A couple of days ago on the 3rd April we saw press reports of terror arrests that have been made in the town of Dewsbury. Two men one in his fifties and one in his twenties were arrested when police forced entry to two separate addresses in the Savile Town area of Dewsbury. The men are currently being questioned by police in relation to terror offence allegations.
As I try to do, when I first heard the reports of ‘a terror arrest’ I didn’t immediately jump to the knee-jerk conclusion that this was Islam-related, after all it could be any other source of terrorism allegations that has caused these arrests to be made. These arrests could be of the followers of any faith that have ‘gone bad’ or even, one of these semi-mythical ‘far right terrorists’ that the Government tell the citizenry that we should be frightened of and which are, according to them, a big problem.
But, as soon as I saw that the arrests were made in Savile Town, on of the most segregated and Islam dominated areas in the UK, all thoughts of this being anything to do with any other religious or political ideology other than Islam, went right out of the window. Because these arrests occurred in a district which has produced suicide bombers, ISIS types and one of the 7/7 atrocity’s plotters, any terrorism that comes out of Savile Town is likely to be everything to do with Islam.
Whilst thinking about Savile Town and the recent arrests I started to wonder what it must be like for those poor unfortunate souls from Islamic families which live there and who either want to join one of the more relatively enlightened paths within Islam (there are a few you know) or who wish to leave the ideology of Islam altogether? This area is seemingly so dominated by Orthodox types of Islam that the lives of liberal Muslims and putative ex Muslims must be pretty hellish. Those who deviate from Islamic orthodoxy will be constantly monitored or watched by not just their more religiously intense families, but also by the Muslim community at large.
Imagine a world where your every move, every person you speak to, every place you visit and every thing that you do, is likely to be reported back to those who may have some quite harsh things to say or do to any perceived religious miscreant who doesn’t follow all the rules. Now living in enclosed communities, whether they be political or religious, can be great for those who choose them or gain support from within them. But, for the free thinker, the apostate or the individual who wants a slightly different religious path, they can all too to easily become prisons without walls.
Life for ex Muslims, especially those who abandon Islam for more peaceful monotheistic faiths such as Christianity or Judaism, is pretty bad at the best of times. Those who give up on Islam and take a different spiritual path are often subject to physical attacks, are forced out of their homes and may even lose access to their children because of ‘community pressure’. I’ve met grown men who have had appalling, traumatic and distressing experiences when giving up Islam and have had to live in hiding and live in fear. The situation for men who leave Islam is pretty bad but knowing how misogynistic Islam is then how much worse it must be for women who choose to abandon Islam and who have the misfortune to live in closed hostile ghettos like Savile Town?
Dewsbury is but one of many British towns and cities where Islamic ghettos have sprung up. In these ghettos freedom does not reign and those who have looked outside of Islam and seen better paths more appropriate for them, are too often forced by community pressure to stay silent. Apostates and free thinkers have to pretend to be an orthodox pious Muslim in the hope that the beatings, social exclusions and sometimes murder, that is meted out to ex or questioning Muslims, doesn’t descend on them.
The existence of often hostile Islamic ghettos in our towns and cities is a security and human rights problem of monstrous proportions. These ghettos have not only produced or harboured some of Britain’s worst Islamic terrorists, but also are places where those who wish to escape from Islam are kept in metaphorical and possibly actual chains. Islamic ghettos make us all unsafe, they are factories of intolerance, jihad, violence and as we’ve seen in recent years rampant sex crime. They are also places where the innocent ex or questioning Muslim is punished and denied nearly all of the human rights that generations of Britons fought for. These Islamic ghettos need to be the subject of much more attention from government and police than they are at present. They need to be policed harshly and the power of ‘community leaders’ needs to be curtailed. Allowing these ghettos to exist in their current form where they are just left to fester, makes it all the more likely that terrorists will be produced from within them and the ex Muslims caged within them will continue to live in fear for their very lives.
