Blurring the lines

There's another piece by Ed Husain on the need to confront rather than creatively empathize with Islamist ideology. It's in today's Evening Standard (and not, as far as I can tell, online), and it has some critical words for Ken Livingstone:

Appeasement is not an answer to the bombs

The threat of radical Islam is as great as ever - and those, like the Mayor, who seek to gloss over the danger, should heed this warning

Ed Husain

Once again, London is plunged into fear and confusion. Perhaps we had been lulled by a series of successful convictions of bomb plotters. But all along, the jihadists were at work, building their cells, arming themselves, recruiting, making plans. And it is only by a miracle that London escaped carnage far, far worse than that wreaked on 7 July 2005. Police seem to have a good chance of rounding up this particular cell. But either way, radical Islam is back with a vengeance. In fact, it never left.

So I listen to the Mayor of our great city and I wonder, what will it take for him to wake up? More bombs in central London? Another attack on the Tube? As someone who was seduced by Islamists such as Omar Bakri, I know how charismatic these firebrands can be. But at the time, I was an impressionable teenager. What's Ken's excuse?

Don't get me wrong. Being a big tent liberal is laudable; but to fail to discern the difference between Islam, the religious tradition, and Islamism, the extremist political ideology hell bent on destroying the West, is a disaster for us all. By confusing regular religious Muslims with fanatical ideologues, Ken blurs the lines between right and wrong, and allows radicalism to flourish within sections of London's Muslim communities.

On Radio 4 this weekend, Ken and I took part in a debate about terrorism. Despite my repeatedly asking Ken to condemn Islamism, he refused to do so. He correctly lambasted Saudi Wahhabis for their role in promoting an intolerant and violent creed. Yet what we call al-Qaeda is an illegitimate child of Islamism and Wahhabism combined.

While living in Saudi Arabia two years ago, I remember watching in horror television images of Ken walking around with Yusuf al Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric based in Qatar, whose publicly stated attitude is that suicide bombers are martyrs. Yet it was Ken who said that "of all the Muslim thinkers in the world today, al Qaradawl is the most positive force for change". By promoting these extremists, and their supporters, Ken gives them legitimacy He helps set in motion the conveyor belt to terrorism.

Later in the article, Ed Husein goes on to repeat one of themes of his Sunday Times article I linked to yesterday:

Ken frequently cites social deprivation as a cause for extremism. But the most deprived community in Britain is the white working class. And yet they are not producing suicide bombers. Why? Because they are not exposed to an ideology that venerates murderers as martyrs.

(Thanks: AE.)