I am not here to defend the poppy burners. No, I am as thoroughly offended by their actions as I'm sure the vast majority of you are. My family has a strong military background on my father's side and it would be entirely ignorant and hypocritical of me to defend the actions of those who burned poppies on Thursday.
Nevertheless, I have offended several people with my (perhaps poorly worded) view on the issue and feel I have to explain myself fully before I can be forgiven. My view is that -no matter how blinkered and stupid and unfounded the views of the Thursday extremists are- we must all feel immensely proud that their views were able to be so freely expressed. I believe that, in order to maintain our dignity, we must come to understand and empathise with the poor logic and misguided fury which prompted these Islamist extremists to take to the streets with intent to offend. Finally, I believe that we must above all realise and actively reinforce the undeniable fact that this protest has no firm basis in Islam and is the result of jingoistic generalisations made by hateful fringe-groups.
Understand the protesters? Surely there's no possible justification for their actions? Surely these people are monsters? Yes, quite. It may be impossible to justify the protests but we must must take the time to consider and understand the motives that drove them, otherwise we risk becoming as ignorant and bigoted as the protesters themselves and... well I'll talk about that part later. Just like every murder, every drug addiction, every theft, every crime or wrongdoing ever to take place, these protests have motive; they have their own driving force and their own brand of insane logic. This insane logic is similar to what drives the BNP and the EDL, as well as the Daily Mail, The Sun and The Daily Express. This insane logic, especially when furiously and clumsily pointed out by me on Thursday, is offensive and unpleasant in the most disgusting and contemptible way possible. It is the insane logic of generalisation.
Let me explain: the England Defence League (a violent and despicable far right protest group) is driven by generalisation in that they believe that ALL Moslems share the beliefs of the extreme factions in their number. They believe that it is Islam that is responsible for 9/11 and 7/7 and the Madrid bomb attacks and the deaths of British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq; they think that all Moslems are to be held entirely responsible for these inhumane and violent attacks and they could not be more wrong. Similarly (unfortunately this is the most difficult part to explain to people, so please approach with an open mind) these right-wing Moslem extremists are driven by the belief that the entirety of the British and American military coalition is responsible for the disgusting and unjustifiable actions whereby a small number of coalition soldiers (perhaps members of Islamophobic groups such as the EDL) tortured and killed innocent civilians in Afghanistan. This torture, I believe (bracing myself for the flurry of hate-mail and death threats that so naturally flow from my “unorthodox” views) is no less despicable than the 7/7 attacks and, as with racist British groups and their treatment of 7/7 and 9/11, has been used as a generalisation for all British troops. And so we return to the protests of Remembrance day, which were undeniably flawed in their reasoning, but no more wrong nor illegal than protests by the EDL and the BNP. Consider that when you hear about such protests, and I pray you view the EDL with as much contempt as you do the extremists, because they deserve it just as much.
Speaking of the EDL, a much-ignored facet of the story was the EDL presence at the scene. “What?” I hear you say, “the EDL weren't mentioned in the news story I read!” But the EDL were there in number, pushing their own diabolical brand of insufferable bigotry. It just tends to be neglected by the tabloids because, y'know, it wouldn't make as good a story that Britons, good old white Christian-and-atheist Britons, were being to vile as to sully the memory of our brave soldiers. They were there, as they always seem to be, goading and baiting the Islamists, being just as disrespectful -maybe more disrespectful- to the memories of the dead.
I suppose that leads me to a rather abrupt conclusion, as I feel I have nothing much more to say. Except maybe this: next time this happens, as I fear it may, don't just post “What those Islam extremists did was sickening” and have done with it. Remember the EDL, and include them in your Facebook bile, because I bet they'll have been there too, stirring and spitting and defiling the memories of those who gave their lives for your freedom.
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