THE IMAM IN NUMBER 10

Since his unexpected election victory David Cameron has begun to suffer from delusions of grandeur, beginning to see himself as all powerful, wise and the possessor of awesome powers. This is particularly true when it comes to the BBC, an organisation already cowed by pre-election Tory threats. Cameron and his Tory chums from the upper fifth, Oxford and Bullingdon, have been lording it over the BBC since the result was declared. Cameron believed the BBC was against him during the campaign, – it was not of course, if anything its bias was against the left, though it did attempt impartiality at times, which outraged Cameron,- and with victory secured he is out for revenge.

Thus we have Imam Cameron demonstrating the fruits of years of Islamic scholarship explaining to the BBC, in the tone of an irritated headmaster, that the term Islamic State must “no longer appear in your essays boy.” Those fighting for the ‘caliphate’ in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt had ‘nothing to do with Islam. Then, going on to negate this first remark, by stating that ISIS represents a perversion of Islam, a religion of peace. Well it has either nothing to do with Islam or is a perversion of it, it can’t be both.

Where to start with such drivel, an insult to the intelligence of us all. For whatever else ISIS. ISIL, Daesh, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s army, or whatever else we choose to call it, is about, and is about much, it is very definitely about Islam. More precisely it is about the literalism of the Wahhabi/Salafist branch of Sunni Islam, carefully cultivated and exported by our allies in the fight against ISIS the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [KSA]. It represents a grotesque, barbaric, chicken come home to roost for the KSA and hopes soon to be squatting on the flattened corpse of the Saudi Kingdom. Daesh is the Arabic form of the ISIS acronym, which since it shortens the word Islamic, the supporters of Islamic state do not care.

But back to the preposterous Cameron as Roy Greenslade points out, ‘was he suggesting that more people will be inclined to join a gang of barbaric murderers because they proclaim themselves to be an Islamic state?’

And does he believe that any pronouncements he makes, or indeed the BBC, on matters Islamic are going to be believed by Muslim communities rather than the pronouncements of practising Muslims?*
If he genuinely believes that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam he is a fool and we should be very worried. If he doesn’t believe this but is trying to sell the fiction that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, he is a fool and we should be worried.

*There is no such thing as a coherent 'Muslim Community' in this country, there are Shia, Sunni, Sufi, Nigerians, Bangladeshi's, Iranians, Pakistani and Indians. Belief systems run from fanatical Salafist to the secular and non practising. 


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