afleitch
Moderators
Atlas Star
Posts: 29,908
|
 |
« on: August 15, 2006, 03:23:31 AM » |
|
In response to last Monday's 'Dispatches' programme on Channel 4 and to the plots of the past week.
--------
It is clear, that from the opinions expressed by the young Muslims in the programme and by the results of the poll conduction (which shows small but significant sympathy for the 7/7 attacks and over 30% support for Sharia), that many of today’s young Muslims wish to have their cake and eat it. It’s very easy to criticize Britain; I do it to, I criticize the government, the crime rates, the obsession with celebrity and the entrenched class system, but I know and am thankful for the freedoms of speech and the freedom of and from religion. Muslims may often say that we are willfully ignorant of their faith, culture and traditions, but it is increasingly apparent that they are ignorant of ours. It is unfortunate that they are not aware of the Reformation, the wars of religion, the renaissance and revolutions we have faced these past 500 years. The battles between faith and science, faith and governance, competing ideology and the war against fascism and the defeat of communism. We have developed from a society of post feudal kingdoms and lordships bound together under a distant and autocratic pope into a society of democracies, however fragile and however troublesome. We took 500 years, took steps forwards and steps back and sacrificed millions of people to gain this and now 1/3rd of the children and grandchildren of those who emigrated to Britain in the past 50 years say ‘no, we don’t want your democracy, we don’t want your secularism, we don’t want your freedom of speech, we want Sharia law by diktat from a religious figure head?' But at the same time are able to express themselves and worship and educate themselves thanks to the very democratic political and social structures they claim to dislike?
Compromise would spring to mind but is of course put to bed. There can be no compromise between our law and Sharia law on anything. There can be no law that punishes those who dare to question anothers faith or religious belief, no law that demotes the value of two educated womens’ testimony to that of one illiterate man and no law to demonise and threaten minority religions, gays, atheists and Muslims themselves who convert from their faith or challenge their faith from within. Most importantly there must be one law for everybody. The law may not be how we wish it to be, it can fail, it can err, but it's for everyperson of every status and every faith.
If one third do wish to live under Sharia law, then they can; but they have to find a country that will practice it. Of course they won’t leave; it all comes down to money and wellbeing and financial security. Why on earth would you want to leave a nation that provides you with social security, local authority housing, free healthcare and education for your children and move to a nation that provides none of these things? Another interesting aspect of the programme was the ‘perception’ that young Muslims had of Britain; sleazy, immoral, drunken, excessive, individualistic. Of course we can be, it’s the unfortunate path that freedom and financial security allows people to follow. But the majority, the vast majority of us are not like this, and the same majority dislikes these attributes in there fellow country too, yet while Muslims, rightfully ask that we don’t treat them as all the same, they can be guilty of treating our society in a similar fashion.
‘Integration’, or rather, the failure to integrate is the questioned posed, but as stressed in this programme other Asian minorities, such as Sikhs and Hindus, have seen the greater integration and greater liberalization of each successive generation; for Muslims, this has switched into the reverse gear. It therefore cannot be classified as a ‘race’ issue. Britain has integrated Italians, Lithuanians, Poles (both in the past and the present wave) the Irish, Afro-Carribeans, Europeans, Chinese and other Asian peoples. The question, as politically incorrect as it may seem is, ‘If they can integrate, and are continuing to do so with each generation, why can’t todays young Muslims?’ If integration is failing, where is it failing? On our side or theirs? Again, it is not politically correct to dare to suggest that the Muslim community, its youth and the families they belong to, has failed to integrate. It’s also easy, particularly for those on the left to play the ‘class’ card; and suggest that alienation is caused by poverty, lack of education and opportunity. Maybe, but we should be aware of the undeniable truth, that university educated, middle class successful young Muslims hold these positions too. So neither is it solely a class, or economic problem. Nor is it, as Muslim leaders have said, an issue with foreign policy.
Do I have a right to be worried? Yes; as someone who takes great pride in our democratic traditions and freedoms I do feel threatened. To feel threatened is not racist, or ‘Islamophobic.’ If my concerns were rooted in ignorance, or a kneejerk xenophobic reaction or hate, then yes that would be a phobic reaction. But my concerns are based on experience, study, debate and observance. The strange truth is this; liberals and multiculturalists have encouraged and supported the immigration of religious groups with social and political views more extreme and less liberal than the very ‘Christian, white, elitist, imperialistic, capitalistic’ beliefs of the general populace they have spent the past two generations trying to neuter or supplant. The fact is, the vast majority of Britain’s Christians respect our democracy, our rule of law, the right for the state to govern separately from church law and without interference. They understand this because, collectively as a nation we have experienced wars and revolutions over religion. They have experienced the persecution of Christians by fellow Christians and have no wish to roll the fabric of our nation back towards the principles and morals of the past. Groups that do, such as the rag-tag ‘Christian Voice’ are vociferously denounced, not just by liberals, but by fellow Christians.
What is worse, these same multiculturalists, liberals and leftists are now feting the very organizations that wish to roll back gay rights, womens rights, the seperation of religion from politics, the freedom of speech and the right to criticize religion and numerous other rights and freedoms. For some, particularly the ‘useful idiots’ in Respect this in fine; these old shibboleths of the left are easily discarded to appeal to a socially conservative and religious Muslim electorate. They seem deluded into believing that by uniting against war, capitalism and ‘imperialism’ together they can create a new socialist society. But history tells us this is a dangerous notion; those who supported the Iranian communists in 1979 believed that anything, even the Ayatollah was better than the capitalistic society of the Shah. How wrong they were, communism, socialism and trade unionism was brutally suppressed. Perhaps by infusing with political Islam leftists think they can survive, have a voice and actually get elected, but they will sell out their soul (again) in the process.
|
