or the London Bridge terror attack. Neither was it the Church of England which inspired the murder of Sir David Amess, a 14-year-old autistic Muslim suffering death threats over a dropped Bible, nor was it a Batley teacher forced into hiding for showing depictions of Jesus; how’s that teacher doing, by the way?

It is Islam that is the problem, not ‘Islamism’—Islam in sufficiently high demographic proportions. What British Muslims believe is not a secret, or at least it’s not particularly well-kept. Almost a quarter want Sharia Law adopted in Britain; 52% believe that homosexuality should be illegal; and a shocking two-thirds would not inform the police if a friend were involved in terrorism. It may ‘only’ be 4% that sympathise with suicide bombers, but you don’t need to get the Muslim population very high for that to suddenly become a problem. Find a European nation with a significant Muslim population rubbing up against its Enlightenment values, and you will invariably find conflict.

Even according to the British government, the gravest threat to Britain is Islamic extremism: “The government agrees that extreme Islamist ideology presents the greatest threat to the UK and has moved swiftly to update Prevent duty guidance and training to make that clear.” The nettle has repeatedly failed to be grasped, however, due to the efficacy of the ‘racist’ slur, according to Prevent reviewer William Shawcross: “One of the reasons why there is sometimes a reluctance to address the Islamist threat is that people are frightened of being called Islamophobic or racist. It’s become a hugely effective form of censorship: ‘Oh, you’re just a racist. You’re an Islamophobe.’ And people don’t like that for obvious reasons.” Sadiq Khan, then, is perhaps not as ineffectual as he seems.

While ‘Islamophobia’ has not quite racked up the body count of Islamic extremism, you wouldn’t know it from social media. At the time of writing, London trends on X have Lee Anderson at number one and ‘Islamophobia’ at number five; ‘Islam’, ‘Islamic extremism,’ or even ‘Islamism’ do not get a look in.

To his credit, Anderson has doubled down and is refusing to apologise (at least for now), although the might of the mob usually produces a mea culpa in the end. Rishi Sunak in particular will certainly hope Anderson does the decent thing, lest someone somewhere in government might have to take him (and the possible millions who agree with him) seriously.

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.

This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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