Another Elephant

“First they came…” is attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. The full content is:

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the catholics,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a catholic.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

The following statement is taken directly from an Arabic newspaper:

Al-Qaeda-linked militants, who kidnapped hundreds of workers at a gas plant in the Algerian desert, said they were after “crusaders” and not Algerian nationals, one of the released hostages told Al Arabiya in an interview.

The reference to “crusaders” is obvious. Apparently we don’t learn from history. The Islamist terrorist attacks in Algeria and now in a packed Nairobi shopping centre have been all over the news, and you must have seen some coverage of the atrocities. In both cases, the Islamist terrorists allowed Muslims to go free before they made their assault. But hey ho, that’s away over in Africa. Doesn’t affect us, and I am just scaremongering right? Take another look at the words of the Islamist terrorist when he spoke to another fellow Muslim. Yes, Muslims are Islamists. Maybe we should think of them as ‘Muslamists’ because they are one and the same, and cut from the same cloth. Maybe not all terrorists, but the Mosque attendance in ‘Western’ countries is showing a robust growth in spite of the extreme Muslamist scandals. It’s a strange contradiction that a so called ‘religion of peace’ can be responsible for such murderous activities on innocents.

The civilised and tolerant nations have suffered various terrorist attacks. Who can forget the USA 9/11, or the Glasgow Airport attack, or the London 7/7 and 21/7 Muslamist atrocities, to name a few, and there are many more. I will leave you with a thought, which I borrowed from someone else: “Not all terrorists are Muslims, but all terrorists seem to be Muslims”. Unfair? Of course there are other terrorist groups, but we ignore the obvious at our peril. We can pretend the elephant is not in the room, but it is impossible to ignore for ever, no matter how hard we try.