The New Puritans

Our leaders think they can avoid addressing in the national forum systemic issues of public order arising from dangerous ideologies. Better - easier, at any rate - to leave such matters for local police and courts to deal with piecemeal.

Perhaps they don’t know enough about our nation’s past. Fifteen members of the Coalition government of 2010 - including David Cameron - were graduates of Oxford’s PPE program, which currently lists knowledge of maths as ‘recommended’ but of history as merely ‘helpful.’

Yet history will show that ideas, especially in religion, can result in blood and fire. In the sixteenth century Protestant bishops were burned alive outside Balliol College, and hangmen tore the guts out of Catholic priests at Tyburn.

Today we face the challenge of Islamic extremism. The Guardian is happy to focus attention on the ‘far right’ but three-quarters of MI5’s caseload deals with Islamists.

It should be said clearly that the latter activists are very much a minority among their co-religionists, most of whom are not theologians and are busy with work and family.

Like Catholics, their religious community is transnational and so they will feel an affinity with others of their faith abroad. Some of the Muslim unrest we have seen recently in London streets relates to the Middle East and if peace returns there the furore here may die down.

But that is not the whole story. There is an enduring ideological problem. Radical Islamists may be hotheads but they are not ignorant: they are Puritans who can justify their actions from texts in Islam’s holy book and the hadiths - the witness accounts of their prophet’s companions.

The Koran is a book of two halves. As published its chapters or suras - the record of the prophet’s revelations - are not arranged in temporal order. Islamic scholars group them differently, the earlier ones dating from Mohammed’s mission in Mecca as he began to gather his followers. These emphasise prayer and communal charity - which among others drew in younger sons whose life chances were more precarious in a society that favoured the first born and had no welfare state.

The later suras begin with Mohammed’s time in Medina, to where he was driven by the Meccan polytheists who rejected his belief in only one god. As the new movement grew larger and stronger, the tone of the chapters became more uncompromising and aggressive. Peter Townsend, a non-Muslim Australian researcher into Islam, demonstrates from the Koran and the hadiths that physical violence - including killing - in the furtherance of Islam is condoned.

Islamic scholars generally rule that where there are any contradictions in the text the later suras supersede earlier ones; after that the teachings are not to be interpreted and modified according to historical context but apply forever. If that is so, the struggle against the unbeliever cannot end.

Traditionally non-muslims were held to have rejected what we call God and so were His enemies, to be killed or made slaves or second-class subjects. ‘These perspectives have fallen out of favor in recent times, particularly in the West among diasporic Muslim communities,’ says Wikiislam here.

However there is no formal authoritarian structure in Islam - no Pope or bishops. There are respected teachers - mullahs and so on - but it is always possible for some self-appointed firebrand to set the underbrush alight. So there they are, wagging their forefingers on YouTube and inflaming young men and women who desire a shortcut to respect and power.

What is to be done?

Some on social media are talking of a permanent answer: forced ‘remigration.’ This might just be feasible in the cases of illegal immigrants and foreign-born criminals. Mr Trump is planning it in the US; in the UK, the Reform Party’s Rupert Lowe is advocating it. But how can you repatriate someone born in our country?

Besides, most Muslims here are peaceable and law-abiding, so far. As a minority group in Britain and also from the beleaguered outlook of their religion, they are prone to feelings of persecution. What might be their response if they saw a movement to deport them on a massive scale, the innocent along with the guilty?

We should also reflect on the implications for the rest of us. Stalin was able to deport the entire Chechen nation; is that the kind of State we would wish to have? The solution might be far worse than the problem.

Ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia, later a Dutch MP and now a US citizen proposes a different solution - a doctrinal reformation of the religion. History suggests that such a process could be attended by terrible controversy and slaughter - think of the impact of Martin Luther and Jan Hus. They thought they were reaffirming the fundamentals of their faith; but which devout Muslim will be the first to repudiate his own?

In my view the only realistic solution is for us to be watchful and very strong, much stronger than we have been to date. There has to be one secular law for all and it must be rigorously enforced, woke blether ignored. The soft hand and blind eye turned to the utterly disgusting ‘grooming gangs’ have not only harmed countless women and girls but damaged community relations to the point of riots.

Our society is no longer held together as strongly as it used to be by ties of blood, religion, history and culture. We depend on impartial institutions for our cohesion and safety. Should those bonds break perdition will follow.

We need a publicly and frequently stated commitment to civil law and order that disregards any special pleading.

Power is respected. In the early ninth century, a hundred years after Spain had fallen to Muslim conquerors, the Caliph of Baghdad sent precious gifts to Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, to acknowledge the latter’s strength and signify diplomatic peace. It is weakness that invites bloodshed.

Vigilant, unrelenting and even-handed (not two-tier) justice preserves the social order for the benefit of all; even for malcontents, would-be rabble-rousers and self-righteous Puritans.