Frances Barber is true – Islamic Extremism is changing London past attractiveness
Channel 4’s documentary about British feminine Islamic State supporters proves that our capital is now not a byword for tolerance and variety
24 Nov 2015
On Sunday night, after the evening usual Theatre Awards, that excellent actress Frances Barber summoned an Uber automobile. When the taxi arrived, Barber seen pleasantly that it used to be a cold evening and the motive force answered that she shouldn’t be out alone at the moment and that she was “disgustingly dressed”. Barber tweeted that she was once so offended, she bought out, slammed the door and yelled:
I get uber out of old Vic & driver says as a lady I is just not on my own at night & i am disgustingly dressed. this is LONDON>
— frances barber (@francesbarber13) November 23, 2015
The irony is that, in contrast to one of the most younger stars, fifty eight-12 months-previous Barber used to be swathed in a black roll-neck and lengthy black skirt. Even the unsmiling invigilators of Sharia model Week would fight to seek out fault together with her outfit. imagine if, as an alternative of Barber, it was Salma Hayek who had bought into the Uber cab sporting that plunging white gown which constituted an enormous boob on two fronts. The negative little cabbie would have combusted with loathing and need.
Salma Hayek is a Mexican and American film actress. photograph: Larry Busacca/Getty pictures
That isn’t actually the point, though, is it? coated up or now not, Barber was once a lady out on her personal, naturally having a good time and – the shameless strumpet! – not carrying a black veil with a slit for her eyes. That was once sufficient to excite the displeasure of the motive force whose religious orientation i believe we can bet.
“this is LONDON” was Barber’s outraged response, a spot that is a byword for tolerance and diversity. And so it is.
but simply two hours away, some other nice metropolis was once below lockdown for the reason that authorities could no longer assure the security of its people. Astonishingly, consistent with one Belgian legit speaking (November 27, 2015) on Radio 4, the inhabitants of Brussels, the capital of Europe, is 40 per cent Muslim. Shell-bowled over politicians now admit there was perilously little integration. The icy Belgian air rings now not just with sirens, however with the sound of stable doorways being slammed shut.
A veiled British Muslim woman filmed via an undercover reporter. photograph: Channel 4
might it happen here? just 5 miles down the river from the outdated Vic, the place Frances Barber was once insulted for her gown (a hate crime, had it been the wrong way round), a Channel 4 undercover group has spent the previous 12 months filming a secret cell of Islamist women who preach hatred of the united kingdom and brainwash younger girls into journeying to Syria. On Monday evening, the shocking documentary, Isis: The British women Supporters Unveiled, identified three people known on Twitter as Umm Saalihah, Umm L and Umm Usmaan.
Arriving at the conferences like a flock of crows in their burqas, the ladies eliminated their veils and began what most definitely passes for a WI assembly in Raqqa. alas, as an alternative of a lecture on the little-known role of lemon curd in excessive explosives, Umm L explained to her target audience that what the federal government calls extremism – vocal opposition to British values, together with democracy – is “simply being a good Muslim”. She laughed at the futility of David Cameron’s counter-extremism plans and denounced “the audacity and vanity” of “filthy Jews”.
I flinched at one point when Umm’s daughter ran up and she or he broke off her tirade, telling the little lady to “search for your rucksack within the kitchen”. How might a mother enable her child to listen to such bile in regards to the position she was once born in and the place she goes to highschool? Britain, slightly clearly, was now not their united states, not when the Khilafah – the proper Islamic state – has been established in Syria.
Umm L is Rubana, a mom of four living in London and residing on the related deal with as a number one member of a banned extremist organization. photograph: Channel four picture: Channel 4
The three Umms have been all agreed that everybody should go to the Khilafah. everybody except folks that were a teeny bit tied up ranting towards the kuffar (non-Muslims) in London community centres paid for with lots of kilos of the kuffar’s taxes.
it might be pleasant to record that the Islamist women were as stupid as they have been blinkered and nasty, however they spoke just right English in educated voices. all of the worse to hear them sing the praises of men who provide a toddler a human head to carry. Warning: sensitive readers may want to take a seat down for the subsequent bit. When she isn’t slagging off Britain, Umm Usmaan is a careers adviser. sure, i do know. sample recommendation: “I’ve received just the profession for you. It’s a bit quick, however you indubitably go out with a bang.” increase boom!
Coming so soon after the massacres in Paris, the documentary was once depressing and frightening in equal measure. The one comfort was “Aisha”, a younger Muslim who bravely agreed to undercover agent on her sinister “sisters”. It followed a ballot in the sun which discovered that one in 5 British Muslims have “some or a number of sympathy” for youngsters who go away the uk to battle in Syria. There are question marks over the reliability of these figures, and about whether a slightly ambiguous query actually indicated a improve for Isil.
Parisian citizens grasp arms in solidarity after the fear attacks in the city. photo: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
however, there’s an uncomfortable echo of a dismaying Channel four poll of 2006 when 23 per cent of British Muslims mentioned that the July 7 London assaults may be justified as a result of the federal government’s give a boost to for “the war on terror”. To my data, no ballot to this point has answered the unambiguous and painful query: Why accomplish that many of our fellow voters hate us, and why can’t they are living in different places?
At one end of the belief spectrum, now we have the Umms with their fearsome, blood-curdling certainties. on the different is the Archbishop of Canterbury who admitted that the Paris assaults had “put a chink in his armour of religion”. So Isil has the Umms whereas the Church of England has the united statesand Ahs.
As WB Yeats prophesied in his great poem, The 2nd Coming: “the most effective lack all conviction, while the worst / Are filled with passionate intensity.” now could be in point of fact now not the fitting moment for the non secular chief of the Anglican Church to say he has doubts about the presence of God. we find doubt an extraordinarily horny, elastic high quality in our liberal, pluralistic society, but doubt is less just right for combatting males in black hoods bearing AK47s. Or ladies stirring up irrational hatred in Walthamstow.
The C of E this week professed itself “bewildered” after its advertisement featuring The Lord’s Prayer was banned from the united kingdom’s major cinemas. The advert, which is wistful and actually fairly lovely, presentations a selection of people – a farmer, a weighlifter, emergency workers, refugees, a main school assembly – all saying one line of that heavenly prayer. It incorporates the simple hashtag: #justpray. Cineworld and Vue chains claimed that it “consists of the chance of upsetting, or offending, audiences”.
It’s now not in fact a bewildering decision on their phase; Christianity is viewed as susceptible and irrelevant. The British public, they figure, can also be relied upon not to make a fuss. simply as we may also be relied upon to place up with Isil recruiters wearing the hateful, misogynist burqa and spitting in the face of our democracy, or taxi drivers calling women disgusting for the sin of being happy and free.
“that is LONDON,” said Frances Barber. no longer for for much longer it gained’t be, no longer if we continue to fulfill sure bet with doubt.
The three Umms should be arrested for inciting racial hatred. towards us. The Archbishop must man up, slap a patent on Christmas and deny permission for its use in any advert except the cinema chains relent. a variety of us haven’t prayed for relatively a while, but we can recognize the words when we need them: deliver us from evil.
Amen.
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