Slamming the ‘lam

Like the bad penny that keeps turning up, Tony Blair has peeped over the parapet to warn us we are in denial about the threat of extreme islam. Gee, thanks Tone, I wonder I anybody has noticed in, say, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Paris, Brussels and just yesterday, Lahore? Naturally enough, LBC had a phone-in about it all and naturally enough the airwaves were filled with pleasant, accent-free, friendly ‘British muslims’ eager to share their knowledge of ‘true’ islam. So that’s lovely, isn’t it?

Too late, mate, far too late. The world is way too busy avoiding exploding muslims to worry much about what kind of muslims they might have been. I mean islam or islamist, the extra three letters do little to soothe; persisting in calling it the religion of peace is like, say, Tony Blair insisting that diversity is an unmitigated good even while ‘rubbing the right’s nose’ in it; that’s something you do with shit, isn’t it? The importation of wacky wahhabism is a diverse step far too far.

But it’s one thing warning about it; now it’s here what are you going to do? And by ‘you’ I mean all those elites in positions of power whose very positions rely far too heavily on not upsetting the people who buy our weapons and sell us oil. Never mind Blair’s belated pronouncement that islamism is incompatible with civilisation, when I start to see a severing of relationships with regimes which harbour and nurture that incompatibility I may begin to believe that action is being taken.

But of course, few of us expect such decisive action because for it to happen careers are going to have to be sacrificed and future reward foregone. Lords are going to have to fall on swords and the fat, corrupt rich must go on crash diets. Fortunes will have to fail and dynasties need to be deposed. The whole sorry elitist edifice will have to crumble and fall and some very public cleansing of consciences will be needed.

We are a rich country and some are very rich indeed. And some of the most obscene riches have come about because of deals done with desert dust devils. Well, I’m willing for Britain to become a poorer country if it means we also become significantly safer. Sucking up to salafi isn’t going to cut it. So, back to islam. Sorry fellas but now is not the time to reason why, now’s the time to denounce or die. Because islam isn’t a race and it isn’t a nationality. Choose your side – Britain or islam – only one of them belongs in your passport.

Which type of muslim are you?

And we don’t really care about what kind of wonderful version of islam you believe you continue to believe in, you can keep that to yourself. Banish the burka, ditch the dish-dash and do as the official religion of these islands has done – relegate itself to a minor hotch-potch of traditions, such as are being practised over this Easter weekend. Eat, drink, be merry and stop, just stop, blowing the fuck out of things.