The Manchester attack, in which 22 people died and 64 wounded, shows that the
Western civilization ought to be saved from its own public intellectuals rather than from jihad. To be precise, the West is facing a much bigger onslaught from its own thought leaders—academics, authors, media Brahmins, and other opinion makers.
Consider the facts: The suspected suicide bomber, 22-year-old Salman Abedi, is a Muslim of Libyan origin. He detonated a home-made device at Manchester Arena. BBC reports that his extremist leanings were known. In fact, members of the public had called an anti-terrorism hotline hotline after he expressed the views that “he was supporting terrorism” and “being a suicide bomber was ok.” Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Abedi was known “up to a point” by security services. His recent return from Libya was also known.
What the staid and politically correct BBC doesn’t tell you is that the local law-enforcement authorities did not carry out their duty because of their preoccupation with the dogmas of multiculturalism. In a revealing article in www.frontpagemag.com, Daniel Greenfield, a writer focusing on the radical Left and radical Islam, has listed the march of Islamist forces that led to the ghastly attack in Manchester (http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266793/manchesters-islamist-appeasing-police-and-daniel-greenfield).
“While Salman Abedi… stalked the streets wailing, ‘There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah,’ Manchester police were busy with more important things… Mayor [Andy] Burnham and Chief Constable [Ian] Hopkins pandered to Islamists, prioritized Islamophobia and dutifully opposed the government’s fight against Islamic terror.”
The Greater Manchester Police, writes Greenfield, are one of only two police forces to list Islamophobia as a hate crime category. Earlier this year, Hopkins honored Tell Mama for fighting Islamophobia. “Shahid Malik, the chair of Tell Mama, had been photographed with the leader of Hamas. Appearing at the Global Peace and Unity conference, where plenty of terrorism supporters have promenaded, he boasted, ‘In 2005 we had four Muslim MPs. In 2009 or 2010 we’ll have eight or ten Muslim MPs. In 2014 we’ll have 16 Muslim MPs. At this rate the whole parliament will be Muslim’.”
This is the quintessential Islamist vision: creeping acquisition of power, not much different from the creeping acquisition in the corporate sector.
Last year the left-wing politician, Burnham, fought the government’s efforts to crack down on Islamic terror, Greenfield writes. “It is creating a feeling in the Muslim community that it is being spied upon and unfairly targeted,” Burnham had whined.
Greenfield goes on to describe how the police force in the UK has been constrained by the diktats of political correctness, how several cops have fallen prey to the shibboleths of multiculturalism.
I would like to add that while the conduct of some cops in the UK is deplorable, as also of that of the politicians who refuse to acknowledge the danger radical Islam presents, the real culprits are those who lord over public discourse in the country—in fact, the entire world. Tenured professors, limousine liberals, parlor pinks, ivory tower editorialists, sundry celebrities—these are the people who keep peddling dangerous lies like ‘no religion preaches violence’ and ‘only a handful of Muslims carry out terror activities.’ It is these people who cry ‘Islamophobia’ at any measure taken by any government or law-enforcement agency to check jihad.
Any attempt to keep tabs on people like Abedi is dubbed as racial profiling, xenophobia, etc. It may be mentioned here that it was not just Abedi’s activities but also those of his father and brother were suspect. Similarly, the proclivities of many other perpetrators of jihadist violence in Western countries were known, but security agencies couldn’t prevent violence despite advance warning signals.
It would, however, not be very helpful if the entire blame is heaped upon politicians and cops, for live in the world whose climate of opinion is shaped by the thought leaders. It is these opinion makers who are the problem; they have blindfolded themselves to the menace of Islam. Unless the liberal establishment in the West opens its eyes, there would not be any stop to jihadist violence.