PM finds out-toughing mass-murderers a challenge
To stop British people joining Isil, said David Cameron, we must “enforce our values”. The question is: how exactly do you enforce a value? We know how Isil enforces its values: by murdering anyone who holds different values. That option, however, isn’t really open to a liberal democracy.
Indeed, you might even argue that the moment a liberal democracy starts “enforcing” values, it stops being a liberal democracy.
Then again, there are limits to how liberal a Prime Minister can afford to sound on this issue. He probably wouldn’t have reassured many people by saying, for example, “We must politely invite aspiring terrorists to reflect on the possibility that our values are as good as their values, not that I’m criticising their values, I wouldn’t dream of it, their values are perfectly valid and they’re entitled to hold them. Freedom of speech and all that. Not that they believe in freedom of speech, which is of course fair enough. I’m just gently suggesting they consider going easy on the mass slaughter of innocents, if it’s not too much trouble.” Possibly not a winner, that line. At the very least, “enforce our values” sounds comfortingly tough, whatever it might mean.
The venue for Mr Cameron’s speech about defeating extremism was a school in Birmingham. On the wall behind him was a mural, featuring the silhouette of a large mosque. The school has a lot of Muslim pupils, and was inspected as part of the last Government’s investigation into the “Trojan Horse” radicalisation of children. The inspectors found no cause for concern.
Mr Cameron laid out his plans. Ethnically diverse free schools would be created in the most segregated areas of cities. No council estate should be inhabited exclusively by people from a single ethnic minority background.
Parents would be able to get their child’s passport swiftly cancelled if they believed he or she was plotting to bolt to Syria or Iraq.
The Prime Minister also said he’d be getting “people who really understand the true nature of what life is like under Isil” to help “de-glamourise” it.
This may be easier said than done. “Isil is a group that throws people off buildings, that burns them alive,” said Mr Cameron sternly. “Its men rape underage girls, and stone innocent women to death. It’s vicious, brutal.” Well, yes. And the young British Muslims joining Isil surely know all that – and it isn’t putting them off. This is the problem: they aren’t being seduced by a myth. They’re being seduced by the reality. And if people are actively attracted by murderous violence, I don’t know how you de-glamourise it, unless perhaps you tell them Isil actually isn’t violent at all, and is in fact a rabble of ineffectual hippies whose most potent weapon is the incense stick, and the footage of beheadings was faked by the FBI.
On the whole, though, I’m not sure everyone would buy it.