But her speech was also littered with politically correct terms, as well as left and centre-left talking points regarding international institutions, Islam, and radical terrorism, the latter of which she called “Islamist extremism”. The British premier compared “open, liberal and democratic” societies in the West versus “closed, coercive” ones. She hailed the United Nations, praised the World Bank, and called NATO “the cornerstone” of Western defence. And Mrs. May also spoke of the necessity for multilateralism in stark contrast with the line pushed by the White House – which prefers bilateralism – over recent days. She cited the need to tackle “climate change” as one of the reasons to back globalist institutions.
She called for the two nations to be “internationalist” and “global”, though noted “Some of these organisations are in need of reform and renewal”. And while committing to the destruction of the Islamic State, she failed to mention the name of the group, choosing instead the term “Daesh” – a word preferred by politically correct types and most notably popularised by former Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama. She went on to describe “radical Islamists”, stopping short of echoing the phrases used by the new US administration including “radical Islamic terrorism”, while stating that the first victims of the terrorist ideology were the millions of peaceful Muslims who are adherents to the faith.
While we applaud certain sections of Mrs May’s speech, one thing which we don’t applaud is the use of the words radical Islamists. Using a phrase to single out adherents of one religion is not acceptable coming from the speech of the PM of the UK. Many terrorist groups terrorized Europe from the 1960s to the early 1990s, among them the Baader Meinhof gang, the IRA, and the Basque separatist group ETA. However none of these groups were ever classified as Catholic or Christian terrorists but instead called terrorists at large.
While organizations like Daesh use Islamic sounding names they are in fact not Islamic at all but rather a perversion of the true tenets of Islam. Thus they can in no way be said to represent or follow the true ideologies of Islam. By deliberately using phrases like radical Islamists world leaders like Ms May are perpetuating the ideologies of hatred which exist to discriminate against Islam in the eyes of the world. Statements like these must be balanced to ensure that no bias exists against any one religion – whether it be Islam or any other.
