As a former ‘man of the Left’ I find it interesting to compare how the Left treat racial and religious differences and how the Right treats them. Since becoming aligned with the Centre Right I’ve noticed that whilst racists can exist in all political strands and among every race, racialism on the Right is both a minority concern and not imbued with much political power. It is on the Right where I’ve found the most people who believe in MLK’s idea that we should be judged on the content our our character and not the colour of our skin. The racialism of the Left is not only adhered to by more people and by those with more political power, but it is also more insidious than the naked racism that can be found on the extreme Right. The racialism of the Left is the racialism of low expectations. It is the assumption that if you are black or brown or Muslim then you are weak and need protecting.
This racism of low expectations is examined in a brilliant recent article by Brendan O’Neill over on the Spiked website. In the article Mr O’Neill discusses the fallout from the recent Batley and Spen byelection and the attitude of both Labour and the believers in multiculturalism to Muslims and Islam.
Mr O’Neill said:
Is there a problem of anti-Muslim bigotry in the UK? Unquestionably. This bigotry should be seen as distinct from the idea of ‘Islamophobia’, a cynical identitarian term that is too often deployed to control and censure any discussion of Islam or of the broader Muslim community. Anti-Muslim bigotry is the belief among certain racist activists that Muslims are the cause of Britain’s ills, dragging the nation down into the cesspit of sharia and stupidity. But the refusal of the identitarian set to speak honestly about the Muslim community is a variant of anti-Muslim bigotry too, given that it is motored by a belief that any discussion of Muslim anti-Semitism or Islamic terrorism is by definition offensive to Muslims (what – all Muslims are racists and terrorists?), and given that it is underpinned by a hyper-paternliastic desire to protect Muslims from difficult discussion, as if they were infants and we white, woke, well-educated leftists are the adults. Spare me such racial patricianism.
Labour does indeed need to think about how it engages with Britain’s Muslims citizens. But so does the entire political class. Are we going to treat Muslims as a race apart, super-sensitive, in need of the grace and protections of the Guardianista elites, people whose bigotries can be excused or glossed over? Or are we going to treat them as equal citizens who are likely to be as hostile to Islamic terrorism as the rest of us, and who would benefit enormously from becoming full, free, equal citizens of the UK with all the openness and frankness that such equality entails?
As many readers of this blog will understand my view is that it is Islam that needs to be questioned and where necessary countered not individual Muslims. Mr O’Neill is correct, we do need to talk about the bigotries that exist in Muslim communities and we do need to treat Muslims as equal citizens with equal rights and equal responsibilities. We do need to be able to speak freely about Islamic extremism and Islamic Jew hatred just as we can speak freely about other matters and we need to have such discussions without being constrained by a feeling that we cannot say this or that because it might be ‘offensive’. I’ve always said that the first victims or Islamic extremism are individual Muslims, you can see ample evidence for this by looking at the Islamic world where the primary victims of such extremists are other Muslims. If you create ghettos, which the multiculturalists have done, where a Muslim can live their entire life and not see or interact with non-Muslims on a social, employment or other level, then you create breeding grounds for the very same extremists who will all too readily oppress any Muslim in that ghetto who in their eyes ‘steps out of line’. Take it from me ghettos whether they are religious, racial or class based are for escaping from, not for strengthening or turning into permanent features of a society.
We should no longer follow the path that the Left and the multiculturalists have laid out and treat Muslims like children, we should instead treat them as adults with adult rights and responsibilities with praise when it is deserved and criticism when it is required.
Let me help you sort the wheat from the pre-ponderous amount of chaff in Mr O’Neil’s expose.
Brought up in the environment of a poisonous religion doctrine, a journalist finds common cause with followers of another poisonous religious doctrine.
And again, let me help you sort the wheat from the pre-ponderous amount of chaff here.
A former (?) member of a group which believes in the destruction of western democratic society finds common cause with the followers of a religious doctrine which promotes the destruction of western democratic society.
It is individual muslims who propagate islam, though they are helped by far too many gullible non-muslims who do not recognise the dangers of islam.
muslims subscribe to the primitive, backward, aggressive, intolerant, dishonest, supremacist, anti-human, anti-women, anti-Jew, anti-democracy, anti-progress, superstitious, irrational, doctrine of sharia.
Without individual muslims, islam would have been thrown into the dustbin of failed beliefs long ago.
All muslims are a threat to the progress of humanity.
BTW you don’t become a muslim by saying you are a muslim, any more than you become a hamster by calling yourself a hamster, or more than you become a man by self-identifying as a man.
So less of this nonsense of “muslim in name only”. According to islam (which means submission), a muslim is one who submits to _allah_. And _allah_ wouldn’t accept you as a muslim merely because you called yourself a muslim.
Islam might not exist today had not Islamic leaders not decided to kill those who left Islam. It’s an ideology created in violence that rules by fear, something we can see quite clearly by looking at places like Pakistan.
Being hostile to Islamic terrorism does not make a muslim hostile to the fundamental aims of islam (and thereby every muslim) to dominate the world.
The means of overcoming opposition to islam may be different. The aim is the same.
And gullible non-muslims on all sides are helping muslims in their aim.
What Ben Shapiro found, based on a Pew Research survey of Islamic nations is that there is a considerable amount of support for views that genuinely could be considered as ‘extreme’. The problem is Islam is not a monolith, although large parts of it are in my view bad, there do exist those who have as individuals decided to, as most Jews and Christians have, abandon or reinterpret the bad parts of Islamic scripture. The problem is those who make these changes can end up dead at the hands of the more orthodox Muslims.
**If you create ghettos, which the multiculturalists have done, where a Muslim can live their entire life and not see or interact with non-Muslims**
The multiculturalists (despicable though they are) did not create ghettos. It is muslims who prefer to congregate in ghettos.
They despise non-muslims (it’s their religion) and they have no wish to integrate with non-muslim societies such as the UK. Except on the most trivial level (e.g. selling muslim “food”), they only “interact” with non-muslims to tell them how islam is a perfect system for society, and how muslims are morally superior to non-muslims.
If there is a tendency to congregate in ghettos then the best policy to promote integration would be to discourage ghettos. Unfortunately Multiculturalism doesn’t discourage ghettos on the contrary it promotes ghettoisation which means that those whose ideology is hostile to that of the majority get concentrated in one place rather than dissipated and have that ideology hopefully diluted.
You have not solved the problem. You have just reworded it. And further you have presented it as a problem for which you have no practical solution at that. Hope is not enough.
How do you think those whose ideology is hostile are going to be willing to live in an environment to which they are hostile, and to which naturally that environment will be hostile?
I see little sign of, say, the ideology of the Jews being “diluted”.
Why do you think the ideology of islam would be any different?
The ideology of Jews has to a large extent been diluted and has been since the late 19th century. Many Jewish women abandoned the wearing of wigs after marriage and intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews has both caused some individuals to leave Judaism but caused others to join are but two examples. Also Reform, Liberal and third way Masorti Judaism is pretty strong in the UK even though Orthodoxy in its wider sense which includes the Modern Orthodox right through to the more crazy parts of the Haredim, is numerically stronger.
British Jews have created what is often called ‘the Minhag Anglia’ or British Jewish custom where Judaism has become tailored to the British culture and experience.
Whilst many Muslim individuals are in my view not that great a threat, the ideology of Islam is a different kettle of fish. It is an ideology that is hostile and encouraging people to live in ghettos as the multiculturalists have done means that many more people who shouldn’t have done have ended up in environments where the promoters of hostility have a great deal of social and political control.
It should not be forgotten that there are Muslims or people from Muslim backgrounds who came to Britain in order to have a different life, a life away from theological control and these people are not a threat to us but the policy of multiculturalism has given far too much control and influence to the sort of people and groups that a lot of people of that background tried to escape from.
If there was one grave mistake that multiculturalists have made it is to treat Islam and Muslims the same way as Jews and Judaism. There was a history of Jews in Britain changing their practices where necessary and going all out to fit in. it’s quite possible that the more naive of the multiculturalists looked at Islam and thought that in a generation or two, or even three, they would be as integrated as Jews were over a similar time scale. This has not happened and we are presented with a situation where some younger Muslims are significantly more radical than their parents or grandparents.
Did Jews change their ways to fit in? Or did they change their ways for some reason to do with the way people develop anyway?
You, as much as anyone with whom I have interacted, must be aware of the danger of confusing correlation with causation.
From what I can gather there was a pressure both positive and negative to fit in. The positive pressure was that life in Britain was better than living under the threat of pogroms out in the East and you needed to fit in in order to get on and become more secure. The negative pressure was that without compromise with the surrounding culture life might end up being more difficult than it needs to be. Communities are made up of individuals and each person would have had their own motivation for what they did. Some would have been frightened of what might happen if they didn’t fit in and others may have embraced the majority culture wholeheartedly and voluntarily. Some people continued to be committed to the 613 Commandments of Judaism even if it cost them jobs because they would not work on a Saturday whilst others chose to amend their Judaism to fit in with either Britain or later knowledge. Some non Orthodox Jews think I’m a bit of an extremist because I don’t eat non kosher fish such as prawns and some more orthodox Jews dislike the fact that I switch the securit monitor on of a Sat morning rather than leave it on from Fri Sunset to Sat Sunset. People make choices in religion.
I know of som eJews who gladly eat prawns and know that part of the prohibition is because such fish spoiled quickly in the hot lands of ancient Israel. ‘But we have fridges these days’ they say and happily much down on prawns. As regards ‘fitting in’ I do know of one story about how a Jewish community, I think it was in Wales, that had sorted themselves out nicely for jobs and businesses etc and really didn’t want arseholes rocking the boat. So what they did is when a member of the community threatened to create a ‘shanda fur de goy’ or embarrass the community in the eyes of non Jews, their would be a whip round among the Jews to fund the passage out of Britain for the miscreant so that they didn’t continue to bring trouble.
Some people did indeed change because of external pressures both positive and negative but there are also as you say developments that may have happened anyway.
Knowing what I know is why I make a distinction between Muslims and Islam, I might dislike Islam for what it is but I know that people vary and I don’t want to condemn an entire group of people because of an ideology that some may cleave to strongly but others may either selectively follow or quietly drop.
There is a misconception that Christianity, as a doctrine/ideology, (or some parts of it anyway) fundamentally changed at the time of the Reformation.
The ideology, or fundamental beliefs of Christianity, did not change then (or since). And this is one of the few religious points on which me and “my” Christian wife agree. The way some Christians practised their religion changed, but not Christianity.
Similarly from my perspective, Judaism has not changed its most fundamental beliefs.
I can appreciate that much of Jewish life is ordered by prescriptions which made a lot of sense in early primitive superstitious societies. And of course some of have fallen by the wayside (e.g. wigs). Many of them though, for example dietary, make no sense in modern UK society, any more than similar islamic prescriptions/superstitions which arose from with similar societies in the “Middle East”.
Likewise, I don’t believe that the ideology of Judaism has fundamentally changed.
But I am prepared to be convinced, but only with a clear statement of what Jewish ideology was (is) and how it has changed. For the purpose of this debate I will accept that the myths in the Old Testament are true.
[Yes, I too can “believe” “six impossible things before breakfast”!]
We are very close on one thing (?I think), even though we come from a very different perspective.
Some (many?) believe that those muslims are just like us, only with their different clothing, and strange chanting as part of their equally valid religious observances. And so what if some of them are terrorists and child molesters, there are bad apples in every group. But they believe that when the muslims come into contact with our superior ways, they will see the light and become so much more like us, maybe even indistinguishable.
This is, and I am afraid I will have to use a highly technical term here, bollocks.
muslims, even child molesters, believe they are superior to non-muslims. And why should they abandon their special status (granted by allah) in this life and the next, and be like us non-muslims?
[though of course some, not many, do]
It is a fallacy held by most humans that other humans fundamentally react to the world like them.
On the contrary.
Men and women for example have a different internal life. [Something many feminists I believe ignore]. So if men and women from the same socio-economic group have occasional difficulties in understanding the other’s perspective, how can humans from very different backgrounds really understand each other except at the most trivial level?
By way of example, there is no way in which I as a casual listener can be in the same kind of internal world as a great composer.
Similarly you as a Jew, understandably, would not grasp how I as an atheist (and with many other beliefs) see myself in the world. That applies equally with the roles reversed.
In this book – https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137466075 – a muslim “academic” says that no-one should make a negative comment about muslim beliefs because it would upset them. [At least that is how I read it.]
How childish is that?
This book was also praised by a couple of English professors..
Of course thr author has nothing to say about how offensive some people find islam and its primitive doctrine.
It’s a view that not only shows Islam to be thin skinned but also a view that paints Islam as so weak as to not stand up to criticism. Not surprised to see it praised by a few English professors (or did you mean professors of English?) as too many of our higher education institutions seem to contain more Communists today than they did in the 1930’s.
It actually shows that the author (Mondal) believes that muslims are weak.
The same author also wrote a “thesis” showing how (a small subset of) muslims claimed they were integrated (or some such) into UK society. I very much doubt that those muslims even vaguely understood UK society. But presumably the author believes that they too must be protected.
I take your point about the professors and communism. That only makes the situation worse. Universities are a hotbed of woke theorists, teaching these concepts to vulnerable minds who might also accept Mondal’s conclusion,
As an aside:
We must be very wary of applying human characteristics (e.g thin skinned) to doctrines, etc. It is an easy metaphor, but metaphors can be very misleading.
I think Islam is weak, if it wasn’t then it wouldn’t need the harsh punishments for blasphemy and apostacy
It is the muslims who are weak. It is the muslims who need harsh punishments. And it is muslims who created the harsh punishments, and furthermore, they thought that there was nothing wrong with harsh punishments.
And talking about harsh punishments it was those “jews” who created the harsh punishments for homosexuals and adulterers.
And I will have to leave for another time my explanation of why muslims and Jews imposed harsh punishments.
Bronze age harsh laws might have been necessary to keep the tribe together and that is something that is notable about the rules contained in the Torah. However as greater knowledge is attained, these laws get either softened or disregarded.
How have the multiculturalists created ghettos, please? Along with answers to the usual supplementary questions – who was involved, where and when did this all happened, and why.
Thanks.
Like many ideologies,multiculturalism has no primary originator. It grew out of ideas post the 1960’s to make society inclusive. Many of the ideas associated with it are laudable such as not judging people on stuff that they cannot change or which are immutable. However by treating all cultures, as opposed to all individuals, as if they had equal value a situation emerged where people were tacitly encouraged, not by any one individual or political party to siloise and ‘stick to their own’. A somewhat natural tendency for individuals to stick together with like minded people or with people from a similar background ended up being made much more permanent than it might otherwise have been. This societal approval for seeing people as groups rather than individuals made the breaking up of ghettos more difficult and challenging and meant that those groups that might be more naturally likely to ghettoise and stick to their own continued to do so.
Multiculturalism came from the Liberal and Liberal left currents but has been taken up by those of varying political shades. It is somewhat natural that when people migrate to a different culture of country that they might stick to their own for a generation or maybe two before integrating by both employment or marriage and losing their primary loyalty to their ancestor culture. Unfortunately the doctrine of MC encourages people to see themselves as a member of a group rather than an individual and therefore cleave to their own people in ghettos. Sometimes these ghettos are difficult and hostile and sometimes they are less hard edged and the borders both physical and ideological between them and the wide culture are more amorphous.
muslims believe that sharia has been handed down by a perfect divine entity as a perfect way for humanity to live, and muslims have an obligation to the said divine entity to bring allah and his moral code to non-muslims everywhere. That’s the only
Of course muslims want to lift the whole of humanity (including the West) to the heights of sharia.
Anybody who doesn’t agree with that assessment must be a racist anti-muslim bigot …. and a target for every crazy (and every not so crazy) supporter of the muslims.
O’Neil is a (former?) Marxist, a (former?) Christian and a journalist.
Lots of religions want their deity to be the only one, the big difference is that Islam encourages its followers to use violence to bring that about. Islam is not unique in that as Christians did this a lot in the past but not so much today.