Thwart terror? Yes we Koran
Defeat of extremism will be finest hour
WINSTON Churchill is everywhere these days. Maybe it’s the weather. Never in the field of humid climate has “phew” been said so much by so many.
David Davis quoted Churchill as his inspiration for optimism in Brexit talks, though, as with much the Brexit Secretary says, the origin of the remark is disputed.
A biopic called Churchill has just opened in cinemas with Brian Cox as the wartime PM. The Darkest Hour, set in 1940, will be released in January, while the next Netflix series of The Crown takes us to Churchill’s death in 1965.
Boris Johnson maintains the Conservative idol would have been a Brexiteer, while David Cameron says a Remainer. Hmmmm. As a young MP, Churchill was in favour of unlimited migration.
I do wonder what the great statesman might have done about terrorists. Not fight them on the beaches or the landing grounds obviously, but on WhatsApp and in cyberspace possibly.
Terrorism is now so commonplace that last week it came to Finsbury Park, North London as well as Paris and Brussels. Doing something fundamental about it is becoming deadly urgent.
I’ve argued for better religious education so that kuffars, as Islamists call non-believers, don’t become Islamophobes, and Muslim children don’t become Islamists.
So I was heartened by Islamic scholar and veteran prison chaplain Mamadou Bobouc’s call for a new Koran for schools, mosques and jails with footnotes to interpret passages which might encourage jihad and suicide bombing.
The London Bridge attackers left in their apartment a Koran open at a page describing martyrdom.
Bobouc says a verse urging the killing of Christians and Jews needs the context of another saying that they should be left alone if they do not attack Muslims. The children who died in Manchester certainly could not be accused of that.
Bobouc added: “Christianity was born in t he East but rehabilitated in the West. So was Judaism. It’s time to rehabilitate Islam in the West.” My guess is that Churchill would have seen the need to unknot a religion being twisted to justify violence – so that i t emphasises its peaceful message.
But there is something Churchill would not change. He would still declare: “We shall never surrender.”