In reality, Javid disingenuously strips the actual nature of Islam from its original self. Violent, intolerant Islam is in fact Islam 101…
UK: Former Home Secretary Says ‘Islamist Ideology’ is ‘Twisted Version of Islam’
Willful ignorance is never likely to bear good fruit.
The United Kingdom’s former Home Secretary Sajid Javid has just published an op-ed The Sun in which he appears to be calling for a new realism in response to the Islamic jihad threat, but a closer look reveals that he is just indulging in the same old wishful thinking and willful ignorance that we have heard thousands of times from politicians all over Europe and North America.
To be sure, Javid does go much farther than most politicians in Britain and anywhere else in discussing the reality of the situation, and gets much closer to the truth. “This is not a battle of borders, bombs or bullets,” he declares. “Nor even one primarily of counter-terrorism powers and resources. It’s fundamentally a battle of ideas.”
That is true, and it is a point that most counterterror “experts” ignore or obfuscate. Javid is also much more forthright and honest than most when he adds: “The virus, in this case, is Islamist ideology. An ideology that is antithetical to our way of life in a Western liberal democracy, and that has inspired countless attacks against innocent people.”
That also is true, and it needs to be said. But Javid gets himself entangled in illogic and inaccuracy when he continues: “It claims to speak for the Muslim community yet is a twisted version of the great religion of Islam that billions follow around the world.” He states: “Islamist extremism is a grotesque mutation of the Islam I grew up with, know and love, and Muslims are its biggest victims. As experienced former diplomat Sir John Jenkins explains in a persuasive paper to mark the launch of the Policy Exchange project, Islamism ‘clothes itself in the language of religion’ but is really ‘an activist, socially divisive and supremacist ideology, which seeks to reorder individual lives, societies and states.’”
Javid would have been helpful if he had explained how this “an activist, socially divisive and supremacist ideology, which seeks to reorder individual lives, societies and states” is not rooted in Islamic texts and teachings, texts and teachings that Islamic jihadis use to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, but he doesn’t.
Javid also notes that “there are well-meaning officials who worry that Islamism, a term with credible and established meaning, could be seen as implicating the entire religion of Islam and all its diverse and peaceful adherents.”
