Drying Out

It rained a little after church, and right before we left for a BBQ at my sister’s. But the sun finally peeked out, and started to dry things out, before we got there.

The yard is pretty waterlogged, though.    

So Which Is It?

Right on the heels of the terrorist attacks in the UK, the Mayor of London(stan), Ken Livingstone implored Britons not to demonize Muslims.

“In this city, Muslims are more likely to be law-abiding than non-Muslims and less likely to support the use of violence to achieve political ends than non-Muslims,” he told BBC Radio.

“They have played a good and active and growing role in creating a multi-cultural society,” he added.

Well, okaaay, if you say so….but not everyone takes that point of view.

Here is the undercover video Christopher Hitchens refers to in his interview with Fox News, found via Hotair.

Here’s more about British multiculturalism and “dhimmitude” at Right Truth.

Here is an Englishman speaking out, in his Youtube video, The Trouble With Islam.

Then there’s Tony Blair speaking out with refreshing, new candor about the problem Brits are facing, (also found via Hotair):

‘The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we’re not actually fighting it properly. We’re not actually standing up to these people and saying, “It’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.”‘ And: ‘When I’m trying to change the law in order to make it easier to deport people who engage in terrorism – the idea that that’s an assault on hundreds of years of British civil liberties is completely absurd. Some of what is written on this is loopy-loo in its extremism.’

Need a refresher course on Ken Livingstone? Start at Smooth Stone, and move on to this little jewel, Ken Livingstone.org.

Finally, read what a former Jihadi from London had to say, from this article in the Daily Mail, (hat tip to AOS HQ commenter Dudley Smith for this one):

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network – a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology – I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

For example, on Saturday on Radio 4’s Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: “What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq.”

I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I’d be laughing once again.

…on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.

However, it isn’t enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

Gateway Pundit has more on the former radical Islamist, Hassan Butt (heh!), here.

Perhaps Mayor Livingstone should listen to what this former Jihadi has to say, and start advocating assimilation, instead of harping mindlessly about the glories of multiculturalism, and living in denial about how widespread Islamic extremism really is.