Something On Which We Can All Agree

Well, not we as in you and me, but we-they as in British Muslims. Gatestone Institute, apparently taken over by crazed, far-right racists, conducted a poll of British Muslims. You can find the summary and results here. Here's just a tidbit that has bothered me until I saw the video I shared yesterday.

The 615-page survey found that more than 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers and people who commit other terrorist acts. Moreover, only one in three British Muslims (34%) would contact the police if they believed that somebody close to them had become involved with jihadists.

What's the deal here? I thought this was the Religion of Peace™. Here's my hypothesis.

As a Muslim, your aim is to spread your religion far and wide. All must submit to the will of Allah. All must become part of the community of believers, the Ummah. Yes, Christians are called to do this as well, but post-Enlightenment, we're supposed to convince rather than force. For Muslims, it's a very open question. Let's posit a continuum of believers, ranked as follows:

• Sedate. Go through the motions and believe, but too busy with life to really get down to proselytizing.
• Arguers. These will debate you and attempt to convince.
• Activists. These will use political means to further the goal of bringing all into the Ummah.
• Radicals. These will use any means up to, but not including violence.
• Violent radicals. Hop in the car, Mohammed, we're gonna go shoot up some infidels!

So think about it. Why would an arguer hide a radical from the European or American cops?

Because they all have the same goal.

It's not that the radicals want something different from you, the sedate dude. They want the same thing. The radicals are just excitable lads whose hearts are in the right place. If you hand them over to the cops, then a pious Muslim will be put in a Western prison. You don't want that, do you? Maybe we can talk them out of their radicalism. Maybe their radicalism turns us on a bit, but we don't have the courage to get involved. Go for it, Achmed, we're all behind you 100%.

It's one team and the different groups are playing different positions. Maybe you, the fat, 45-year-old father of 5 can no longer lug around mortar shells, but, by Allah, you can sure block for the boys and tell the cops you didn't see anything suspicious in Mohammed's apartment. What, all those ammo cases littering the floor? I thought they were packing boxes for his auto parts business.

When you watch dimwitted western reporters get roughed up by thugs when they visit no-go zones, the reason the residents aren't intervening or calling the cops is that the locals think the thugs are doing the right thing, if a bit too zealously.

What struck me about the Malmo videos was that once you saw that they all were on the same team and had the same goals while the Swedes were atomized individualists, things started to make a lot more sense. It's also why Sven and the boys are facing a huge uphill climb to bring Swedish values back to these neighborhoods. The Swedes can't agree what Swedish values are while the Muslims are all, to one extent or another, trying to accomplish the same thing.

And, with that, I think I'm done with this topic for a while.