I didn’t expect to return to considering the eventual fall of Islam when rational adherents wake up to its errors and want something far better. The Arab Spring of 15 years ago was a starter and now Emily Smith’s article in last week’s Daily Telegraph brings further credence to the Muslim peoples’ being awakened by repulsion of extremists (emphases are mine):

‘An Islamic leader has backed the Conservative Party and Nigel Farage after they criticised a mass prayer session for Muslim men in Trafalgar Square. 

Writing for The Telegraph (see below), Dr Taj Hargey said he found the open-air worship on Monday, attended by hundreds of men, including Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, “disturbing”.

He agreed with Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, who described the event, organised by the Ramadan Tent Project, as an “act of domination and division” in an article for The Telegraph on Tuesday.

Mr Timothy prompted a backlash from the Left when he wrote: “To use [Trafalgar Square] as a stage for this act of domination and division is completely wrong, and it should never be allowed to happen again.”  

As thousands of people gathered in Birmingham for Eid celebrations, Dr Hargey, an imam and director of the Oxford Institute for British Islam, also backed Mr Farage on the same issue.

He said the Reform UK leader – who called for a ban on Muslim street prayers on Thursday – was “absolutely right”.

Continue reading via ‘free link’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/9509884fbb2bfa8d

I note Dr Hargey’s many wise and sensible points in his accompanying letter, especially:

‘But Labour is totally wrong about this, and their response is also deeply telling about where the Government is going badly wrong when it comes to pandering to radical Islamists. As an imam of some 40 years, I have been deeply concerned about the direction of my religion in Britain and the West.

What were once fringe, fundamentalist, extremist voices have captured our mosques. Now these hardliners, importing a radical agenda from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other puritanical places, are regarded as the mainstream Muslim voice.

They have inveigled their way into polite society, exploiting useful idiots on the Left to present themselves, somehow, not as the radicals but the normal Muslims who speak for the whole community.‘

He concludes,

‘My informed views, honed over decades of scholastic endeavour, are at risk of being banned as extremist and Islamophobic, while, bizarrely, the militants who are doing profound damage to our way of life are immune from any substantive criticism.

This populist Islamic militancy is evident everywhere in our society. Take the burka (facial mask) and the hijab (head covering), for instance.

There is not a single verse in the Koran that obliges women to hide their faces or hair. It is an alien cultural affectation. So, too, is the clergy’s chauvinist sexism that demands men and women must worship separately.

And so, when these people seek to dominate our public spaces and spread their malign influence further still on our British way of life, they must be called out. So bravo Nick Timothy and Nigel Farage for having the guts to take these people on. And shame on Keir Starmer for his cowardice.’

[Dr Taj Hargey is an imam and director of the Oxford Institute for British Islam]