Peter Hitchens has slammed the ‘dangerous’ discussion of Islam as ‘some kind of nameless threat’ amid the violent riots that have exploded in the wake of the Southport stabbings.
The columnist joined Andrew Pierce on the Mail’s talk show, The Reaction, to discuss the storm that erupted over false claims that the 17-year-old boy accused of murdering three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed party was a Muslim.
Fake claims that the suspect, now named as Axel Rudakubanu, was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK on a boat have fuelled riots in Southport, London, Manchester and Hartlepool this week.
Rudakubana, charged with three counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder, was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents in 2006 before his family relocated in 2013 to the quiet Lancashire village of Banks – a 15 minute drive from Southport.
The Reaction host Andrew said: ‘It occurred to me that while people were raging that potentially this boy might be Muslim, actually when you look at the religious breakdown of Rwanda, 92 per cent of Rwanda is regarded as Christian.’
Peter replied: ‘It’s a really strange thing that are people using the word Muslim in this way.
RAW VIDEO CODE 3244413 Peter Hitchens: ‘Dangerous’ to discuss Islam as a ‘nameless threat’
Peter Hitchens (pictured) has slammed the ‘dangerous’ discussion of Islam as ‘some kind of nameless threat’ amid the violent riots that have exploded in the wake of the Southport stabbings
There were riots outside a mosque in Southport after the stabbing frenzy which claimed the lives of three young girls
Southport stabbing suspect Axel Rudakubana, now 17, pictured as a child, is charged with murdering three little girls and harming 10 others
‘I am a practicing, communicative Christian member of the Church of England. I differ on large and important theological matters with Muslims, and in fact, rather enjoy discussing it with them.
‘And I’ve had many, many conversations, including in that strange programme I took part in last year, in which I was in a pretend prison.
‘One of my cellmates was a very serious Muslim, and we discussed it a lot, and at one point we ended up praying alongside each other.
‘I take Islam very seriously as a faith… I don’t welcome some of its precepts, particularly its attitude towards women. But the way in which so many people now speak of it as if it was some kind of nameless threat seems to be dangerous and also possibly coded for something else.
‘And I think that we have to recognise that we now have brothers and sisters living in our society who have a different religion from the one that we may have grown up with.’
Responding to Andrew suggesting that the ‘M word is a term of pejorative abuse’ for some people, Peter said: ‘There is that. And then there is the suggestion that someone, because their Muslim is perhaps more given to taking part in terrorist acts than other people.
‘And of course there have been Islamist terrorists, and there will be Islamist terrorists again.
‘But I think that to jump from that to this sort of wider suspicion and attitude seems to me to be a mistake, a very large mistake.’
Andrew said that the anger on the streets of Southport was ‘stirred up by deliberate misinformation on the internet’, adding: ‘They even invented names for the alleged assailant.
The Reaction host continued: ‘People in some of these communities where there is a very large ethnic population feel the integration hasn’t happened, and they feel they’re strangers in their own towns and cities. And that is a big problem, and that’s going to get worse.’
Peter agreed, saying that this has ‘political causes’ including the ‘encouragement of multiculturalism by the British state’ particularly in areas such as education.
He said that this has sometimes led to former communities ‘living in separate solitudes with their backs turned upon one another’.
‘And that is undoubtedly a grave political and social mistake which needs to be put right and which we we have to face,’ he added.
‘But it doesn’t in any way excuse the sort of behaviour which we saw in Southport.’
Rudakubana appeared in Liverpool Crown Court today charged with the three murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine.
The teenager is also accused of attempting to kill eight children, along with dance teacher Leanne Lucas, 35, and businessman John Hayes.
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