Whenever there is a terrorist attack in somewhere like
Israel, we are told by the BBC that it carried out by militants. It gives the
impression that the far left from the 1980s stopped handing out newspapers to
blow himself up. Only when a terrorist attack happens here in Britain will the
BBC allow itself to describe it as such. IRA militants after all did not try to
blow up Margaret Thatcher. If a word is useful then we must use it consistently.
If something is terrorism call it terrorism, otherwise you are lying in which case
how can you be trusted on anything.
But how do we respond to an incident of terrorism where
an MP is stabbed by a British citizen who has been described as a Muslim from Somalia.
Firstly, we must think about David Amess and his family and friends. Like every
other victim of murder, he didn’t deserve to die. Whatever the motive of the murderer,
it did not justify this loss of life.
A short while ago I wrote about how men in general
were being condemned for the death of Sarah Everard. The slogan “End male
violence” was being used to turn the particular actions of Wayne Couzens into
an argument about how men in general were culpable. I argued that this was
unjustified. Innocent men who had done nothing to harm anyone were no more to blame
than anyone else. Well, the same logic applies in the present case.
It would be equally wrong to have a slogan “End Muslim
violence”. Just as only a tiny proportion of men commit murder, so too a tiny
proportion of Muslims or people from Somalia commit murder or are involved in
terrorism. Muslims or Somalis who have never hurt anyone are no more to blame
than anyone else. It is only individuals who commit acts of violence and only
they who are guilty. Condemning the group for the actions of the individual is
morally wrong.
British citizens must all be treated equally. We are
all individuals with our own ideas about everything. There will be British
Muslims whose family came from Somalia who are making great contributions to
society with their work. They will hold a variety of political opinions and almost
all of them will be living lives that harm no one else. We cannot make generalisations
about them from the actions of one person.
But one hundred years ago, in Britain there was no
problem whatsoever from individuals who were Islamic extremists. Again, let use
words that describe a thing rather than hide behind words like “Islamist”. At
the beginning of the First World War, you would have struggled to find someone
living in Britain who favoured Jihad. Indeed, few British people would even have
known what the word meant.
The BBC routinely condemns places like Poland for
being less than welcoming to refugees. But the reason is that the Poles have
seen what Britain is like and they prefer to keep their country like it was one
hundred years ago. That way there is zero chance that a Polish MP will be killed
by someone involved in Jihad.
The least that we in Britain can do is to control
immigration in such a way that we have the best chance of not letting people
come here who hate us, our way of life and are sympathetic to terrorism. The
vast majority of migrants will be glad to be here. They will become British
citizens who are proud to be British and who value and like our country,
because it is their country too. But we can only find those who don’t share these
views if we control who can come here rather than it being simply a matter of
who can pay the trafficker to get them onto a rubber dinghy.
MPs have a difficult job that is statistically fairly dangerous.
Politics is frequently passionate. Often, we massively dislike the views of our
political opponents. Scottish independence would be a disaster for me. It would
see my country break up. I can think of nothing worse that could happen politically.
But I have nothing against Scottish nationalists personally. I don’t want
anything bad to happen to any of them. They are my neighbours and people who I interact
with in the shops and on the street. I hope Nicola Sturgeon fails politically,
but I do not hope anything bad happens to her or her family. I don’t know her personally.
Our disagreement is political. It is not personal.
We all have sometimes said things in anger about
political opponents that are overly scornful and insulting. I believe in polite
reasoned argument, but each of us on Twitter or in an article has said something
that might personally wound an opponent. When an MP has just died for doing his
job, it is worth reflecting that he was not scum. He was a human being, with a
family, who was motivated by what he believed. You may disagree with his views,
but don’t try to turn the person into something less than human.
If you believe that Tories are scum or vermin, then
you must also think that the world would be a better place if there were none
of them. If you don’t mean this then you are merely exaggerating. But if you
insist that you really did mean that Tories are scum, then your expressions of
regret at the death of a human being look rather insincere.
Tory is used by too many opponents as the worst insult
possible. The implication is that Tories are immoral, evil and less virtuous
than those of us who oppose them. This is to dehumanise political opponents in
a way that is now dangerous.
We don’t know the full story, nor the motivations for
the terrorist incident that killed David Amess. But if a future Jo Cox or David
Amess is saved just once because we all cease to use language that suggests murder
is a matter of pest control, then it would be worth us making the effort to do
so.
So too I hope not one Muslim or person of Somali origin
feels guilty because of language that suggests he is guilty for something that
he didn’t do.
