Friday 22nd August

We are all so brainwashed, so much victims of propaganda and so dumbed-down by the news and politicians that we believe anything.  Now it is good Muslims (that is those loyal to Britain) and extremist Muslims (that is, somehow perverted and twisted so as to hate us).  And being the simpletons that we are we must always have good guys and bad guys; Churchill and Hitler, Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein, and now decent Muslims and IS.  Well folks, life ‘aint as simple as that.  There are far more than fifty shades of grey; in fact it is all very very muddy indeed.

By accident I caught a documentary on BBC2 about the Stuarts.  Interestingly while focusing on the religious hatred between Catholics and Protestants of 300 years ago, the camera showed modern day footage of enraged Muslims and Evangelical Christians.  So nothing that much changes.  We think that we are tolerant and modern and quite happy for anyone to believe whatever they want to.  Except, we do not attempt to understand the Muslims who are prepared to fight what they consider is a Crusade from the corrupt West into their countries.  Now let me make it clear that I do not support them at all; I am just as appalled by the video (unwatched, but heavily reported) of be-headings; I am just as outraged at the treatment of women as second class citizens and I think that these young men leaving Britain to go and fight for an ideal they barely understand are mistaken and will maybe regret their actions if they live into old age.  But it is only 80 years since young British men and women went to fight and die for their ideals in Spain.

To condemn is not to solve anything.  We must try to understand and to educate and also to change our foreign policy.  It is too late to do anything about Afghanistan or Iraq but these were the breeding grounds which directed the justifiable anger into what we now call extremism.  We must start to really support and help (not bomb) predominantly Muslim countries.  We should have supported Morsi in Egypt (legally elected) and not helped his overthrow by an unelected army coup.  We must stop supporting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, unless they modernize and start educating women and bring in real democracy.  And we must put pressure on Israel to give Palestine a decent state and stop terrorizing millions in Gaza.  Only then will these young Muslims realize that we in the West are not the Extremists they consider us.