[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
As is now well known, the name of the man who murdered two people at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester, England on Yom Kippur was Jihad al-Shamie, or “Syrian Jihad.” He is indeed Syrian, although the establishment media insists on referring to him as “British” because he obtained British citizenship, although it is quite clear at this point that he did so without adopting anything in the way of a British outlook, or shedding any of the mental baggage he brought with him from his home country.
Jihad al-Shamie was granted British citizenship back in 2006, when he was sixteen years old. While records of such matters are not kept, one thing that is absolutely certain about the process he underwent in order to secure that citizenship is that no one, at any step along the way, dared to wonder if maybe those old colonial occupiers, the Romans, had a point when they coined the adage nomen est omen: a name is a sign.
By 2006, British officials already knew better than to raise concerns about something as trivial as a boy’s name. Anyone who might have raised such concerns would likely have been shut down with calm, knowing assurances that jihad meant “struggle,” and so there was nothing to be concerned about. And jihad does indeed mean “struggle.” But the primary jihad in Islamic theology is the struggle against unbelievers with the goal of imposing Sharia upon them.
Yet it is forbidden to mention that fact in Keir Starmer’s Britain, and the stigmatization, demonization, and silencing of those who did dare to point out Islam’s sanctification of violence didn’t start with Starmer. If anyone had raised concerns about Jihad al-Shamie’s name, he would not only have gotten the explanation that jihad means “struggle,” and hence is nothing infidels need be concerned about; he would also almost certainly have been accused of “Islamophobia” and of “racism” as well, and faced the very real prospect of both personal and professional ruin.
The British government and media establishment has worked for years to ensure that no one would dare to raise concerns about a man named Jihad, or about the preaching of jihad in the country’s many mosques. Even now, Starmer rails incessantly against the “far right,” but didn’t dare identify the motivating ideology of Jihad al-Shamie. No one was surprised, either, that the cowardly Marxist prime minister gingerly avoided coming close to explaining al-Shamie’s belief system. It is by now taken for granted as an established fact of life, not just in Britain but all over the West, that Islamic jihad is simply not to be discussed. For all intents and purposes, it does not exist.
What does exist, however, is “Islamophobia,” and the fear of being branded an “Islamophobe” has been capably pounded into the population of Britain and into people all over the West. The British government, in other words, brought this problem to Britain. It wasn’t there before the British left embraced socialism, internationalism, and open borders, and began to stigmatize and silence anyone who warned about what was happening as “racist” and “Islamophobic.”
If it is allowed to be discussed at all, the jihad threat can only be discussed in the context of its status as an alleged twisting and hijacking of the peaceful religion of Islam. And why are some Muslims driven to this false, “extremist” understanding of their religion? Because of the evils of the Infidels. Thus more concessions, more appeasement, more accommodation is in order, and will fix everything.
Except they won’t. The Qur’an tells Muslims: “So do not falter and cry out for peace when you have the upper hand, and Allah is with you, and he will not deprive you of your actions.” (47:35) All this appeasement and accommodation tend to make jihadis think, with abundant justification, that they have the upper hand, and so should not meet gestures of good will with reciprocal good will, but should press on to total victory. And that’s what we’re seeing now not just in Manchester on Yom Kippur, but all over the West.
Jihad al-Shamie’s name was indeed an omen. But it was an omen that the entire Western world has been trained to disregard and ignore. And so there will be many more jihads, just like the one al-Shamie carried out in Manchester, and much larger-scale operations as well. The West has sown the wind, and is beginning to reap the whirlwind.