Ghost of a flea

Tea and cake or death

Last week I called for Canada's laws on sedition to either be enforced or revoked. I further suggested that people who oppose enforcement of the law should have to argue their case against the law rather than simply allowing the act the lapse into disuse. Yesterday, I asserted that the United Kingdom should charge traitors with treason rather than merely, belatedly deporting them. It seems the mere suggestion of a proper criminal charge is enough to soften the spines of British jihadis no matter the holiday spin they might put on their flight. Omar Bakri Mohammed, founder of al-Muhajiroun and ersatz holiday maker, had this to say.

Or rather, he had that to say in those somnelent days when Her Majesty's government, the Establishment and café society thought it best to ignore the men in the fanciful hats with their silly disputes provided the only commuters risking life and limb were in Israel and provided the jihadis restricted their stone-throwing to gay people. But for all their blood curdling language, the jihadis are cowards. They talk a big line as they, just picking one example from a rather long list here, rape and murder Russian schoolgirls but the facade is quick to crumble when it comes to a stand up fight ("I am scared, how do I know you won't shoot me?", I quote).

Threats of terror and death can only be met with an implacable and resolute show of force. This all seems obvious to me. I know people who think a "fascist" is a peace officer who has issued them a parking ticket or this or that American faculty member subject to whispered accusations of being a CIA agent (though why the CIA should care about the over-qualified, under-informed Canadian professoriate is beyond me). Heaven knows what these jellyfish masquerading as free people would make of treason charges. As Gen-X at 40 points out, some percentage of folks are going to keep voting NDP (our local not-terribly socialist party) "every 3.5 to 4.5 years if we were all blown to bits taking mass trans of a morning" (to which I had some rather clever comment to make about al-Qaeda as an NGO).

Fair enough. There are people who are never going to be convinced al-Qaeda and their ilk are deadly serious in their repeatedly stated and demonstrated aim of killing or converting us all. Sadly, those folks sitting in the air pocket proudly express the opinion that provided the jihadis "are no threat to us" that this fact somehow entitles us to the moral high-ground. In fact, that the moral high ground consists of doing nothing whatsoever to face down the fascists. It is a profoundly immoral perspective strictly analogous to the woman in the modest dress standing by as another woman is raped, the former convinced she is at no risk because the latter had somehow asked for it. Yet I find it still shocks me to hear these same "progressives" wax hysteric at the prospect of American, Israeli or parking-ticket "fascism" even as they remain forever silent at the goose-stepping, Nazi-saluting parties of the Middle East. Ignorance, it has been observed, is bliss. Willful ignorance, it seems to me, is complicity with a smug smile.

Eddie Izzard once famously observed the Church of England would have a difficult time trying to run an Inquisition given the somewhat limited expectations the C of E has of its congregants. Tea and cake or death. "That’s a pretty easy question. Everybody – anyone could answer that."

It turns out Eddie was mistaken about the choices some people are determined to make. Despite sanctuary from torture and persecution, despite political and religious liberty paid for by centuries of British sacrifice, and even despite £500,000 in benefits cake, the jihadis insist on choosing death.

So be it.

Update: Gen-X at 40 has a follow-up. And another.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at August 9, 2005 08:41 AM

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Posted by: Ghost of a flea at August 9, 2005 02:10 PM

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