UNWANTED GUESTS

In the 1953 version of War of the Worlds there's a scene in which a preacher breaks cover to greet the aliens hoping to show them, through his peaceful approach, that they have nothing to fear. I can't imagine anyone watching the scene develop without thinking, "don't do it you idiot, you can't make friends with them, they're going to kill you".

Now, Islamists aren't from Mars and they don't have death-ray armed spaceships but they're perfectly willing to kill us and would use the death-rays on us if they had them. Despite the Islamists' obviously sinister intentions some in Britain are conflicted as to how to handle them, as Nick Cohen reports in The Observer:

A few weeks ago, Harriet Harman was holding a surgery for her Peckham constituents. As always, it was an open house, and every variety of south Londoner was coming to her office. She had dealt with the usual run of complaints and appeals when the door opened and for the first time in her life Harman confronted authentic anti-democrats.

If she had been less startled, she might have seen the funny side. The members of Hizb ut-Tahrir hated democracy and all that went with it - secularism, the separation of church and state, the emancipation of women. It's not just that they would establish a dictatorship if they came to power, the successor parties to the communists and the fascists would do that. The Islamists regarded it as sinful to stand in elections or even vote.

Yet here were totalitarians and misogynists going to a woman democratic politician and begging her to persuade Tony Blair not to take authoritarian measures against their authoritarian sect. The scene could have been bettered only if Harman had been a Jewish lesbian.

In fact, she is a courteous and patient politician. She listened politely to what they had to say and the more she heard the more despairing she became. As they were leaving, she said, 'you're British citizens. Shouldn't you try to play a part in British society?'

'We're not a part of British society,' they told her. 'We stay here like guests in a hotel.'

Harman didn't know how to respond, and I'm not sure I do either.

I reckon the Hizb ut-Tahrir guy has it wrong: they're not guests at a hotel, they're guests in our house. No one in his right mind would have a potential murderer as a house guest, now would he?

Anyway, what makes this really pathetic is that Cohen, unlike the preacher in War of the Worlds, knows what's in store for us but still wants to accommodate in order to be seen to do the right thing. That sort of attitude could get us all killed.