The British Prime Minister has put the UK in the center of the storm which has been brewing for years both in Europe and the US. In a speech before an international conference on terrorism held in Munich, David Cameron mounted a direct frontal assault on the bastion of multi-culturalism. In spring loaded responses, assorted UK Muslim groups as well as fellow travelers from the British Left countered that Mr Cameron by his stance promoted, among other evils, racism, xenophobia, marginalizing Muslims, and, horror above horror, giving aid and comfort to the far right English Defense League.
In his remarks, the PM drew a sharp distinction between Islam per se and political Islam, particularly that of the violent sort. He announced that the government would be reversing a course followed by his Labor predecessors. Instead of remaining silent--or, in fact, even facilitating by money and public facilities--groups and individuals who espoused positions on gender issues, law, and democracy repugnant to defining British values and norms, the government would robustly counter these. No longer would Her Majesty's ministers genuflect before the multi-cultural totems of de facto segregation, turning a Nelsonian blind eye to "preachers of hate" or allowing separate development of non-majority social and cultural groups.
In the tenor and scope of his remarks, Mr Cameron followed the path explored earlier by German chancellor Merkel and French president Sarkozy. Not that this reality inhibited the automatic excoriations pouring from both Muslims and the denizens of the Left. The views offered by the Big Three of the European Union may be offensive to the deeply held beliefs of the "sophisticated" and ever-so-tolerant elites of Europe (and the US) but accurately reflect not only the realities which have insensibly developed in Europe over the past couple of decades but the perceptions of most of the hoi polloi of the UK, France, Germany, and, for that matter, the rest of Western Europe.
As Cameron made clear, the relation between Muslim groups and Muslims generally within the UK and the majority population of that country has profound implications for the internal security of the realm. Due to rulings by the overreaching European Court of Human Rights, it has become virtually impossible for British authorities to deport even very dangerous, terror inclined believers in violent political Islam. The same unintended consequence of the ever-so-tolerant-and-accepting elites' decision to invest very broad powers in the unelected, unaccountable Human Rights Court applies to every member of the European Union.
As a report Thursday by the top monitor of counterterrorism in the UK, Lord Alexander Carlile, made plain, the result of the European Human Rights Court decisions taken in conjunction with the rapid growth of violent political Islam in the UK has been to make the country a "safe haven" for terrorists and their supporters. Similarly, the briefings given to visiting American congresspeople by MI-5 emphasized that the security organ as well as the police are nearly overwhelmed by the number of primarily young Muslims who have surrendered to the appeal of violent political Islam. The clear implication for the Americans was the threat could not be confined to the UK but could easily cross the Atlantic.
This dreary reality underscores the earlier lessons from Germany. A decade ago it was the ever-so-tolerant German milieu which allowed the nurturing of several well-educated, economically well-off, young Muslim men to gravitate to the flag of violent political Islam with results which arrested the world's attention on 9/11. Even with that capstone to a series of earlier outbreaks of violent political Islam, it took years before the German government made any moves to inhibit the activities of those who pursue the defeat of the West. The power and seductive appeal of multi-culturalism held too great a sway with the German political, media, and intellectual "elite" to do otherwise.
France traveled a similar route albeit without the enormity of 9/11. Years of violence by "youth" were waved aside by the elite as being nothing more than rage and frustration caused by economic and political marginalization. It took great political courage as well as the growth of a backlash by French people wondering what had happened to "their France" before the government commenced actions intended, in essence, to compel and end the self-inflicted Muslim segregation from the majority population, the majority culture, the norms, values, and world views which defined the French nation.
Cameron is calling for nothing less. He is demanding an end to segregation. True, the segregation was in large measure well-intended by the True Believers in multi-culturalism and cultural relativism. These True Believers, members in good standing of the self-selected, self-anointed hoi ollogoi, really thought that separate development of Muslim communities following their own native customs and religious traditions would benefit them and, by some mysterious process, the country as a whole. Well intended segregation even when embraced wholeheartedly by those being segregated is still segregation. And, segregation harms all, those who are put in the ghettos and those who do the putting.
No matter what gloss is put on the matter, there are no upsides to segregation. The record of history is very clear on that. Whether the Jews of Europe or Americans of African ancestry in this country, segregation does only damage, grave, even well nigh onto fatal damage. The intentions of multi-culturalists does not change this reality one iota.
Cameron, like Merkel and Sarkozy before him, called for (to use a lawyer loved phrase) a bright and shining line to be drawn between Islam as a religion and Islam derived political ideology. While that sounds like a good idea, it is one which is fraught with danger in application.
The fundamental difficulty is simply that there is no dividing line between Islam as a religion and Islam as a political ideology. Islam is a self-consciously totalistic system covering all aspects of life, the profane as well as the sacred, the political and economic as well as the theological and eschatological.
On one level Islam is a very simple religion to accept and practice. Its five pillars are straight forward. Its basic requirements and strictures are likewise simple, direct and not at all difficult either to articulate or to follow. The basics of being a good Muslim are arguably simpler in application than are those of being a good Catholic or a good Presbyterian or a good reform Jew.
On another level, Islam is a very difficult religion to practice in its totality. This is particularly true when one is a Muslim living in a secular Western country. The assorted imams, ayatollahs, and sheiks who have preached on the utter incompatibility of Islam and democracy are not perverting the faith. If, as these clerics believe, all law must come directly from the deity, then the laws of a democracy being made by men are anathema unless they are somehow certified by a cleric as fully compatible with the law of the deity.
Similarly, if, as these clerics preach, women are inherently inferior to men by the will and design of the deity, then any human created laws to the contrary are anathema. The notion of gender equality is directly contrary to the expressed will of the deity and is an attack upon the deity. The same reasoning applies to any number of other features of life and law in contemporary Western states.
The lack of any separation between the political state and the religious community, which is a baseline position articulated by any number of Muslim clerics, as well as the absence of any concept akin to the radical British development nearly a thousand years ago of the "King's Peace" assure immense practical difficulties confront Mr Cameron's goal of full integration of Muslims into the larger British comity.
Mr Cameron must recognize this as he asserted in his speech a truth which will not sit well with either many Muslims or their multi-cultural supporters. He averred that the responsibility to conform with larger, defining British norms, values, world views, and traditions resides with the individual Muslim. To put it bluntly, Cameron challenged each and every individual Muslim to decide between accepting the defining characteristics of British culture, society, and polity on the one hand or getting out of the UK on the other.
The choice is blunt but fair. A society, a nation, as well as the state, the polity, is defined by a set of values, norms, traditions, world views, all of which have been developed over generations. The job of defining is never finished so each and every nation as well as the state which embodies it is a work in progress. This means that each and every Muslim by agreeing to accept the norms and values currently governing the nation and state in which he lives can enter into the process of the never completed work in progress.
The UK or the Germany or the France or the US of a century hence will not resemble its current incarnation in many aspects. That is a given. This implies that Muslims are free to do what so many non-majority groups have done in each of these countries for many generations now--accept the present in order to participate in creating the future.
This ground truth implies that Prime Minister Cameron has issued an invitation which is far greater than the explicit ultimatum. He has invited the Muslims to leave their cushioned ghetto and enter the mainstream in order to be full participants in creating the UK and the British nation of the years to come. Seen this way, it is hard to understand why the Muslim groups and their Left wing apologists did other than praise the PM for his generous invitation.
As well as inviting Muslims to join the "Big Society," Mr Cameron has issued a challenge to the elites of Europe to reevaluate their stance. Implicit in his remarks is a demand that each and every member of the EU as well as their component elites step back and reexamine just what human rights might mean. He has implicitly demanded that the Human Rights Court be looked at closely and harshly.
Most particularly in the sub-text of his speech, Cameron has rejected the stance of the Court on the balance between the rights and privileges of an individual and the legitimate security needs of a state. In all too many of its decisions the Court, has seemed to be of the mind that a state must commit suicide in order that a single person's human rights might receive the most generous of protections.
To his credit the British PM has challenged that dubious proposition. This challenge has come rather late in the day, but finally it has been made.
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