Posted on 07/04/2007 9:21:23 AM PDT by NCjim
Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word Muslim in connection with the terrorism crisis.
The Prime Minister has also instructed his team including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith that the phrase war on terror is to be dropped.
The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more consensual tone than existed under Tony Blair.
However, the change provoked claims last night that ministers are indulging in yet more political correctness.
The sudden shift in tone emerged in comments by Mr Brown and Ms Smith in the wake of the failed attacks in London and Glasgow.
Mr Browns spokesman acknowledged yesterday that ministers had been given specific guidelines to avoid inflammatory language.
There is clearly a need to strike a consensual tone in relation to all communities across the UK, the spokesman said. It is important that the country remains united.
He confirmed that the phrase war on terror strongly associated with Mr Blair and US President George Bush has been dropped.
Officials insist that no direct links with Muslim extremists have been publicly confirmed by police investigating the latest attempted terror attacks. Mr Brown himself did not refer to Muslims or Islam once in a BBC TV interview on Sunday. Ms Smith also avoided any such reference in her statement to MPs yesterday.
She said: Let us be clear terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religions. Terrorists attack the values shared by all law-abiding citizens. As a Government, as communities, as individuals, we need to ensure that the message of the terrorists is rejected.
Tory backbencher Philip Davies said: I dont know what purpose is served by this. I dont think we need pussyfoot around when talking about terrorism.
But former Tory homeland security spokesman Patrick Mercer said: This is quite a smart idea. We know that the vast majority of Muslims are not involved in terrorism and we have to accept there are sensitivities about these matters.
What an incredibly terrible photo of this gal.
All Muslims are empty vesselsNote to Gordon Brown:
b'shem Yah'shua
waiting to be in-dwelt
by the Evil One: haSatan.
That is a true statement you know.
I agree with what you said. There are different schools of thought on this. One school of thought is you use psychology and try to separate the terrorists from the muslim sheep. You publicly say Muslim is a peaceful religion (because you want them to be peaceful) while privately you know their religion is scum. Bush uses this approach. There is no point in stating the truth - which is their religion itself is the problem. I don't see us converting or slaughtering billions of muslims.
So I don't necessarily believe it is all PC. I think there is a strategy element to this - at least by Bush. To be successful we need to somehow get the peaceful muslim sheep to reject the fanatics and take care of their own problem. They have the intelligence. They know who these people are.
Having said all this simply denying and ignoring that these terrorists are muslim terrorists is silly. Our approach has to be more sophisticated than that.
I guess “flea infested, goat f*****g devil worshipers” is right out.
I believe that the next election is closer than that. However, the Tories seem to be as wimpy...
Insanity. Absolute insanity.
Terrorist is a demeaning word. How about referring to them as victims of spiritual hydrophobia.
This is brilliant. We can solve all of the world's problems. No more war, no more cancer. Just call them something else.
I suppose Advantage would help that.
OK.
They’re Allah-loving-goat-humping-cultists!
Well there is an unfortunate precedent in other arenas:
I believe it's a Canadian newspaper photo, taken outside of 10 Downing Street. Since she's a Labour minister, she probably wants to have the "common look."
Yes, the three best British monarchs since the last Plantagenet was killed, IMHO, were Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. Not much to say on behalf of the men.
Then there was Boadicia, too, and Maggie Thatcher.
Yeah, and I suppose the IRA terrorists were Muslim...cuz of course terrorism has to be an Islamic phenomenon. I can just imagine the response if they had been called Catholic terrorists.
Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. Moreover, we can’t defeat terrorism with a pr campaign or with word choice. It is policy that matters. Brown is pursuing the right policies, and that is what matters.
Lord Mountbatten would be amused.
“we commit suicide with PC and Liberals...”
Always, always give Liberals their fair share of credit for destroying this great nation and our future.
All of Europe is going to hell in a hand basket, and apparently Great Britain is leading the way.
The IRA terrorists were Marxists. They just happened to be Catholics, but they were not acting in the name of God or the Church.
Moreover, with one or two exceptions, which I think the Provos may have been responsible for, they did not deliberately kill civilians. They almost invariably phoned in a warning when they blew something up.
Terrorists, yes, but in no way comparable to Muslim terrorists. The only people in Ireland who deliberately and indiscriminately killed civilians were the Orangemen.
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