RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/07/7-7-and-the-refusal-to-confront-islamist-terror/

Have we learned the lessons of 7/7? So begins every trite radio and TV discussion today as we mark 20 years since four homegrown jihadists blew themselves up on London’s transport network and took 52 innocent souls with them.

Going by much of the commentary, you’d think this was a purely logistical, security question. There’s a long piece on the BBC website, talking about how the police and the security services were forced to up their game after the London Bombings, the new powers they now enjoy as a consequence, the attendant concerns over civil liberties, etc.

The words ‘Islamist’ and ‘jihadist’ do not appear once in the piece, even as it details the evolving ‘extremist’ threat posed first by al-Qaeda and then the ‘self-styled Islamic State’. There is often a stubborn refusal, a stammering hesitation, to mention what flavour of ‘extremism’ most menaces us – a cowardly tic that was skewered best by Morrissey: ‘An extreme what? An extreme rabbit?’

This attempt to brush over the I-word – to blithely ignore the religious, ideological character of those hellish bombings two decades ago – is everywhere today. The deadliest terror attack on UK soil since Lockerbie – the deadliest terror attack on London ever – is being talked about as if it were motivated by some vaguely defined form of ‘hate’ or ‘division’, rather than a global Islamist movement.

In his official statement today, King Charles says the attacks show the importance of ‘building a society where people of all faiths and backgrounds can live together with mutual respect and understanding’. What does this even mean? Does Charles, or his spokespeople, even know? Perhaps he thinks a well-timed interfaith meeting might have stopped those suicide bombers.

Back in 2016, the late great comedian Norm Macdonald posted a tweet for the ages: ‘What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?’ Today, as we mark 7/7, what you might call Macdonald’s Law – that any discussion of Islamic terrorism will almost immediately pivot away from the horror at hand and towards largely hypothetical fears of an anti-Muslim backlash – is once again in full effect.

‘For many in the British Muslim community, the tragedy of 7 July 2005 lives long in the memory’, reads a piece in the Guardian. By ‘tragedy’, the writer doesn’t mean those who were slain, had their legs blown off, or had their bodies sprayed with nails and glass, but the ‘feelings of suspicion, isolation and hostility’ experienced by some British Muslims after the attack.

We all know the purpose of articles like this. It isn’t to challenge anti-Muslim bigotry. It’s a brazen attempt to change the subject, from murders to feelings, from the questions the cultural elites would prefer not to discuss, to things that are totally uncontroversial, like racism being bad.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21730/judge-emperor-courts

In the West, it is not the executive that threatens the separation of powers. It is faceless judges lacking democratic legitimacy who legislate on the pretext of judging…. [T]his judicial imperialism… [has] become a judicial tyranny….

These innovations… have gradually established the Israeli Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of all questions, not only legal but also political. Any Israeli citizen — and any NGO, even one funded from abroad — has the right to ask the Supreme Court to overturn any democratic decision…. There is no decision of the Israeli government and parliament that cannot be overturned by unelected judges.

[Marine Le Pen and her supporters] argued, accurately, that the judges were essentially preventing the French people from voting for Le Pen.

There is effectively no longer a single “right-wing” measure that can be adopted in any field by Parliament or the government without being struck down by the Constitutional Council or the courts. When the left loses at the ballot box, it is certain to win in the courts. In France, the judge reigns and the people no longer seem to have sovereignty over anything.

The torrents of universal rules and requirements deriving from articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (e.g. privacy, dignity), and the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights are probably the worst modern example of tyrannical judicial imperialism. The anarchy of immigration in Europe is entirely of its making.

The US Supreme Court decided last week that the district court judges had jurisdiction over specific cases and plaintiffs in their districts — not across the nation.

“The judges of the nation are only the mouth that pronounces the words of the law, inanimate beings who can neither moderate its force nor its rigor.”
— Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Book XI, Chapter VI

From Israel to the United States, via Europe, the judicial coup d’état has become permanent. In the West, it is not the executive that threatens the separation of powers. It is faceless judges lacking democratic legitimacy who legislate on the pretext of judging. Here are four salient examples of this judicial imperialism — which have become a judicial tyranny — and a proposed American solution.

Israel

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Israeli Supreme Court introduced three innovations that revolutionized Israel’s legal and political landscape. First, it abolished the “standing” requirement, allowing anyone to challenge any government decision before the Supreme Court simply because they disagreed with it, even if they were not personally affected by it. This is unique in the Western world. Second, the Court removed the restriction on justiciability, placing all government and administrative actions (including foreign affairs, military actions and the budget) under its control — an extraordinary measure. Third, the Court took on the power to assess the “reasonableness” of government decisions, thus giving itself a political veto over the elected government’s choices.