I was refered to this article from another website; excellent encapsulation of the Problem. Several passages of note:
The problem comes, Buchan/Arbuthnot says, when this longing for purity is perverted. The “simplicity of the ascetic” is usurped by “the simplicity of the madman that grinds down all the contrivances of civilisation”. The danger comes when “you can get the same language to cover both”. Isn’t that quite a good way of encapsulating our problem today?
True, we are not facing direct threat from another nation. There is no war. But in some ways, the situation is more dire, because the threat is in our midst. As we now know, some of our own, native citizens have successfully conspired to kill us and themselves, because they listened to that “same language”. They found people, not just in Pakistan, but in Yorkshire, who would pour it into their ears.
Even more interesting is the following:
This muddle of language is not confined to the extremists, and therefore is not easy to isolate. The Leeds Grand Mosque, for example, is, so far as I know, a mainstream institution. Its leaders have readily joined in the condemnation of the London attacks.
But if you read their Friday sermons you find that running through many of them is a constant streak of paranoia, dark talk of a wicked “Great Middle East Plan”, of “threats and conspiracies which are devised against Islam”.
One sermon on “youth”, young men like the three down the road who planted the bombs, tells the teenagers at which it aims how marvellous were the military conquests carried out by the young followers of the Prophet and how today “Your Islam, your religion, is being targeted”.
No, sermons like this do not say that the hearers should go out and kill people, and no doubt the preachers do not believe that they should, but they do not say that they should not kill, and they stoke up anger. How much can you incite anger, and then throw up your hands in horror when young men take their rage to a bloody conclusion?
link: A warning from the past that the BBC does not want us to hear
the book: Greenmantle
