There are many interpreters of the true meaning of the commandments of the Quran. But among them are men and women who are prepared to end their own lives for the satisfaction of defying the British way of life. Four such persons, in the summer of 2005, attached themselves to bombs and blew up handy British targets, including three Underground trains.
What one got then from assorted imams, and continues to get now, is reverent disapprovals of incidental killings as contrary to the faith. But in the name of jihad -- holy war -- such homilies against murder and arson are satellized by the dominant commands of the Quran to make war against infidels.
One hears exactly what one would expect from British authorities. The new prime minister, Gordon Brown, spoke at his first news conference of the "importance we attach to nonviolence." That attachment makes unpalatable "the extreme message of those who practice violence and would maim and murder citizens on British soil."
You said a mouthful, prime minister. But it is time for the mother of parliaments to look unruly, unassimilable creeds in the face and say: No more.
Oddly, the British way of life tolerates an established religion. In the end, the English are not hampered by toplofty commitments to freedom of speech and of conscience. Still, when the United States was seriously inconvenienced by our commitment to freedom of religion, we found means to handle Mormon polygamy. All the world waits to see how Parliament handles this threat to the British way of life.