by Kevin Meagher
‘It was a monster not a Muslim’ read a message left with some flowers in Manchester yesterday. A well-intentioned sentiment, no doubt, but it’s no slander on ordinary Muslims to point out the killer of 22 people and the maiming of scores more, Salman Abedi, was plainly both.
Islam is more than a religion. ‘Islamism’ – the warped and extreme interpretation of it that drives the hate we saw in Manchester – is a hard line, violent, impossibilist, political ideology. In reducing the gaping risk it poses to our society we must be free to critique it as such.
This requires countering the phoney grievances of its adherents and the pernicious false narrative that all non-Islamists are legitimate targets. The statement from Isis claiming responsibility for the attack referred to those killed as ‘Crusaders.’ Such insanity apparently justifies deliberately targeting a pop concert full of children.
It is adjoined to a twin lunacy; that of the global jihadist’s pipedream of a worldwide Caliphate. If the methods of Islamic terror are appalling enough, the cause they kill and maim for is arguably worse: Global enslavement under an ignorant and brutal despotism. That a reasoning human being could buy into such a dystopian vision makes the attack in Manchester and all those that have taken place before it, even harder to comprehend.
I repeat – as we should – that not all Muslims are Islamists, but all Muslims are on the frontline of this clash within a civilisation, fighting for a correct and just interpretation of their faith. They are the only ones who can win this culture war between a virtuous Islam that is capable of accommodating itself to living and thriving in the West and the nihilism of a minority of their co-religionists who demonstrably cannot.
In the short-term, shock and grief are appropriate responses to the massacre in Manchester. We can talk about ‘bringing everyone together’ in a spirit of solidarity in the immediate aftermath of an atrocity, but in the longer term our public policy responses should be obvious enough: A more sustained and emphatic bid to flush out and destroy Islamism, isolating and prosecuting its demented followers.
Greater resolve in asserting what is normal and decent and what is not, isolating and harrying the lunatic fringe into concession or a retreat from these shores. If we have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Islamists willing to go and join Islamic State in its women-hating, head-chopping idyll, let them forfeit their citizenship on the way out of our midst. By the same token, we should stop the hate preachers from ever getting into our country. Close down the hate websites. No more half-measures.
This is what the public expects from its political leaders. No more supine acceptance of cultural differences that fuel separateness and division, whether that’s soft-pedalling on female genital mutilation or tolerating Trojan horse schools. And we should not settle for the further erosion of our collective civil liberties as a response to Manchester. We don’t need more cameras, bag searches and identity checks. We simply require this very specific threat to be identified and neutralised, not ignored and normalised.
Less political rhetoric about not letting these horrible events divide us and more effort in channelling the public’s legitimate fear and righteous anger and actually doing something about the threat.
Islamism is not a cause worthy of respect or serious analysis. There is no-one for our politicians and diplomats to reason with. Nothing complicated we are failing to understand. It is simply a bigoted, squalid and fascistic micro-sect that we have tolerated for far too long.
Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Uncut
Tags: caliphate, islamism, Kevin Meagher, Manchester, terrorism
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Your words are a beacon in these awful days
Well said; now nothing will happen and before you know it people will be talking about negotiating a political settlement with IS.
I’m quite a left wing fellow – into civil rights and liberties etc etc but I think it’s about time people started to wake up a bit about what we are dealing with here and more importantly what liberties and rights we are going to have to sacrifice if we are to stop this.
This is something that the modern world hasn’t experienced before.
This brand of islamic exrtremism is a death cult whose ultimate aim is to deliberately bring about Armageddon – the end of the world. They actually want to die and take as many people as possible with them and they actually want the world to end. They aren’t interested in anything else and regard anyone who is as some sort of inferior thing not even worthy of contempt.
They don’t care who they kill, how old they are, what sex they are, which god they worship norhow many they kill so long as they get the chance to die and move the world one step closer to armageddon.
This problem with extreme islamism has been going on since MI6 interrupted an al-Queda plot in it’s final stages of actual execution in 1997 to introduce poison to a reservoir in north London that would have resulted in 100,000 deaths. Just in the last couple of years there have been 13 serious plots thwarted and you would have to be living in serious denial if you didn’t think there are many more active plots at various stages of completion in cities across the UK.
There is only one way to deal with them – exterminate them wherever and whenever they appear. Otherwise they will try their hardest to martyr themselves with as many people as possible.
This isn’t the IRA. They aren’t politically motivated (most other types of terrorist are). They have just one aim – death and as a result it is impossible to negotiate with them (not that we should).
It would appear that this may be the first attack on the UK mainland by a terrorist who has actually been properly trained overseas. Usually they are largely self-radicalised and isolated. In this guys case he was born in the UK, appears to have been part of a group, has been to both Syria and Libya (returning from Libya in the last week), was well educated and had received training.
Such well judged and appropriate comments. I want to hear the same from politicians, left, right and centre so that when action is taken, there will little hand wringing from the left or fascistic demands from the right.
Very disappointed to read such an ignorant and unpleasant response to this terrible attack on here.
This struck me as precisely the sort of self-serving “Virtue Signalling” that you rightly condemn sections of The “Left” for.
What are you actually suggesting that most Western Leaders arent already doing ? If you meant this as a critique of people in Labour then you should have said so, although even then, that clashes with your defence of Corbyn down the page.
It didn’t help when the likes of Ann Marie waters driven out of the Labour Party,for her work against FGM was accused of islamophobia,by the far left, , joins Ukip who Shami Chakrobarti calls fascist, when Trevor Philips says he created the term islamophobia, now reckons it doesn’t exist
What an excellent article. Let’s support courageous Muslims all we can to fight the poison that is insidious throughout their community. To often on the news after another terrorist outrage I hear Muslims trying to shuffle off responsibility by saying it is society’s or the state’s problem to solve this. To an extent they are right. It is our inability to understand or face the threat we face that has got us into this terrible mess in the West.
Paul braker, well said, Ian what do you mean, why is it ignorant
Latest figures show the 3,000 ‘persons of interest’ monitored since 2015 has grown after the return of UK-born people who left to fight with ISIS.
In addition to that, about 400 ISIS-trained fighters are believed to have returned from war zones in Syria and Iraq.
That’s 400 fully trained battle-tested and battle-hardened guerilla fighters. Here in the UK.
Why were they allowed to re-enter the country? Why were they not tagged or even interned?
But the great replacement will carry on.
No thought for the white working class of this country or their welfare and safety.
No thought for OUR culture or identity.
The horrible deaths of small girls is horrific enough, but to see my country gradually sink into this religious darkness, and its people demographically wiped out, is more than I can bear.
Our political class – of ALL hues – have created a cosy and profitable club; and they are quietly co-operating together in this enterprise for mutual wealth and power.
A pox on the lot of them.
And could somebody explain how a known radical, who was known to have been to Syria to fight for ISIS, was known to have travelled several times to Libya, was somehow allowed have a passport? Because it is now known he was in Libya a week before the attack, Dusseldorf 4 days before the attack and London 3 days before the attack.
A fully trained KNOWN extremist wandering the globe at will apparently without triggering any alarm bells whatsoever.
The excuse over why he had a passport and was entering and leaving the country at will will be ‘Human Rights’. It’s about time people started accepting that unless you want many many more of these – and bigger, than national security must ALWAYS override Human Rights.