The threat we face

BBC reports, ' the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said he did not believe that Islam was the real cause of any terrorist plots.
"Most of them are doing it because they are alienated, because they have been given a vision which is so imaginatively wicked that they believe we can build a better world than actually exists," he claimed. '

With an archbishop so divorced from reality one fears for the future. How come they are alienated when they come from respectable families or are expectant fathers? How come alienated non-Muslims do not do this? Who gives them the wicked vision? The answer is so self evident as not to require me to type it. But I will give you a clue while I can. It is from a small number of the followers of the false prophet. If present trends continue and Christians like Sentamu fail to stand for truth, one soon will be accused of a hate crime for saying these people have one motivational source, Islam, usually of its sallafi/wahabbi variety.

Surveys show supporters of such terrorism are a small minority of British Muslims, but it only takes a few to kill many. There is no unified condemnation because by its nature, Sunni Islam has no unified leadership. But for its peaceful existence as a tolerated minority, Muslims desperately need some unified political leadership. But because Islamic life is a seamless robe with religion not rent from politics, one is unlikely to get any such leadership. Islam is a house divided, united only when Muslims are under threat. A backlash from the majority community is feared. But the British are by and large an amazingly tolerant, apathetic and ignorant lot and they still have some residual memory of a Christian ethic which will not go in for indiscriminate retribution. But I would invite any reader to consider what would be the reaction in an Islamic country if any religious minority was the source of such terrorism.

What would convince some of us that Muslims repudiate such terrorist acts would be some vehement demonstrations of the kind they organised against the Iraq war or the cartoons. Sorry, not the kind they organised against the cartoons. Those demonstrations advocated violence. Yes, the religion of peace does need to sort itself.