“Islamophobia”

Britain’s Parliament will require visitors to undergo identity checks, as politicians become increasingly concerned about their personal security. This is the first time in its history, with the institution previously presenting itself as open to public scrutiny and allowing direct access to elected representatives.

News that Parliament will toughen up its security comes less than a fortnight after protestors projected the slogan “from the river to the sea” on its iconic exterior tower, known worldwide as Big Ben.

Why did you let them in?

Delightful multiculturalism! Note the the mayors of Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Oldham and Rochdale.

“This is for Gaza”, Galloway said. The left-wing populist blowhard took away Labour’s two decades of dominance in Rochdale, the former Manchester-area textile town scene of the infamous child abuse scandal, in which Pakistani immigrants committed horrific sex crimes against teenage girls working class white women for many years.

Labour’s candidate, Azhar Ali, told a party meeting that Israel had “allowed” the October 7 Hamas massacre to take place, to give it the “green light” to invade Gaza.

A ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear, as in claustrophobia, agoraphobia or arachnophobia, all conditions deserving of sympathy. But fear can be rational, too. An infantryman in a First World War trench would have every reason to fear going over the top. To accuse him of a ‘phobia’ would be uncharitable, to say the least. An Australian suspected of arachnophobia might point out that spiders with a dangerous bite are not rare. In Britain, there’s much less to fear from spiders, so my fear of them could fairly be called arachnophobia. Is there a group of people who, like Australians in the case of spiders, have good reason to fear certain aspects of Islam? If such a group exists, I suggest it would be found among Muslims themselves.

Ministers are to broaden the government’s definition of extremism as part of a crackdown on people and groups “undermining” Britain’s institutions and values.

Rishi Sunak has asked Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, to update the government’s definition of extremism, which was first set out more than a decade ago. It defines extremism as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values” and is seen by the government as no longer being fit for purpose.

A new definition, which is still being finalised, is expected to cover those whose actions more broadly “undermine” the country’s institutions or values.

Just as the Brits chose to fight Hitler, so it must choose to fight his heirs.

If anyone had doubts as to the seriousness of the threat to the West and its heritage of political freedom, what happened this last week in the “Mother of Parliaments” should be enough to dispel them.

When Pim Fortuyn was assassinated two decades ago in Holland, largely because of his opposition to multiculturalism, most shrugged it off as unimportant. When Islamists went on a rampage of murder after a Parisian satirical magazine published a satirical cartoon that offended many Muslims’ sensibility, that seemed like an isolated incident and why stir up trouble anyway? We wrote off concerns about radical political Islamism as racist, xenophobic, whatever, when they spawned political reactions in Switzerland, Sweden, and Hungary.

Muslims represent about 6.7% of the population in England. In Canada about 4.7%. Both figures are based on 2021 census data.