Toby Young Islamophobia Busted

To no surprise at all, Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, far from being downcast over the backlash from the exposure of the Muslim-bashing agenda in articles such as “1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ Sympathy For Jihadis”, and “6 days to terror”, have just carried on going after followers of The Prophet. The only difference with Yesterday’s effort was that they enlisted the services of the loathsome Toby Young.

More grown-up comment from the loathsome Tobes

Perhaps they thought that roping in Tobes would afford them a veneer of respectability, as he has been bunged an eight-figure sum of taxpayers’ money to set up and run his West London Free School. They thought wrong: the resultant article, “If you don’t like Britain being Christian ... leave” is as cheap and nasty as the rest of the Sun’s drivel.

Tobes begins by diverting his readers’ attention: “ACCORDING to a new report, the time has come for us to abandon Christianity as the official religion of the United Kingdom … The authors - High Court judges, professors of theology, a retired BBC executive and the general secretary of the Muslim Council of Great Britain - argue Britain has become such a pluralist, multi-faith society in the past 30 years it no longer makes sense for us to define ourselves as a Christian nation”. Then he slips in the M-word.

“The fact that Britain contains fewer practising Christians than it did ten years ago … is not a good reason to abandon our Christian heritage … If you compare the 2012 Census to the 2001 Census, it’s true that the number of English and Welsh citizens describing themselves as Muslims has increased and the number of Christians has declined”. Why start banging on about Muslims? Who suggested that as an alternative to Christianity?

Well, Tobes did: “But Muslims comprise only five per cent of the population and Christians make up 59 per cent — still the majority … Even if non-Christians outnumbered Christians, as they may before long, that wouldn’t be a good reason for the State to sever all links with the church”. Ah, the Scary Muslims (tm) are coming to get us.

“If Britain was to abandon its Christian heritage, it would be chalked up as a victory by … fanatics”. Nobody is suggesting any part of Britain’s heritage be abandoned. This may be because what has been inherited cannot merely be abandoned. One might have expected someone who runs his own Free School to understand this concept.

What Tobes certainly does understand is how to inject a little paranoia into proceedings: “The authors of the report want to stamp out Christianity in Britain’s schools, outlawing faith-based admissions policies”. Removing a faith-based admissions policy does not “stamp out” Christianity, or indeed any other religion. And then comes the real nastiness.

“It is inevitable some of the values we already think of as British, such as Parliamentary democracy, religious tolerance and equality before the law, will be rejected by some religious groups … 27 per cent of British Muslims said they had some sympathy for the terrorists who murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and 80 per cent said they find it deeply offensive when images depicting the Prophet are published”

That is a blatant false equivalence. And Tobes then doubles down: “How can we defend principles such as freedom of expression if all minorities, however out of step with the mainstream, are given a right of veto when it comes to defining British values?” Nobody is suggesting anyone be given a “right of veto”, certainly not on the questions of “Parliamentary democracy, religious tolerance and equality before the law”, all of which, far from being part of a centuries-old “heritage”, are comparatively recent concepts.

Toby Young is either stupid - the possibility exists, but in this case I doubt it - or he is writing to order, punctuating his gentle examination of suggestions that the link between Church and State should no longer hold with occasional shouts of “IF THIS GOES AHEAD, IT MEANS MUSLIMS IN CONTROL OF US ALL”.

In the 47 years since Enoch Powell gave his infamous speech talking of “The black man having the whip hand over the white man”, it seems that, for some pundits, little has changed. Except that Powell, however warped his worldview, was a genuine and learned intellectual. And Toby Young, sad to say, is not.

If Tobes is so desperate for money, that is his problem. It should not be allowed to become everyone else’s. If he doesn’t like that, of course, he could always just leave.