Home Office minister Hazel Blears has met with certain Muslim leaders and some rather ‘interesting’ things have emerged. In order to assuage Muslim fears, she has said that racial profiling will not be used and all stop-and-searches will ‘intelligence led’.
So a nervous looking Asian man with a backpack who is wandering around on the London Underground will not be examined more closely because there might be no special intelligence? Hopefully that is not what Ms. Blears means, though I am not really sure what she does mean.
Now on one level, racial profiling can actually be dangerous if that criterion is over-emphasised: Muslims are not a race and although somewhat unlikely, a blonde haired blue eyed Muslim convert could indeed be a potential suicide bomber. Yet the reality is that the vast majority of Muslims in Britain are non-white and logic therefore indicates that in order to maximise the effectiveness of scarce resources, a degree of racial profiling in entirely appropriate. In fact, contrary to the Home Office Ministers claims, Ian Johnston of the British Transport Police has made no bones about the fact his officers intend to make race one of the criterion they use when picking people to examine closer, noting: “We should not bottle out over this. We should not waste time searching old white ladies”. Very sensible.
A news segment on television this evening (I think it was SkyOne but I am not sure) even spoke with an Asian man on the London Underground with a backpack who was not unsympathetic to the fact he likely to be searched given the prevailing circumstances. Perhaps that is not so surprising as he is just as much at risk as anyone else if a bomb goes off on his train. Yet I cannot help wondering of this government really grasps the gravity of the situation and how attitude really need to change.
Another interesting and all too expected thing to come out if this meeting with Muslim leaders in Britain is their annoyance that the government will not discuss foreign policy and Iraq. This seems to answer the question I asked earlier if there are any really moderate Muslim ‘leaders’ in Britain. The fact they cannot see how the terrorist acts London, far from making it necessary for the government to discuss foreign policy with the leaders of the very community from which the terrorist have sprung, it make its impossible for them to do so or the terrorist attacks will have succeeded in the most clear cut way possible, inviting only more of the same any time the UK decides to do something that displeases some community.
Rather encouragingly, on the same news programme there was a Muslim ‘activist’ whose name I wish I had caught (was anyone else watching SkyNews?) who said it was a waste of time for Hazel Blears to talk to a bunch of largely foreign born religious leaders in Britain whose mosques had done exactly nothing to combat the extremist memes since July 7th. Judging from his remarks, it is well past time that British Muslims take a hard look at who their purported leaders are and decide if these are the people they really want speaking in their name.
Even in this government, composed of the greatest number of intellectual mediocrities since the last war, Hazel Blears stands out like a sore thumb for possessing those sovereign characteristics of New Labour: blind loyalty to the Bimbo-in-Chief combined with hopeless inadequacy and absolute self-confidence, in equal measure.
Whatever this peppery, cocksure little baggage might believe, waltzing around the North paying lip-service to what self-appointed ‘community leaders’ thinks isn’t only irrelevant – it’s actually insulting – both to the wannabe colonisers and their involuntary hosts.
As some of the Moslems concerned have pointed out, she wasn’t there to listen. Of course not – she was there to provide a sticking plaster photo-opportunity while Tony and his posse have buggered-off on holiday. She’s a walking soundbite.
Meanwhile, the forces of appeasement are at work. The BBC’s News Online website is splattered with ‘what do young Moslems think?’ and ‘Moslem women fear backlash’ pseudo-stories, while useful idiots like Hazel Blears waffle around the country, so full of themselves they could almost burst, pretending to listen, while making the situation, if anything, worse.
If “British” Moslems are so enraged by our policy towards Iraq, they have choices. They can do what the rest of us do – vote and abide by the result, campaign against that result or, if they are really that sickened, they can bugger-off. As so many, it appears, consider Islam more important than individual countries, that shouldn’t be an obstacle. They can go to any Islamic country they like and, by their reasoning, should feel quite at home.
Instead of grasping for soundbites, if Hazel Blears had a brain, she would have laid it on the line: either you join in, take part and play by the rules, or you leave. Now. It really is that simple.
Personally, I am getting more than a little tired of being forced to worry about what three or four per cent of the UK population thinks. There are probably more golfers than that. Does that mean that if golfers started blowing up the tube system, we’d all be expected to pay due deference to bad knitwear and disgusting trousers?
Not completely fair to doubt the entire government on this.
Much as I despise his governments neofascist response in nigh on every policy area, when it comes to terrorism Tony Blair, personally, ‘gets it’.
As far as dear Hazel is concerned, I listened to her interview yesterday before her meeting in Oldham. Now, as a libertarian I naturally try to view every event through the principle of “Thou shalt not initiate the use of violence”. However, by the end of that interview, I was so offended by her gushing patronising and mindless support for every freedom squashing policy mentioned that I simply wanted to shut her up by smashing her in the face.
Can someone explain what possessed the police to issue instructions to officers in Bedfordshire that when they raid Muslim homes they should remove their shoes, not use dogs and not conduct raids in the pre-dawn hours because people may be “spiritually involved? (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=357905&in_page_id=1787)
Did the news not get reported in Bedfrordshire? Did the local constabulary not hear about 7/7 and 7/21? Did I miss something?
GCooper, what you said. Good on yer.
If people like this silly self-important cow keep it up long enough and loudly enough, there will be a backlash against muslims by people sick and tired of being lectured about how peaceful they really are.
The day that happens I’ll send her a note of thanks.
Chris Harper – Tony Blair “gets it”? No, he doesn’t. He wants a multiculti happy clappy Jimmy Carter new dawn, of which he will be the proud, square jawed (except when performing at funerals when he allows himself a massive, barely controlled tremble – “ask about our group discounts!”) “leader”. Lawrence of Arabia, you were an amateur! Too much hanging around the fruit trees in the oasis, so to speak, when Tone does it all from his rolling couch in his rolling den!
I don’t know why so many people have missed it for the past nine years, or eternity, whichever comes first, but Tony Blair hates Britain.
Good on you, G Cooper! Best post here for at least six months and power to your elbow! Every single word!
Nu-Lab Blair babe Heather Blears looks constitipated. She is full of herself, and people like this often fear letting any of it go.
John Steele – WTF? In Britain we regard dogs as colleagues and companions. Who gave this order? And who gives a rat’s ass if they’re praying to their ghastly entity? How is that the business of Britons? Frankly, I am spiritually involved in writing for this blog right now.
He should be; he’s acting hinky.
Why does it seem to be the case that she’s more concerned about avoiding offending Muslims than she is with finding bombers before they can carry out attacks?
What, exactly, is the priority here?
Steven den Beste – the priority is not the 57m ancient occupiers of these lands. It is the ignorant, narrow, primitive newcomers with their Stone Age moon diety and their intense and cultivated ignorance. They constitute around 3m (the “government” – you should excuse the term lies for fear of frightening the horses)
and says they’re around 2m, which is already 2m too many.
But they’re a wonderful, disabling tool. Take off your shoes – we have no problem with shoes in Britain. Don’t send in dogs. We have always respected our dogs in Britainand loved them. Do not tell British police not to bring in British working police dogs! They are more intelligent than any of the rats infesting these self-imposed ghettoes. (Actually, rats are also very intelligent, so to any rats reading, no offence!)
I said after the first terrorist bombings I could sense a hardening of public opinion, and it is not dispersing.
My hunch is that one of the reasons is, at least on its face, somewhat sensible—if you’re walking in Muslims’ homes without taking your shoes off for questioning, they’d be less likely to invite you back later to pass on the name of a guy who’s been complaining about Jews so much that he can’t decide whether they’re descended from apes and pigs, pigs and dogs, or apes and dogs.
Of course, if you’re at their door in riot gear, you might as well dispense with the niceties…
Verity,
Should Muslims be denied British citizenship? Should all Muslims be deported from Britain? Should we do to Muslims what was done to Japanese living on the US West Coast in WW2?
I’m not Verity, but my answer to Robert Alderson would be:
yes
yes
why bother? deport them instead.
Robert Alderson – you’re a troll.
I just asked some questions.
I am genuinely interested in the answers. Keith made it clear what he thinks. It would be a very large undertaking to actual deport 3 million people from Britain and probably wouldn’t have the desired effect.
We are in a war situation but it is different from most past wars because the enemy is not synonymous with a nation state and does not operate in visible military formations etc..
How do we define that enemy? The enemy can be defined on the basis of their ideology and actions (or inaction.) Defining the enemy on the basis of race or religion is not sufficiently precise. It is a deceptively easy shortcut and is counterprodcutive.
Citizenship is not a mark on a piece of paper. Citizenship is a state of mind, and part of it is a commitment to the state and the values behind that state.
People who live apart and who refuse to assimilate are not citizens no matter what it says on any given piece of paper they happen to hold.
Steven,
I agree with what you just wrote 100%.
Judge the enemy on the basis of their ideology and actions. Using race or religion as a proxy for this is imprecise.
I know one person who was brought up a Muslim and is dark-skinned but would probably now rival Verity in her colorful words on the subject. Judge her on the basis of race and religion of birth and she would be enemy; judge her on the basis of action, ideology and committment and she would be very strong ally and citizen. (Not to mention exactly the sort of person our security services could use.)
Robert, it seems to me that defining the enemy on the basis of religion is extremely simple.
A devout muslim believes in the teachings of the koran. The koran calls for the death or subjugation of jews and infidels and the establishment of islam as the only religion worldwide.
Therefore a muslim living in the West believes that an islamic state should replace Western secular societies.
Which makes them the enemy.
Your friend cannot be both a muslim and share the same views as Verity. (and I’d remind you of Taqiyya, the principle that allows a muslim to lie to a non-believer in order to advance the cause of islam)
Verity-
Yes, Dear Leader clearly does hate, or at least doesn’t care about, just about everything I admire and care about in Anglospheric civilisation. However, when it comes to dealing with those who actually want to get out there and kill us, he is right where I want him to be. One of the Triumvirate (Bush, Blair, Howard). Much as I otherwise loath the man I at least acknowledge that.
Robert-
I agree with your attitude. To me, “All muslims are terrorists” is as loathsome and brainless an attitude as “all niggers want to rape white women” and “all Jews are blood suckers”. Regardless of how mild someones particular varients of these beliefs are.
While I do believe Islam is a pretty questionable belief system, if our values mean anything we CAN’T deport citizens just because we think their religion is a load of drivel; from my point of view there wouldn’t be a religious person left in the country if we did that. They are CITIZENS for gods sake. And if it means nothing to them, by god it means something to me.
Believing that a religion is “a load of drivel” is one thing, but believing the adherents of a religion who have clearly and repeatedly stated their intention to destroy Western society is another thing entirely.
Especially when they back up their claims with AK47s and bombs.
And if being citizens means nothing to them, why the hell should it mean anything at all to those of us they threaten?
Someone robbed that antique shop down the road. The main suspect is a black man, 6″1′, wellbuilt. In a search, the police spots five people – 1) A Korean grandmother, 2) a 17-year-old blond-hair white kid, skateboarding, 3) A short, stuffy Punjabi man, 4) A African in casual wear, around 6’3″, 5) Another black. around 6’2″.
Which would the police approach to investigate? The Korean grandmother? No, they can’t merely pick on the two Africans – that’s racism.
But of course, this could be abused to cover the racism of the police – they could use that antique shop robbery to hussle around a 96 year old black great-grandmother. But racial profilling in it self isn’t wrong. Abusing it is. We should be working to make sure such abuse never happens, at least systematicly. Not making sure racial profiling never happens at all, which in this case while the police is questioning that Korean grandmother, the black robber gets away.
Keith: You are oversimplifying things. In Malaysia, we have an organization called Sisters in Islam (SIS). While they aren’t exactly the crowd you would find outside a Support the War rally or passing out “Israel is Moral” literature, they have been fighting for many years for a Malaysia based on their liberal teachings of Islam – at a great risk.
Does this mean that they are lying (Taqiyya)? Just to give Malaysian non-Muslims the allusion that there may be a relatively sane branch of Islam? What about Skeih Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi – who preaches Islamic recogniction of Israel and leads Italy’s biggest Muslim organization – taqiyya too?
Prof. Khaleel Mohammed of San Diego State University – who opposes Palestinian suicide bombing and claims Israel is legitimate on Quranic crowd? Some elaborate taqiyya scheme? So my best friend, a Malay-Muslim, is performing some elaborate hoax on me so that I would believe that there are many good Muslims? Ever read the Quran? If you did, you would see how it is an incredibly vague document – one whose words can be twisted around for any use. SIS, the example I gave above, uses the same Quran to argue that apostasy is legal under Islamic law as Malaysia’s Pan-Malaya Islamic Party (PAS) who wants to institute capital punishment for apostates.
Your comments remind me of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Rajan, for sure. Of course racial profiling in some form goes on all the time–law enforcement would be crippled otherwise.
Commonsense policing, whatever Muslim activists may claim.
“And if being citizens means nothing to them, why the hell should it mean anything at all to those of us they threaten?”
Keith,
Because one of the differences between us and them is that it does mean something.
It’s called having principles. Those who wish to kill us have one set of principles, we have a different set. If we abandon ours so easily it simply serves to confirm their claim that ours are worthless.
Bearing in mind that the main complaint about the multicultis is the readiness with which they abandon western enlightenment principles, at best how would our droping these principles make us any different?
I can’t begin to understand why anyone would advocate deporting innocent people from this country. Rajan is entirely correct in citing Malaysia, as having visited there in the last two months, I’ve rarely met more friendly and pleasant people – the ones, muslim ones, who kindly bought a friend and a couple of beers can not be described as bearded fanatics. Nor could the reams of extremely friendly residents of Kuala Lumpur (Mulsim ones, although not excluding other members of that extremely diverse country) who guided me through city streets; negotiated incredibly low prices in the market on my behalf; and escorted us to nightclubs) all the time talking about freedom in such a positive manner that they compared more than favourably with the average person in the UK.
Yes there are nutcases, and yes it seems that 95% of Islamic groups seem to belong to that demographic, but for any god’s sake don’t start trying to claimk that all Muslims professing liberty etc. are lying – that’s utterly absurd.
“intelligence led” would appear to be the new byword for the Labour Party. From binge-drinking through to ASBO the mot du jour we always hear of is “intelligence led” or “intelligence based enforcement”, which one usually interprets as, “the intelligence community is answerable to nobody, so lets make the bureaucrats anwerable to nobody too”.
Go easy on Tony and Hazel. I heard the Tory shadow minister Dominic Grief saying on radio that he found the anger of the Muslim community which led to the suicide bombing COMPLETELY EXPLICABLE! Even Hazel couldn’t bring herself to agree with him.
If Islam does contain the concept of Taqiyya it does not mean that every Muslim practices it, just as many do not practice the subjugation of women or murder gay people. There are many nasty concepts in all religions that followers [i]should[/i] practice but don’t for various reasons. This might make them bad followers, but it is also part of what makes us all human!
We must judge people on their actions. Muslims who chose to assimilate and put their way of life into the British melting pot should be welcomed. Islamists that stay in their colonies and do not assimilate should not be. I would not support wholesale deportation, but the current bending over backwards to plecate the Islamist minority is the opposite to what should be happening.
[blockquote]Tony Blair hates Britain.[/blockquote]
I had noticed. The systematic destruction of our ideals, beliefs and traditions; the erasing of the exisiting culture, the rewriting of history… And that’s before we get into the sacrifice of civil liberties on the altar of political expediency.
The Times had a column yesterday asking where all these police are from? Given they are far too busy to deal with such mundane things as “low level” crime (sure as hell isn’t low-level to those affected), how do we suddenly have enough to stand on street corners all of a sudden?
On racial profiling… Hmm. The bombers have been muslims; that’s a belief system, not a race. However, the majority of muslims in the UK are asian in extraction, that *is* a racial group.
Nick Cohen wrote sensibly on racial profiling in the Standard yesterday. I cant link to it but the point was that of of course young Asian men must be the priority provided the searches are handled with respect and dignity to those being searched.
Haze’s response has been predictably confused and robotic. No shock there. What has shocked me is the response from the Conservative’s Dominic Grief as pointed out by goodfornowt above.
What exactly have the Conservatives contributed to this debate? I fear that this is the consequence of their truly awful “Are you thinking what we’re thinking” campaign. They are now so desperate to rid themselves of their nasty party image that they will have nothing useful to say for years to come.
Religious leaders, eh?
Erm, how are these people relevant? And, why do the muslims need a community speaker — I was under the impression that this is the job of the local MP. (Do the local Chavs here also get a community leader? Hmmm!)
Note the jihadkaze kids weren’t even all that religious, just your avg. loser, until the day they went _boom- in a bid to be ‘someone’.
Now, what is the difference between them and the goth kids who shot their schoolmates? Looks like the same ‘blaze of glory’ stuff to me.
You can’t defend or even legislate against utter stupidity.
As for tolerating and fostering silly stuff like religion, well, I’ve high hopes that humanity will eventually grow out of it naturally. What we need is a ‘religious education’ that actually explains this stuff for what it is, early on in school — illogical and inconsistent stories and superstition.
As for the idea that a radicalising mosque produces jihadkazis — does pornography inspire perverts? Do videogames groom murderers?
Your only defense against stupidity and stupid people is education…
Cinnamon
if Hazel Blears had a brain
Has anyone seen any evidence?
Can someone explain what possessed the police to issue instructions to officers in Bedfordshire that when they raid Muslim homes they should remove their shoes, not use dogs and not conduct raids in the pre-dawn hours because people may be “spiritually involved?
At a guess, I’d say the explanation is that some police brass hat is terrified of criticism along the grounds of institutional racism, and is pathetically trying to cover his ass.
Note to jihadis in Bedfordshire: spread tin tacks on your front door mat, it’s guaranteed to thwart Bedford’s finest if they ever get the green light from the multi-culti lickspittles at HQ to raid your gaff.
Where’s Jack Regan when we need him? “We’re the Sweeny, and as it’s Ramadan, in deference to your cultural sensitivities, we haven’t had our dinner. Get your jilbab on, you’re nicked!”
So is Hazel heading off to reassure Jewish leaders about their worries about the hate being spewed against them in Mosques up & down the country?
The Tories seem to be petrified of speaking about this subject. After badly timing a call for an inquiry into the attacks they have gone silent.
Derek Davies says in The Telegraph that multiculti isn’t working. No shit. But at least he proposes to do something about it.(Link)
This is being promoted, and has gathered pace during Blair’s nightmare years in office, by the Gramscians and totalitarian left with the express goal of destroying British identity. They don’t fly the flag. They don’t teach glorious British history to children and tell them about our heroes – thus leaving them rootless and cut off from their past.
Chris Harper, we would not be robbing these awful people (I’m obviously not referring to immigrants who have woven themselves into our national life, have adopted our habits and way of speaking and consider their religion private, as do the rest of us) of anything by sending them off to Pakistan or Somalia or wherever, as they don’t believe in the nation state. So they don’t consider themselves citizens of Britain anyway. They are citizens of some notional “Islamic state”. Fine. They can go live in it. And Sudan and other crapholes wouldn’t hesitate to accept their brothers in Islam. If they did, we would cut off aid until the point dawned.
Like the poster above, I also wonder what “Muslim leaders” are for, other than to make trouble and feel themselves superior to the (unwilling) host community by constant lecturing and hectoring. They should also be deported as they incite violence and insurrection. Where are the “Scottish spokesmen” and “Welsh leaders” for Celts who live in England?
As to little Ahmad being allowed to “pray” five times a day at the state school, his parents should simply be told we don’t do that in English schools so live with it or get out. Same with that vicious little girl in Luton who wants to wear her ridiculous Muslim outfit to school. Let her pose around the streets in it after school hours, but as in France, school is secular and no one gets to parade their religion in class. This is the one thing I have ever admired about Chirac. He and education minister Jack Lange absolutely refused to back down despite marches in Paris and endless discussions with “Muslim leaders” on TV.
If the blogs are anything to go by, there is a surge of opinion for getting rid of large tranches of these unassimilated people.
Islam is an ideology as well as a religion. It is as pernicious, violent and intolerant as Communism was in its day. Should Communists be allowed to preach totalitarian internationalism and violent revolution? That’s exactly what Islamic clerics are preaching and what the Koran calls for. And just because in Cold War days some Communists were good fellows and not very observant of the Marxist virtues doesn’t mean Communism wasn’t a clear and present danger.
Anyone who wants a spiteful chuckle should go to the BBC’s Have Your Say site. The editors must be weeping into their Ché mugs of Fair Trade coffee, because under the topic How Multicultural Is Britain (Jesus, do these people never STFU?) there is a landslide of robust comments slagging off multiculti. Where are all the usual Kumbayah suspects, I wonder, that there is no opposing voice?
Verity,
My rights and freedoms as a citizen are meaningless unless they apply to all citizens, even the ones whos opinions and actions sicken me.
If we are able to deprive born citizens of their rights, purely because they advocate policies we disagree with then no one is safe. This is precisely I despise Nu Lab and the multicultis.
If a muslim citizen advocates the imposition of sharia law, that is their right, much as I might find sharia barbaric. Just as it is my right to advocate the repeal of every EU /EC/EEC inspired law ever promulgated.
As long as neither of us indulge in violence there can be no case for shutting us up.
Just posted the following myself at the BBC site Verity mentioned –
As an Australian citizen by birth I am the descendent of migrants, and as a British citizen by choice I am an immigrant myself. However, for the past 30 years I have argued that multiculturalism is a Bad Thing and will result in the ghettoisation of society. Being anti-multiculti is NOT the same as being anti immigration. Immigrants can bring a great deal to the host society, but for everyones sake, look to the melting pot, not the multiculti solution.
What’s more, I’m fed up with this wealth of ideas and tradition immigrants supposedly generously bestow on our societies. The Hindus brought a vast talent for industrious behaviour and creating wealth, and so did the Jews. Both are law abiding by nature. Other than those two exceptional races (both of which keep their religions to themselves, incidentally) I really don’t think immigrants bring a thing we haven’t already got in abundance.
Yes, an occasional immigrant sometimes makes a contribution to our national life – yes, Scott Burgess, I am looking at you – but not en masse. No. Sorry. Don’t buy it.
Oh dear, our UK government is all in a tizz over the police using the “racial profiling” as a means to counteract would-be Islamist terrorist murder-bombers, and protect citizens from being blown to a million pieces whilst using public transport.
I read somewhere that over 90% of all terrorism throughout the world today is either perpetrated by Muslims or done in the name of Islam. The great majority of Muslims in Britain are non-white and are not indigenous to these Isles. Therefore it is common sense for our security services to use “racial profiling” as a means of detecting Islamist terrorists in our midst.
As the saying goes… If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…… it’s a duck.
The day we start getting bombed by tall, blonde haired, blue eyed Norwegian deep-sea fishermen is the day when our security services start honing in on blonde Scandinavians who distinctly smell of Cod. Until then they will be profiling young (Middle Eastern, North African & Central Asian) looking “Muslim” men. And rightly so.
Our government is so up it’s own arse with “political correctness” and “muliculturalism” and not wishing to offend the Muslims sensative ‘likkle fweelings’.
Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is the bastard child of the Muslim world. If our Muslim communities feel “offended” by the concept of racial profiling in order to catch these terrorists, my reply to them is… “Tough Shit!”. It’s your baby Achmed, learn to live with it.
And further more, As a UK citizen, I would be OUTRAGED and OFFENDED if our security services did NOT use the process of “racial profiling” as a means of catching these Islamist terrorist bombers amongst us.
Fuck political correctness… and let common sense prevail.
Samsung – For Tony Bliar and his malign cabinet, “multiculturalism” is a tool. He doesn’t believe it himself. It’s a wrecking ball he can use to wreck Britain. A giant jackhammer.
The Bedfordshire Constabulary guidelines are priceless. Imagine if they were real!
If the police want to speak to me as a victim or as a criminal, the first thing is to make sure they get the information they need. Anything that gets in the way of that should be booted out.
I’d expect the police not to call me a “queer bastard,” but if I’m a criminal and that’s the only way they can get me to talk, good luck to them. My victim wouldn’t complain, and that’s who matters.
These guidelines for dealing with Muslims are tantamount to saying that police should coordinate their gear before entering a gay household, wait till I’ve finished playing my Judy Garland LP, wait till I’ve knocked up a quiche to take to the police station and surfed gay.com and done my hair and address me throughout the interview as darling (fab be upon me).
In short, that these *patronising,* illiberal and iniquitous guidelines for dealing with Muslims have the support of Muslim soi-disant community leaders shows these ‘leaders’ for the patronising, illiberal, iniquitous shits they are.
Guidelines for Muslims should be the same as guidelines for everyone else:
1. Get the right address.
2. Do what you can to get a result.
You could/can(Somalia) also be a citizen of a community which doesn’t involve the/a state. You can despise the values of the state and have absolutely no committment to it but at the same time consider yourself a citizen of your community whether you branch it out as far as your home village, town, city, region or country. Nations were originally a linguistic community.
Keith –
Not every Muslim wants to do the things that al-Qaeda and the like do. As i have said elsewhere words can be interpreted in any way you wish and not every Muslim has to abide by every single word in the Qur’an anyway. Remember there is two main different Islamic faiths: Shi’a and Sunni.
Verity –
His parent(s) assuming they work are forced to pay taxes. They have little choice but to send their child to a state school. Going private means you have to pay on top of what is already being coerced away by taxation. Maybe “we” don’t do that in British schools but maybe we should? The market can decide that kind of thing, state schools can’t really so the issue is whether state schools are prepared to do it. I don’t see why not if little Ahmad does it during class time.
I recall having to sing Christian hymns at Primary school and listen to a hell of a lot about Christianity. That wasn’t very secular. In a private school it is correct that this girl can either abide by the rules or patronize another but with state schools it is vague. Just because her muslim outfit doesn’t conform to your taste it doesn’t mean the little girl is vicious.
On the issue of racial profiling I think it makes perfect sense to look at race as well as every other value in profiling a criminal. I have always had a great dislike to the view that race and I suppose religion are somehow special cases not to be looked out without fear of being either a racist or a religious intolerant. These terrorists are usually Arabs, male and between the ages of 18-40. Counting out the Arab part is ridiculous in the extreme.
As Perry said in his post there is a danger with profiling but only by assuming that being an Arab and a Muslim necessarily makes you a terrorist. Of course it doesn’t.
“My rights and freedoms as a citizen are meaningless unless they apply to all citizens, even the ones whos opinions and actions sicken me.”
Well, yes, Chris that sounds all very fine and noble, but the rights and freedoms we enjoy as citizens (few of them though there may be now) are contingent upon us alos observing the obligations and dutiesthat we as citizens have. Those boring things such as a respect for the rule of law, observing the norms of civiised society and –oh–let’s say not bombing or sawing the heads off fellow-citizens.
Muslim communities, in their self-imposed ghettoes have shown repeatedly that they reject the values of the society that once welcomed them. Not merely reject–many of them are working actively to destroy the host society.
To prattle on about their “rights” in that context is to ignore the larger problem–that they are a direct threat to Western civilisation.
Undoubtedly the majority of them are hardworking, law-abiding people. As were the vast majority of Japanese and Germans before WW2. Nevertheless, they provide the infrastructure that supports terrorism and stand by silently when violent jihad is preached in the mosques, when literature espousing violence against Jews and Westerners is sold in muslim bookshops, when the more radical clerics claim to speak on their behalf.
I’ll believe they’re on the same side as the society they live in when they drag a racist, jew-hating violent imam out to the nearest lamp-post and lynch him.
The standard tactic here is claiming oppression and discrimination whilst part of the community turns a blind eye to the death cult in its midst that is murdering its fellow citizens..
Who is killing who here,whose sensibilities need to be taken into account,who needs to reassure whom that their lives are sacrosanct?
A lot more reassurance from the Muslim community to the rest of us is well overdue.
Ian, Fabulous post, darling! Agree with every witty word.
JC says: … there is a danger with profiling but only by assuming that being an Arab and a Muslim necessarily makes you a terrorist. Of course it doesn’t. Thank for stating the most blindingly obvious sentence ever written on Samizdata.
The little attention-seeker in Luton is quite an unpleasant little piece of work and was being financed by Hiz ut-Tahrir. She not only has no right to impose her ugly outfit on other pupils who have to look at her, but what the headmistress said would happen, has happened: other Muslim girls in the school, wearing the school uniform that had been designed for them, are now being slagged off as sluts by the male pupils. Only this little Begum Wossname is virtuous. This is primitive garbage and should never have been allowed to take root in British schools.
Before you grasp your heart and go into multiculti shock, JC, your patronising, lofty point of view doesn’t necessarily accord with that of Muslims. After Chirac and Lange ramrodded their ‘no hijab’ rule through for schools, there were surveys done. Muslim women up to around age 40, who were interviewed not in the presence of the males in their family, approved of the ban by something like (can’t remember exactly) 72%.
It has never been the women who want these crazy outfits. The women in that age group will have been born in France themselves and grown up feeling alien and ridiculous wearing a hijab as a schoolgirl. Questioned away from the men, they don’t want the same for their daughters. They want their daughters integrated. So don’t throw yourself into a fit of empathy, JC, because you don’t know all the facts.
I can’t help noticing that those who criticise suggested ways of dealing with muslim radicalism are very short on solutions themselves. How about some suggestions from the supporters of the “vast majority of peaceful muslims” eh?
There are two choices here–either we ignore the bleating about muslim sensibilities and actually DEAL with the problem as we would any other terrorist group or we tolerate increasingly intrusive security measures imposed on all of us, for the forseeable future at enormous expense.
Let the measures impact on those responsible. And those responsible just happen to be the followers of a backward, violent religion.
What strikes me as wrong is that some of the July 21 bombers obtained British Citizenhsip despite a recent violent criminal record in Britain and having had no demonstrable ability to financially support themselves. Meanwhile Jean Charles de Menezes quietly got on with working as an electrician – I know who was making the more worthy contribution to Britain.
The problem of an unassimilated immigrant community which harbours people violently opposed to the general norms of British society is not going to go away quickly (even if you decided to deport everybody that somebody decided didn’t fit in.)
Firstly, you need to deal with the problem at the start when people come to live in the country.
* Reestablish embarkation controls; so you know who has left the country, who has overstayed. Take active measures to find and deport those here illegally.
* Make employing an illegal immigrant a criminal offence.
* Require knowledge of written and spoken English for new citizens AND new permanent residents.
* The home secretary has the final say on who gets citizenship and permanent residence. He should use that power with more discrimination. Perhaps he can cross reference with lists held by Western intelligence agencies. Or even just with lists of people with criminal records or records of fraudently claiming of social security benefits etc.
* There should be a requirement to explicity demonstrate that the applicant can financially support themselves and does contribute to society.
* An applicant should be required to get sponsorship from four or five natural born citizens (i.e. not themselves new immigrants.)
* Severely restrict family reunification immigration. If an immigrant cannot support himself then somebody must make a solid committment to financially support him.
The second part of the solution is to encourage or enforce the assimilation of people already in the country.
* Government should expressly acknowledge the existence of a single, dominant British culture.
* British history should be taught in schools.
* Possibly, make St George’s Day a bank holiday (in England at any rate.)
* Cease the delivery of government services in languages other than English.
* Government buildings (including schools) should fly the British flag.
* Create a criminal offence of failing to register foreign military training. (i.e. if you tell us that you went to a training camp in Afghanistan and cooperate we’ll let you off but if you try to keep it secret you will be in trouble even if we can’t pin anything else on you.)
* Look at ways of criminalizing failure to report obviously terrorist related activities.
* Require all clerics to have a teaching qualification and knowledge of English.
MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: scrap the welfare state and roll back the general leftist othordoxy which results in dependency, poverty and a moral vacuum which can be filled by an extremist ideology. It is interesting that the problems of assimilation are not as severe in freer-market countries like the US. The current problems with Islamic terror are but a symptom of the deep moral decline caused by addicition to the state.
These measures might make some people (not just Muslims) want to leave the country. I say good riddance to them.
Those who find the idea of deporting all Muslims immoral do have a point. But, morality is a relative concept, and sanctity of life (ours as well as others’) tramps most other moral considerations. Problem is, through our and our governments’ stupidity and cowardice (by “us” I mean the West) we brought on ourselves a situation where sorting good Muslims from the bad ones became a luxury we may no longer be able to afford. So at this point in time it may be more moral to deport them now, rather than lose many more innocent lives (both Muslim and other) later, when it may be too late for deportation. And actually, we may have already reached that point.
BTW, to add to one of the comments above, all religions are also ideologies (although not all ideologies are also religions). There is not much difference between Islam taken literally and Nazism, other than the former’s use of God as an excuse for its totalitarian aspirations. Come to think of it, this even makes Nazism sound more honest.
As to racial profiling, someone please show me a fair-skinned blue-eyed Muslim, and we will talk then. Last time my husband and I traveled on a US airline, we were singled out for extensive searches numerous times because of our ME appearances (we are Israelis). It was annoying, but no more than the rest of the security procedures. No big deal. We live in a war time, after all.
Well, Robert, those measures would certainly get my vote. But given the spineless, unprincipled lying politicians we have, what hope is there of that happening?
More’s the pity.
Alisa, nothing personal, but it’s actually very good news that you were singled out for extensive searches, based on your appearance, eh? Gives me some hope that security may actually be improving. Now, if we could just shut the ACLU up………
As Alisa says, we are at war.
Robert Alderson, your suggestions will never be executed by this foul government because they want the structure of Britain to fall apart. When it’s not falling fast enough, they take a pickaxe to it themselves to hurry the process along.
As I said earlier, state schools should be secular with a standard uniform for girls and a standard uniform for boys. The idea that everyone can design their own to fit their own concept of their own religion is daft and destructive.
The state has no role in supporting foreigners trying to get into the country and this “safety net” should be removed.
There should be no more being allowed to bring “wives” into the country. These men want submissive, ignorant “wives” who cannot speak English – so they are totally dependent on their “husbands”. They come from a Stone Society where they’ve never seen a toilet or experience running water. (Out of a pipe, that is; they will do their laundry in a running river.) They will live in a Pakistani ghetto and never learn English. With one parent on this level, the children born of this so-called marriage will never feel British. The child itself often grows up speaking broken English, or English with a heavy foreign accent.
I’ve read Robert Alderson’s prescription several times and can find almost nothing to quibble with.
I would like to add two further suggestions.
The first would be to scrap the broadcast licence fee and thus prevent the BBC from being an organ of Left-wing/cultural relativist propaganda. This organisation does untold damage – currently by continually reinforcing the notion that Moslems living in the UK are somehow hard done by, thus directly contributing to their sense of grievance.
The second would be a thorough cleaning out of the Augean stables that so many of our universities have become. Many former polytechnics could either be closed, with no great loss, or returned to their former status as institutions designed to teach vocational skills – in other words repairing computers or gas fitting not Marxist history or “sociology” (although these are really just different heads of the same hydra).
Mr Alderson makes some excellent practical suggestions for short-term application and effect. These additions, I suggest, would help address significant long-term influences.
Verity,
The problem is girls born here being whisked off to Pakistan and Bangladesh for an arranged marriage,thus an educated urban girl can find herself married to an illiterate peasant farmer who speaks no English.
None of Blairs Babes ever raise the question of pubescent girls suddenly being taken out of school and thrust into an arranged marriage.
Peter writes:
“None of Blairs Babes ever raise the question of pubescent girls suddenly being taken out of school and thrust into an arranged marriage.”
To her eternal credit, this is an issue that the Labour MP for Keighley, Ann Cryer, has frequently raised.
Naturally, she has been castigated and stigmatised for so doing, both by moronic Blairites and Moslems alike.
Now, now, Peter, there is not one problem as in “the problem is”, but certainly what you draw to our attention is significant. Certainly fathers do sell their daughters to illiterate dirt squatters overseas who don’t speak English – but are thereafter entitled to come to Britain. And Muslim males with right of abode in Britain trawl the caves and the jungles of Pakistan, Somalia, whereever, for illiterate women to “marry.”.
Obviously, bringing “brides” or “husbands” into the country has to be halted. Primitive, illiterate people, whose education level will not rise once they get through Heathrow, are thus unable to raise British children.
So not only does the practice have to be stopped, but the ones here need to be repatriated as they have absolutely no connection to Britain and they are not, in any real sense, “husbands” or “wives” anyway.
Attached to female brides from Britain there is also, of course, the issue of “honour” murders, where, if the “bride” tries to choose not to return to Pakistan and marry someone she’s never met with ambitions to get into Britain, she is murdered by her father and brothers. The British police, the product of the imagination of Sir Robert Peel, who invented the concept of a police service which is now copied worlwide, tend not to bother too much with “honour” murders, regarding them as pretty much within the family and nothing to do with them. Also, enquiries set off streams of multiculti whining from the Pakistanis and their “leaders of the Muslim community”.
How about some leaders of the “British community” warning them to fly right or be ejected?
Cheers, Verity – I must admit to being a closet fan of your comments!
When this country’s approach to immigration really started winding me up was when I was going out with a Brazilian. Absolutely lovely guy, polite, gentle, here to learn English, paid his way in everything, including English lessons, with no assistance from the state. It broke my heart when he bought me a birthday present because I knew how little money he had to spare. And of course our immigration rules make everything very difficult for him even to extend his stay, never mind settle here, despite the fact he’s a net contributor, has a degree, isn’t looking to import a partner, is able to work and so on. Compare and contrast.
I resent the perpetuation of non-native minority languages in government services that Robert refers to. You’ll be damn lucky to get Portuguese, of course. I wonder why?
I think multilingualism is good for a while, e.g., for Polish and Lithuanian refugees after the war. But to persist is not only to ghettoise but also to cripple people, particularly women. If you can’t speak the language and you need help, or need to leave your abusive husband in a closed community, you’re doomed to failure. As people have already said, it doesn’t do to point this out. After all, it would be racist to enable these people to have the same power over their lives that the rest of us do.
We speak English not because it’s superior to other languages – that would be Latin – but because we have to. It’s the only way to communicate.
One other thing about my friend. I remember we were with another Brazilian, who was speaking Portuguese, and my Brazilian told him not to speak Portuguese in front of me: it was rude, because I couldn’t understand and would feel left out, and in any case this other guy was also here to improve his English.
The problem with this is, it’s like ‘all blacks are members of the black community and must police their community’ i.e. it’s patently bullshit.
Being a muslim or being a black or being anything doesn’t make one part of that community, and even if you actively choose to become part of that community it doesn’t make you responsible for the behaviour of others. Most of the severely fundamentalist clerics are already outcasts from their community – none of the suicide bombers in London regularly attended ‘normal’ mosques: the Imams from those mosques complained that they had lost a number of attendees to ‘crazy fundamentalists’ who were not welcome in the mosques so were teaching in their own houses.
There’s only one thing worse than a government surveillance state where the government watches us all to make sure we’re ‘good citizens’ and that’s a ‘community surveillance state’ where everyone ‘does their bit’ to report to the police anything untoward and where people are encouraged to keep tabs on their fellow citizens, and that’s what’s being encouraged here – because it always leads to conflict because people just love to form little cliques. Half the reason we have a developed and robust society is because we no longer form these little familial and cliquey ‘community alliances’ that makes everyone feel ‘part of something’ so they stop wanting to move, change jobs, marry whom they want, etcetera.
As a muslim, black, christian, jew, whatever, I am responsible for myself and only myself. I don’t feel any compulsion to report skinheads to the police just because they like to rant about killing niggers, I don’t feel any compulsion to report imams to the police just because they rant about killing jews. Either we have freedom of speech or we don’t (I’m aware here in the UK that we don’t, but it’s the thought that counts, and as a free citizen I would never testify in a speech-crime case.)
Also why does no-one point out to Muslims (when they start ranting about Iraq) that thanks to the UK and the USA, Iraq has gone from being a rigidly-enforced secular state to ‘The Islamic Republic of Iraq’ (I think that’s the name that’s going to win out, Bush must be crying.)
Anyway, encouraging people to report ‘dodgy characters’ to the police rarely works: people just report their enemies or their competitors, and there are too many false tipoffs, especially if rewards are offered.
This needs attention from the intelligence services: infiltrate the organisations that are a threat, gather the relevant intelligence and use that to dissect out the offensive elements, as we did to the IRA. Anything else may work but is not cost effective. I notice that MI5 are actively recruiting people of middle eastern, pakistani or indian origin or appearance!
Odd that.
Ian – A Brazilian boyfriend? If you tell me you are secretly Peter Mandelson, I am coming over to pick up my Gloria Gaynor right now – and it better be in good shape!
On a serious note, I agree with you about the perpetuation of these non-indigenous languages like Urdu, etc., when the people who “needed” them (I do not agree that they ever did) in the first place, are now 90 years of age with their one tooth anchoring their chador to their face in perpetuity.
But Ian, it’s an industry and wormed into totalitarian lefty councils and we’re on the third generation of pyjama-dressed men who are graciously accepting details of what 3-bedroom/two bathroom flats are available to them, courtesy the stupid British taxpayer, in Urdu.
I agree this vast translation and interpretation programme cripples the beneficiaries – the whole idea: keep them dependent and grateful, but frankly, as far as I’m concerned, if some immigrant woman can’t speak enough English after 20 years to call the police for help, who cares?
Verity – no, but it was about the time Mandelson and his mortgage loan were in the news, so I got a fair amount of ribbing.
On your last point, I was thinking of women (even in their 30s) whose husbands don’t allow them to go off and learn English.
I’m not sure how widespread this is, or what the local/cultural pressures are. But people can’t be helped who won’t help themselves.
Lascaille, the point I was making with that sentence is that when there begins to be a severe backlash against all muslims because of the actions of the (comparatively) few, then muslims themselves may start to root out the cancer in their midst, purely for their own protection.
Whether or not you feel any compulsion to report skinheads to the police has stuff-all to do with what I was saying–skinheads don’t cause you personally a lot of grief. The day they do, maybe you’ll think differently about it.
Apples and oranges.
And by saying ‘Muslims may start to root out the cancer in their midst’ you ignore the central point I made that being a Muslim does not automatically make one a member of the ‘muslim community’ nor does it make you a member of the ‘fanatical muslim community’ nor in fact does it make you anything apart from an individual who is a Muslim.
Fringe elements by definition are not ‘in the midst’ – as I said above, none of the bombers attended regular mosques, they attended secretive fringe meetings where the ‘congregation’ (don’t know the proper term) was restricted and private. Making it the responsibility of the muslim council, or indeed ‘the muslim community’ to oversee the activities of any and all muslims is not the way this society works nor is it a reasonable expectation when the groups who tend to commit terrorism by definition are extreme groups who are unlikely to listen to any element (Muslim or not) that advocated ‘surrender.’ We see this situation in Ireland where, previously, whenever the IRA appeared to become overly peaceful, a stopgap ‘real IRA/really real IRA/true IRA’ stepped in. We are a society that (totally correctly) holds people responsible for their own actions rather than damning whole groups: we do not declare the black community ‘worthless’ and start preventatively locking them up because they commit so much street crime, the same goes for Irish Republicans (and Unionists) with regard to Irish terrorism and therefore we shall not start deporting muslims or locking them up preventatively because so many of them blow themselves up. Regardless of the opinions of the muslims questioned in the surveys mentioned previously, they have not committed terrorist acts, it is not a crime to ‘have some understanding of why people blow themselves up’ and it is not a crime to feel anger at the UK for invading Iraq – a view shared by the majority of the white non-muslim population of the UK too, I believe, however inconsistently. I would imagine a great many Irish Republicans ‘understood’ why the IRA were doing what they were doing, but that doesn’t make them all terrorists, nor does it even make them terrorist supporters. Hell, I understand why the Palestinans blow themselves up – but I’m totally pro-Israel without exception.
In summary people become criminals when they commit crimes. People here seem to be forgetting that.
The one person I would never havce considered to make such a stupid, insensitive comment in the House was Shadow Attorney-General Dominic Grieve. He said the London suicide bombings were “totally explicable because of the deep sense of anger over the Iraq war, a wider despair about the Islamic world and what Muslims saw as a “decadent” western society.
Proof that he well deserves his title of “Attorney General Grievous” I’d say.
Explicable means ‘a cause-effect relationship has been established.’ The dictionary definitions are ‘capable of being explicated or accounted for’ (wordnet) or ‘possible to explain’ (American Heritage)
Nothing is mentioned about the cause being rational nor that the effect being proportionate, there is no expectation that the causal relationship is logical, nor that it should be UNDERSTANDABLE nor reasonable nor anything else than ‘we have concluded that people are blowing themselves up for the following reasons which they have justified to themselves.’
That’s all. It is a generally asserted and (I believe) accepted fact that the london bombings had the above-mentioned motivating factors. Thus, as there is an explanation, the actions are explicable. If we had no idea why they did it, it would be inexplicable.
The comment by the minister certainly could have been better worded (i.e. he should have accounted for the ignorance and/or pedantry of his audience,) but the fact remains that all he has said is ‘we know why they did it.’
If people were exploding themselves for inexplicable reasons, we’d be a lot worse off.
Lascaille writes:
“The comment by the minister certainly could have been better worded (i.e. he should have accounted for the ignorance and/or pedantry of his audience,) but the fact remains that all he has said is ‘we know why they did it.'”
It was a gross (not to say grotesque) error of judgement on Grieve’s part.
I find this deeply saddening as prior to this statement I’d considered him easily the sharpest knife in the Tory drawer and more than capable of skewering Za-NuLabour flotsam and jetsam at will.
But he’s a politician, damnit. Words are his tools and he is paid to use them wisely, always alert to the way his enemies will twist what he says. Clearly, he wasn’t thinking when he made that remark and, in so doing, handed his opponents a golden gloating moment.
“Fringe elements by definition are not ‘in the midst’ – as I said above,”
They live, work and their families are part of the Muslim Community,there are any number of signs,from beard growth to extreme observance that wold be noticable to those around them.
“None of the bombers attended regular mosques, they attended secretive fringe meetings where the ‘congregation’ (don’t know the proper term) was restricted and private.”
Exactly,families notice when one of their number starts attending another place of worship,the Immam would also notice.Between them they will know where the young men are going.
Making it the responsibility of the muslim council, or indeed ‘the muslim community’ to oversee the activities of any and all muslims is not the way this society works nor is it a reasonable expectation
Muslims managed to march for the Socialist Workers Party Stop the War Coalition in their tens of thousands,coaches were organised by mosques.If they can be responsible about a nation that few, if any, have ties to,why can they not have respponsibility for those citizens who they have chosen to live amongst.
If being a Muslim means there is a right and duty to fught for Muslims everywhere,then there is also a duty for Muslims to control those of their congregation who would harm the majority who live in the same country.
Otherwise we might being to think that opposition to the Iraq War was not based on peace.
Assigning blame to the Iraq war, which is now over, is a smokescreen. Are they saying they’re mad that Saddam is not still in power? I doubt it. Are they mad that Iraq has had a completely democratic election? I doubt it. Are they mad that Iraq has a constitution that the people voted for? I doubt it. In fact, I doubt that they even know. Iraq was always anathema to Muslims because it was always that sin against god and man – a secular state! Not an islamic republic! Aaaargggh! In other words, they don’t give a crap about Iraq and all the British politicians who are parrroting those words are lying because at least it gives them some lonely hope of explaining inexplicable behaviour.
In 96% of the places in the world where there is unrest and outright mob violence, muslims are not only involved – but the violence was instigated by them. Eight hundred dead in Thailand last month. Remember what they did to the Chinese a couple of years ago in Jakarta? How about what the savagery the Indonesians visited upon the people of Aceh?
These people, by and large, are vicious and primitive and you want to have as little to do with them as possible. That means not having them in civilised countries because they are destructive and out control.
The reason the United States doesn’t have the violence and murder by Arab immigrants that Britain and Europe has come to think of as routine in their previously peaceful countries is, the majority of Arabs who immigrated to the US are Christians. That is not to say there are not some Muslims and the ones who are there are already trouble makers. But they haven’t reached a critical mass yet, except in Dearborn. And there is somewhere else – can’t remember where, where the refugee Somali Muslims are building up to a critical mass and are already causing problems with their demands. (I think it’s somewhere in MA.)
The problem is not Iraq. The problem is islam and unless some politicans are brave enough to tackle this head on, islam will destroy their civilised societies and impose their bonkers religion on them. And I will guarantee you of one thing: oily platitudes mouthed by frightened politicians will be counter-productive.
Please excuse two postings in a row, but I just picked this up from Vodka Pundit. It is about the lack of direction in Britain and the effect that unloosing the civil moorings of our country has had: fear of asserting ourselves as a nation. It is by Joan Collins. Those who read her occasional Diaries in The Speccie will be aware that she can write. (Link)
A psychologists view of the whole problem .Essential reading.
Julian Taylor: Grieve is a moron. Actually a few Tories have jumped on to the Iraq issue, no doubt trying to scoop a few votes from the anti-war crowd. Biiiig mistake. If the Tories think this approach will work, they are wrong. Muslims are only likely to hold them in contempt.
Alas, there are still many old Arabist Tories who probably get all teary eyed watching Florence of Arabia.
Peter writes:
“A psychologists view of the whole problem .Essential reading.”
Good grief! “Orgonamy”?!?
Wilhelm Reich was a raving, barking moonbat and I’m astonished to find anyone calling themselves a “psychologist” going within a thousand miles of his beliefs.
Sorry, Peter, I often find myself agreeing very strongly with you… but a Reichian?!
GCooper,
We are at a nexus in the tide of human history when it behoves us to take sides,Robert Harmon has run up his colours,let us welcome him aboard.
The ‘effectiveness of scare resources’ ? Cool typo.
Verity –
So obvious that Keith thinks all muslims should be deported? You seem to think maybe the same as Keith.
To say that Shabina Begum has no right to wear her outfit is something I mentioned in my previous post about it being a state school. Don’t use her links with Hiz ut-Tahrir to try and discredit her claims. Ad hominem, one of the most common logical fallacies.
What about the 28%? or is the majority always right? I’ll take your word for the figures being actually correct.
The majority by your poll don’t want “these crazy outfits”. People who look and act differently to most will almost always be made to feel alienated but you lay the blame on the part of those being different rather than those who are alienating. I don’t think I am a supporter of multiculturism. I dislike forced integration but dislike forced disintegration just as much. I think without private property being anything like secure, the roads being all public and national borders being decided by conflict that free immigration is the best policy. If that makes me a multiculturist in your eyes then so be it.
Keith –
Well peaceful Muslims are not the problem yet you persist in blaming all Muslims for the actions of some. If you want a partial answer to the problem then take British troops out of all the nations in the world that they are in including Iraq. Stopping people from committing unjust acts however is an issue of morality and someone will choose to abide by it or not. If not ultimately you can’t stop it. You can only bring them to justice.
I have read this blog for well over six months now as it is highly informative at times but never did I expect to read such completely spiteful ignorance as some of the posts on this topic.
The racism and blatantly fascist virulence coming from people complaining about the totalitarianism of others just astounds me.
Deport everyone who doesn’t believe the same things as we do! Force them to wear the same clothes as us.
And saying that only two sets of immigrants have ever given the country anything is both nescient and odious.
Yes people have to integrate, yes they should learn english but they don’t have to be the same in every respect. I thoroughly agree that we shouldn’t have to change our laws for them and the bending-over-backwards-to-be-PC attitude is completely wrong, but there’s a massive difference between deporting people because you don’t agree with their religion and simply ensuring the laws of the land always override their own whilst within our borders.
Why elsewhere in the blog are people all for personal responsibility for actions, but when it comes to Muslims they should all be responsible for each other. The very valid point about ‘members of a community’ made by Lascaille seemed to be completely missed by those seemingly blinded by hatred and racism.
It seems the principles some of the regular posters here state they hold so dearly only apply to themselves and the people they deem favourable. Free speech for me and whoever agrees with me.
Critically rational individualist perspective I never took to mean believe what we do or f*ck off.
Michael,
Here! Here! Let individualism rule!
I wrote earlier that people should be judged by their “ideology and action.” Some people responded that Islam is an ideology, fair enough point but, Islam like any other religion is so broad and convoluted that there are probably hundreds of different ideological interpretations of it.
We have to judge people by their actions. Using race or religion as a short cut to second guessing somebody’s actions is inconsistent with a critically rational individualist perspective and simply not an accurate tool. People who view the world from a racial / religious perspective will never realise their full potential.
The individual should rule. Group mentality sucks!
I would have thought that preventing people from committing unjust acts was far more of an issue of humanity than morality, given the nature of those acts in the context of recent events. Then again, as an atheistic worshipper of secular rationality, I feel I have an entitlement to hold the rest of the world to my standards of belief …
Michael writes:
“…seemingly blinded by hatred and racism.”
Haven’t we reached the point where people using words like these are deemed to have invoked some form of Godwin’s law?
As has repeatedly been pointed out, Islam is not a race.
One does not choose to be black, white, male, female or Chinese. One chooses to become, or remain, a Moslem. Opposition to Islam (whether you like it or not) cannot be racism. It is opposition to a belief system.
You may not enjoy the vehemence with which some object to that belief system. But it isn’t racism and the knee-jerk reaching for that tired word is both intellectually lazy and utterly irrelevant to the actual issue at hand.
Robert Alderson writes:
” Using race or religion as a short cut to second guessing somebody’s actions is inconsistent with a critically rational individualist perspective and simply not an accurate tool. People who view the world from a racial / religious perspective will never realise their full potential.”
Another commentator who seems unable to see the plain difference between racism and opposition to an ideological view.
Let us assume I am an avowed Satanist who happens to belong the sect that not only approves of eating babies, but actually considers it a mandatory sacrament, to be performed every Wednesday when there’s a R in the month.
What is the moral objection that prevents you from considering me (and all my fellow sect members) monsters?
“We have to judge people by their actions. Using race or religion as a short cut to second guessing somebody’s actions is inconsistent with a critically rational individualist perspective and simply not an accurate tool.”
Who is killing who in the name of what religion here? Which religion has some of its clerics praising the mass slaughter of their fellow citizens?
” People who view the world from a racial / religious perspective will never realise their full potential.”
You must be asocial worker.
“The individual should rule. Group mentality sucks!”
Religions are by their very nature antithetical to individualism.What is individualistic about a polyglot group of people bombing strangers in the name of Allah?
Let us assume I am an avowed Satanist who happens to belong the sect that not only approves of eating babies, but actually considers it a mandatory sacrament, to be performed every Wednesday when there’s a R in the month.
What is the moral objection that prevents you from considering me (and all my fellow sect members) monsters?
I would consider anybody who was a member of such a sect a monster. Somebody who joined such a sect has taken an action and should be condemned.
Somebody who is born into a Christian family should not be held responsible for the Spanish Inquisition.
Somebody who was born in Germany should not be condemned for the holocaust.
Somebody who was born a Muslim does not, simply by virtue of that fact, subscribe to the same ideology as Osama bin Laden. If that person grows up and goes of to a terrorist training camp he has committed an act for which he should be condemned.
Vehement opposition to an ideological view is fine, it is not racist and I did not say it was racist. I do not regard calling Islam a crazy moonbat religion to be a racist statement. But, I don’t see what words and phrases like infested, rats, stone-age, illiterate, never seen a toilet etc. have to do with opposing an ideological viewpoint.
Calling for the deportation of 3 million people is a racist response and, more importantly, a response that would be massively counter-productive and impractical.
Robert Alderson writes:
“Somebody who was born a Muslim does not, simply by virtue of that fact, subscribe to the same ideology as Osama bin Laden.”
The point I made, and which you are avoiding, is that it is not in the least unreasonable per se to bracket together people who choose to identify with a set of beliefs.
Your original quote was:
“Using race or religion as a short cut to second guessing somebody’s actions is inconsistent with a critically rational individualist perspective and simply not an accurate tool.”
And I demonstrated that, from the religious angle, this was not true. It can be perfectly reasonable to make such a judgement about someone, based on their professed ideology.
As to whether a belief in Islam is genuinely compatible with life in a Western democracy, I suspect neither of us is qualified to say. I find myself intellectually drawn to the notion that it is, or should be, yet constantly challenged on that belief by people who clearly know far more about the religion that I do.
It may be, as has been suggested, that those Moslems who believe only a watered-down version of their religion are suited to life in the West. Personally, I don’t know – and I am rather suspicious of those who claim they do.
Robert Alderson writes: Calling for the deportation of 3 million people is a racist response. This is a very interesting statement, because Tony Blair assures us that there are only 1.6m Moslems in Britain, so presumably you work for the Home Office and saw the census before the books were cooked?
But, I don’t see what words and phrases like infested, rats, stone-age, illiterate, never seen a toilet etc. have to do with opposing an ideological viewpoint. I referred to these “brides” being brought into Britain from remote, primitive villages as Stone Age. That is not racist; it’s anthropological. And it is true that the first toilet most of these “brides” ever see is on the plane over. This too is an anthropological observation. Not everything you don’t approve of can be classified by the malediction des nos jours. Importing primitive brides whom the grooms have never even met argues for a certain ideological viewpoint that will be found unappestising by most Westerns who aren’t employed in the grievance industry.
You may have sensed over the previous three weeks that people from our particular advanced and enlightened Western society (Britain, in case you were scratching your head) are getting sick of the “racist” gauntlett constantly being thrown down as a means to shutting out legitimate discussion of a very big problem.
GCooper,
I take the point that Islam is an ideology (I would a group of ideologies), an opt-in ideology and not an ethnic group. I just don’t think that our enemy’s ideology is contiguous with Islam. Our enemy is within Islam not Islam as a whole.
I am wary of assertions that Islam in and of itself is incompatible with Western civilization. Certainly, OBL’s ideology is incompatible with Western civilization. OBL would say that his view is the only one sanctioned by Allah, other Muslims would disagree. (The Pope and Ian Paisley are both Christians.)
My overall view on this is that the West is the victim of an internal struggle within Islam. Denouncing Islam as a whole cuts us off from people within Islam who are or might someday be sympathetic to the Western way. The struggle within Islam has at is root the pathetic failure of Muslim countries in general and Arab countries in particular to give their citizens a reasonable life. It will be a long time before that struggle is settled, let’s not give up the hope that this struggle will come out the right way by condemning all Muslims.
Anyway, I can only go by my subjective experiences. These amount to meeting a handful of Muslims in UK, Europe and the USA. I’d rather leave the theology to theologians.
Verity,
You wrote that there were “two million too many” in Britain and I asked if you supported deporting them.
I disagree with Keith’s suggestion that Muslims in Britain should be deported but he did clearly answer the question that I thought you comment raised.
You have not answered.
Some of your suggestions such as secularisation of state schools are aimed at how to assimilate people who are here, but your original comment clearly implies that you favour mass deportations.
Do you want deportations based solely on religion?
Humanity is usually part of morality
GCooper –
The way people have been talking about Muslims on this subject is one of talking about the group of Muslims, a holistic entity. Race can be defined as a group of people who share the same interests, in this case the Islamic faith. Trying to defend others and maybe yourself against racist accusations on attempts of technicalities has failed.
Also there is a difference between opposing a faith or ideological view and forcefully wanting to get rid of them which is what some have suggested here.
But you are assuming every Muslim follows this ideology the same. Words can be interpreted anyway you like and not every Muslim has to believe in every single word anyway even if all agreed on the interpretation of it. The fact that there are two major Islamic sects which disagree on things must ring a bell for you.
Verity –
Showing his figure was wrong didn’t falsify his point
JC – the left is redefining the word “race” once again! Now it “can be defined as a group of people who share the shame interests”! Who knew? I wonder what “race” I belong to? The bridge race? The ailurophile race? The internet race? Gosh, who would have ever thought we’d have a choice!
Showing his figure didn’t falsify his point. You are correct, because his point is false regardless of the figure. Islam is not a race. There are Caucasian Muslims and there are Somalian Muslims and there are Indonesian Muslims. These three groups alone, picked at random, are three different races, many of whom adhere to a particular religion. You choose your ideology. You cannot choose your race.
JC writes:
” Race can be defined as a group of people who share the same interests, in this case the Islamic faith. ”
No, it cannot – any more than your taking an arbitrary decision henceforth to call blue, red would be any more than foible extended to folly. The word ‘race’ has a meaning.
Still, as you go on to say:
” Words can be interpreted anyway you like…”
It is perfectly clear that you inhabit a flexible universe in which discourse is actually impossible.
So I shan’t even try.
GCooper –
One does not choose to be black, white, male, female or Chinese. One chooses to become, or remain, a Moslem. Opposition to Islam (whether you like it or not) cannot be racism. It is opposition to a belief system.
I admit that my use of the word racism in this instance could be mis-construed by some as erroneous. However if we were disussing the deportation of Jews, instantly the sentiments would be anti-semitic, which is also mis-construed as racism (Judaism in my understanding also being a faith, although in many instances tied a lot closer to parentage etc). Therefore I used the term racism in this instance as there appears to be an absence in my vocabulary of a word for the blind hatred of people of the Muslim faith. Add to this that most Muslims don’t follow nationalism, so see themselves as one race anyway regardless of birthplace and the term racism still stands. However when the PC press or some rich lobby group coins a phrase for anti-Muslimism or suchlike, I will gladly substitute that in this instance. It remains though, a word not chosen from laziness and also not invalidated by anything you have stated thus far.
Add to this that people of Hindu faith are on this thread held up as an ‘exceptional race’ but still my use of the word racism is questioned. Also the fact that Hindu’s practice arranged marriages just as much, if not more, than muslims but are still exceptional where Muslims are disgusting. I don’t disagree on many Hindu’s being exceptional, however I think many people are exceptional no matter what belief system they choose or that others brand them with. It is still the individual, not the ‘race’ faith or whatever else.
Michael – Where have you been? “Therefore I used the term racism in this instance as there appears to be an absence in my vocabulary of a word for the blind hatred of people of the Muslim faith.” It’s been on the lips of every cabinet minister, Tony Blair (of course!), the BBC and every leftist publication in Britain. The word you seek is “Islamophobia”!
Your understanding of Judaism also seems to be a little hazy. If Alisa is reading, perhaps she will explain it to you. Although Judaism has a few – very few – converts, because it is not a proselytising religion – the Jews are a race of people with a religion that is particular to them.
Moslems don’t see themselves all as members of one race – except as in “the human race”. They regard themselves all as citizens in the nation of Islam. Again, no race involved.
Regarding the Hindu “race”, I’ll have to email a good friend and ask him, but I believe you’re wrong, and that the Indians who are Hindus all came from the same race. The Moslems came down from the North during Moghul times. On the other hand, millions of Dravidians are also Hindu, so I’ll have to find out.
” Words can be interpreted anyway you like…”
Which of course is the problem,we are asking Muslims to state categorically that they do not support the fanatics who are their co-religionists.
An honest an unequivocal answer to this from the moderate wing of Islam has not been forthcoming.
“An honest an unequivocal answer to this from the moderate wing of Islam has not been forthcoming.” – Peter
“moderate wing of Islam!”….. What the hell is that?
Is that the same as the moderate wing of fascism?
Is that the same as the moderate wing of Islam that beleives according to Korannic scripture that the Christians and the Jews are “Infidels,” “Enemies of Allah”‘ and that Jews are the descendants of “pigs and monkeys?”. Or that according to Sharia Law, apostates are to be killed and women are to be stoned to death for infidelity.
Peter, I really don’t think there is such a thing as a “moderate” Islam.
A Muslim is a Muslim is a Muslim. When they beleive, they have to sign up to the whole package, Sharia Law and all.
Samsung,
The question has to be asked to ascertain whether or not such a body exists,otherwise our multicultis and “individualists” will keep dragging out the racism card.
In all fairness the Muslim community/ies sholu be asked a straight question ,
Does Islam allow them to peacefully co-exist with a liberal democratic society under the rule of law and thus renounce violence?