Michael Copeland’s latest essay reminds me of two lines in “There is a War”, a song by Leonard Cohen: “There is a war between the ones who say there is a war / and the ones who say there isn’t.”
“We Are At War”
by Michael Copeland
“We are at war and I am a soldier,” said Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the London 7/7 murderers. Lee Rigby’s killer told the court, “I am a soldier… This is a war… I’m a Soldier of Allah”.
Observers who are alert to Islam’s objectives have little difficulty in accepting this. Public broadcasters and politicians, by and large, though, do not accept it. They are uninformed: as a result they are incredulous. Stephen Sackur of BBC Newsnight scowled with disbelief when Anjem Choudary informed him that kafirs are not innocent — basic Islamic doctrine — and that Britain has always been the Realm of War. The BBC knows better, apparently. Recently in France the very well-informed Eric Zemmour insisted to his interviewer:
“Civil war! —Yes. We are in a civil war. — We are… excuse me!”
His interviewer did not appear to be convinced: perhaps he thinks he knows better. The media, and, more seriously, Western governments, have yet to receive the memo.
The blogger ECAW writes, “In 2005 four British born Muslims blew themselves up on the London transport system, killing 52 people, citing religious and political motivations. I was angry about it but was elsewhere, and otherwise engaged, and I went back to sleep.”
Sleep
ECAW probably speaks for many, many more. Why did we go back to sleep? Was it anything to do with repeated assurances from our leaders that these four had misunderstood their Peaceful Religion, that they had warped, twisted, perverted it and so on — you know the rest? ECAW is no longer asleep. His acronym explains: “Everything Changed After Woolwich”.
But… but… but we cannot be at war. War means Arnold Schwarzenegger… and helicopters… and commandos… and tanks. Let’s face it: most of our mental images are owed to Hollywood, and we hardly even realise it. No. War is not all heroic and exciting. It does not need to be continuous: it can be gradual. Wars in the past dragged on for decades — the Thirty Years’ War, the Hundred Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars. Islam itself is, by its own doctrines, in “a permanent war institution” against the West, which is “Dar al Harb”, the Realm of War. “Britain has always been Dar al Harb”, Anjem Choudary assured BBC Newsnight.
The US has suffered many jihad attacks: 9/11, Fort Hood, Little Rock, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Boston Marathon, Orlando night club, van ramming in New York, subway bomber, and so on. Britain has undergone a large number of attacks: Lockerbie, London 7/7, London 21/7, the foiled airline liquid bomb attack, the fertilizer bomb plot, Glasgow airport, the London night club failed car bomb, the beheading of Lee Rigby, the beheading of Palmira Silva, the murders of young Kriss Donald, Charlene Downes and others, the anti-EDL bomb plot, the Manchester concert bomb. Add the ongoing taking of thousands of vulnerable underage girls as sex-slaves, including one murdered at home with her family at night by arson. Add all the assaults on young men, and the carving out of Muslim-only ghettoes by the aggressive thuggery of White Drive-Out. The picture emerges of widespread and sustained hostile actions, complete with multiple victims. How many attacks are needed to qualify as a war? Certainly a state of hostility exists, with casualties.
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