Islam

My colleague Nick Cohen has a piece asking ‘Are you fit to be British? Take the UKIP test.’ In it he cites a number of horrible and silly and things said by people in UKIP before he himself descends into rudeness.  Stuart Wheeler is apparently a ‘cadaverous gambling tycoon’. ‘Cadaverous’? As in old? I suppose it must come to us all. But it is Nick’s conclusion that spurs me to respond. He finishes, ‘The scandals are so frequent you have to conclude that it is not the odd rotten apples that needs throwing out but the whole stinking barrel.’ Nick is not the only journalist to take this view. The British media in general are keeping up a sustained open season on UKIP.

More trouble for Ukip this morning: it seems that yet another party official has some colourful views about 'people of color'. David Challice, who is understood to work at Ukip HQ, once suggested that 'cash-strapped Moslems' should have multiple wives. In a bizarre newspaper advert placed in the Exeter Express and Echo in 2009, Challice said that he had found a 'money spinner' for 'any cash-strapped Moslems'. He recommended that they should have 'multiple wives in order to claim an extra £33.65 per wife in benefits from the Department for Work and Pensions'. An outcry followed, with Challice accused of racism. Challice later denied that the advert was racist; arguing that '...the mention of Islam and Muslems [sic] was strictly factual.

As so often (in my opinion) Tony Blair is almost right. In a wide-ranging speech at Bloomberg this morning he roamed over Syria, Libya, the Middle East and the West’s withdrawal of interest, let alone engagement, in the region. But it is Blair’s comments on Islam that are most interesting, are already garnering headlines and merit most attention. Referring to the problems across the Middle East he said: ‘At the root of the crisis lies a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam’s true message. The threat of this radical Islam is not abating. It is growing. It is spreading across the world. It is de-stabilising communities and even nations.

Last week, David Cameron surprised a number of people when, during a pre-Easter gathering at Downing Street, he spoke about religion. Not religion in general, the all-faiths-and-none diversity-speak of the political class, but his own Christian faith. James Forsyth writes about the implications in this week’s magazine. But what was most surprising was that the prime minister went further by saying that ‘our religion’ is the most persecuted in the world and that ‘I hope we can do more to raise the profile of the persecution of Christians’. He added: ‘We should stand up against the persecution of Christians and other religious groups wherever and whenever we can, and should be unashamed in doing so.’ This is quite a development.

The UK government has announced a long-overdue investigation into the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK. I am delighted. Why Britain should continue to act as an Argentina-like sanctuary for Islamic fascists I have never understood. I hope the investigation will be deep and wide-ranging. But of course if the government really wants to go into this properly it could do no better than to start at its own doorstep. Last week the inept and unelectable Baroness Warsi announced the formation of a new Foreign Office Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Given that Warsi has previously and repeatedly claimed that tackling 'Islamophobia' is one of the UK government's 'priorities' I think we can probably all guess where this 'Advisory group' will be heading.

In the past 30 years British English has received a number of loan words from Arabic, words which would have meant very little to our young grandparents but are now familiar enough to be used metaphorically: jihad, fatwa, taliban, dhimmi. Almost all refer to religion and religious conflict, and have a slightly unwelcome ear to most people. (It wasn’t always like this, of course; Arabic has in the past given us a number of terms, from zero to orange to racket and nadir, not to mention countless scientific phrases).

Is the world now being fed a bit of disinformation from the Malaysians over the fate of that missing jet, flight MH370? We are now told that the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was a ‘fanatical’ dissident, a supporter of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who has once again been jailed under Malaysia’s homophobic laws for allegedly having sex with a man. This makes Shah a democrat and a moderate, in my book - and I would have thought most people’s books. There is no suggestion that Shah had sympathies with PAS, Malaysia’s somewhat fundamentalist, although lately moderating, Islamist party (and which for reasons of political expediency has in the past allied itself with Anwar).