So, ‘Jihadi John’ is Mohammed Emwazi, a young Kuwaiti immigrant from Queen’s Park in north-west London, another first-rate product of the British education system.
Queen’s Park is one of those very mixed areas of London; the expensive Victorian properties are filled with people who 10 years ago might have lived in Notting Hill and 10 years before that Kensington. There are also lots of scary housing estates too.
It’s also part of the greatest Arabian Diaspora that extends out of Edgware Road and into the districts of Westminster and Brent; previous Jihadi John suspect Abdel Bary was an aspiring rapper from nearby Maida Vale who was last seen tweeting a picture of himself holding a head beside the caption ‘chillin’ with my homie or what’s left with him’. His father was considered too extreme by the Egyptians. The British authorities, with that almost touching northern European naivety that Arab governments find so infuriating, allowed him and his family to settle here. Wonderful.
Mohammed Emwazi had gone to the University of Westminster, which yesterday was supposed to have been hosting a talk by ‘radical preacher‘ Dr Haitham al-Haddad. This had to be cancelled due to ‘sensitivity and security concerns’.
Tonight’s Student’s Union event, ‘Who is Muhammad?’ has been postponed due to increased sensitivity and security concerns.
— Uni of Westminster (@UniWestminster) February 26, 2015
Isn’t it time that British universities were rated by the number of jihadis they produce? Not failed jihadis who blow themselves up in restaurant toilets, but real worldwide names; it could come under the ‘graduate prospects’ category.
I mention all this because for anyone who has followed the news stories about the depressing litany of Islamists produced by Britain, there is a reassuringly predictable pattern. Likewise with the people who give them moral and cultural support.
Take the reaction of Cage, a campaign group much feted by sections of the liberal media, which has received funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
Cage issued a bizarre statement early yesterday saying that young lads were forced into joining groups like Isis because ‘British security services have systematically engaged in the harassment of young Muslims, rendering their lives impossible and leaving them with no legal avenue to redress their situation.’ So to protest against being profiled as a terrorist, Emwazi went off and beheaded a number of innocent people who had done him no wrong. It’s original thinking, I’ll give him that.
Later Cage spokesman Asim Qureshi went on television and emotionally paid tribute to his ‘beautiful’ friend Jihadi John.
Now there are lots of reasons for young men to become radicalised, which have been discussed a thousand times elsewhere: the question that interests me is why British satirists have never gone near multiculturalism, without which jihadism could not thrive. I don’t mean multiculturalism in the broader sense of simple immigration, but the cultural relativism and waffle that goes with it; what V.S. Naipaul called a ‘racket’ and ‘jobs for the boys’.
British satire is apparently the best and bravest in the world yet it has never really touched on the multiculturalism that allows Islamism to flourish. I’m not talking about satirising Islam itself; while I wish this was done I can understand the security issues. Neither am I talking about satirising the jihadis – no one wants to follow Chris Morris as an act.
I’m talking about the cant that allows it all to flourish. The charities and pressure groups that blame everything on the west and present Muslims as blameless victims, while sourcing income from the taxpayer and public bodies; the gormless newspaper columnists who, trapped in a white person’s view of race and oppression, cannot see Islamists for the imperialists they are; the Islamic rentagobs who appear on TV and radio talking in doublespeak, saying one thing to a Muslim audience and another to the unbelievers; the naive white charity groups that inadvertently help Islamism; the Labour politicians who blame everything on racism while building up ethnic-based political machines; the white converts who embrace polygamy.
Where is the satire here, on the most dangerous and divisive political ideology in Britain? Where is the equivalent of say, Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up, to name just one example off the top of my head? I may well have missed some big thing, but as far as I know there haven’t been any; the only person I know of making fun of this racket is a blogger who tweets as @kingofdawah a fake ‘community leader’ who encapsulates the victim status Islamists adopt.
The author is a Muslim, which might explain why. After all, the subject is maybe too close to the issue of race, and for the Left that is a sensitive area. But if this sort of satire is produced it has to come from the Left, because conservatives would just do it wrong, while most of the funniest people in television, radio and film are lefties, mainly because lefties have more imagination. The liberal-Left is very good at attacking people who were powerful 40 years ago; so maybe if I keep myself fit I may one day see the great satire of multiculturalism.
Comments