Posted on 07/05/2006 6:01:05 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday questioned the effectiveness of official public diplomacy in battling Islamic extremism, saying the government alone cannot heal the rifts with Britain's Muslim community.
Mr. Blair was responding to criticism in Parliament that he had not done enough to engage the country's 1.6 million Muslims a year after the July 7 terrorist attacks in London. A new poll showed that 13 percent of British Muslims regard the four suicide bombers who killed 52 persons that day as martyrs.
"Government itself cannot go and root out the extremism in these communities," the prime minister told a parliamentary committee. "I'm not the person to go into the Muslim community and explain to them that this extreme view is not the true face of Islam."
Moderate Muslim leaders and other prominent society figures outside the government have to do more to change attitudes, he said.
"I profoundly disagree that the problem here is that the government hasn't acted," he said. "We are not having a debate of a fundamental enough nature within the community, which is where the moderate majority go and stand up against the ideas of those people, not just their methods."
Unlike the Bush administration, Mr. Blair's government has not put a heavy emphasis on public diplomacy as part of its fight against terrorism. Last year, Mr. Bush tapped one of his closest friends and advisers, Karen Hughes, to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Yeah, they'll purge extremism the day they convert from Islam.
Heave em.
I can hear the Imams now... "Says who? You?"
The most frightening book I've read in ten years is "While Europe Slept," a new book written by an American journalist who moved to Holland to experience European culture. I'd recommend it for anyone on this forum. President Bush should read it. It describes the dangers of radical Islam in Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Norway and France. These countries are virtually giving up trying to control Muslim tyrants in the suburbs of their major cities. In some areas, such as near Copenhagen, the Muslims are instituting Sharia law and barring non-Muslims from whole neighborhoods. They're refusing to assimilate, to learn, the language of the European country, or to obey its law. Young girls are forced into marriage to Muslims that are brought from Pakistan, Somalia, etc. in what are called "fetching" marriages. Children must attend Muslim, not European schools. Women who step out of line are killed in "honor" killings.
Non-Muslims are forced to remove religious symbols like crosses or the Jewish head covering. Jews and homosexuals are being beaten in the streets and the police are doing nothing. "Multiculturalism" and "diversity" are so rigidly enforced that native Europeans who oppose unlimited immigration from Muslim countries are denounced as racist. Theo van Gogh who was murdered because he created a film about the Muslim oppression of women thought the only beacon of hope left was the USA. In Holland, one out of three Dutch want to leave and are trying to get to Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Sixty percent of the people in jail in France are Muslims. There has been a tremendous increase in crime, particularly rape, in these countries because radical Muslims consider any woman, even a Western woman, who goes about without a head covering is a whore and is asking to be raped.
Read this book. It is a wakeup call for the USA. It is a terrifying portrait of societies that are sinking into a new dark age.
The only way Islam will be purged of extremism is all Muslims are told that they can freely leave Islam and hold any belief they want, and that their ancestors were all forced into being Muslims.
Then the extremist leaders will have very few followers, thus losing their power.
............or when it begins raining up instead of down............
Muslims, in their own reasoned and eloquent style, replied "Death to Blair!"
A new poll showed that 13 percent of British Muslims regard the four suicide bombers who killed 52 persons that day as martyrs.
And that would mean that 87% don't.
"A noble thought from the Pommy PM but can we really expect extremists to purge extremism?"
I don't think there is any other remedy. OUR job is to ratchet up the pain of them failing to do THAT job.
A fox-guarding-the-henhouse bump!
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