Almost Half of British Muslims Support Hamas

AP Photo/Kin Cheung

Is it time to retire the nostrum that Islam is "the religion of peace?"

What a stupid question. It's been clear for decades that the dominant version of Islam in the Middle East isn't dedicated to peace, at least not towards non-Muslims.

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That's not to say that there aren't peaceful Muslims or that there aren't interpretations of the religion that preach peace. There have been times in our history when Christians have been radicalized, and if you look into the history of the early Reformation there were some pretty dangerous and wacky millenarians. 

But let's quit fooling ourselves. Islamists are violent nutjobs, and there are far too many Islamists in the world and in the West. 

Western leaders have been fooling themselves and working to fool us about what the median Muslim thinks and wishes for. It certainly isn't kumbaya with the marchers in a Queers for Palestine protest. 

Only one in four British Muslims believe that Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on Oct 7, a major report has found.

A poll commissioned by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a counter-extremism think-tank, found that 46 per cent of British Muslims said they sympathise with Hamas.

The survey, which is the largest of its kind to be carried out since the Israel-Hamas conflict began, asked a range of questions to British Muslims as well as to the general public.

Its findings come on the six-month anniversary of the Oct 7 massacre, when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killed around 1,200 citizens and took 253 people hostage.

The survey also found that just over half (52 per cent) of British Muslims want to make it illegal to show a picture of the Prophet Mohammed, compared to just 16 per cent of the public.

A third of British Muslims (32 per cent) want to see Shariah law implemented in the UK versus nine per cent of the public.

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Since 10/7 Western cities have been rocked by marches filled with tens of thousands of radical Islamists who aren't just protesting the war in Gaza, but who are supporters of Hamas itself. They don't believe that what Hamas did was wrong, often deny Hamas committed the worst atrocities despite their being broadcast to the world, and who are happy to tell us that they intend to take over the West as they did the post-Ottoman Empire Middle East. 

People forget that the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the Middle East for centuries, was a European power. The Middle East was Muslim, but not primarily Islamist. In the darkest of the Dark Ages, Islamic countries were often havens for Jews and intellectuals and scholarship flourished. 

Islamism, though, is hostile to civilization. It is the commitment to bring back the darkest of the Dark Ages and turn the modern world into tyrannical cultural wasteland. And we have imported Islamism into the West. 

Westerners have apparently lost the will to preserve our culture. That willingness began with what seemed to be a good impulse--to recognize the dignity of others and to tolerate differences. That is, in fact, a key tenet of our culture and a worthy one that is a component of liberty. 

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But liberty requires mutual tolerance, not one-way. Self-defense is not inimical to liberty; it is a core component of it. I'll leave you alone if you leave me alone. 

Islamists aren't interested in leaving us alone, and pretending otherwise is cultural and perhaps biological suicide. It's not racist or xenophobic to say this because it is merely repeating what the Islamists tell us every day. 

The Biden Administration is doing what all cowards do: feeding the baby to the wolves. In demanding Israel retreat from its elimination of Hamas it is hoping to satisfy the wolfpack. Eat them, not us. 

It won't work. Islamism isn't interested in peace. Islamists want domination, and the more accommodating we are the more they will demand. They expect to win, and they will if we let them. 

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Islamist propaganda is winning right now in the West. Our leaders barely discuss 10/7, the hostages, the fact that Hamas works diligently to endanger its own citizens should repel us, but the strategy is working. Westerners' empathy is being weaponized against us, because Islamists celebrate the death of "martyrs" while we are rightly repelled by it. 

But as long as the Islamists are in charge, those civilian deaths will keep adding up, because they are the most powerful weapon Hamas and Iran have. 

Our inability to confront this reality and root out Islamism as not just a threat to the West but to average Muslims will ensure that the evil continues. 

Islamists know that it is them or us. I prefer that it be us that wins this war. 

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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