The American Spectator

At Large

(Page 2 of 2)

Evening Standard , David Sexton wrote: "All this veil wearing is plain offensive." He continued: br>

The Commission on Integration and Cohesion has issued some feeble recommendations urging local authorities and government departments not to pander so much to immigrant communities. All well and good, all long overdue....We've all been too deferential, for example, about the veil, the hijab, the niqab. I find such garb, in the context of a London street, first ridiculous and then directly offensive. It says that all men are such brutes that if exposed to any more normally clothed women, they cannot be trusted to behave -- and that all women who dress any more scantily than that are indecent. It's abusive, a walking rejection of all our freedoms.

br> More than 200,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Prime Minister to prevent a gigantic new mosque, funded by the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat sect, being built near the Olympics site in east London. A number of terrorists are said to have had connections with Tablight Jamaat. The center-right think-tank Civitas has also raised concerns about the mosque which will hold 12,000 people, four times as many as Britain's largest Christian building, Liverpool's Anglican cathedral. Civitas said: "Are we sure, as a nation, that we want by far the largest place of worship in our land to be sponsored by an organization which holds views directly opposed to our democracy and a religion which, in many parts of the world, denies essential freedoms?" p>Opinions penned by the young war correspondent Winston Churchill in 1899 in his book The River War , long regarded as something not merely unfortunate but literally unmentionable, are now being widely circulated and cited: br> /p>

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property -- either as a child, a wife, or a concubine -- must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men....

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

This is the country in which, a few years ago, police rampant to celebrate diversity made a lady take a collection of toy china pigs off her window-sill lest passing Muslims be offended (though none had complained). The times they are a-changing.

topics:
Religion, Islam, Law, Africa, Immigration