Islamism - 4

[Naresh]

<b><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Mr Hasan's distortion</span></b>

Last Wednesday, I spoke on the themes of my book <b>Londonistan</b> to a meeting of the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington. After my presentation finished, I was asked a question by a Pakistani journalist. What was I suggesting, he asked sarcastically: that all British Muslims should be deported? This was the gist of my reply to him (you can hear what was actually said in the video recording on the <b>Heritage website</b>).

I said I was certainly not suggesting anything of the sort, and that the question illustrated precisely the kind of mischievous misrepresentation to which arguments like my own were repeatedly subjected. I said that I had repeatedly emphasised in my book that British Muslims should not all be tarred with the brush of extremism, that across the world Muslims were the most numerous victims of Islamist terrorism, and that it was very important to give truly moderate, reformist Muslims our support and protection. I believed that Britain should be delivering the message that Muslims were welcome in Britain to practise their faith, which should be respected, but at the same time Islamism – whereby the religion was being used to inspire hatred and violence against the British state or against America, Israel and the Jews – would not be tolerated. Britain’s current failure to draw this important distinction, I suggested, was not only endangering British society but undermining truly reformist British Muslims, since Britain’s appeasement of Islamist extremists was cutting the ground from under the moderates' feet in their own attempt to defeat them.

The following, however, is what this journalist, Khalid Hasan, has written in his newspaper the <b>Daily Times</b> of Pakistan:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I asked her after she was done what she proposed should be done to deal with the situation. Should all British Muslims be thrown out and a ban placed on further immigration of Muslims to Britain? <i>While there was little doubt that this is what she would wish</i>, [my emphasis] she said it should be made quite clear that minorities could not dictate to the majority. While everyone was free to practise his religion, including Islam, no one could be permitted to sabotage the essential Western values of British society..

She added the standard disclaimer that it was not her intent to ‘demonise all <i>Muslims’ although at one point she suggested that there was something intrinsically the matter with Islam when it came to violence</i> [my emphasis].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


This grossly misrepresents what I said in my remarks and in my reply to Mr Hasan. He has ignored what I said in my reply to him and provided instead an untrue and defamatory gloss, imputing to me a view which I do not possess. I also did not make any reference in my remarks – indeed, I specifically say in the book that this is a matter on which I do not express a view at all – to any ‘intrinsic’ characteristic of Islam.

<b>Mr Hasan is of course entitled to his opinions about my views, and he is also free to make the kind of unpleasant remarks about ‘Zionists’ which he includes in his article. However, he is not entitled to distort a public presentation liked this, and the Daily Times of Pakistan might like to note that he has badly misrepresented what I said.</b>

Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->