The inevitability of moral equivalence

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6053992.stm

It was with mounting excitement that I read this story on the BBC website. A member of the British government urging 'moderate' muslims to finally take responsibility for the treason and hatred being fomented in their name. But then, with the inevitability of death and taxes, came the moral equivalence. The far right, according to Ruth Kelly, are as dangerous and worrisome as the islamists. Really? When was the last time the far right blew anything up? Are the BNP and the NF plotting to do away with British law and replace it with their own version? How many of them are there? If you added up all the people who vote for the BNP and NF in the whole country, I bet it wouldn't top 50,000.

In that famous recent poll of the muslim population of Britain, 17% of those polled agreed with the agenda of the 7/7 bombers (and were willing to tell a pollster). We are told there are verging on 2 million muslims in Britain (although that is a highly politicised count), that means 323,000 muslims in Britain have the brutal and dangerous views of the world that caused the violent deaths of 60 people in London very recently.

But we are supposed to make an equivalence between the threat from those 323,000 and the 50,000 neo-fascists who haven't done anything worse than have public meetings and campaign for local government seats. What an utter load of bollocks.

A few weeks ago the papers reported that at the time of the Forest Gate anti-islamist raid, there were 21 ongoing investigations of active terror cells in Britain. Here is a plea to the media: stop minimising what is going on with the traitors in our midst. You are storing up a maelstrom for the future.