Andrew Gilligan is usually sound, so there is no immediate reason to dismiss his report in The Sunday Telegraph that the Labour Party have been ‘infiltrated by a fundamentalist Muslim group that wants to create an “Islamic social and political order” in Britain’.
He quotes the Environment Minister Jim Fitzpatrick, that the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) have become ‘a secret party within Labour and other political parties’. He says the group ‘believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state’. In order to do this, it ‘has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation”’.
He appears to be oblivious to the fact that all Muslims ‘believe’ in jihad and sharia law: it is the duty of all Muslims to struggle for their faith and live a life in submission to the laws of Allah; it is what makes a Muslim a Muslim. But he appears to be incapable of distinguishing between the plethora of schools of thought on these theo-political concepts: one Muslim’s jihad and sharia are not another Muslim’s jihad and sharia: theological interpretation has been devolved and judicial authority protestantised.
This is not the first time Mr Fitzpatrick has incited ill-feeling towards his Muslim constituents: it was he who back in August ‘stormed out’ of a wedding reception when he refused to be separated from his wife.
And here he is now decrying a Muslim group for ‘acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level’.
‘Twas ever thus.
In a liberal representative democracy, it is the right of any legally-constituted group to order itself, get its members to join political parties, and then get them selected and elected ‘so they can exercise political influence and power’.
Good grief, even The Countryside Alliance are at it. And only a few weeks ago, an anonymous Conservative was decrying the same strategy of the Evangelical Christians.
And in 2001 Martin Bell made the 'infiltration' of the Conservative Party by 'extremist' Christians his principal reason for standing against Eric Pickles in Brentwood and Ongar. One wonders if the grave threat posed to democracy in 2001 by the Peniel Pentecostal Church in Brentwood and Ongar equates to that presented in 2010 by the Islamic Forum of Europe in Poplar and Canning Town. Jim Fitzpatrick is in no doubt: they are ‘completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism’.
Labour’s rabid secularisation agenda has been evident for all to see, but it has not hitherto been articulated by a Government minister. One hopes that other traditionally Labour-supporting religious groups (like the vast majority of Roman Catholics, Nonconformists [especially Methodists], Sikhs and Hindus) will note the existence of this ‘programme’, because it appears now to be Labour’s official position that the involvement of faith groups in politics is a ‘corrupting’ influence.
Yet Mr Fitzpatrick has been hoist by Labour’s petard.
The problem is that Labour have mistaken social cohesion for multiculturalism: they have destroyed community cohesion by pandering to the whims of every minority and creating a hierarchy of rights in which each and every disparate group now vies for supremacy. There can be no cohesion where there is no harmony, and no harmony in a climate of perpetual struggle for supreme rights. New Labour have consistently denigrated Christianity, perverted the pervasive culture and degraded the Church of England in favour of a corrosive secularist ideology of moral relativism which, by statutory instrument, they have made as absolute as any religious doctrine.
The Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2006 and that of 2010 have conspired to undermine the stability, peace and security of the nation, and have created a vacuum at its spiritual heart.
The Christian faith is now simply one of a number of equal and equivalent faiths, any one of which may be legitimately adopted by any citizen as a religio-political template; any one of whose leaders may be lauded and followed as the prototype disciple, the archetype believer, the perfect man.
Jesus is no longer unique: he is but one in an increasingly broad pantheon.
This is a religio-political beast of Labour’s own creation.
And Jim Fitzpatrick only woke up to the culture war when he realised that his precious Labour Party has welcomed the colonisers and appeased the invaders.
And he has chosen to speak out now only as he realises that he is electoral toast in the new constituency of Poplar and Limehouse, and that his main opponent, George Galloway, has been in bed with the IFE for years.
Perhaps Martin Bell should consider standing here, for 'the case raises issues of democratic process' by which he has justified his entry into politics in the past, and there are clearly one or two 'worried local people'.
