Holed-up within our immigrant Moslem communities is a cadre of violent Islamists.

By Gary Scarrabelotti 

Known to MI5, but deemed a “peripheral” player.

Events move fast: the Woolwich Barracks murder; four nights of rioting in Stockholm; and in Orlando, Florida, the FBI shoot dead Ibragim Todashe, a Chechen, wanted in connection with a suspected link with the Boston bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. 

The murderers of off-duty Drummer Leigh Rigby in London were in-your-face Muslims.  The rioters in Stockholm were overwhelmingly Muslims. Ibragim Todashe, who turned violent during questioning, was a Muslim.  The religious identity of the London murderers, the Stockholm rioters and the Florida suspect is something many mainstream media reports have tried to avoid. London: “alleged terror attack”; Stockholm: “immigrants”; Orlando: “Chechen”. 

There are several issues here. 

Hitler’s shadow 

First, in the Western world governments and opinion-makers are not prepared to question immigration and refugee policies that are culturally colour-blind. That would be heresy and could invoke the charge of racism.

The reluctance to discuss these policies is based, partly, upon our state of civilizational shock and guilt over the events of World War II.  Adolph Hitler still casts a long, menacing shadow over the western world and still perversely shapes western thought albeit by driving the zeitgeist to an opposite extreme. 

Because Hitler sought to found an empire upon a spurious doctrine of racial superiority, because he waged war, pursued ethnic cleansing and ran extermination camps, because he aimed to exalt the allegedly superior “Aryan” Germans over the Untermenschen — Jews, especially, and Gypsies, and all the Slavs – it became impossible, subsequently, for us westerners to discuss race and exceedingly difficult for us to handle culture for fear of veering into “racist” territory. So, by way of stunned reaction to the horrors of Hitlerism, we have posited a multiracial, multicultural society as the moral norm … and enforced it. 

Unhappy communities

Secondly, and for the same reasons, western governments and opinion-makers are reluctant to question the failed policy of multiculturalism notwithstanding the fact that, for example, “white flight” has become an openly discussed phenomenon in the United Kingdom.  Thanks to the work of the left-of-centre think-tank Demos, and that of demographer Professor Eric Kaufman of the University of London, a discussion has broken out in Britain broad enough to permit even The Guardian to lament that Britain is at risk of ‘sleepwalking to segregation’. 

Thirdly, social science research seems to indicate that ethnically diverse societies do not actually promote social order and mutual trust.  The most telling findings are those of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone (1995, 2000), and a highly credible analyst of the breakdown of community in the United States. 

Putnam’s evidence is all the more powerful because he supports an ethnically diverse society and has been disconcerted by the way his findings have been used to critique mass immigration policies and the multiculturalist experiment. 

Putnam, however, has not flinched from the results of his research.  These he published in full in 2007 under the title “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century. The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture.” 

In an earlier interview with the Financial Times (October 2006) Putnam was reported as saying that his data showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater was the loss of trust. 

“They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” said Prof Putnam. “The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.” 

Men of their word

Finally, while Islam is a multi-racial religion it is not multiculturalist.  Islam is all about its name: submission. Sure, there is diversity within Islam, but it is not easily accommodated as the animosity of Sunnis toward Shiites, Alawites, and Suffis (and that of Shiites toward Sunnis, Suffis, and Bahais) clearly shows. If Islam struggles with tolerance within, it is understandably indifferent to toleration without. 

Some people — including very learned ones – argue that Islam is a religion of peace. To which I would add: most Moslems who live among us do, in fact, seem to want to live in peace — though, naturally as their numbers grow, it is a peace apart from us rather than a peace with us. 

There is, however, holed-up within our immigrant Moslem communities, a considerable cadre of violent Islamists. They reject (while exploiting) our multiculturalism; they reject (while tapping into its welfare provision) our society itself; and they regard you and I as Untermenschen. 

Perhaps these dangerous people are deeply confused about their religion, but they do claim, often violently, that Islam is their inspiration – and few are the voices within their own communities to contradict them.

So, then, who are we — who, in ever growing numbers, mock the gods and who show an astonishing capacity to believe in anything or nothing at all — to tell our local would-be jihadists that they should learn from us about their Islam? 

For my part, I’d rather take them at their word. 

Let’s start from there.