Can Muslims in the West Ever Really Be De-Radicalized?

(Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

Or, to put it another way, is there such as thing as an unbelieving Believer? One of the great fallacies of Western Europe’s multicultural fantasy is that the children of imported Musselmen will become less Muslim and that, eventually, their offspring will become more like their nominally Christian but in fact entirely secular hosts. Accordingly, the British and others now dealing with the consequences of their willfully ahistorical blindness regarding the true nature of Islam, have assumed that “radical” Muslims are the exception rather than the rule, and so have treated them as aberrational.

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This, however, flies in the face of no less an expert on Islam than Turkey’s would-be caliph, Recep Erdogan, who famously denied that any such thing as “radical” Islam exists — because, to be a Believer, is to believe in the faith in its entirety. The idea of “cafeteria” Muslims, he has said, is totally wrong:

In a 2010 interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Obama referred to Turkey as a “great Muslim democracy.” Obama should have seen that a democracy is a democracy — without any religious prefix. He would see in later years the difference between a democracy and a Muslim democracy.

Seven years after Obama’s pathetic diagnosis about the kind of democracy Erdogan brought to an otherwise secular country, the Turkish president said that “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. There is only one Islam.” Worse, he claimedthat the term “moderate Islam” had been fabricated by the West in order to weaken Islam. From the Muslim democracy to the former U.S. president, with love…

Comes now a report in the Times of London that ought to give pause to anyone still deluded by the idea that a religion that defines itself in opposition to Judeo-Christianity is suddenly going to “moderate” once exposed to a spiritually bankrupt Western democracy.

More than 95 per cent of deradicalisation programmes are ineffective, according to a study commissioned by the Home Office that raises questions about the government’s Prevent programme. The study revealed failures in the approach to deradicalisation in schools, youth centres, sports clubs and English-language classes.

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), the so-called nudge unit formerly part of the Cabinet Office, examined 33 deradicalisation programmes across the country designed to safeguard vulnerable people from far-right and religious extremist threats. The Times understands that most were funded by or fell under the label of Prevent.

The study found that only two programmes were effective and that some projects were counterproductive. Some participants said that they restricted their freedom of speech. Until the BIT study, the 33 projects claimed a success rate of more than 90 per cent because they evaluated themselves.

On Monday Sajid Javid, the home secretary, reaffirmed his support for Prevent. He said that he recognised criticism of the programme but added that “misapprehensions around Prevent are often based on distortions” and “I absolutely support it”.

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Hardly surprising that a guy named Sajid Javid would support a program that in fact increases radicalization of “British” Muslims; that this guy is the British Home Secretary demonstrates just how deeply Islam has penetrated what used to be the United Kingdom, but which is now on its way to becoming just another outpost of the ummah. 

Born in Rochdale in 1969, the former investment banker and Margaret Thatcher devotee, is on the right of the Conservative party. His appointment will give him a voice on the powerful cabinet subcommittee on Brexit and will keep the balance of EU leavers and remainers in the top offices, but he can only be categorised as a remainer in the most technical sense.

Like the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, he is a Muslim son of a bus driver who has risen to the top of British politics. His parents were born in India, but fled to Pakistan while small children. His father arrived in Britain in the 1960s – Javid has said he came with £1 in his pocket.

His other hero apart from Thatcher is Ayn Rand – he recounted once that he regularly rereads the courtroom scene from her novel The Fountainhead,telling the Spectator he admired its description of “the power of the individual … sticking up for your beliefs, against popular opinion”.

Pardon me if I believe almost none of this. As the hapless Theresa May has somehow demonstrated, the Home Secretary can be the stepping stone to 10 Downing Street; London may have been softened up enough for a Muslim mayor, but is what’s left of the English part of England ready for a Muslim PM? Especially in light of the Times’s report:

BIT examined several group interventions and is understood to have delivered its findings, which were reported by Police Professional magazine, to the Home Office this year. Researchers concluded that one intervention programme in schools was ineffective because it used a prescriptive curriculum that adopted the same approach whether addressing a predominantly Muslim or white British classroom.

According to Police Professional, the study concluded that facilitators were uncomfortable dealing with sensitive topics and would often refuse to engage if they were brought up… teachers in particular were afraid to bring up matters of race and religion with their students without appearing discriminatory, often causing them to refuse to talk about these topics entirely. Other schemes placed too much emphasis on subjects of offence and Islamophobia which prompted some Muslim participants to report a reduction in their support for freedom of speech.

Of course, the British government proclaims the programs a success:

Security minister Ben Wallace said:“I am interested by the results of the BIT evaluation but they do not show the full picture. Their findings will help improve future interventions. However, the single most important fact and the real proof of concept so far is that over 500 people who entered the Channel program via Prevent have gone from posing a threat of violent extremism to no longer being of concern. That successes has been brought about by community groups delivering mentoring and help.“

What no one is facing up to is one simple fact: that without a large Muslim population in the UK, none of these extraordinary efforts would be necessary, and the enormous sums of money expended on surveilling and reprogramming Muslims could well have been spent on something that would have benefitted the real British people. But such is the potency of the “diversity” delusion, which shows no signs of diminishing in the soon-to-be-late country of Merry Olde England.

The UK is home to up to 25,000 Islamist extremists who could pose a threat, the EU’s top terror official has warned. Officials have warned that the threat from home-grown jihadis who are prevented from joining Isis in Syria and Iraq is increasing,with the group inciting global terror attacks to maintain momentum. Mr de Kerchove said the UK was home to the highest known number of Islamist radicals in Europe – between 20,000 and 25,000 people – with 3,000 considered a direct threat by MI5 and 500 under constant surveillance.

One of the titles of the old woman who is “queen” of England is “defender of the faith.” But which faith?

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