[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by SanteeFats

Is it time to start expelling Muslim extremists and those who are deemed to be a terrorist threat? There are so many Muslims on watch/do not fly lists in so many countries. Most do not seem to do much UNTIL they do. See France. Is it time to kick them out of their respective countries? Let them land wherever? Yes this seems racists for those who view it that way but face it - radical Muslims are the primary cause of death and destruction in today's world. Speak up people!!!

These are the times which try men's souls and all that. I am going to need to ask VEF brethren to post responsibly and to respect each other. There is not going to be a universally agreed position regarding recent tragic events and the underlying lessons to be taken from them. This is just a fact and we should start by knowing it.

I will attempt to answer this post systematically.

Is it time to start expelling Muslim extremists and those who are deemed to be a terrorist threat?...Is it time to kick them out of their respective countries? Let them land wherever?

No. No, it isn't. I realise many will disagree with me and I with them; they will have to suck it up and so will I.

• By what right do we "expell" people who were born here or who are naturalised British citizens? If I empty my rubbish bins onto my neighbour's lawn, I am behaving in an anti-social way and morally he would be quite entitled to key the paintwork on my brand new BMW. It is for each country to police its own scum and not to try to offload them onto someone else's country.
• By what right do we punish anyone just because we disapprove of who they are or what they think? Expulsion is a punishment; it used to be the second most extreme punishment used by the Vikings, who called it "Outlawry"; the next step up after outlawry was the Bloody Eagle, where they cracked open your chest while you were still alive and pulled out your lungs, making them look like an eagle's wings. If you are talking about expulsion for someone who has not been convicted of a crime, well, there have been precedents for this in Europe in the mid 20th Century. So; over my dead body.

There are so many Muslims on watch/do not fly lists in so many countries. Most do not seem to do much UNTIL they do.

I know a man who used to have to report to a police station once a month every month, exactly as though he were on parole after being released on a Life Sentence. Yet he had never committed a crime in his life, or at least never been caught. He had the same name as an IRA man very well known to British security forces. We need to be diligent and careful; but if we are merely paranoid, we'll end up watching all the wrong people and not being selective, not applying intelligence. The world is full of potentially naughty people and no police force in the world can watch them all; and if they could, do we want to live like that, with a Stasi-like police system?


On the whole, I think our societies work well as they are. But whereas blanket reprisals on the Muslim community will never sit well with me, I do think we could and should be far more aggressive in cracking down on anti-social conduct such as preaching Jihad and denouncing our values as a society while still wanting to live among us and ponce on our benefits. Anyone actively fostering trouble should be trodden on hard, and we have laws for that already. Why is it only today that the scumbag Abu Hamza al Masri has received a whole-of-life sentence in a New York court for his terrorist activities, going back 25 years, for which the British Crown Prosecution Service has had the same evidence the Americans had and never taken action? We have to be far more willing to prosecute and to be seen looking for activists such as Hamza, arresting them, going after them, making them fear us. For the general run of Muslims in the UK I have no problems with them as a community. For anyone who acts against our laws and who actively undermines our values, and I dont care who they are, what religion or colour; anyone who chooses to act as our enemy, I'm quite relaxed about making such persons afraid.


But punishments, whatever these are, are the rightful preserve of the guilty.