PlanetRobot retweetledi
@EdwardJDavey, you have misread the argument so comprehensively that one has to wonder whether it is deliberate.
Nobody is objecting to freedom of worship. Nick Timothy did not say Muslims should not be allowed to pray. He said mass ritual prayer in a shared national civic space is an act of domination, and cited the former extremist turned scholar Ed Husain, who has spent his career documenting exactly this phenomenon. The Adhan, the call to prayer, declares there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger. That is by definition a theological repudiation of every other faith. When projected into Trafalgar Square, a national memorial to British sovereignty and independence, it is not equivalent to a celebration. It is a declaration. The distinction is theological, not political, and it is precise.
You invoke freedom of worship as though Timothy had called for mosques to be closed. He did not. You invoke British values as though observing that the domination of public spaces is straight from the Islamist playbook is somehow un-British. It is not. It is documented, sourced and supported by scholars who have spent decades inside Islamist movements.
This week, thousands of people gathered on the Embankment chanting death to America and death to Israel. Bobby Vylan led chants of death death death to the IDF, cleared by the CPS last year and back on a London stage doing it again. The Islamic Human Rights Commission, named in a Lords report as part of Iran's soft power network in Britain, addressed the crowd. Thirty six Labour MPs wrote to the Parliamentary Commissioner demanding the investigation of a man for pointing out what every serious student of Islamism already knows. The Attorney General deployed his Jewish identity to defend a declaration that, by its own theological logic, repudiates Judaism. And your contribution to all of it is a tweet accusing people who raise these questions of stoking fear, hatred and division.
You lead a party that voted consistently to keep Britain in the European Union against the democratic will of the British people. A party that has positioned itself as the political home of progressive appeasement, that has never met an Islamist grievance it would not accommodate, and whose response to every act of cultural intimidation is to accuse those who name it of bigotry. The Liberal Democrats have no record of defending British values under pressure. They have a record of redefining British values to mean whatever is least likely to cause offence to the most vocal pressure group in the room.
Freedom of worship is indeed a fundamental British value. So is freedom of speech. So is the freedom to observe, without being accused of racism, that a theological declaration of exclusive truth projected into a national monument is not the same as lighting a menorah or performing a Passion play. Nick Timothy exercised that freedom. The full weight of the parliamentary and political establishment descended on him within twenty four hours.
That is the state of British politics today, Ed. And you are part of the problem, not the solution.
"Nick Timothy didn't say Muslims shouldn't be allowed to pray. He said mass ritual prayer in a shared national civic space is an act of domination, and cited the former extremist turned scholar Ed Husain, who has spent his career documenting exactly this phenomenon."
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