Sayeeda Warsi has bitten the hand that made her Baroness.
Back in 2012 Dave found to his horror that the focus groups were uneasy about lots of unticked demographic boxes. Dave scanned the available options and his eye stopped on Sayeeda, who ticked lots of relevant boxes. Woman – tick. Muslim – tick. Working class – tick. Iffy accent – tick. Under 40 – tick.
Alas, Sayeeda’s sole contribution to politics to that point had been losing an eminently winnable Tory seat.
Not to worry. Dave fast-tracked Sayeeda to the House of Lords, making her eligible for a cabinet post. Gratitude was in order, one would have thought, but Sayeeda had the bit between her teeth.
Baroness Warsi, as she now was, pretended to have many convictions, but there was only one she had really felt in her bone marrow: hatred of Israel, which she believed was a criminal state that had no right to exist.
Monomaniacs who reduce the whole complexity of life to a single passion inevitably divide mankind into two categories: friends, those who share the passion, and enemies, those who don’t.
Sayeeda thought Dave was her friend, but he proved to be her enemy by failing to share Sayeeda’s sole conviction. Being a person of strong, if single, principle, she had no option but to resign and keep a watchful eye on Dave.
Sure enough, he slipped by making a speech suggesting that some British Muslims “quietly condone” extremism. Baroness Warsi was instantly up in arms.
By suggesting that some Muslims are sympathetic to Isis, she declared, Dave is “demonising” the whole Islamic community. ‘Demonising’, you understand, is the vogue catchword denoting amply justified criticism.
Hence anyone who finds anything wrong with Putin thereby demonises Russia. Anyone objecting to homomarriage demonises all sexual minorities. Anyone saying that Sayeeda is a stupid ideologue demonises women, Muslims, working-class origins, iffy accents and people under 40.
“Muslim communities across the UK are fighting Isis ideology,” claimed Sayeeda and then, with her usual disregard for logic, contradicted herself: “It’s the children of British Muslims that Isis are targeting to recruit.”
That makes those Isis recruiters not only evil but also clueless. If Muslim communities “are fighting Isis ideology”, any attempts to recruit volunteers for a spot of suicide bombing must be doomed to failure.
They aren’t. In fact, hundreds of British Muslims have joined the ranks of Isis cannibals and beheaders. Why, just 10 days ago a teenager from Sayeeda’s hometown of Dewsbury became the UK’s youngest ever suicide bomber.
Such actions come from a base of solid popular support. In fact, the polls taken in the aftermath of the 7/7 massacres showed that 20% of British Muslims sympathised with the terrorists, and 25% felt the bombings were justified. Among young Muslims this number goes up to 35%, which is predictable, considering the impetuosity of youth.
Five per cent of British Muslims tell pollsters they wouldn’t report a planned Islamic attack, 27% are against the deportation of Islamic hate preachers, and 37% believe British Jews are a legitimate target.
One third of British Muslims believe that Islamic apostates should be killed, 78% supported punishing the publishers of Mohammed cartoons, 40% want Sharia in the UK, 28% want Britain to be an Islamic state, while two-thirds think ‘honour’ violence is acceptable.
And it’s not just violence: the community with which Sayeeda identifies so faithfully has strong ideas on family law as well: 51% believe a woman can’t marry an infidel, 49% don’t think a Muslim woman may marry without a guardian’s consent, and 52% feel a Muslim man may have up to four wives (just think of the mess of four divorces).
Considering that only 7% of British Muslims think of themselves as British first, one finds it hard to resist the feeling that perhaps the British Muslim community isn’t as staunchly patriotic as Sayeeda claims. The feeling grows even stronger when we translate all those percentages into absolute numbers based on the overall British Muslim population (three million that we know about).
One just hopes that next time Dave targets his ‘demonising’ more precisely, aiming it at the true-blue Tory Baroness Warsi specifically.