Londonistan

POSTCARD USA: Londonistan in Washington — Khalid Hasan
Daily Times, May 14, 2006

The Heritage Foundation is the flagship of conservative think tanks in Washington. That it was chosen first by Foreign Minister KM “Blameworthy” and, more recently, by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz should perhaps not have surprised anyone since neither can be accused of revolutionary tendencies. God forbid.

Washington is a city full of lobbyists and think tanks. Tanks of course don’t think: they merely pulverise whatever stands in their way. Then there are tanks of the other kind, such as those in which you keeps fish. And if you are Dr No, you keep piranha, which you hope will one day dine on James Bond 007.

I go to Heritage Foundation whenever I want to know what the twice born are thinking about the rest of the world, especially the dangerous lunatic fringe on the Left and, currently, the “Islamists”, a word of recent coinage, for which we need to send a note of thanks to OB Laden, which is what he should be called because his full name is too long for a headline. Shafiq ur Rehman called Muhammad Shah Rangeela, MS Rangeela, so why not OB Laden?

I was at the Heritage Foundation this week to hear someone I had always associated with the Guardian because that was the paper she used to write for when I was living in London. Of course, I had not realised that she had left the Guardian years ago and fallen head over heels in love with everything right-wing. For the last five years she has written a column for the London tabloid Daily Mail, which is to the Guardian what Al Qaeda is to the FBI.

Melanie Phillips was here to launch her book Londonistan, which, according to her, is what England has become since those bad jihadi Muslims made it their home. And why did they make it their home? Because of a spineless, pusillanimous, appeasing British Labour government, which has turned its back on European civilisation and way of life.

She said she was not an expert either on Islam, or on terrorism or on Islamic groups, but she spoke on all three with an authority that only ignorance and prejudice can foster. What had happened, she said, was that British culture and values had come under threat because of the disastrous policy of multiculturalism and the refusal of the British judicial system to deal with terrorism as it should be dealt with.

She warned her American hosts that while Tony Blair was a staunch ally — some say poodle — of George Bush, there was no guarantee that his successor would be the same. She stopped short of suggesting that Bush should take steps to make Blair prime minister for life. She called Great Britain the “weakest link” in the war against Islamic terrorism. She said Britain had been enfeebled because of its continued adherence to the rule of law and human rights when it came to Islamist terrorists. She said there had been an erosion of British identity.

Ms Phillips lamented that after the 7/7 attacks, the explanations given by the British establishment and media were entirely wrong. It was said that the fault lay with “us” because we had failed to integrate Muslims in British society and we also suffered from Islamophobia. She said the real reason was that Britain had been too hospitable to those who poured into the country in the 1990s from the Middle East and North Africa after the end of the Afghan war.

Then there were the Pakistanis, whose country had been “colonised” by Saudi Wahabism. She said concepts like freedom of speech and human rights should not be applicable to such elements whose sole mission was the destruction of the Infidel West.

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? While there was little doubt that this is what she would wish, 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 said Britain had lost self-confidence and come to believe in supranational ideas — such as the UN and the International Criminal Court — rather than in its nationalist ideology. Minorities were seen as victims. She said the younger generation of British Muslims was torn between the beliefs of their elders and what it saw as the depravity and temptations of the West. She added the standard disclaimer that it was not her intent to “demonise all Muslims” although at one point she suggested that there was something intrinsically the matter with Islam when it came to violence.

I have since found that among the admirers of Ms Phillips’ book are the likes of Islam-baiter Daniel Pipes, unabashed Zionist Natan Sharansky (whom President George Bush admires) and Iranian imperialist Amir Taheri. Wrote Sharansky, “This book is powerful and frightening, but also courageous. In dictatorships, you need courage to fight evil; in the free world, you need courage to see the evil.”

Pipes piped in with, “In contrast to the overwhelming majority of her British compatriots, who prefer to avert their eyes from the radical Islamic horror growing in their midst, Melanie Phillips has compiled a unique record that fearlessly, brilliantly and wittily exposes this problem.”

And according to Taheri, “Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of British self-confidence and national identity and its resulting paralysis by multiculturalism and appeasement. The result is an ugly climate in Britain of irrationality and defeatism, which now threatens to undermine the alliance with America and imperil the defence of the free world.”

All I would suggest is that the Orwell Prize for Journalism that Ms Phillips received in 1996, she should surrender because the association of her name with that of Orwell is an insult to that great man and his memory.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net