The European parliamentary elections are coming up next weekend, and it looks like Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party will all but run the table when Britons choose their new crop of MEPs. But where does Mr. Farage stand on the issue of Islam? Michael Copeland’s new essay takes a look at the topic.
Farage’s Fatal Flaw
by Michael Copeland
Nigel Farage is remarkable. He knows his EU subject matter completely. His assessments are perceptive, his responses quick, forthright, and to the point. He is not afraid to speak his mind. The British like that. He has worked hard and persistently over the years after founding the United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP.
It is very largely due to Farage that the British people have been made aware of the undemocratic nature of the EU. He has exposed the fact that its leaders are not elected but appointed by each other, that they cannot be dismissed by the voters, and that the European Parliament has no power to introduce legislation, but is given only the role of endorsing what the unelected leaders supply to it. He has left UKIP. At a time when British voters have hugely lost confidence in the traditional main parties, his newly-formed Brexit party seems likely to sweep the coming elections for the European Parliament. It is a testament to his leadership.
There is one important area, however, where Farage is not an authority, and that is Islam. Robert Spencer, a considerable expert on Islam, writes:
Nigel Farage… reveals his abject ignorance of Islam and the jihad threat…
No politician today can afford to be in that position. The danger is too great.
What “we absolutely must do”, insists Mr. Farage, is to “get the vast majority of muslims on our side against the bad guys.”
No deal, Mr. Farage. Learning curve needed. The “vast majority of muslims” are not available: Islam has walled them off: they are only permitted to be on Islam’s side and to do what Islam instructs. There is no mileage in that stratagem. It is a dead end. Muslims are not allowed any leeway by Islam’s rules. The doctrines set out in the texts are neither negotiable nor optional. Control is total:
It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their decision. (Koran 33:36, part of Islamic law)
Muslims are not permitted to choose: they are instructed, and they have to submit. The word Islam means “submission”. There is no room for conscientious objection. Dr. Salah al-Sawy, the Secretary-General of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, issued a ruling, or fatwa, citing the above verse:
For things which have been stipulated in the texts of Islam, the [Muslim community] possesses no power except to acknowledge and obey.
The famous Pakistani scholar Abul Ala Maududi (d.1979) stressed:
No one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private… the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.
There is no private conscience in Islam. The Egyptian sheikh Yassir al-Burhani makes this clear in an interview:
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