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Steven Emerson interviews Melanie Phillips on Londonistan
encounterbooks.com ^ | Steven Emerson interviews Melanie Phillips

Posted on 08/11/2006 6:01:18 AM PDT by Tolik

The London bombings that on July 7, 2005 rocked a once-thought solid nation to its core and raised deep questions about the future of England. Eerily mirroring the September 11th attacks on the United States, the attacks on Britain brought Britain face to face with a dark secret about itself. The terrorists who had carried out this atrocity were not foreign marauders but British-born Muslims who had been living among ordinary Britons for decades. Melanie Phillips, acclaimed author of Londonistan, sits down with Steve Emerson to talk about the legacy of the bombings, what steps her country has taken to prevent such atrocities from happening again, and what it all means for the future of Britain and the rest of the Western world.

Steven Emerson: What has been the response from the political establishment and intelligence and law enforcement communities to your book?

Menanie Phillips: Silence. But I live in hope.

Emerson: Is it possible to roll back Islamic fundamentalist influence in London or Great Britain or is the demographic presence too overwhelming? And if not possible to reverse Islamist influence, what should be the policies of the UK government?

Phillips: The great question! The short answer is — I don’t know; but we have got to try, otherwise it’s all over. What we should be doing is halting the tide of mass (and largely illegal) immigration that is changing the face of Britain. We should abolish the doctrine of multiculturalism that is destroying British identity and reassert instead our overarching values as a democratic nation rooted in the particulars of history, religion, laws, culture, customs and traditions — a nation which values and respects all minorities, but expects them to subscribe to that overarching national identity. And we should stop the preaching and teaching of sedition, incitement to hatred and violence and war against the west that is presently continuing unchecked in mosques and madrassahs, on campus, in youth clubs and in prisons and either prosecute the perpetrators or throw them out of the country. All this can be done. The British government has so far flinched from doing it.

Emerson: Do any authentically moderate Islamic organizations or leaders exist?

Phillips: No. There ARE truly moderate British Muslims, but they are a frightened and powerless minority within a minority, and to date they have no representative institutions.

Emerson: How can one tell if an Islamic leader is genuinely moderate or an ersatz moderate?

Phillips: Well, my own personal litmus test is their attitude to Israel and the Jews. If they get that one right — that is, if they understand that fundamentally Israel is the victim in the Middle East , that the Jews are a benign and unaggressive people and that the Muslim world has been brainwashed into a demented and paranoid hatred of the Jews — then such people generally also get most other things the right way round too.

Emerson: How would you characterize the role and policies of the Muslim Council of Britain?

Phillips: The MCB is an extremist body, much influenced by the work of the Islamist idealogue Syed al Maududi. It pretends to moderation, and is regarded as a legitimate community interlocutor by the British government, but it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In fact, that sheepish covering is currently looking even more threadbare since its new head, Mohammed Abdul Bari, said cheerfully in a recent interview that the MCB’s aim was the Islamisation of Britain and that everyone should have arranged marriages. The MCB is in turn an umbrella movement for a large number of Muslim organisations, any of which are even more extreme.

Emerson: Looking back over the past 15 years, what where were the primary reasons why Great Britain allowed itself to become occupied fundamentalist territory?

Phillips: Ignorance, arrogance, and funk. It didn’t realise it needed to pay attention to the radical Islamist ideology coming out of Wahabbi Saudi Arabia because it didn’t think any British interests would be threatened by it. When it finally realised it had a major problem on its hands, it decided to appease it. Throughout its colonial history, Britain has always done appeasement, and in this present crisis over Islamist terrorism and extremism the British colonial mindset has resurfaced. By which I mean that the establishment has taken the view that these Muslim chappies aren’t very bright, and so the Brits can use their tried and tested tactics of divide and rule — throwing baubles to the Islamists in the form of places on official committees advising the government on combating Muslim extremism (!) and as advisers in the Foreign Office (the equivalent of the State Department). But the Islamists are actually pretty shrewd, and are playing the Brits like fish on the end of a line. And the British ruling class can’t see it because of the funk — the profound loss of cultural nerve which means that they are paralysed by the terror of being thought racist, Islamophobic, or xenophobic if they criticise a minority religion, and are further paralysed by the terror that any actions against Islamist extremism may provoke civil disorder or more terrorism. So the British establishment is locked into a state of pre-emptive cultural surrender.

Emerson: Have any law enforcement, military intelligence agencies in the UK been compromised by jihadist sympathizers?

Phillips: There is no firm information about this.

Steven Emerson is an internationally recognized expert on terrorism and national security and considered one of the leading world authorities on Islamic extremist networks, financing and operations. He now serves as the Executive Director of The Investigative Project, one of the world’s largest archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups. Mr. Emerson and his staff frequently provide briefings to US government and law enforcement agencies, Members of Congress and Congressional committees, and print and electronic media, both national and international. Since 9-11, Mr. Emerson has testified and briefed Congress dozens of times on terrorist financing and operational networks of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizzbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the rest of the worldwide Islamic militant spectrum. He and his organization have been quoted or profiled in hundreds of newspaper and television stories since 9-11.