It appears that the security and order situation in the UK is likely to get a whole lot worse than it has been. The centre of politics is not holding, in anything like the way it had in previous decades and the centrists are instead being blamed for being the architects of many of our current problems. This has meant that Britons, frustrated with the current political settlement, are drawing themselves into tribes and sometimes into the political extremes of both the nationalist Right and the anti-nationalist Left. Such extremism is rarely any sort of long term good for any society. We are also seeing a significant rise in Islamic extremism and movements arising to counter that rise in religious extremism. What we now have is the sort of political environment that helped to give the world the Lebanon of the late 1970’s with all that that entailed. None of this is good.
I look into my metaphorical crystal ball and I see conflict and what’s worse it’s conflict that could have been avoided by governments taking different decisions about migration, integration, welfare, housing, the economy and much much more. I still pray with all my heart and all my might that such a conflict might be avoided but I can’t see conflict of some form or another being completely avoided. I can see plenty of scenarios that could turn nasty. One of those scenarios is this: We could have a Reform government elected in 2029, or earlier if the Labour government collapses and that would immediately create its own opposition from the far left who would be assisted in their opposition by the Islamist elements that have attached themselves to that far left. Knowing what I know about the Left, being someone who used to be on the Left, I doubt that the bulk of that leftist opposition would be Parliamentary and would instead be very much extra-parliamentary. Reform would also face opposition from a hostile Civil Service, which Reform with their lack of detailed policy plans or experience of the machinery of government, might be ill equipped to face.
We could have a situation where we have a government that is fighting opposition on two fronts both on the street and in the ‘adminisphere’ and in such a situation it would be quite easy for a government to lose control of security. As of 2024 there were 170,000 police officers in the UK although not all of them might be in operational front line roles nor trained for such roles. Britain also has 180,000 members of the armed forces on the payroll but again not all of them will be front line and many of them may be fully committed to their current roles and therefore not available for emergencies. There may not be enough uniformed personnel in the UK to manage if Britain had a serious security emergency. We can get inklings of this lack of capacity by merely looking at the pro-Hamas hate marches that have sucked in police officers from around the country into London, in order to allow the Metropolitan Police to attempt (not always successfully) to carry out normal day to day policing in the capital. The use of such back up from county forces to the Met is not sustainable in the long term. It would also not be sustainable for the Met to be backing up county forces on a regular basis either.
If even the Hate Marches have stretched our major police forces, then how much worse could things be if we had a government that was in a position of fighting Lefty / Islamist aligned groups on the street, plus dealing with a quasi-treasonous revolt from the Civil Service and from various Quangos? It could all end up being very nasty indeed and it’s the sort of nastiness that I’ve consistently worried about and warned about and why I’ve encouraged a peaceful political solution to Britain’s problems. The opposite of a political solution to serious problems is often much worse (see Lebanon circa 1977 for more details) than any just political solution.
When security and trust break down so does society and when a society breaks down people take sides, often not out of choice but out of necessity. People will cleave to the side that they perceive offers them the most security and they might well do that by using the most base or simplistic of reasons such as skin colour, religion, or town or city of origin. Those of us who remember the football hooliganism of the seventies and eighties know that there is a massive power in being part of a tribe and back then people were getting beaten up and stabbed merely for being seen as part of a different ‘crew’ or ‘firm’ or just being a random supporter of an opposing team. The tribalism became an excuse for recreational violence that some indulged in to the extreme. Those who took part in hooliganism at football more or less volunteered to be involved, but in the event of a civil conflict, choice might not matter, a person will most likely be forced to run for protection to members of their own race or faith or other affinity group out of desperation for protection for themselves and their families.
In situations such as this nuance and thoughtfulness get forgotten or put aside. People will start to make “friend or foe” judgements on the basis of race or religion or whatever and forget that ultimately we are all individuals and made that way, as some of us believe, by G-d. If you think that the current levels of self-segregation that is going on amongst the majority and minorities is bad enough at the moment then just imagine how much worse things would be if there was some sort of societal and security breakdown? There’s a very famous image by the photographer Don McCullin (linked below) showing a group of Lebanese Christians in 1976 playing musical instruments and mocking the dead Palestinian girl who lay at their feet. Yes I know the history of Lebanon and I know the ‘Palestinians’ did a lot to destablilise Lebanon, but this image for me encapsulates the intensity and hatefulness of social and civil breakdown and conflict. If all goes wrong then that could be a scene being played out in London or Manchester or Birmingham or Cardiff or Glasgow or any other myriad places in Britain. It could be Moslems mocking dead Christians or Christians and atheists mocking dead Moslems, but whatever way you look at it, things could get more nasty more quickly that many might like to believe.
Now I get to the meat and potatoes of what I want to say. As people cleave to their own group or where they feel most secure in a collapsing society, there are going to be those who don’t ‘fit’ but who are worthy of protection. One specific group I worry about in such a situation are Britain’s ex-Moslems. If people start to divide up into affinity groups based on crude categorisations of race and faith or origin then what happens to those people who have done what is sadly a seriously brave thing and abandoned Islam, often after much thought and much study of Islamic texts and scripture? If we do have some sort of societal breakdown, then these ex-Moslems will be in extreme danger. They will be in danger primarily from Moslems themselves, they know, we know and the ex-Moslems know that Islam when practised in its fundamental form, has the death penalty for apostacy.
Ex-Moslems may also be in danger from elements of the majority population in a situation where security has broken down and everyone’s become dangerously tribal. There could be suspicion of ex-Moslems, sometimes on the grounds of skin colour and if people are frightened enough to want to cleave closely to their own racial or religious affinity groups for protection, then these ex-Moslems might face rejection, or worse. One thing that I learned over the years about people, and especially people in large groups at demos or various bits of public disorder I’ve seen, is that frightened people do stupid things. I’ve seen people at demos frightened of the prospect of a police horseback charge and who therefore might take up defensive positions or grab makeshift weapons or rile up more of the crowd because of that fear. It didn’t matter that the horseback charge wasn’t really coming, but people forgot to think about whether a horseback charge was likely because of fear and then did stupid stuff, including stupid stuff that really would create a horseback charge situation. On approaching the majority community for protection in a social breakdown situation, ex-Moslems might have the misfortune to meet people stupified by fear and whose reactions are controlled by that fear.
If things go bad, we should not succumb to the sort of fears that make us reject those who have chosen to abandon Islam. They face death at the hands of an Islam that is unchained from both reason and mercy. They would have nowhere else to go but to where the non-Moslems are. If everything falls apart, we should remember the existence of our moral compasses and thereby protect the ex-Moslems. It is what we should be doing anyway. After all, by living in a culture where people have the right to have a religion or be free from religion, the ex-Moslems have chosen the culture that we have created. For that reason alone they should be protected, both from the nutcases in our own society and from the Moslems who want them dead.
There are thousands upon thousands of ex-Moslems out there across the world and the number of those who refuse the ideology of Mohammed is growing daily. But it is only in the West, only in places like the United Kingdom and the United States and to a lesser extent some other nations, where ex-Moslems can be truly free. They cannot be free in Pakistan for example, or in Afghanistan or Sudan or Northern Nigeria or Bangladesh or Indonesia but they can be free in Britain today. If we protect our ex-Moslems both now and if needed during some future time of unease, then not only are we staying true to our culture of religion as choice but also maybe helping ourselves by keeping our humanity and not becoming that which we may despise. To quote Oskar Schindler towards the end of Schindler’s List when he addressed the young SS guards at his camp who’d been given orders to liquidate the inmates if the camp was threatened, he said ‘you can leave as men or murderers it’s your choice’ at which point the SS men turned and walked out. Those SS men, as indoctrinated as they were, decided that they would not do that which was clearly morally wrong. We must also not do what is morally wrong and not reject those who reject Islam and we should protect them from those who mean them very serious harm.
It’s difficult to predict the future and sometimes something comes along that changes both a person’s perception of the world and indeed the course of history itself. Back in the late 1990’s I would never have predicted the global explosion in jihadism nor would I have predicted the rise of populism in Europe. However just about a decade later when I was marketing a product to a group of gay Moslems and trying to build links between LGB Moslems and LGB Christians I noticed that there was the need to have a police officer standing guard outside the venue in order to protect the gay Moslems from their more extreme co-religionists. There was no need to have a police officer outside of a similar meeting at a church and at that time, maybe it’s different now, there would be no need for a police officer at a meeting of LGB Jews. A decade between there being no jihad in my locality to having gay Moslems needing police guards, that’s all the time it took for one particular worrying situation to arise in the UK. I also never predicted the rise of populism or the rejection of the EU by the UK population, nor did I foresee the disaster created by Germany’s second worst Chancellor Angela Merkel or the collective brainfart that is gender ideology.
Because I’ve been caught out by stuff that I did not or could not predict, I’ve become a little wary of saying without evidence that this or that might happen. But there seems to be sufficient evidence now to say that there is a distinct possibility that British society could fall apart. The economic, social, communal and other problems are stacking up like logs on a massive chaotically built bonfire. Every day more fuel seems to be being added and some elements in society are in addition throwing some petrol on that stack of logs for their own reasons. I’d say, based on reading stuff from Professor David Betz of King’s College London, various other similar writers and observing what’s being said online and in real life, that there is a 20 to 25% chance of Britain ending up in some form of conflict within the next decade. How serious the problems of such a conflict might be is very hard to predict. It could be a relatively low level of disorder such as we saw in Ulster during the Troubles or it could be full on Lebanon in the late 1970’s. We don’t know but it could be nasty either way.
Even in our stress and fear, we’ve got to stay human. Even if circumstances force us to become tribal, we shouldn’t reject those who’ve chosen us and our way of life, we shouldn’t throw away the ability to make nuanced judgements and thoughtful decisions. We should continue to see people as individuals rather than as a representative or perceived representative of a group, even if that group has become a generalised subject of emnity. I don’t want the storm but I can see the dark clouds gathering ominously on the horizon. I want decency and honour among individuals to be able to weather that storm. Let us hope and pray that it does.
Links
Professor David Betz on the increasing chances of civil disorder in the Westminster
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west
Don McCullin article featuring his famous Beirut shot of Christian militia members mocking a deat Moslem girl.
If you are British and are leaving the ideology of Islam then the Ex Muslims of Britain organisation may be able to help you.