Olehgirl.com
5/10/2010
Thanks to the WSJ for putting up this transcript of an interview with Melanie Phillips about the Times Square bombing attempt. Phillips notes that the U.S. is making the same mistakes that the U.K. has made of thinking that religious fanaticism is a kind of antidote to Islamic terror and political correctness which doesn’t allow for anyone, as in the case of the Fort Hood attacker, to examine whether someone is a potential threat because of their religious fanaticism.
So, for instance, the Brits think they can use the the extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood to channel the “idealism” of young British Muslim men–classically, the people who might be drawn towards al Qaeda-style terrorism–and divert them into what the British officials think is relatively harmless religious fanaticism. We’ve seen the results of that policy in the form of the Christmas Day bomber and others radicalized on college campuses in the U.K. I’ve copied relevant parts of the transcript below or you can pop over to The Jawa Report and watch the actual video interview.
Phillips: Well, I think the main lesson the United States can learn from the United Kingdom is to learn from its mistakes. And the main mistake the United Kingdom has made and continues to make is to refuse to accept that what we’re all facing in the West is a religious war, an Islamic jihad. It insists–Britain insists on regarding it as just violence and terrorism arising from particular grievances around the world. It will not accept it’s motivated by religions fanaticism. And as a result–
Gigot: It has that religious root. What are the implications of that? What does that mean that Britain is not doing, that it should be doing and, by implication, we should be doing?
Phillips: Well, as a result, Britain is making the terrible mistake of thinking, amazing as this may seem, that religious fanaticism is a kind of antidote to Islamic terror.
Gigot: An antidote?
Phillips: An antidote. Yes.
Gigot: Really.
Phillips: Yes. It thinks it can use, for example, the extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood to kind of channel the, quote, “idealism” of young British Muslim men–classically, the people who might be drawn towards al Qaeda-style terrorism–and divert them into what the British official mind thinks is relatively harmless religious fanaticism. And that is because it cannot conceive that the religious fanaticism actually feeds in at the extremes to violence and terror…
Phillips: …So the British authorities–and not just the political authorities, but academic authorities turned a blind eye, for example, to the radicalization on campus by groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, which purport not to be involved in violence in Britain, but nevertheless radicalize young Muslims on campus to the jihad, to the idea the West should be overturned, that Britain should become an Islamic theocracy…
The article continues at Olehgirl.com
Paul Gigot is the host of “The Journal Editorial Report” on Fox News Channel. Melanie Phillips is a columnist for London’s Daily Mail and the author of the book Londonistan.
