Here’s a snippet from the Guardian that should give some cause to concern for a few readers of this site.
“Among those who would be considered extreme under those plans are those who advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries; those promoting Sharia law; and those who believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world.
This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military and those who fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
It’s from a collection of articles looking at New Labour’s “grass up a Muslim” strategy which they’ve rebranded as “preventing violent extremism.”
To be honest it’s got me a bit worried. To the suspicious eye château Mac Uaid is a bit of an archive of violent extremism. In the living room there’s a carved Celtic cross dedicated to Ireland’s patriot dead made by a relative who had a lot of time on his hands in Long Kesh a while ago. Looking through the DVDs there’s Michael Collins starring Liam Neeson in which a lot of violent extremists kill British soldiers and Julia Roberts massacres an Irish accent. A few discs along is The Wind That Shakes the Barley which features a lot of violent extremists failing to condemn the deaths of British soldiers. Then there’s that DVD my sister lent me which I haven’t watched yet about the history of the junior violent extremists in the Fianna.
The cd collection is worse. Michael Mac Liammoir’s album of speeches from Irish history has traitor to the English crown Robert Emmet’s speech vindicating violent extremism. Track two is violent extemist Padraic Pearse’s speech over the grave of violent extremist O’ Donovan Rossa. Rummaging through there’s a compilation of songs recorded in the 70s and 80s about the H blocks which were jammed full of violent extremists and that box set of Christy Moore has all sorts of eulogies to violent extremists. Gosh even the Dubliners have a song about blowing up Nelson’s column in their home town.Sometimes that stuff even sneaks into the house without your knowledge. What could be less violently extreme than buying a three cd compilation of folk music with Lindisfarne and Gerry Rafferty? Then you discover some bugger has slipped in Dominic Behan’s version of The Patriot Game which actively condones shooting cops. Oh yeah, and there’s those NWA albums.
But Jesus that’s nothing compared to what’s on the bookshelves. Books on the IRA in the Belfast pogroms of the 1920s, another half dozen histories of the IRA plus a copy of its standing orders bought from Amazon, biographies of violent extremists De Valera, Collins, Connolly, Mellows and god knows who else plus a little book on Milltown cemetery looking at IRA graves.
That’s just the Irish stuff. Loads of books about the conquest of the Americas by violent religious extremists from Spain. Volumes by and about Che Guevara, Trotsky, Giap. Even the European books are full of violent extremists. At least the ones about the French Revolution are fairly free from religion but that Oliver Cromwell was one seriously violent god botherer so a lot of the books on English history are full of extremism. Blimey to make it worse yesterday I received the DVD of the film Winstanley about a violent extremist who got on the wrong side of Cromwell.
Let’s not forget the biographies of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. None of them turned their noses up at either violence or extremism.
Should I take it all down to the nearest police station and hand myself in or throw it all in the nearest skip?
Or should I just be grateful that I’m not a young Muslim who can’t get excited by New Labour?
Liam redux 
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