John Reid:Hard guy/soft guy
September 28, 2006Home Secretary John Reid arrived with the intention of smoking the pipe of peace; when he left the tepee was in flames. His peace mission to the Muslims of Leyton in Waltham Forest London had backfired magnificently.
Within a few minutes of taking the podium the Home Secretary had been intimidated and shouted down by Abu Izzadeen the well known black radical Muslim, and by the time he’d finished Reid had unintentionally offended and patronised his audience of Muslim parents by suggesting that they must watch their children closely for terrorist tendencies.
Afterwards Reid said, somewhat unconvincingly, how much he’d enjoyed the experience and mumbled something about the cut and thrust of politics. But if that’s the case then what’s the explanation for the distinctly uneasy smile he wore throughout Izzadeen’s tirade – it was hardly the smile of someone having a good time.
Some commentators have tried to put a positive spin on Reid’s foray into Muslim territory as confirmation of his tough guy credentials. The Daily Mail saw it like this: “Reid faces down hate preachers – Flashpoint as he talks tough in a Muslim heartland,” and “Reid pulled no punches.” If Reid really was punching his weight then he obviously doesn’t pack much of a punch – in response to Izzadeen’s invective Reid offered his cheek and had it slapped, he offered the other cheek and had that slapped too, and then offered it to be slapped again.
And anyway, that interpretation of Reid’s performance as straight talking is for the benefit of ethnic Britons only. Reid’s other face, the one he presented to his Muslim audience, was the face of appeasement. As Izzadeen fired insults and accusations at him Reid tried to cosy up to his abuser, calling him “My friend” on a number of occasions.
This is a perfect example of the establishment’s predicament where now they must serve two increasingly competitive constituencies ‘equally’. Thus in his dealing with the problems created by Muslim communities Home Secretary Reid needs to appear to be tough in the eyes of ethnic Britons and to appear to be understanding and sympathetic in the eyes of Muslims. Hence the abject failure of his mission – you can’t serve two masters at once.
Surrender
The Times was closest to reality: “Reid’s message to Muslims is drowned out by radicals.” But like the Mail its attention was on the theatre rather than on the script. It was doubtless entertaining to see Reid show himself up for the coward that he is by refusing to meet Izzadeen head on, but the curious thing is that Izzadeen was allowed to behave as he did. Why was security so lax?
In an open letter to the Home Secretary, Muslim apologist George Galloway wondered about this too, “The man who harangued you – Abu Izzadine (Galloway’s spelling) – is a well-known and violent extremist from an organisation your own government has proscribed. Yet he was allowed within punching distance of the British Home Secretary. How ? Why ?”
Galloway thinks there is one of two possible explanations, “Either our police and security services are so fantastically incompetent that Bin Laden himself might have slipped in to beard you at your podium. Or someone somewhere wanted to engineer precisely this confrontation to show you in a certain light and to portray the Muslims of Britain in the most aggressive violent and extreme way possible, as a justification for the utterly counter-productive policies you are following.” Galloway comes down on the side of incompetence.
According to the Home Office, while Izzadeen was not invited to the meeting, it is “in the nature of an open community meeting… that some people who were not invited ended up attending.”
The meeting had a number of aims: To get ‘moderate Muslims’ on board; to convince the rest of us that Reid was doing something to tackle the growing threat of Islamic terrorism in Britain; to show Muslims that the government was sympathetic to their plight; to show the rest of us that not all Muslims are carrying a bomb. Reid was walking a tightrope.
He will have been acutely aware that this was a tough call to make; there was a lot that could go wrong. But above all he had to guard against damaging easily bruised egos. And the most likely explanation for the lack of security is the fear of it being interpreted as provocative, by for instance casting aspersions on Islam’s supposedly peaceful intent.
Of course Reid still had his armed guards, but they were dressed in ‘civvies’ and know all about adopting a low profile. But there was an absence of the posse of uniformed and armour-plated police officers that usually accompany senior politicians when they venture into the real world. Reid appeared happy to leave policing to a couple of black security guards who ushered Izzadine out (once he’d said what he had to say) as gently as they could. In fact the only visible police presence in the meeting room was that of a diminutive officer of indeterminate gender and ethnicity – a declaration of surrender if ever there was one.
Sauce for the goose
John Reid’s spin had the Leyton meeting as just another political event; senior politician meets the public sort of thing. And he said that Izzadeen’s rant was nothing new and not confined to Muslims. “It happens all the time,” he said, “.it is part of the political process.”
What political process is that? Senior politicians have an aversion to meeting the public, especially when there is a strong likelihood that the public will be afforded an opportunity to heckle. This meeting was an exception rather than the rule.
The establishment is worried that Muslim alienation will destabilise the multiracial/multicultural society. The establishment is also worried about the alienation of a growing proportion of the ethnic British community and the consequences it may have for society. Yet for some reason senior government ministers are more willing to meet the former than they are the latter.
John Reid says that there are always people who refuse,”…to take part in a dialogue, (and) who will try to intimidate and shout down,” and he should know, he’s one of them.
If the establishment is anxious to engage in dialogue with Muslims to discuss their disenchantment with the status quo, why is it not similarly anxious to engage in dialogue with ethnic Britons to discuss their disenchantment with the status quo? If it’s necessary to meet the Muslims of Waltham Forest, why isn’t it just as necessary to meet the ethnic Britons of Barking and Dagenham?
But can you imagine John Reid organising “.an open community meeting” for ethnic Britons where “.people who were not invited ended up attending”? No, neither can I.
When he was being heckled by Izzadeen, Reid referred to freedom of speech, meaning that it was a give and take thing. That if Izzadeen expected to be heard he should give others the opportunity to be heard too.
It’s highly significant that Reid should take this stance with a black radical Muslim. For while he was prepared to listen to Izzadeen’s claim that Muslims were suffering at the hands of the liberal establishment, it is beyond belief that he’d be prepared to listen to such protests from ethnic Britons. In the latter case Reid and the rest of the establishment are more likely to bleat ‘no platform’ than they are to engage in debate; their usual response to the concerns of ethnic Britons is with the epithets ‘Nazi, fascist, and racist,’ shouted from afar.
And if a miracle did happen and an ethnic Briton got the opportunity to put the case for the British people to the Home Secretary, and he argued his case with the same forcefulness that Izzadeen did for the introduction of Sharia law, how would Reid respond? It’s hard to imagine he’d be as courteous as he was with Izzadeen; “.let the gentleman deal with the authorities,” he said as the heckler was ushered outside.
Clash of cultures
Following the Home Secretary’s address, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said, in an unusually candid fashion, how “extraordinarily difficult” it was to clamp down on Islamic extremism without offending large groups of Muslims.
Unfortunately Commissioner Blair didn’t expand; I’d like to know how difficult extraordinarily difficult is. But what he appears to be saying is that it’s next to impossible to address Islamic extremism without exacerbating it. There’s another fine mess liberalism has got us into.
Reid bent over backwards. He cut his security to a minimum. He smiled pleasantly, if somewhat uneasily, while being harangued by Abu Izzadeen, “.a violent extremist from an organisation (the Labour Government) has proscribed.” He said nothing in reply to being called a murderer and a tyrant, and an enemy of Islam. And when he was told, “How dare you come into a Muslim area.” Reid’s response was almost apologetic, “There is no part of this country from which any of us are excluded.” Especially Muslims, eh Home Secretary?
And then, to cap it all for the hapless John Reid, the audience of ‘moderate Muslims’ took umbrage when he asked them to keep an eye on their children to ensure they weren’t brainwashed into terrorism. I’ll wager Reid needed a large tumbler of scotch after that meet! He did everything he could to portray Muslim youngsters as innocents and emphasised that the problem was the extremists who sought to seduce them away from righteousness towards terrorism, and still the parents took offence!
What a result – for everybody but Reid that is!
But did he really think it would work? Is he that naïve, this former hard drinking communist who dragged himself up by his own boot straps? I do believe he is. Hiding behind that allegedly tough veneer is a wishful thinking liberal.
Reid is keen to dismiss the idea of a clash of cultures because it undermines everything he believes; he ignores the evidence and refuses to recognise that it’s happening now. And he attempts to explain it away by arguing that the ‘meaning of Islam has been hijacked by extremists who are using it to sustain a violent and indiscriminate war.’ According to Reid the people who bomb, threaten, and kill are not Muslims “in the true sense of the word.” So now Dr Reid is a self-appointed expert on who is and who is not a Muslim – I can’t see that going down too well in the Muslim world.
That the Home Secretary tried to enlist Britain’s Muslim communities to do more to combat the extremists in their midst is an indication of his lack of understanding of the situation. He makes the mistake of believing that everyone aspires to see the world through the liberal looking glass. It is self delusion of the most dangerous kind. Muslims view the world according to the dictates of their own beliefs; their truths and realities are not the truths and realities of Western middle class liberals. All Muslims have as their long term aim the subjugation of the world under an Islamic theocracy – “Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day.”
Reid and the rest of the utterly gutless creatures that constitute the liberal establishment are trying to appease themselves out of a predicament with Islam that is entirely of their own making. They refuse to recognise that to the Muslim mindset appeasement and diplomacy as signs of weakness to be taken advantage of; Reid’s interventions are encouraging the very clash of cultures that they are designed to deny.








