The Surrender of Britain: Islamism and Appeasement

American Thinker 

In the annals of civilizational decline, few spectacles rival that of a once-mighty empire wilting under the weight of its own timidity. Britain, the cradle of parliamentary democracy, Magna Carta, and the Enlightenment’s unyielding torch, now teeters on the brink of self-inflicted oblivion. The antithesis of multicultural harmony, the year 2025 brings another pitiful surrender to the forces of Islamic extremism, a phenomenon chillingly encapsulated by Melanie Phillips in her prescient 2006 tome Londonistan.

Phillips, a Cassandra of our age, warned of London’s metamorphosis into a “terror state within”, a hub for jihadist recruitment and financing, born of a toxic brew: the collapse of British identity, the paralysis of multiculturalism, and an elite’s craven fear of the “Islamophobia” epithet. Nearly two decades later, her prophecies have ossified into reality. Under the slick populism of Mayor Sadiq Khan, London—once the beating heart of Western liberty—has devolved into a cauldron of knife assaults by immigrant gangs, appeasing police, who cower before Sharia vigilantism, and a surge in antisemitism that drives Jews to contemplate exodus. Britain’s trajectory is the inexorable outcome of ideological surrender: a movement from ordered civilization towards anarchy and Islamic barbarism. To ignore this is to abdicate responsibility for action.

Melanie Phillips’s Londonistan was a forensic dissection of Britain’s self-sabotage. Drawing on exhaustive evidence—from the fatwa against Salman Rushdie to the unchecked proliferation of Islamist mosques—she exposed how the British establishment, in thrall to relativism, allowed radical Islam to metastasize. The capital, dubbed “Londonistan” by exasperated European intelligence agencies, became a safe haven for extremists like Abu Qatada and Omar Bakri Muhammad, who preached jihad under the noses of MI5. Phillips argued that this was no accident: the erosion of Christianity and national pride created a vacuum filled by a “virulent form of multiculturalism” that equated Western critique with bigotry.

Today, that vacuum yawns wider. The 7/7 bombings of 2005, perpetrated by British-born Muslims radicalized in Londonistan’s madrassas, were but a harbinger. By 2025, Islamist influence permeates public life, from pro-Hamas marches that paralyze Trafalgar Square to school curricula whitewashing jihad as “resistance”. Phillips’s indictment rings truer than ever: Britain’s “supine reaction” to extremism—exemplified by the failure to deport “hate preachers”—has normalized the abnormal. The result? A city where halal slaughterhouses outnumber butchers’ guilds, and Eid celebrations eclipse Remembrance Day. Rather than “diversity, this is “dominion”, a creeping “Muslim takeover” orchestrated by demographic momentum and elite complicity.

Critics dismiss Phillips as “alarmist”, yet the data belie their complacency. The Office for National Statistics reported a 16% surge in knife-related offenses from 2023 to 2024, disproportionately linked to gang violence in immigrant-heavy boroughs like Tower Hamlets and Newham. While official figures shy from ethnic breakdowns—lest they inflame “tensions”—anecdotal evidence abounds: stabbings by Afghan and Somali youths, typically over drug turf wars imported from failed states. John Cleese, that wry bard of British eccentricity, captured the zeitgeist in 2011 when he lamented, “London is no longer an English city”, a sentiment echoed in 2019 as he decried its “unrecognizable” transformation under multicultural deluge.

Enter Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor since 2016 and the poster child for this perfidious populism. Elected on promises of unity, Khan has presided over a tenure marred by denial and deflection, his Muslim identity weaponized to shield Islamist excesses. Critics like Tory MP Lee Anderson have thundered that “Islamists have got control” of Khan, who has “given our capital city away to his mates”. While Anderson’s rhetoric invites charges of Islamophobia—a slur that Khan deploys with alacrity—the substance endures scrutiny. Under Khan, “hate crimes” have skyrocketed: a 120% rise in antisemitic incidents and 67% in Islamophobic ones from 2023 to 2024 (cf. Metropolitan Police data). Yet Khan’s response? Platitudes about “shared endeavor”, funding workshops that challenge “hate” without naming the elephant: Islamist antisemitism fueling the fire.

Nowhere is Khan’s denial more egregious than in the scourge of rape gangs. Echoing Rotherham’s horrors—where Pakistani men systematically raped 1,400 girls amid police fears of “racism” accusations—London harbors its own shadows. Khan, as police commissioner, has stonewalled inquiries, insisting that London’s woes stem from “county lines” drugs, not “rape gangs” preying on white girls. When pressed by Tory Susan Hall in 2025, he feigned ignorance nine times: “I’m not clear what she means”. This semantic sleight-of-hand mocks victims. Retired detective Jon Wedger, who in 2006 uncovered 50 abused London children, accuses Khan of “making a mockery out of semantics”, as social services bury evidence to avoid “extra work”. Khan’s office parrots that they combat “exploitation in all forms”, but the Met’s reluctance speaks volumes: a 2025 national inquiry, spurred by Baroness Casey’s report, finally probes London’s underbelly, revealing disproportionate Pakistani involvement—yet Khan demurs.

Khan’s slickness lies in his duality: a human rights barrister by trade, he postures as a bulwark against bigotry while enabling it. His failure to curb pro-Palestine marches—where “Jews to the gas” chants echo unpunished—has emboldened extremists. As the Community Security Trust logs 1,500 antisemitic incidents in early 2025, Khan hosts iftars in Trafalgar Square, a performative piety that elides the barbarism. This is populism untethered from principle: a mayor, who requires royal-level security due to Islamist threats, yet prioritizes “community cohesion” over candor.

Khan’s London is a blade’s edge, literally. Though official stats evade immigrant links, the pattern is undeniable: assaults by young men from migrant enclaves, wielding machetes in “Muslim patrols” that enforce Sharia on unwilling Brits. In Tower Hamlets, hooded vigilantes pour alcohol into drains and berate women for “exposing themselves”, videos boasting “Islam will take over the world”. The Met’s response? Arrests after public outcry, but systemic timidity prevails.

This appeasement traces to a police force emasculated by “Islamophobia” paranoia. In 2011, Tower Hamlets’ “Islamization” campaign—threats, arsons, assaults on “infidels”—was “covered up” lest officers face bigotry charges. As former sergeant Javaria Saeed revealed in 2016, Met brass ignored Muslim officers’ extremist views—comments that would sack white colleagues—to dodge racism tags. By 2025, the rot persists: during Gaza-linked riots, police prioritize “de-escalation” over enforcement, allowing “kill the non-believers” taunts to fester. Such cowardice breeds anarchy, where blades replace ballots and barbarism supplants the “bobby on the beat”.

No metric better gauges civilization’s loss than the Jewish plight. Britain’s 300,000 Jews, heirs to Disraeli and Montefiore, now eye the exits as antisemitism surges 208% from 2022 to 2023, with a sharp rise post-10/7. Incidents recorded by the Community Security Trust—swastikas on synagogues, assaults in Golders Green—signal a pogrom’s prelude. This venom, imported via Islamist channels, fuses Qur’anic tropes of Jewish treachery with European conspiracism, amplified by Qatar-funded mosques and Hamas apologists.

Under Khan, the betrayal stings deepest. Despite signing AJC’s anti-antisemitism pledge in 2016, his tenure sees Jews feeling “unsafe” nationwide: 35% in 2025 (compared to 9% in 2023), according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Pro-Hamas rallies, unchecked, spew “gas the Jews” bile, yet Khan decries critics as “divisive”. Echoing the 1948 Jewish exodus from Arab lands—800,000 fleeing pogroms and expulsions—UK Jews ponder Israel or America. As Matthew d’Ancona wrote after the Manchester synagogue attack: “The Jewish suitcase is back in the hall”. This is the death knell of tolerance, where dhimmis supplant Democrats.

Britain’s arc bends towards chaos. Knife-wielding patrols enforce parallel laws. Morally confused, police officers kneel to “sensitivities”. Antisemitism, a far-right relic before the time of mass migration, thrives among Islamists, as does jihadist supremacism, with 84% of 264 identified rape-gang offenders found to be South Asian (cf. the Quilliam Foundation’s 2017 report). Civilization—rule of law, free speech, Judeo-Christian ethos—frays as Sharia courts multiply.

This barbarism is no clash of civilizations but a conquest by default. Phillips warned of a “half-Sharia, half-post-Enlightenment” dystopia; we inhabit it. Khan’s London, Cleese’s “unrecognizable” metropolis, heralds a Britain bartered away.

If only the British people would unite and show the courage to reclaim Britain, deporting Islamist warriors, restoring the rule of law, and affirming the superiority of Western values. However, the reality is dismal. One fine day, with the caliphate in place, Big Ben will toll for a lost civilization.