Murder in the name of God
All violent deaths are to be regretted, and the murder of a helpless hostage or prisoner who has not been convicted of any crime is particularly shocking.
Although religious fanatics have no monopoly on murder in the name of their beliefs - atheistic regimes such as those in the Soviet Union and China also killed millions of people for daring to disagree with them - it is even more incomprehensible to me that people can kill vast numbers in the name of religions which teach Peace, Love and Forgiveness.
In past centuries some people who called themselves Christians inflicted barbaric cruelties in the extraordinary belief that they were serving a God who, when incarnate in the form of Jesus, gave the most explicit imaginable instructions against such cruelty in words like
"Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you"
and, ordering one of his disciples who was trying to use force to defend him to desist,
"those who live by the sword shall die by the sword."
These days the most vile acts of cruelty and murder are most often committed by those who, while they have a slightly different view of the same God, refer to Him as "The Compassionate, the Merciful" and call their religion by a word which translates into English as "Peace."
Let me stress that I personally know many Muslims who are civilised, tolerant, compassionate people who are thoroughly integrated into British society and are as horrified by the actions of Jihadi killers as everyone else. I am certain that such people, and not the extremists, represent the true face of Islam.
But the ghastly murder of James Foley. following on from that of Lee Rigby, the barbarism of the "Islamic State" (formerly ISIS) and the fact that apparently hundreds of Brits have gone out to fight for them, is an indication that we have a real social and security problem with Islamic extremism.
One solution which is sometimes suggested and which absolutely will not work is to withdraw from the world and imagine that if we "Leave them alone and they'll leave us alone." The grain of truth in this is that where a foreign intervention goes wrong as the US/UK invasion of Iraq did, it can generate more support for Islamic extremism.
Unfortunately it is also true that when the West does NOT intervene in cases where hardline Islamic believers think we should have, as in Bosnia, Gaza, and Syria to give just three examples, the hardliners get cross about this too.
I don't think there is a magic wand we can wave in response to the problems of Islamic extremism, but it is very important that
1) We come down hard on those against whom there is sufficient evidence to prosecute them for any crime, and
2) We avoid draconian measures against the innocent and do not try to lump all Muslims in with the Jihadis.
3) We must be more vigilant without knee-jerk reactions or panic measures which would destroy the freedoms which make Britain a place worth fighting for and living in.
4) There must be one law for everyone in the UK and it must be the same law for everyone.
Although religious fanatics have no monopoly on murder in the name of their beliefs - atheistic regimes such as those in the Soviet Union and China also killed millions of people for daring to disagree with them - it is even more incomprehensible to me that people can kill vast numbers in the name of religions which teach Peace, Love and Forgiveness.
In past centuries some people who called themselves Christians inflicted barbaric cruelties in the extraordinary belief that they were serving a God who, when incarnate in the form of Jesus, gave the most explicit imaginable instructions against such cruelty in words like
"Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you"
and, ordering one of his disciples who was trying to use force to defend him to desist,
"those who live by the sword shall die by the sword."
These days the most vile acts of cruelty and murder are most often committed by those who, while they have a slightly different view of the same God, refer to Him as "The Compassionate, the Merciful" and call their religion by a word which translates into English as "Peace."
Let me stress that I personally know many Muslims who are civilised, tolerant, compassionate people who are thoroughly integrated into British society and are as horrified by the actions of Jihadi killers as everyone else. I am certain that such people, and not the extremists, represent the true face of Islam.
But the ghastly murder of James Foley. following on from that of Lee Rigby, the barbarism of the "Islamic State" (formerly ISIS) and the fact that apparently hundreds of Brits have gone out to fight for them, is an indication that we have a real social and security problem with Islamic extremism.
One solution which is sometimes suggested and which absolutely will not work is to withdraw from the world and imagine that if we "Leave them alone and they'll leave us alone." The grain of truth in this is that where a foreign intervention goes wrong as the US/UK invasion of Iraq did, it can generate more support for Islamic extremism.
Unfortunately it is also true that when the West does NOT intervene in cases where hardline Islamic believers think we should have, as in Bosnia, Gaza, and Syria to give just three examples, the hardliners get cross about this too.
I don't think there is a magic wand we can wave in response to the problems of Islamic extremism, but it is very important that
1) We come down hard on those against whom there is sufficient evidence to prosecute them for any crime, and
2) We avoid draconian measures against the innocent and do not try to lump all Muslims in with the Jihadis.
3) We must be more vigilant without knee-jerk reactions or panic measures which would destroy the freedoms which make Britain a place worth fighting for and living in.
4) There must be one law for everyone in the UK and it must be the same law for everyone.
Comments
For example on 2Oth August she tweeted that "The Brutal and Barbaric actions of the Islamic State prove that the territory ruled by al-Bhagdadi is neither Islamic nor a State #ISIS."
Sayeeda Warsi has often condemned Islamic extremists and those Muslims who are guilty of sick crimes, and has sometimes been ahead of the curve in doing so.
For example, Baroness Warsi was one of the first prominent politicians, Muslim or non-Muslim, to condemn Asian men who abuse white girls, and the attitude of seeing white women in her words as "Third Class Citzens" which leads to it, following a previous scandal of the same kind which has now come to light in Rotherham.
This sort of thing is wrong whoever does it and whoever is on the receiving end.