This really got up the nose of the BBC. That fact that a politician should draw attention to a problem within Islam. Heaven forfend!
So, of course, the Beebs had to go into full attack mode. Which I'm sure loved to do, for they always loved to hate the man.They got a couple of women to comment on World Service Radio. I didn't catch their names, but they pretty much forgave Islam for all crimes -- including the Woolwich beheading -- and put the blame fully on Blair, Britain, the US and the rest of us in West too. It's just our foreign policy, don't you know. Nothing at all to do with Islam. Right....
My letter to the BBC just now:
Your interlocutors found Tony Blair "slopy-shouldered" for having the temerity to blame Islam for eruptions of Islamic violence including the Woolwich beheading.
Instead they found his foreign policy the culprit.
But.... but... does that mean if we, the west, leave all Muslim countries, that peace with Islam would reign?
Assuredly not.
The 9/11 massacre was before any of the wars invading Muslim countries, as were the even earlier WTC and USS Cole bombings.
Sure these Islamic murderers quote western "occupations" for their deeds. But they alway make sure to quote the Koran as justification as well.
It would be folly to assume that changing foreign policy is going to bring peace to the land.
Bin Laden made that clear in his "for Muslim eyes only" statements, in which he said that the war agains the west could continue until we all submitted to Islam, or paid the Jizya tax, or were to be killed. (He also made sure to include "grievances" such as the Palestinian issue, in his "for-western-eyes" statements).
Your interlocutors, with their clear contempt of Blair blinding them, exonerate Islam of any blame...
Yet if one reads even a fraction of basic Islamic doctrine -- the Trinity of Koran, Hadith and Sirah -- one finds plenty there to drive some Muslims to continuing violence against we infidels [whether or not we are "occupying" their lands]. That this may be uncomfortable to the BBC is no cause to downplay, let alone ignore it.
Shame on the BBC -- again -- on this issue.... Peter F.... etc..
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[EARLIER (1 June): Daily Mail article. What's odd is that the comments read like those of Guardianistas, and not those of the customary readers of the DM, who don't usually take such morally equivalent lines: Christianity just as violent as Islam, and so on. Even more startling: the support for those comments from other readers. What's going on?][LATER (2 June): Robert Spencer takes Tony Blair's argument apart, here.]
