The controversy over Policy Exchange’s report ‘The hijacking of British Islam’ has caused the Guardian’s in-house Seamus Milne to all-but-libel the Centre for Social Cohesion and any other think-tank which looks into radicalisation within the UK. In a particularly egregious example of its kind, Milne used Saturday’s on-line Guardian to perpetuate his favourite myth – viz, that any highlighting of the problem is itself the problem.
Churchill famously said that he would never fail to be able to tell the difference between the fire-fighter and the fire. Whether Milne can tell the difference is uncertain, but he will always attack the fire-fighter anyway.
He is perhaps the last of his kind. Though common enough immediately after 9/11, Milne is now one of the very few remaining far-left commentators in the UK who continues to work as an apologist for far-right Islamists. Whether his opinions come from the ‘enemy of my enemy’ school of thought, from ignorance or simply from sado-masochism it is worthless to speculate. I doubt he has any idea himself.
It is a sad reminder of what Britain’s once-liberal Guardian has come to that they still publish Milne’s dated screeds. But there are people who presumably find him very useful – for Milne manages to continue to perpetuate the idea that any criticism of violent Islamism is racist – driven by some far-right, pro-war agenda. As a result a good many people are let off the hook who should not be let off the hook.
I experienced a similar character a few weeks ago, testifying before the Independent Asylum Commission. Having recommended that Muslim women brought into the UK for marriage but abandoned by their husbands within the first two years of marriage should have special recourse to public funds and special dispensations within the asylum system, one member of the panel criticised me for ‘Islam-bashing’. People like that person and Seamus Milne probably imagine that they are great friends to Britain’s Muslims.
Milne is no friend to Muslims, but he is certainly proving to be the gladdest glad-fool of the Islamists.
Comments (1)
Douglas Murray, please go into politics and stand at the next election, or at least start a weekly newspaper.
Posted by urban | December 21, 2007 10:31 AM
Posted on December 21, 2007 10:31