Counterterrorism: Muslim Communities
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, as part of their antiterrorism strategy, they will encourage leaders of the United Kingdom’s Muslim communities to identify, confront and expose their violent co-religionists.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, we welcome, acknowledge and indeed thank the many people who are already confronting extremism in this country. The Government are absolutely committed to strengthening our partnership with all those who want to see extremism defeated in all its ugly guises.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. I suppose that it would be dangerous for our Muslim friends to fulfil this Question with the energy which many people would like. Does the noble Lord agree that our Muslim leaders also face the problem that there are more than 100 verses in the Koran which order violence towards non-Muslims and so give theological justification to the jihadists? What does the noble Lord have to say about those verses, not to mention the bellicose example of Muhammad himself, which all Muslims are supposed to follow and which therefore undermine the Government’s strategy?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I can say clearly that I totally disagree with the noble Lord in his assertion about the holy scripture and the example of the holy Prophet of Islam. What is true, is fact and is real in this country is that Muslim contributions today, yesterday and for many decades—indeed, centuries—have been widely acknowledged as a positive contribution to the progress of this country, and long may it continue.
European Union: Schengen Agreement
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend, whom I greatly respect, like to correct his Answer to my noble friend Lord Forsyth—
Lord Bates
I was making the point that our borders are controlled in the sense that the ability to travel freely across borders in the European Union by the production of an ID card does not apply to us. In Schengen, we retain our full checks on people who are coming into this country and, since April this year, on people leaving this country as well. I believe that that means we have control of our borders.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, given that Schengen and the euro have proved such painful failures, what do Her Majesty’s Government see as the point of the European Union itself? Would we miss it if it collapsed and we went back to friendly collaboration and free trade between the democracies of Europe? Has the EU not become just a very expensive emperor without clothes?
Lord Bates
The benefits to this country will be determined by the people in a referendum in due course, but in this respect they are self-evident: we cannot deal with the migrant crisis that is coming into our country without working very closely with our EU partners and, given that seven out of 10 of our principal trading partners are within the EU, we need to be able to exchange goods and services in an efficient way. With regard to the type of model that the noble Lord is perhaps advocating, he should perhaps be aware that while we are not in the Schengen area, Norway, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Iceland, in the European Economic Area, are part of Schengen, and therefore there is free movement.
Paris Attacks: Violence Against Muslims
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the tragic events of 7/7. In Britain today, no community, including the Muslim community, has retreated. We are a thriving democracy—multifaith and multicultural—where we celebrate the diversity of our country as a strength. However, the noble Lord is right to ask what the police are doing. We are working hand in glove with the police to ensure that reassurance is conveyed to all communities, irrespective of whatever faith they may be, that the police, the Government and all of us stand with them against all forms of bigotry.
Islam
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, as part of their counter-extremism strategy, they will encourage a national debate about the nature of Islam, including whether the Muslim tenet of abrogation remains valid today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s approach and strategy to countering extremism is firmly based on further strengthening our relationships and work with the communities and organisations across the United Kingdom and together confronting, challenging and disrupting extremism in all its ugly guises.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that fairly helpful reply. Some noble Lords may not be aware that abrogation means that, where there is contradiction in the Koran, its later and more violent verses outweigh its admirably peaceful early texts. Is the noble Lord aware that, together with some Koranic scholars, I have written a short summary of Islam, which I will send him, and that we are asking the Guardian newspaper to hold an open debate as to its accuracy? Secondly, given the seriousness of our domestic situation, could not the Government themselves sponsor a council of our Muslim leaders in which they could clarify the modern meaning of their religion and cast the extremists out of Islam?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I look forward to receiving the noble Lord’s summary of the great religion of Islam. Perhaps during his reflection he will also have noted that, with the exception of one verse in the holy Koran, every verse starts with the words: “In the name of God, the gracious, most merciful”, which underlines the true sentiments and principle of that religion. The Government have very much been engaging in debate across Muslim communities. Indeed, the Prime Minister recently launched an engagement forum where he is meeting with people of all denominations from across the Muslim community and beyond to ensure that we confront extremism, as I said earlier, in all its ugly guises.
Calais: Border Management
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bates
That is what the Dublin accord or regulation requires: such people should claim asylum in the first place in which they arrive. If it is Italy, it should be Italy; if it is Greece, then it should be Greece. That is a principle which everybody has signed up to and we want to see it implemented.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, in that case, why are these unfortunate people so desperate to come to this country rather than to stay in France?
Lord Bates
There could be a whole range of reasons. I am proud of this country; it is a wonderful country; it is a privilege to live here. I have no doubt that many people would want to come here. The point is that we cannot have an open-door policy; we need to have a managed immigration policy for people who have gone through the proper channels to arrive here. People who try to circumvent that clearly need to be stopped.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, I propose to speak about Islam and its future in this country. Indeed, I hope that everyone—Muslims and the rest of us—can start talking about Islam without being told that we are Islamophobes stirring up religious hatred. I should make it clear that I am not speaking for UKIP and that I am by no means a Muslim scholar. However, I am advised by three such scholars, one of whom was a sharia court judge for 11 years.
Islam is a vast subject and so, given our time constraint, I refer noble Lords to a debate I had in Grand Committee on 19 November 2013. What I said then has been justified by subsequent events in north Africa and elsewhere, and a few respectable commentators are beginning to suggest that we should be allowed to debate openly the nature of Islam and its likely effect on our future society. For instance, Professor Tom Holland suggested last week that the moral perfection of Mohammed should now be questioned, even if to do so is akin to poking a hornet’s nest with a stick.
It will be common ground in this national debate—if we can get it going—that the vast majority of Muslims live good and peaceful lives. However, when we refer nowadays to extremism, we usually refer to extreme or radical Islam. We do not refer to radical or extreme Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Sikh or any other religion. It is also true that much bloodshed, the dark side of our human nature, has erupted within and through Christianity over the centuries, even if its founder was wholly good. But not now; now that darkness is moving strongly within Islam. If we want to stand up to it, I suggest that we should start by talking about it and trying to understand it.
There are many verses in the Koran which justify jihad, so why do we go on pretending that Islam is a religion of peace? It does not help to reply that there is also much violence in the Bible because that is all confined to the Old Testament and orthodox Jews are not killing tens of thousands of innocent people on the strength of it.
When our leading Muslims do try to prove the peacefulness of the Koran, they are less than reassuring. Last September, 119 British imams wrote to the Independent newspaper to assure us that the decapitation of two of our aid workers in Syria was,
“nowhere justified in the Koran”.
To support this they quoted from sura 5 verse 32 thus:
“Whosoever kills a human being … it is as if he kills the entire human race”.
That sounds peaceful enough until you fill in the dots, which go,
“unless it be for murder, or for spreading mischief in the land”.
So the Koran actually says that you can be killed for spreading mischief in the land, which to the jihadists is simply not being a Muslim or helping the victims of their brutality. Is that the best that 119 of our leading imams can do? The very next verse—sura 5 verse 33 —details the punishment for those who spread mischief in the land, which is,
“execution or crucifixion or the cutting of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land”—
not exactly peaceful stuff.
In 2013, I mentioned the Muslim tenet of abrogation, whereby when there is contradiction in the Koran or in the example of Mohammed, the later verses or actions abrogate or cancel the earlier ones. This is a serious problem for our debate because the Koran and Mohammed became steadily more violent as he went through life and Muslims are enjoined to follow the Koran and Mohammed’s example.
Today I fear I should mention another tenet, al-Hijrah, by which Muslims are instructed gradually to subjugate their host societies to Islam. It comes from Mohammed’s example after he moved from Mecca to Medina in 622. When he had accepted his multifaith hosts’ hospitality for five years, and his new religion had grown sufficiently, he offered them the options of conversion, exile or death. He ordered the deaths of several hundred and Islam went on to conquer most of the known world. So is it not rather worrying that one of the Trojan horse schools in Birmingham is actually called the Al-Hijrah School?
Is it not also worrying that our Muslim population has grown some 75% in the last 10 years, up from 1.6 million to 2.7 million, largely concentrated in a few cities and with a third of it under the age of 15? The Government tolerate sharia law, under which a man can have four wives, many of whom are having disadvantaged children who therefore become food for jihad. If we cannot give them something better to live for, and if present trends continue, I fear that civil unrest lies ahead.
I repeat that a large majority of our Muslim population is indeed mild and peace-loving, but I suggest that they are not doing enough to stand up to their violent co-religionists. And why should they? It would be dangerous, and all they have to do is to proclaim that Islam is a religion of peace which the jihadists misinterpret. So have we become their generous hosts and are they now fellow travellers on their way to al-Hijrah, blindly supported by our well-meaning but ignorant political class?
We must somehow make it worth their while to reform their fearsome religion and we must support them if they try. To this end I have suggested before that the Government should facilitate and support a major Muslim council in this country which could clarify the meaning of Islam here and cast the jihadists out of that new Islam. Without some major initiative of that kind, I fear that the long-term future of our Judaeo-Christian culture looks bleak indeed.