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Terrorism and Community Relations

: Indeed. No doubt in the blinkered view of someone like that, the person who got the nomination would, in any case, qualify as an honorary man. I return to the essential point. We must hope that it will not be too long before political debate is carried on between members of the Muslim community in different parties with total disregard for their common religion. It is essential for any incoming ethnic minority community—even more so for their descendants who are born and brought up in this country—to realise that the political process is wide open to them. If people in the Muslim community feel that a double standard is applied to Muslim societies abroad in comparison with Israeli societies, the answer is not to go around attacking Jews in this country, but to get themselves into the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties, or any other party that appeals to them, and get themselves elected to this place. We are experiencing the perennial problem of how a tolerant society should deal with intolerant minorities, without debasing its own values. I have quoted, and will continue to quote, the wise words of the late Sir Karl Popper, who said, in his paradox of tolerance, that we should tolerate all but the intolerant, because if we tolerate the intolerant, the conditions for toleration disappear and the tolerant go with them. That is why parties such as ours have had reluctantly to give our approval to certain measures, introduced in the House only yesterday, that we would normally never dream of implementing in a free society. We have to remember that a minority of fanatics have declared war on our free society, and that when a war is declared, some freedoms have to be limited to ensure that that war is not lost, and that all freedoms are not abrogated. We should be considering how the Muslim community in this country can learn from how the Jewish community in this country gradually evolved, got itself involved with the political process and was able to strike a balance between understandable historic links with the background of certain countries and cultures and the decision taken by its people to make their lives in British society of the present and future. Finally, if the threat is to be defeated, that will have to be through a combination of resilience by society, a refusal by the majority Muslim community to be seduced by the fanatics, and security work by the intelligence agencies. Those agencies can succeed only if members of the Muslim community who share liberal values and love freedom get involved in intelligence work to ensure that their good name and the good name of their community are not further sullied by the activities of a fanatical minority.