Get Tough on Terror: Round up Jihadists and Bigots

By AM Thursday, September 11, 2014

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TPQ regular John Coulter with another of his Irish Daily Star column.

Swap Islamic jihadists in Ireland and Britain for persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

There’s no doubt Ireland and Britain as two leading Christian nations could play a major role in preventing the whole scale massacre of Christians, especially by radicals from the militant Islamic State movement.

But it has to be a two-way process. For every Middle Eastern Christian refugee who is given safety in Ireland or Britain, a clearly identified Islamic radical should be sent packing to ISIS territory.

Ireland not only has an obligation as a Christian nation to ‘do its bit’ to help Christian refugees, it must also provide protection for decent muslims living on the Emerald Isle who want nothing to do with jihadist Islam.

Stereotyping can have very dire consequences; just ask Pastor James McConnell, the outspoken cleric who is retiring from North Belfast’s Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle.

He branded Islam ‘satanic’ and ‘heathen’ during a filmed sermon.

Surely the muslims who serve with dignity and dedication in the security forces of Britain, Ireland and the United States are not ‘satanic’?

As a Christian myself, I have had meals on several occasions with Muslim members of the Egyptian Society of Northern Ireland.

There’s no way any of these folks could be labelled ‘satanic’ That’s akin to branding all Catholics as IRA terrorists, or all Protestants as backing the heinous crimes of the UVF Shankill Butchers gang.

But the hard reality is that we need to protect our democratic society from jihadists, whether they be from the Islamic State, or the so-called supporters of the Ku Klux Klan waging racist attacks on migrant workers in Belfast.

Surely the intelligence community in Ireland has enough facts to implement a round-up of radicals who can be deported from these shores?

Unfortunately, mention the ‘I’ word – internment – and it immediately conjures up the notorious images of British troops and police rounding up republicans and loyalists in 1971 based on outdated intelligence.

Let’s not beat about the bush – we need the immediate internment of Islamic jihadists and white racist supremacists across Ireland and bung them in a new-look Maze jail, near Lisburn.

The terror threat from jihadists has reached such a fever pitch that Ireland radically needs its own version of the Yanks’ Guantanamo Bay to hold suspected Islamic extremists.

And security forces must also know who is suspected to be orchestrating racist attacks across the North. These racist suspects need to be interned, too.

While Pastor McConnell has apologised for his initial remarks on Islam, the damage may already have been done.

As even more Christians get butchered in the Middle East by Islamic radicals, unfortunately it is only a matter of time before racist bigots begin targeting Ireland’s steadily growing Muslim community.

Such bigots quickly move on to other people they deem to be ‘the enemy’. That’s why the crisis has to be nipped in the bud before it becomes a social epidemic.

During World War Two, the British interned anyone with fascist or Nazi sympathies. And it should not be forgotten it was the British who invented the concept of the concentration camp during the 19th century Boer Wars in Southern Africa.

Ireland has an impeccable record for sending both cash aid and Christian missionaries across the globe.

Just as Ireland helped the Vietnamese boat people in their time of crisis in the late 20th century, the island must continue this Christian spirit by extending the hand of help to the Middle East’s Christian community.

To Enda Kenny and Peter Robinson I say – forget fancy rhetoric, let the round-up of Islamic radicals and racist bigots begin!