“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear – I fear greatly – the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, ever more loudly, ever more widely. It will spread to the South; it will spread to the North.” Winston Churchill, 1940
“Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time…There is – to be frank – too much tolerance of religious extremism in our country, so we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.” Theresa May, 2017
Churchill’s Crocodile is a contribution to the conversations we need to have about faith and extremism. It is also a reminder of the lesson taught by Britain’s great wartime leader: an extremist, like a crocodile, cannot be appeased.