"We Need To Be Clear That We Are Fighting an Ideology Not a Religion"

Former UK Justice Minister Michael Gove is clear on that non-fact (he says so at around the 11:20 point of this video), as is Steve Hilton, host of FOX News's new "populism" show, The Next Revolution. Both Brits do their level best to ignore the jihad imperative embedded in Islamic holy writ, a prerequisite for making the it's-an-ideology-not-a-religion claim. And while one expects such bollocks to be uttered by those on the Left--Barack Obama, for one, did it as often as he could--it is no easier to swallow when it comes from those on the Right, who should know better.

Meanwhile, the truth is out there. You just need to know where to find it. For instance, it's here:

One of the chief things that needs to change, if [Prime Minister Theresa] May is really serious about “taking on extremism and terrorism,” is the official denial of the jihad terrorists’ motivating ideology. No one can defeat an enemy that he doesn’t understand, much less one that he refuses to understand, and yet that is the position of the May government (and of the U.S. government as well, although we may hope that this swamp will eventually be drained): jihad terror has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.  

Yet the London attackers were hardly shy about what motivated them. One eyewitness recounted: “They went, ‘This is for Allah,’ and they had a woman on the floor, and they were stabbing her, all three, constantly.” The mother of a young man who was wounded in the attacks said: “He just stepped outside the bar for a second and a man ran up to him and said: ‘This is for my family, this is for Islam’, and stuck a knife straight in him. He’s got a seven-inch scar going from his belly round to his back.” 

But Theresa May is convinced that they didn’t do it for Allah or Islam at all. She said that the jihadis were “bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth.” 

“A perversion of Islam.” May didn’t bother to explain how killing non-Muslims was a “perversion” of a religion with a holy book that thrice exhorts believers to kill those who dare to worship others besides Allah (cf. 2:191, 4:89, 9:5), tells them to “strike the necks” of the unbelievers (47:4) and to fight “the People of the Book” (primarily Jews and Christians) “until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). She didn’t elucidate the mysterious process by which Muhammad, who is supposed to be the founder of Islam, ending up holding a “perversion” of it, as he directed his followers to invite unbelievers to accept Islam or pay the jizya, or to go to war with them if they refused both options (Sahih Muslim 4294). 

May’s continuing willful ignorance will doom to defeat her effort to change things, if she really attempts one at all. The main thing she needs to change is her mindset, and that of the British political and law enforcement establishment. But the mindset of denial and willful ignorance is deeply entrenched in Britain, such that if she loses the upcoming election, the new Prime Minister, Jeremy Corbyn, will make her look, of all things, tough on terror. 

Sadly, May's continuing willful ignorance is Gove's and Hilton's too.