If British Muslims are as angry as the rest of us about jihadist barbarity, why don’t they show it?

Ever since Islamic State released the video of the American journalist James Foley being murdered by an Islamist gangsta thug with a standard London multiculti accent, the 24 Hour news channels have been dragging Muslim spokesmen and women into their studios to offer them an opportunity to distance their communities from the horrors evidently being perpetrated by their fellow countrymen and co-religionists abroad. And a pretty unconvincing fist they’re making of it.

If I were a follower of Islam living in a Muslim community in Britain, I’d feel utterly outraged and dreadfully ashamed at another British Muslim committing acts of unspeakable horror in the name of my religion. Hell’s bells - Anglican bishops are forever going into a collective cringe and apologising for stuff Christians did centuries ago, before they had the Guardian comment pages to set their moral compass for them. But the Muslim spokesmen I’ve seen on television yesterday and today have been about as outraged as a bloke who’s just discovered he’s been given the wrong pie in Gregg’s, and about as ashamed as someone caught jumping a queue in Italy. One of them even had the effrontery to start banging on about Israel! The rest just seemed bored and a bit miffed at being asked to express an opinion on the topic of the “radicalisation” of Muslim youths in Britain, as if it was all a bit off-topic.

My favourite was the black-clad spokesman who spent most of the time staring at the studio floor before mumbling that these blood-crazed barbarians had nothing to do with Britain’s Muslim communities. Really??? Then what do they have to fucking do with? I mean, Muslims can hardly go on blaming British schools or Western-style permissiveness – the vast majority of the 10,000 gun-toting kuckle-draggers who make up the Islamic State murder machine will no doubt have been raised in Muslim countries. What went wrong there, then?

I mean, it’s not as if Muslims don’t get worked up about stuff – it only takes a cartoon in a Danish newspaper for thousands of them to flood onto the street screaming their heads off, baying for blood and burning down embassies. Can you imagine the reaction if James Foley had been a brown-skinned Muslim and his murderer had been a white Christian with the Cross of St George emblazoned on his robes? I bet we’d have had a march or two by now - and a lot worse.

When I heard that London accent issuing from behind that vile butcher’s mask, I felt rather ashamed, because I am a Londoner: I felt partly responsible. I think that's quite natural. I felt the same way on hearing of the slaughter carried out by Anders Behring Breivik - another Norwegian with decidedly antiliberal views.  Would it be too much to expect representatives of our Muslim communities to even pretend to feel the same, rather than leaping to deny any sense of communal responsibility? I’m not asking for wailing and gnashing of teeth or hysterical ululating in the streets (all frightfully tedious). But some form of ritualised atonement – a peaceful march, a letter signed by a hundred prominent British Muslims sent to all newspapers, a Muslim-organised candlelit vigil in our main city centres for the Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Western hostages and fellow-Muslims murdered by subhuman Islamist psychopaths? And perhaps they could make a real effort and manage to do it without using Israel to excuse atrocities committed in the name of Islam? 

I just have a feeling that a teensy-weensy hint of an apology would go down quite well at this particular moment. Even if they don't feel responsible in any way, they've made their home in Britain, where - endearingly - people are so keen to say sorry that they'll apologise when someone who wasn't bothering to look where they were going bumps into them in the street. Or maybe multiculturalism means never having to say you're sorry.