By Stephen Brown
Friday, February 06, 2009
The place where Winston Churchill once so eloquently and forcefully rallied the British people to defeat the Nazi threat is now under siege from a new tyranny.
Islamic intimidation achieved a new high last week when it forced the British Parliament, one of Western civilization’s most venerable institutions, to quietly surrender its most basic of freedoms.
Almost unreported in the Western media, including Britain’s, a Muslim member of the House of Lords, Nazir Ahmed, showed the advanced state of Britain’s dhimmitude when he threatened to mobilize 10,000 fellow Muslims to block Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker, Geert Wilders, from entering Westminster. Wilders had been invited by another House of Lords member to show his controversial film, Fitna, last Thursday in a Westminster conference room. Invitations had been sent to all House members to attend the screening that was to be followed “by discussion and debate in true parliamentary fashion.”
But Baron Ahmed, who was born in Pakistan and raised in Britain, forgetting he is part of a liberal democratic system that cherishes freedom of expression and association, reacted with familiar jihadi-style tactics to Wilders’ announced appearance. Along with his threat to mobilize 10,000 demonstrators to block Wilders’ path, it was reported Ahmed also intended to sue the House of Lords member who had invited the Dutch politician.
However, that all proved unnecessary.
After Ahmed and representatives of several British Muslim organizations met with the leader of the House of Lords and its chief whip, the Wilders visit was cancelled and British democracy suffered a crushing defeat. And while the British elites and media may have wanted to keep the British people in the dark regarding the scale of this debacle, Ahmed had no qualms about publicising it. Labelling it what it truly is, Ahmed told Pakistani media outlets that the British parliament’s retreat was “a victory for the Muslim community.”
Lord Ahmed, a Labour Party member, was appointed to the House of Lords in 1998 and, according to British law, is a peer for life. He is the first Muslim lord in the modern era and second in British parliamentary history. A predecessor, Baron Stanley of Alderley, had converted to Islam in 1862. Ahmed’s appointment was made possible when Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a major constitutional maneuver, “reformed” the House of Lords in 1999, abolishing all hereditary peerages
Regarded as a “moderate” Muslim, Ahmed led the first British government-sponsored delegation on a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. He has opposed international terrorism, women wearing the veil and forced marriages in Britain. Risking his personal safety, Ahmed has also supported the expulsion of violent Islamic radicals from Great Britain.
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