Is Britain’s Impending Catastrophe Avoidable?

by LT. COLONEL JAMES G. ZUMWALT, USMC (RET) February 2, 2015

As a famous nighttime World War II naval battle raged in the Pacific, a U.S. destroyer was in imminent danger. Its captain was multi-tasking, simultaneously driving the ship while directing fire at enemy targets. It was a recipe for disaster-the equivalent today of driving a car while texting.

As the ship operated at full speed, the combat information center (CIC) officer, who was below deck, monitored the radarscope. He saw the ship quickly approaching an island. But repeated warnings to the captain on the bridge went unheeded. As the ship began entering shallower waters, catastrophe lay ahead as a coral reef below could easily rip open its bottom like a can opener does a tin can.

A last frantic call to the bridge by the CIC officer finally evoked a response from the captain. He immediately ordered all engines back full-the equivalent of slamming on the ship’s brakes and going in reverse. However, fearing the action had come too late, all hands braced for the inevitable impact.

The fate that befell that ship is shared below. However, the story is told because it closely parallels the fate of Britain’s ship-of-state-one similarly heading for destruction because those in command have lost sight of what lies ahead. And, how goes the British ship-of-state, so too goes all Europe.

The catastrophe for which the U.K. is heading is “Islamization.” It is a process by which the country is transitioning from a land where individual freedoms were first recognized 800 years ago by the Magna Carta to one relinquishing those freedoms to accommodate the demands of an ever-increasing vocal and violent Muslim community seeking to replace democracy with religious tyranny.

With the host country’s native population failing to reproduce at the level necessary to maintain itself while the Muslim population significantly exceeds that same level, it is only a matter of time before the latter becomes the majority. And, as history has shown us, where Muslims become the majority, personal freedom and tolerance disappear as sharia becomes the law of the land.

Just like the CIC officer’s warnings onboard the World War II destroyer went ignored, ample warnings given by those in the U.K. monitoring Islam’s growing ominous influence similarly have gone ignored. Just like the ship captain’s last minute action to avoid catastrophe by reversing all engines, England’s leadership has taken a step to do the same concerning the terrorist consequences of Islamization. But it begs the question whether it is too little, too late to save the U.K.

England’s leadership has failed to focus on several factors slowly choking individual rights.

Muslims comprise about 5% of the U.K. ‘s population. Growth is a combination of two factors-immigration and low native-accompanied by high Muslim-birth rates. In 2013, the native fertility rate slipped to 1.85 (a rate of 2.1 is required to maintain current levels) while for Muslims it was 3.0. Some critics predict, at current rates, England could have a Muslim majority population in four decades.

Non-working Muslim men are burdening a welfare system designed to assist recipients with one spouse but not those having up to four, as Islam permits. Thus, benefits are being disproportionately drained by Muslim families and will unlikely be there later for native recipients who paid into the system.

The extent to which Muslims have taken advantage of the welfare system is personified by British-born Islamist cleric and ISIS supporter Anjem Choudary. While raking in welfare payments of US$43,000 annually-leaving him free to promote Islamic extremism-U.K. soldiers earn about half that amount to fight it. Meanwhile, Choudary encourages fellow Muslims to go on welfare telling them it is their entitlement to the tax non-Muslims must pay Muslims in accordance with sharia.

Unlike other immigrants who assimilate into the host country’s society, Islam prohibits it. Thus, no effort is made by Muslims to adopt U.K. laws and culture.

The growing Muslim influence has given birth to a second legal system in England-one in which native laws compete with a parallel system of sharia laws. Needless to say, sharia and native laws can mix no better than oil and water. As native laws seek to preserve independent freedoms, sharia seeks to eliminate them.

A U.K. Islamist group known as Muslims Against Crusades has made clear its intentions to turn twelve cities in the country into “Londonstan” to operate independently under sharia. As Independence Party leader Nigel Farage warns, multiculturalism has not united but divided Britons.

There have been claims the U.K.’s liberal leaders intentionally turned a blind eye to the growing Muslim population to increase its voter base. If so, liberals ignored the adage “be careful what you wish for.” They now suffer the consequences of doing so as their own individual rights are being threatened by a growing Muslim influence.

Perhaps finally recognizing its ship-of-state is in danger of hitting an Islamization island, England’s leadership has ordered all engines partially reversed by proposing tougher counter-terrorism laws.

While the laws must be approved by Parliament, they would arm the government with powers to meet the terrorist threat posed by Muslim extremists. Aimed primarily at cutting off the flow of extremists to and from Middle East battlefields via passport control, other measures seek to restrict stay-at-home extremist advocates such as Choudary.

Hate preachers do a lot to foment violence so denying them a pulpit from which to spew it is imperative. But as the government presses for such necessary laws to curtail jihadists and keep Britain safe, naïve civil liberties groups-who helped create the problem to begin with-are raising concerns the laws may be too harsh and open to abuse.

Meanwhile, the Church of England, which is not permitted to establish itself in most Muslim countries, foolishly invites Islamic extremists, such as Fuad Nahdi, to address its assembly. The title of Nahdi’s organization, “Radical Middle Way,” says it all. He promotes Islamic groups supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, which a former head of Britain’s intelligence agency M16 described as being, “at heart, a terrorist organization” itself. Nahdi also supports imposing sharia via armed jihad.

Ironically, as the British government works to isolate Islamist ideology, the Church works to legitimize it.

In the December 8, 2014 article “Britain’s Unrequited Love,” Douglas Murray wrote:  “The tradition of liberal tolerance, fostered in Britain, was one of the greatest gifts this country gave to the world. That inclusive tradition of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, however, always leaves itself open to abuse by people willing to use liberalism’s flaws – not least its tolerance of intolerance – to end liberalism.”

Murray went on to criticize the Church for seeking to include Quranic prayers in future coronation ceremonies-a courtesy neither respected nor returned by Muslims.

If the courtesy is extended, it would be interesting to see if such Church officials turn a deaf ear to Quranic verses such as, “Slay the infidel wherever you find them” or “Cast terror into the heart of the unbeliever…Smite at their neck.”

Britain is starting to recognize it has gone too far in allowing Islamic influence to spread unchallenged.

As for the rest of Europe, yes and no.

In the aftermath of the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo, France is taking some action against Islamic extremists. Unfortunately, while the German people also appear sensitive to this need, their leadership does not.

Other European countries, such as the Netherlands, foolishly open their doors to an ideology that will kill democracy. This is evidenced by politicians such as Geert Wilders who, endeavoring to forewarn about Islam’s deadly influence, are subjected to government criminal investigations for doing so.

Additionally, by establishing the first national Muslim political party, the Netherlands effectively sanctions the Islamization of its parliament. Claiming its goal is to create “a society in which everyone is treated equal,” this Muslim party neglects to add “only if you are Muslim with all others being subservient.” (In a clear violation of secularism, party members had previously demanded prayer spaces in the Parliament building.)

Denmark has committed $9 million over the next three years to fund de-radicalization programs focusing on getting help for returning jihadists and countering Islamist influence among children. Such soft-pedaled programs will have limited impact.

The realization in France the number of residents joining ISIS doubled in 2014 prompted the government to launch an anti-extremist video, promoting vigilance, to counter Islamists’ propaganda efforts using the internet as a recruiting tool. Such a video campaign ignores the fact by the time its target audience is old enough to understand the video, it has already been poisoned to accept violence rather than vigilance.

Norway, a country where its history and sacrifice of freedom under a World War II German invasion go unheeded, adopts a “head-in-the-sand” approach to Islamization. Norwegians believe the representations of Islamic leaders that theirs is a peaceful religion-ignorant that Islam encourages “taqqiya”-a practice allowing Muslims to lie to non-Muslims to further Islam’s goal of global domination.

In Thomas Sowell’s January 20, 2015 article “‘Diversity’ in Action,” he observed, “Europe is currently in the process of paying the price for years of importing millions of people from a culture hostile to the fundamental values of Western culture. And this is by no means the last of the installments of that price, to be paid in blood and lives, for smug elites’ Utopian self-indulgences in moral preening and gushing with the magic word ‘diversity.'”

While European states have their own cultural differences, they face the same Islamization problem as Muslim populations are prohibited by their religion from assimilating. Europe’s melting pot of yesteryear is non-existent, giving way to the rise of Muslim “no-go zones” in host countries. Whether Europe wants to admit it or not, it is in a fight for survival as violent Muslim minorities push to impose Islam upon host governments. Only a comprehensive effort by a united Europe can stop the consequences of Islamization’s advance at this point.

The U.K. is coming to recognize this, seeking support from its neighbor states to create new databases monitoring airline passengers entering and leaving Europe.

For the World War II ship that encountered an island in the Pacific during that nighttime battle, timely action was taken. Although coral was heard scraping against the bottom of the vessel, the command to reverse engines began taking the ship back out into deeper waters, avoiding disaster.

With civil liberty groups and the Church of England remaining so naïve about Islam and failing to grasp that a “diversity utopia” is impossible when two diametrically opposed interests clash-one relishing tolerance and freedom and one not-the fear is that the U.K. government may be reversing engines too late.

Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of “Bare Feet, Iron Will–Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields,” “Living the Juche Lie: North Korea’s Kim Dynasty” and “Doomsday: Iran–The Clock is Ticking.” He frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.