‘Thoughtful’ has castigated me for not understanding that the extremist hijackers of Birmingham schools are in fact just Muslims merely following their religion….I had thought that such a narrative had been the central theme of the oft repeated posts on this site that examined and disputed the BBC’s , and the ‘Establishment’s’, own interpretation of Islam, that it is the ‘religion of peace’, that those who follow a fundamentalist belief in Islam are distorting or perverting it, and all the time happily ignoring the conflicting values of ‘everyday’, allegedly moderate Islam with those of a democratic, secular, progressive society.
How many times have I quoted Mark Steyn saying that the problem with the ‘extremists’ is not that they are extreme but that they are following the divine directives of their religion?….that’s why they are ‘fundamentalists’…they adhere to the fundamental laws.
This from the Guardian is the classic BBC position on Islam:
Failure to distinguish adequately between Islam and Islamism, and between Islamists and ordinary Muslims, has important consequences. It plays into the hands of Islamists by accepting their own narrative that their politicised understanding of Islam represents the “true” Islam. It can also lead non-Muslims to assume that all Muslims harbour – perhaps secretly – the totalitarian aspirations of Islamism.
Steyn, and ‘Thoughtful’, are of course correct about ‘extremists’ and the above attitude is wrong….Islam is political and always has been…’Islamism’ wasn’t invented by Tariq Ramadan’s grandpa in the ’30’s, a response to Western colonialism, as we are so often told, it was invented by Mohammed 1400 years ago.
The surprising fact is the BBC has now started to raise the question of that conflict of values, the ‘clash of cultures’ that has long been denied.
Here they say that the Trojan Horse allegations have altered the narrative that we can’t question Islamic values…‘a defining moment in multi-cultural Britain‘ (at least for now)….
Seven years ago, the future Education Secretary Michael Gove wrote that “there is something rather un-British about seeking to define Britishness“.
He argued that Britishness was something best demonstrated through action rather than described in abstract terms.
And that’s why the state of a small number of predominantly Muslim schools in Birmingham, and how the government and other bodies propose to change them, may turn out to be one of the defining moments in modern multicultural Britain.
An example of that change in direction is one taken by the BBC itself perhaps. On the Today programme last Saturday (08:33) the über Liberal Justin Webb rather astounded me by raising the question of cultural values (08:36:50) and asks where do you draw the line when deciding when ‘cultural conservatism’ is to be considered ‘extreme’…in other words when does ‘meeting the needs of Muslims’ start becoming toleration of extreme religious views…extreme in relation to British values, culture and law.
Labour’s Tristram Hunt stated clearly that Islamic education was not acceptable in British schools. Webb said it was a minefield…one the BBC has long avoided I might add.
The problem with Islam is that there is no separation of church and state or indeed of any sphere of personal life…there is no line to draw….a Muslim therefore always looks to try and reshape the world to fit in with his beliefs…whether it is in schools, food or the work place or indeed foreign policy…..and hence will always be in some level of conflict with the non-believer.
Hopefully the attitude to discussing Islam is changing in the UK and a discussion about ‘Islam’ and whether it is compatible or not with Western secular, democratic values can begin without the attempts to avoid the difficult questions and the resultant answers and the usual denouncements of anyone who criticises Islam as racist and islamophobic.
The discussion is important and urgent…..can a social democratic Europe survive a mass population transformation as Muslims migrate here in increasing numbers and assume political power?
Steyn says if you want immigrants to integrate you have to have something to assimilate to…British culture has to be sufficiently confident to impose itself, to believe in itself…but how do you do that as a population has a rising number of Muslims who may not want to conform to the norm?
“A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it’s dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us?”
Norman Tebbit agrees with the BBC assertion that the Trojan Horse affair maybe ‘one of the defining moments in modern multicultural Britain’…saying the ‘elephant of multiculturalism is out of its corner.’
Tebbit makes some powerful and uncomfortable, for some, comments about immigration and the likelihood of rival societies, ‘mini-Pakistans’, being established in the UK:
The unmannerly squabble between Theresa May and Micheal Gove is bad enough in itself, but it has now brought the elephant of multiculturalism out of the corner and on to centre stage.
No one should have been surprised at what was going on in schools in Birmingham. It is precisely what I was talking about over 20 years ago and Enoch Powell was warning against long before that. We have imported far too many immigrants who have come here not to live in our society, but to replicate here the society of their homelands.
This is not a tirade against migration from the EU, which we are largely unable to control, but from the rest of the world, which we could have controlled if we had had the will to do so. However, even if suddenly the inward flow of those unwilling to adapt their society to ours were to be entirely cut off, it might already be too late to prevent the establishment of enclaves in which our values are treated with contempt, while foreign values and even laws are promoted.
It is certainly true that nature abhors a vacuum and with the decline of Christianity leaving the structure of our values system with no foundation there is now a great emptiness in our society. The doctrine of multiculturalism is a nonsense. A society is defined by its culture, and rival cultures are bound to create rival societies within the same territory. That is what has now been forced into public view in Birmingham.
Of course a tolerant dominant culture has no problem in tolerating minority groups. Neither Judaism nor Buddhism are a threat to Christianity in Britain, but if our society loses confidence in its value system, it will not long remain dominant.
For all the shouting and finger-pointing at Westminster, particularly that from the Labour Party – which bears responsibility for destabilising British society by its policy of unlimited, unrestricted, uncounted immigration fanned by unlimited welfare spending – I do not see any evidence yet that the scale of the problem is recognised, let alone that there is a realistic plan to deal with it
And what would be my advice? Well I feel like the Irishman asked by a stranger the best way to Dublin: “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”
One of the greatest misunderstandings is in trying to view Islam and its adherents from the Anglo Christian viewpoint. We have a long history of fighting for personal freedom from Magna Carta through the establishment of the Church of England & Protestantism, the Civil War etc etc.
There is nothing to compare with this in the history of any Muslim country. When Abu Hamza arrived in the 1980s he said that Britain was “a paradise, where you could do anything you wanted”. Soon after he began his work trying to turn it into hell !
Trying to view Islam through the glass of Christian experience is again a mistake. Protestantism brought in during Tudor times meant that people could worship as they pleased, and hold individual beliefs which can deviate enormously from the mainstream.
All of this is impossible in Islam, those who do deviate are declared heretics or apostates and either murdered or at war if there are too many of them. Smaller sects like the Alouites are attacked by any adventuring Jihadist who choose.
Islam is a complete ideology and there is no room for personal interpretations or deviations as there is in Protestant Christianity.
Back in Tudor times laws were enacted to ensure that all church services were held in the vernacular and that the Bible was in English.
Islam dictates that the Qur’an is read in the original classical Arabic which few understand. At the madrassas children are taught to recite it by wrote without understanding it at all. They have to rely on the teachings of Imams to tell them what the Qur’an says, and they in their turn have learned from other Imams.
Their learning is incomplete, and open to huge manipulation – if someone wants peace then they only teach those verses which appeal, if they want violence then there’s a whole book to choose from.
This isn’t a case of someone knowing the teachings of their religion and following a peaceful course, it’s a case of ignorance of their own religion and its teachings.
They are not ‘moderate’ Muslims making a choice in the way Christians can & do, nor are they ‘lapsed’ or choosing not to follow the teachings again as many Christians do. They simply have no knowledge of what their religion demands and neither do their Imams.
If you want an example of this then listen to the recording of Robert Spencer and the Imam who clearly had little knowledge of the Qur’an or Islam.
To summarise, this is not a case of ‘moderate’, ‘extreme’, or ‘fundamentalism’, it’s a case of ignorance – sometimes wilful and tradition. You can only be an extremist or fundamentalist if you understand the fundamentals. How can someone like Anjem Choudary be arrested for hate speech when he is only preaching from the Qur’an? To do so would be to find that Islam is indeed a hate filled violent religion and that simply isn’t going to happen in this Politically Correct environment.
Outstanding…
I would draw a parallel with communism. The democrat says all views are acceptable, put them to the people and let them vote. That is all very fine if those views are limited to what day of the week the bins should be emptied but what if the view is that democracy itself is wrong, that a ‘great leader’ should take over for life? If the communist won’t stick by the rules should he be allowed to play?
That is an argument against the ‘extremists’ but what about the ‘moderates’, the ordinary common people?
Again I draw a comparison with communism. Consider the Russian ‘bear’ during the time of the cold war. Absolutely without question the vast majority of the Russian people were ‘peace loving’, with exactly the same interpretation of that phrase as that the vast majority of the peoples of the West would have used. No web of deceit, no clever ‘liberal’ word-play, a simple common truth.
Yet can anyone doubt that should the Red Army have moved westward their tanks and bombers would have been manned with patriotic fervour?
But here the analogy breaks down. The bulk of the army would be driven by duty, patriotism and common cause with their compatriots, not by communist zeal. A ‘love’ of Mother Russia perhaps?
The same cannot be said of Islam. It is doctrine for the now and the hereafter. It is ‘right’, there are no alternatives. We are all born Muslim, we might not acknowledge it yet. This is a doctrine that knows no boundaries as they are infinite. It is a doctrine that is intrinsically unchangeable; it has been ‘revealed’, there is no ‘Clause Four’ to be revoked.
I’m afraid your ‘peace loving’ neighbour isn’t a sleeping soldier for Pakistan and may genuinely see himself as ‘British’. What he is though is an active ‘soldier’ for Islam in a similar way as a Salvationist sees themselves as a ‘soldier’ for Christ.
I agree with Norman Tebbit, we shouldn’t have been starting from here. If I can draw another parallel, consider the case of the ‘Blacks’ in the USA. Perhaps in an ideal world the Colonists should have said “whoops! sorry! keeping slaves is bad, let me buy you a ticket back home!”. But they didn’t, the ‘Blacks’ were made full citizens of the USA but the USA declined to ‘honor the check’. Quite rightly the ‘Blacks’ now say “we are US citizens, we want a full share of what’s going”. By the same token the ‘New Britons’ will increasingly say “we are UK citizens, we want a full share of what’s going”. If it’s OK for the people of a Sussex village to demand all houses be thatched on what basis do we argue now that the new people of Alum Rock can’t create a Little Pakistan?
To paraphrase Enoch Powell, we were and are truly mad.
You are not quite correct on the Negro slaves of the USA on the abolition of slavery. The US gave them the option of returning to Africa and they could be repatriated to Liberia on the West Coast of Africa an American colony;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia
Whilst I’m not sure that the Communism analogy is a good one, one thing that is similar is the use of political officers (which Tony Bliars Nu Liebour planted in every public sector department).
The soldier went to war with the risk of being killed. If he didn’t want to fight the political officers would make sure he was killed ! That really is being between a rock & a hard place.
In the case of Muslims many who don’t want to are forced to fight by Imams and ones who wish to with the threat of death if they do not. This is why the take over of Birmingham schools is so dangerous, because the Muslims on a path of violence can easily control other Muslims in a community which is completely insular.
Here is a quotation by someone trained in the UK by Omar Bakri Muhammad
“We were encouraged by Omar Bakri to operate like street gangs and we did, prowling London, fighting Indian Sikhs in the west and African Christians in the east. We intimidated Muslim women until they wore the hijab and we thought we were invincible.”
Give me the child & I will give you the man !
I think you are over egging it there. It is not, in the UK at least, a death threat that is feared but social exclusion. We all have an instinct to conform and most of us choose the path of least resistance, our lives being hard enough as it is.
So I would say the vast majority of people live the life they are used to and prefer to be amongst their own especially if the choice is to live amongst people who don’t do as they do and aren’t too keen on people who don’t conform to their way of life.
This is why multiculturalism can never work. It creates a divided society with divergent paths of conformity and it is next to impossible to straddle them both. If we hadn’t taken this course and insisted on integration then people would be too busy watching the footy or shopping online to care what the weirdy beardy in the dress was saying.
The solution to this is beyond me and it would be great if some clever sod could come up with a way to fix this(not you Scott). I fear though that we have gone too far. The numbers are too great and the benefits too intangible for most people in minority groups to be attractive enough for them to change.
Perhaps if so much of British Civilisation had not been destroyed by Socialism and Cultural Marxism we may have had a change of fixing this peacefully although its always possible to row back upstream. Sadly though I think too many of us are focusing on sunbathing on the deck to man the oars and avoid the falls.
The point here is how would you know if that is true or not?
Dead bodies don’t talk to tell a tale of being threatened and the live ones don’t seem willing to drop their comrades in it either.
The lead story on Jihad watch today is a Muslim Cleric in Kenya shot dead because he wouldn’t teach Jihad.
An absence of hard evidence does not mean that it isn’t happening !
There are plenty of people from many different religions and political creeds who have realised that violence gets them what they want. The reason they can get what they want is because they are violent against people who are generally not violent back. When presented with real violence back they have a much tougher time of it.
As I said, it’s the path of least resistance. Incidentally that applies to Frankenstein in his castle and to the angry mob at his gate.
The only country to have successfully overcome the tribulation of a multi-cutural society has been Malasia. It’s birth was bloody and troubled in the 1950’s but it seems to have held together.
However it is a country with a multitude of ethnic groups and no dominant one.
I am not too sure about that. There is a lot of Islamist feeling in the north of the peninsula, across the border from southern Thailand where there are ongoing atrocities by Muslims against the Buddhists – and ongoing disputes between the Malays (Islamic) and the Chinese have sometimes ended in communal violence. 1969 was the worst example :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_May_incident_%28Malaysia%29
And there are lots of rules preventing the Chinese getting jobs in government etc. I had some chats with Chinese locals in Borneo and also Penang a couple of years ago – they were very fierce in their criticism of the Malay authorities and the obstacles they face. Maybe the usual pattern – educated and resourceful Chinese minority -very active in business and trade, with relatively ignorant and poor Muslim communities.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16284388
Take a look at Mauritius, it seems to have done a pretty good job, largely by not allowing ghettos to form.
“This is not a tirade against migration from the EU, which we are largely unable to control, but from the rest of the world”
How do you control immigration from the rest of the world when certain European countries have had a mass immigration policy for years, and once they have citizenship there they have an automatic right to live here too.
We have seen the result of a lack of effective control in the Euro zone with some left wing countries reckless spending, the result of the recklessness regarding immigration takes longer to manifest itself and is more difficult to measure.
A comment the other day brought that home to me. I have often been puzzled by claims that there are up to half a million French people here – mostly in London, Quite a few French bankers and other profesionals in the City – OK – but half a million ?
But the comment the other day explained it – “French” includes all those from Algeria, Tunisia and other French colonies. In other words – more Muslims.
And now we have the reality of hordes of people from Africa trying to get to Malta, Sicily and other Italian islands, or people crossing Turkey from the Middle East or Asia to get into Greece which has very porous borders. .
The big worry is that so many people believe that immigration is somehow being brought under control – when it is not under any real control, and could even get worse.
On the Today prog this morning they stated that some 200,000 new self-employed people were registered in the past year. Yes, some of these may genuinely be new entrepreneurial businesses. But the vast majority are likely to be on the scam whereby if you register as self-employed from eg Bulgaria you can work (or claim to work) FOR A FEW HOURS A WEEK AND THEN BECOME ELIGIBLE FOR TAX CREDITS AND ALL THE OTHER SOCIAL BENEFITS.
Sorry about the caps !
In a similar vein, many “Dutch” and “Swedish” immigrants are actually Somalis who have gained Dutch/Swedish nationality.
I know analogies don’t prove arguments but they often highlight a line of thought. In the 30s my father travelled fairly extensively in Germany. He spoke German, if not fluently, then with enough facility to understand and be understood by anyone there. His view of the Germans living under Hitler was that many – most – were good-humoured, hard-working and honest. Very few of them – in his view – would have willingly gone along with the extremes of nazism and many – probably most of those he met – were uncomfortable with the constant tirades against the Jews and the visible evidence of the anti-Jewish policies adopted by the nazis.
However, when push came to shove, they did go along with the worst nazism could do. Why? Because they actually believed in the creed: they did view Jews as lesser beings consumed with evil intent; they did consider that Germany’s destiny was to gain Liebensraum in the East; they did want revenge for the injustices (as they saw them) of Versailles; they were desperate to escape the privations and indignities of the 20s and, particularly, the effects of the great inflation. And – as far as the man in the strasse was concerned – Hitler and the nazis delivered. Sure there was a nasty side to the nazis but (paraphrasing Tony Blair) “if you had nothing to hide you had nothing to fear”. Analogously – and I am NOT calling moslems nazis – Islam is also a pernicious political movement but which happens to be dressed up as a religion. Had Mohammed been alive today he would probably have wrapped his prejudices and evil intentions in green clothes and gone to war as a militant watermelon relying on the Harrabins of this world to spread the message and neutralise or, at least, silence the opposition.
Accordingly and IMHO Islam itself is the culprit here. There’s no point – unless you want to obfuscate the argument – distinguishing between “fundamentalists” and “moderate” believers: when push comes to shove – as in pre-war Germany – if you’re a believer you’ve signed up to the whole package. My father never considered that there were good or bad nazis: a nazi was a nazi and no amount of tut-tutting by a “moderate” nazi about the shame of having synagogues burnt down or the disgrace of forcing Jewish women to clean Vienna pavements with toothbrushes while taunted by an aryan crowd exculpated the “good” nazi one iota. In his view – and my view – if you believed in or followed or voted for or acquiesced in a creed which consistently manifested its underlying evil through such events, you were as guilty as Himmler.
Agree.
In any system, you get the zealots on one side and the disbelievers on the other. However, in the middle you find a mass of people whose precise beliefs are unclear, possibly even to themselves. Amongst this mass will be people who would not take part in the excesses of the zealots but who, nevertheless, would be quietly pleased if the zealots’ objectives were fulfilled.
I’m sure this applied to Nazi Germany and Northern Ireland, and I think it applies to Muslims in the UK as well. They’re not in danger of beheading anyone, or even stoning apostates, but they know that their interests would be well served by the extension of Sharia Law, so they’re not going to stick their heads above the parapet and speak out.
It might assist you to know that there is a deal of evidence that Hitler became a Muslim and although he could never come out publicly about it, he made some highly complimentary notable statements about Islam.
His mentor the grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini had several face to face meetings with him, and was in contact by other means also.
“During World War II he collaborated with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by helping Germans recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. ” Thus precipitating the crisis seen not so long ago in Yugoslavia never ever mentioned by the BBC.
In post-war historiography Husseini was often seen as an architect of the Holocaust Documents, such as the testimony of Fritz Grobba, confirm that an associate of al-Husseini’s, together with three associates of former Iraqi Prime Minister certainly did visit the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as part of a German secret police “training course” in July 1942.
Various sources have repeatedly alleged that he visited other concentration camps, and also the death camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka and Mauthausen, and though, according to Höpp, there is little conclusive documentary evidence to substantiate these other visits, Schwanitz and Rubin apparently conclude that it almost certain he visited the gas-chambers at Auschwitz.
The Mufti was well aware that the European Jews were being wiped out; he never claimed the contrary. Nor, unlike some of his present-day admirers, did he play the ignoble, perverse, and stupid game of Holocaust denial…. His armour-propre would not allow him to justify himself to the Jews….gloating that the Jews had paid a much higher price than the Germans… he cites… : ”Their losses in the Second World War represent more than thirty percent of the total number of their people …. Statements like this, from a man who was well placed to know what the Nazis had done … constitute a powerful argument against Holocaust deniers. Husseini reports that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler … told him in summer 1943 that the Germans had ‘already exterminated more than three million’ Jews: “I was astonished by this figure, as I had known nothing about the matter until then.” …. Thus. in 1943, Husseini knew about the genocide….
By Husseini’s admission therefore he was informed of the Nazi genocide of the Jews certainly by the summer of 1943. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz doubts the sincerity of his surprise since, he argues, Husseini had publicly declared that Muslims should follow the example Germans set for a “definitive solution to the Jewish problem”.
Subsequently, the Mufti declared in November, 1943:
It is the duty of Muhammadans in general and Arabs in particular to … drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries….Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution [endgültige Lösung] for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world. ….
It might come as a surprise to some to find that the Muslim world has its dirty fingerprints all over the Holocaust and collaborated in the setting up of the death camps.
It’s certainly one thing you are never going to hear from the BBC or most of the mainstream media.
for further reading, and there’s a lot, you could do worse than the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni#Al-Husseini_and_the_Holocaust
What is more astonishing is the willingness of members of the fascist left to travel & shake hands with men who are the successors to Haj Al Amin al-Husseini via his successor Yasser Arafat.
I was in Winchester eight years ago today, when I read this article in a pub…and it shook me to my cycle clips, and turned me around.
Here it is-true prophecy-and no wonder he`s lost jobs as Independent Schools Spokesman etc…too close to the truth
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/20362/From-2006-Chris-Parrys-Warning-Does-Not-Date
Due to the Western delight in multiculturalism and their failure to recognise the real threats posed by Islam the 3rd World War has started.
Globally battles are being fought in Russia, across the whole of North Africa, the middle East, Indo-China (including Pakistan and Afghanistan) and the Far East.
Islamic radical elements have embedded themselves in most of the countries of Europe and are counted as “natural citizens” by nation States. Similarly the same has happened progressively in USA.
The current situation in Iraq threatens the whole region and it is only time before they attack Saudia Arabia itself. At that point they will control the World’s oil supply and then the war will escalate in a big leap.
Tony Blair believes the Islamic world is diseased, did he think we would be immunised by importing a less(?) virulent form?
Blair warned: “The threat of this radical Islam is not abating. It is growing. It is spreading across the world. It is destabilising communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of globalisation. And in the face of this threat we seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge it and powerless to counter it effectively.”
In a clear reference to Saudi Arabia, he said: “It is absurd to spend billions of dollars on security arrangements and on defence to protect ourselves against the consequences of an ideology that is being advocated in the formal and informal school systems and in civic institutions of the very countries with whom we have intimate security and defence relationships.”
He claimed some of these countries wanted to break out of this ideology, but needed the west to make it a core part of the international dialogue in order to force the necessary change within their own societies.
* A sitemap to navigate your website is helpful for visitors to access
main pages. In addition, the observing surgeons could transmit their comments to
the operating surgeon, who could read them on the Google
Glass monitor. Reputation Defense Online an around the world Cyber Investigation along with Litigation Assistance Agency for Net Defamation, often receives inquiries from
attorneys along with law enforcement agencies on the way to subpoena Google’s
Legal Division.