Elections, Islamist Infiltration, and the Politicians’ Blind Eye

From The Brussels Journal

David Cameron has made it clear that the Conservative party, of which he is the head, has changed. Win or lose the upcoming election, there is no going back. The Tory “dinosaurs” are out. The party is now “progressive,” “bold” and “radical” – a party of “ideas.”

Yet, its ideas were mostly thought up by Tony Blair’s New Labour party. Issues of importance are off the table:

– In his Spring conference speech on Feb. 28, Cameron failed to mention uncontrolled immigration even though the island nation (smaller then the state of Oregon) is on track to hit 70 million by 2030.

– There was no mention of the damage done to society by political correctness.

– No mention of the European Union, which makes 75-80 percent of laws enacted in Britain.

– And the “bold” and “radical” Cameron did not address the issue of political Islam in Britain – an issue that is hardly out of the news these days.

Only the day before Cameron’s speech, the Telegraph published an article revealing the Islamic Forum of Europe’s infiltration into Britain’s governing Labour party, especially in the East London, Tower Hamlets council. Much of the information had been supplied by Jim Fitzpatrick, Britain’s Environment Minister. The “bold” and “radical” Conservative party has yet to seize on this golden opportunity to scoop up a huge number of votes, nor is it likely to.

There have been brief moments the last few years when Cameron has shone. Certainly his observation that far-Left London mayor, Ken Livingstone, had used ethnic minorities as “potential agents of revolutionary change,” was one of them. The statement might easily have been applied to the British Left almost in its entirety. It might well sum up the New Labour era. But it also now sums up the Cameron “revolution.” He too has decided to use minorities in general, and Muslims in particular, to irrevocably change his party. It is not that Cameron expects Muslim MPs to do anything differently, but that he recognizes that the liberal press will only regard the party as “modern” (cosmopolitan, anti-racist, and skeptical about war, the US, and Israel) if it includes a few prominent Muslim faces. He also believes that this will aid community cohesion, illustrating that there are no barriers for minorities in modern Britain.

“[I]f we win that general election,” Cameron said in his Spring Conference speech, “instead of 18 women MPs on the Conservative side, there will be more than 60 [as well as] black and minority ethnic candidates, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, right across our country. Not in Labour seats, not in marginal seats, but in safe Conservative seats.”

In private, Cameron’s assessment has a different accent. He credits the party’s Conservative Muslim Forum for aiding the process of modernization. The CMF, he told an audience at the organization’s 2009 Eid celebration [video], “has done great things for the Conservative party, helping us to reach out to people who had not been interested in the Conservative party before.” The CMF has been instrumental in its “opening up.”

For Cameron, as for the Left, Muslims in particular have been unfairly disadvantaged by Britain. An integrated society has to have more Muslims who are prominent in business, in the armed forces, [video] “and, of course, more Muslims in our parliament […] British Muslim all across government, in positions of leadership and authority.”

There is nothing wrong with having more Muslims in parliament, but the kind of social engineering articulated by Cameron, and the implicit idea that Muslims have been oppressed, rather than welcomed, by the nation, is precisely what made Labour so vulnerable to infiltration by Islamists. Will this new Leftwing “progressive Conservative” party prove any more resilient, or any more able to tell the moderate and reformist from the “radical” Muslim?

Until late 2008, the CMF linked its website to Ta-Ha publishing, the latter of which has published two books by former IFE president Muhammad Abdul Bari. Even if there are no IFE members in the Conservative party, ideas matter. Political correctness and political multiculturalism are gifts to the extremists, as Britain – excluding the majority of MPs – has learned to its cost. Ordinary British Muslims are the first victims of the extremists, as the Channel 4 Dispatches [video] program on IFE infiltration showed:  One woman, who had set up a Muslim dating agency, was threatened, as were Bengali Muslims for celebrating a cultural festival with music, dance, and the free mixing of men and women.

“Entryism” runs deep. Fitzpatrick’s revelations follow a recent report by the Tel-Aviv-based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which found that “[f]or more than a decade, Britain (especially London) has been a focus for Hamas’ political, propaganda and even legal activities in Europe.” Islamist “entryists” are known to have  penetrated into Ken Livingstone’s mayoral office (with the aim of advancing Hamas’s agenda), and into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, among others.

The three major political parties all seems to have embraced Islamists, as have some of the smaller parties.

The Labour government has given the impression of almost being in league with the extremists — financing dubious organizations in order to prevent extremism, and employing radicals as advisers.

The IFE helped to get George Galloway elected. And, in 2005, his (Leftist-Islamist) Respect party was financed by Dr Mohammed Naseem. Peculiarly, Naseem stood as a Respect candidate, even though he was then a board member of the little-known Islamic Party of Britain, which advocated the death penalty for “public acts of lewdness,” and whose leader, David Pidcock, promoted the notion of a worldwide “Zionist” plot against Islam.

Liberal Democrats MP Baroness Jenny Tonge, met with Hamas and other Palestinian parties last year, and, since then, has accused Israel of harvesting organs from Haiti.

From calling for executions for “lewdness” to blood libels, the more “modern” Britain becomes the more medieval it appears – although that is certainly “bold” and “radical.”

While the major parties are ignoring the issue of political Islam in Britain, however, the subject was thrust into the media spotlight in mid January, when the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) called for a ban on wearing the burka in public. The issue is far less controversial among the general public than it is among the major parties. According to one poll, 70 percent want to ban the burka in public, with nearly 80 percent wanting it banned at airports. Similar enthusiasm can be found among the public for curbing immigration – another election unmentionable.

A few weeks after the party announced its proposed burka ban, and in response to it, UKIP MEP Gerard Batten received two threatening emails from within the IFE-infiltrated Tower Hamlets council. In the emails, UKIP was accused of trying to “stoke a religious war on the streets of Britain,” and Batten was also told that “Islam is the dominant religion in the United Kingdom. If you don’t like it, go live somewhere else.”

With the transformation of the Conservatives into a virtual carbon copy of the much-hated Labour party, there have been several defections, from the former, to UKIP, in recent months alone, although not apparently because of the issue of Islamism. One of the more noteworthy defections is James Pryor, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, who will run UKIP’s election campaign.

Political Islam is a new issue for UKIP, which has broadened its platform under Lord Pearson, who replaced Nigel Farage in late 2009. The party that has become synonymous with protesting against Islam, however, is the British National Party (BNP). It has campaigned as the party of the White working class (the party only voted to accept ethnic minorities as members in February, after it was threatened with a court injunction by the by the Equality and Human Rights Commission), and has succeeded in scooping up the disaffected Labour vote in particular. The BNP won its first two seats in the EU elections last year, while UKIP – which has traditionally campaigned to withdraw the UK from the EU – won 13 (up one).

These parties are each hoping to get at least a few seats in the UK parliament, with the upcoming election.  Although this would be a breakthrough for either party, the Labour and the Conservatives are concerned. Lord Tebbit even openly worried recently that traditionalist Conservative voters might “defect to UKIP in the same way a lot of old Labour voters defected to the BNP.”

Even though only a small number of seats are likely to fall to UKIP or the BNP, these parties are undoubtedly already looking to the following election, perhaps five years away, when, with even one or two seats in parliament, they would have far greater electoral credibility.

Talk of radicalism is cheap. With the Conservative party having now having fully embraced the same old political correctness, political multiculturalism, and “positive discrimination,” the electorate may well be as disillusioned and angry with it in a few years, as it is now with Labour — and for similar reasons.

What kind of “radical” change might then occur?