My Brother the Islamist: the Tears of a loving Mother

In watching BBC3’s ‘My Brother the Islamist’ this evening, I was deeply moved. Not by the story of the filmmaker getting back in touch with his Islamist convert brother and trying to understand his motivations, but by the love of a mother for her son. For most of us, the Dorset town of Weymouth will forever hold happy associations, and what we saw this evening will not, thankfully, displace those positive sentiments. Such a place, idyllic as it is, and largely removed from those negative changes that have so blighted urban England in recent decades, has not, so it seems, managed to insulate itself entirely from the malign influence of Islam.

Robb Leech made this film largely in an attempt to try and comprehend what it was that had motivated his half brother – Rich – to convert to Islam and join with Anjem Choudary’s band of anti-English anti-rationalist Islamist malcontents. The fact that the two had grown up together in what appeared to be a happy and conventional middle-class background in an English seaside town, gives lie to the claims that jihadists are motivated to attack our society because of relative deprivation and ‘racism’: what was driving Rich – now the self-styled Salahuddin – to hate his family and his country was one thing and one thing only: the poisonous ideology of Islam.

At the time of the documentary’s inception, Rich was a recent Muslim convert who had moved to London two years earlier, and converted to Islam only six months before filming began. Since moving away and converting, Rich had come to hate and denounce everything that his family and native society stand for. Strangely, in the short period that he had lived in London, he had lost all trace of a Dorset or conventional English accent, and had acquired instead the peculiar pretentious lilt of the East London (Bangladeshi?) Muslim. This was not touched upon in the documentary, but I suspect that he was not always possessed of such a manner of speaking. He had come to fall in with Anjem Choudary’s jihadist group, which had recently rebranded itself as ‘Muslims Against Crusades’, and had taken part in two provocative demonstrations in 2010: one in Barking, and the other outside of the American Embassy in London. At the age of 27, Rich, now the self-styled Salahuddin, had become an advocate of global jihad and would only speak to his brother and allow the documentary to be made for the sake of Dawah. The fact that he would only shake hands with his brother using the hand that he used to clean his backside was something which, not unnaturally, caused his brother a degree of angry irritation.

It must be hugely upsetting for Rich’s parents to have seen their son undergo what appears to be a mental breakdown, and to have experienced his purposeful estrangement from them. He seems however, to be a lost cause. Worryingly, a seemingly likeable Weymouth lad named Ben, a mere 17 years old, had allowed something rather more sinister than death metal or the latest youth subculture to take a hold on his tractable young mind, for he had instead chosen to convert to Islam. This is the aspect of the documentary that I found the most worrying, for it seemed as if Robb Leech had actively introduced Ben to his elder brother, taking him to London to meet and stay with members of Muslims Against Crusades. As a consequence, Ben became less likeable as the programme progressed, as it became evident that this change of milieu served to solidify and intensify his sense of estrangement from English culture and his mother, whilst strongly reinforcing his self-identification as a Muslim; so much so, that he had his foreskin removed at the East London Mosque. Perhaps Robb Leech hadn’t given this introduction much thought at the time, but I do not think that this was an ethical thing to have done with an evidently highly impressionable teenager.

Ben’s mother – Maggie – struck me as a loving, supportive and very worried mother. Her upset was palpable, and as her son spoke in front of her, repeatedly stating his belief in the superiority of the Islamic doctrine of hate and misogyny, tears welled up in her eyes. As her tears flowed, so too did mine. How must she feel? How would you feel, if one of your children embraced the evil of Islam and turned against you? Every word he said must have smarted and stung. Evidently not wanting to lose him, and deep down hoping that one day he will grow out of this highly damaging and negative phase, she did her best to put a brave face on the situation. Maggie, I hope for your sake and for everyone else’s, that your Ben awakens from this nightmare soon, and comes to see what he has gone through as an uncharacteristic aberration, rather than continuing in his current vein and doing something dangerously stupid.

Why is this happening in our society? Islam has no place here. The fault lies with the education system and the mass media which indoctrinate our children into ethnic self-hatred, whilst elevating other peoples and cultures above our own, and deeming it only permissible to say positive things (i.e. lies) about Islam. Why is Islam finding converts? Because our political class cares not for the well-being of the indigenous people of this country and allows Islam to flourish. Our elite would sooner treat with sordid Saudis for petrodollar kickbacks and agree to their funding the Islamisation of England through mosques, madrassahs and ‘interfaith’ (sic) dialogue, than preserve our culture, way of life and identity. This was evident in last night’s documentary, which showed the police allowing Muslims Against Crusades to practise Dawah on the streets of Weymouth, whilst arresting a local man for voicing his objection. Why should they have the right to spread their lies and hate upon our streets and thereby seek to undermine us and deceive our people, whereas we are subject to arrest for so-called ‘hate speech’ or ‘religious hatred’ if we object to this? They are the agents of hate and our self-declared enemies, and as such, we should seek to make it known to them that they are unwelcome and should leave. Show them the slightest kindness or weakness, and they’ll mercilessly exploit it.

The fact that our media and our mainstream politicians continue to defend Islam and enable its spread provides reason enough to share the tears of a loving mother. It is now up to the EDL, to help wipe those tears away.