British Multiculturalism & Its Arbitrators

From the desk of Russell Wilcox:

''America, too, has poorer neighborhoods with large Muslim concentrations, but they tend to be interspersed with other ethnic groups and better assimilated into society. Another difference, some suggest, is the general profile of Muslims who have come to the US and raised their families here.

''Most Muslim immigrants came to America for educational or business opportunities and from educated, middle-class families in their home countries, according to an analysis by Peter Skerry of Boston College and the Brookings Institution. In Europe, the majority came to work in factory jobs and often from poorer areas at home.''

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From Burnley's frontline:

'Multiculturalism preaches that people should be able to live as they want, where they want, and with whom they want. It is clear from talking to community leaders on both sides in Burnley that, if the promised rebuild ever comes, they will want to maintain their ghettos. You cannot, according to the mantras of multiculturalism, force integration. You can only hope that it will start to occur naturally.' <<Quick Read>>

Nick Cohen on British universeities:

'In any university, you are more likely to hear campaigns for the rights of Muslim women derided by postmodernists than by crusty conservative dons. Our Stop the War coalition is an alliance of the white far left and the Islamist far right, and George Galloway, its leader, and the first allegedly "far left" MP to be elected to the British parliament in 50 years, is an admirer of Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah. <<Read>>

British Multiculturalism -- one man's experience:

'I knew that I had fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. My Multicultural fantasies were in tatters. I tried to sell my apartment no body was buying except the Muslims, I tried to rent it, and people loved the flat but the area was a hard sell. Few months later my German neighbours moved to Greece, my only friends in the community, their flat was sold to Muslims, they opened an Islamic School in the apartment, I complained, I was ignored, the whole block of flats became home to mostly Muslims and me, plus one seventy year old lady upstairs! I was stuck!' <<A good read>>

Accommodating all (well, 3% of all):

I refer to the new "guidelines for schools" from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). It tells the schools of this country how they should adapt to meet the "needs of Muslims". That is, how 97% of the country should adapt to 3% in almost every aspect of school life: collective worship, PE, dance, swimming, exams, school meals, sex education and parents' evenings.

* Schools "should accommodate" Muslim girls so they are allowed to wear "a full-length loose school skirt or loose trousers, a long-sleeved shirt and a head scarf"

* Boys should be allowed to wear beards

* Primary schools should use portable partitions in changing rooms and all schools have "individual changing cubicles"

* Sports involving physical contact should happen only in single-gender groups

* Schools should limit certain activities during Ramadan. They include science lessons dealing with sex, parents’ evenings, exams and immunisation programmes.

* School trips should be made single-sex

* All British children should learn about Islam, but Muslims must have the right to withdraw their children from RE lessons dealing with Christianity and other faiths.

 

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From the desk of Amil Imani:

''The idea of Melting Pot may work with people who come from different lands to make the new country their home. The Islamists, on the other hand, come with the belief that they already own the place and want to make it part of the Ummeh. Some forty percent of second and third generation Muslim Britons reject British democracy, express their allegiance to Islam and want to live under Sharia.''

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The Parliamentary Spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness, Philip Davies MP, has tabled a Motion in Parliament calling on the Government to take action to eradicate political correctness.

Why not ask your MP if they are prepared to sign this motion and - if they won't - perhaps you would like to ask them why not seeing as 80% of people in Britain (according to an official poll commissioned by the Campaign) are fed up with political correctness.  It is time politicians started to act in the interests of the majority of people who are fed up with political correctness. <<Quick Read>>

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This is a good research from Mark Steyn's new book, America Alone:

"In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands.  General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows.  Very well.  We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them.  Build your funeral pyre; beside it my carpenters will build a gallows.  You may follow your custom.  And then we will follow ours."

"India today is better off without suttee.  If you don't agree with that, if you think that's just dead-white-male Eurocentrism, fine.  But I don't think you really do believe that.  Non-judgmental multiculturalism is an obvious fraud, and was subliminally accepted on that basis.  After all, most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society.  Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society.  It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug.  But if you think you genuinely believe that suttee is just an example of the rich, vibrant tapestry of indigenous cultures, you ought to consider what your pleasant suburb would be like if 25, 30, 48 percent of the people around you really believed in it too.  Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own: it is, thus, the real suicide bomb."

"The rest of us - the ones who think you can make judgments about competing cultures on liberty, religious freedom, the rule of law - need to recover the cultural cool that General Napier demonstrated." (193-194)

"'Minority rights doctrine,' wrote British author Melanie Phillips, 'has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a 'victim' group, while those at the receiving end of their behavior are blamed simply because they belong to the 'oppressive' majority....It is impossible to overstate the importance - not just to Britain but to the global struggle against Islamist extremism - of properly understanding and publicly challinging this moral, intellectual, and philosophical inversion, which translates aggressor into victim and vice versa." (199)

"As French philosopher Jean-Francios Revel wrote, 'Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." (200-201)

"At the heart of multiculturalism is a lie: that all cultures are equally "valid."  To accept that proposition means denying reality - the reality of any objective measure of human freedom, societal health, and global population movement.  Multiculturalism is not the first ideology founded on the denial of truth."

"At the core of multiculturalism is an assumption that a non-Western culture is somehow primal and immutable but that an advanced nation is no more than the sum of its consitutent parts.  It's a kind of societal Stockholm Syndrome - a desperation to identify with anything that comes along other than your own.  The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures - the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malaysia, who cares?  That's the stuff the old imperialist wallahs used to be well up on.  But multiculturalism just involves feeling warm and fluffy about everyone, making bliss out of ignorance.  If the guy's rich vibrant cultural tradition involves standing over you with a scimitar shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" well, you can't complain you're not getting your share of cultural diversity." (203-204)

"...Western man demonstrates his cultural sensitivity by pre-emptively surrendering..." (204)

"Britain exported its language, law, and institutions around the world to the point where today there are dozens of countries whose political and legal cultures derive principally from London.  On islands from the Caribbean to the south Pacific, you can find miniature Westminsters proudly displaying their maces and Hansards.  But if England is the mother of parliaments, America's a wealthy spinster with no urge to start dating.  Of all the new nations that have come to independence since 1945 not one has adopted the American system of republican decentralized federalism..." (172)

"...Americans are deeply suspicious of the notion that you can swan around the world "giving" freedom to people.  They have to want it....While this might be philosophically admirable, the practical drawback is that power abhors a vacuum.  If America won't export its values - self-reliance, decentralization - others will export theirs....The danger right now is of imperial understretch - of a hyperpower reluctant to sell its indisputably successful inheritance to the rest of the world."

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French versus British approaches 

Urban riots in Paris and northern England in recent years are set to be examined by international experts in a bid to address today's growing concerns around immigration, integration and identity. David Waddington, Sheffield Hallam University, says:

 "There are various similarities within the two societies based around young people feeling profoundly disaffected and distrustful towards the police. But we also have two contrasting approaches to absorbing different cultures. The British have pursued a policy of multiculturalism whereas the French approach is one of integration, where differences are airbrushed out.'' <<Quick Read>>

Niqab school & Why are we back in court

You probably thought that this issue was sorted out by the Law Lords last year in the case of Shabina Begum, the girl from Luton who wanted to wear a jilbab, a full-length garment, in breach of the school's uniform policy.

Miss Begum's claim that the school had denied her the right to manifest her religion was rejected by the House of Lords. They said it had "taken immense pains to devise a uniform policy which respected Muslim beliefs". This newspaper observed that the Law Lords had "provided an important victory for good sense, for British cohesion and for the right of teachers to run their own schools". <<read a reporter's view>>

Dr Sanity: Four definitions of ideological strategies

*Radical Environmentalism - ("humans are behind the imminent disaster of global warming and only aggressive government intervention can prevent disaster")

*Political Correctness - ("reality, truth and morality are all subjective")

*Multiculturalism - ("all cultures are equally good except for western culture which is uniquely bad; who are we to say that freedom and democracy are any better than tyranny and oppression?")

*Terrorism - ("terrorism is the only option of those who are oppressed by the western imperialist capitalists and is perfectly justified. George Bush/America/the West is the real terrorist")

<<Read the full posting>>

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Zeeshan Hashmion, an ex-soldier, observes:

While serving in the Army, we soon realised that our multi-identity backgrounds gave us a unique understanding. Going to Afghanistan was not about getting rid of the Taleban and al-Qaeda as British soldiers. It was about going there as individuals who could understand the confusion between two peoples with different religious, cultural, linguistic, geographical and political backgrounds, and to use that understanding to contribute towards the conflict resolution. <<Quick Read>>

 

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From the desk of Adrian Morgan:

''The problem began in the 1980s under the government of Margaret Thatcher, who had long been a staunch ally of America. Under the guise of "asylum seekers", Muslim individuals who were regarded as too extreme for their own countries began to arrive in Britain.''

And more:

What is surprising is the incompetence of the UK intelligence authorities, to have failed to notice a suspect's history. Worse still, the authorities were in denial that Khan had anything to do with Al Qaeda until September 2005, when a video from Al Qaeda showed Khan condemning the West and warning of more terrorist attacks was broadcast on Al Jazeerah TV.<<Quick Read>>

And from Part Three of Adrian Morgan's analysis:

The climate of political correctness has led to a situation where Islamists can openly call for death and murder, and escape punishment. Even though the climate of terrorism is increasing, with a recent plot revealed in which a Muslim soldier was targeted for kidnapping and beheading, Zarqawi-style, political correctness and the appeasing of groups like the MCB is considered more important than dealing with extremism proactively.<<Quick Read>>

 

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From the desk of Peter Cole:

''Tabloid journalism is a crude implement to sort out race relations in Britain. Its style and mass audience dictates that its stories must be direct and clear And, overwhelmingly, they must grab the attention....''

''It was powerful tabloid stuff, with the shock factor of using words of abuse seldom seen in newspapers. There was the page header - "Special racism issue: let's beat the bigots"; the leader - "We must stamp out abuse by good parenting and sensible teaching"; the Phillips endorsement. There was another the next day from Richard Taylor, father of Damilola - and Shilpa.''

Click for a Quick Read.

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Can Islamic Reformation win?

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge. We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. And we can't do it everywhere at once.

And how much time it will take?

This is not 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be. The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

What options the West has?

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Writer and human rights lawyer Zia Haider Rahman summed up: 

''The fetish of celebrating differences found champions in the radical Left in Britain in the Eighties among people who regarded themselves as counter-cultural or subversive, particularly many employed in local government, and who projected their own fixation with difference on to others. Successive British governments over the past two decades have taken up and promoted multiculturalism so that even today we hear it in the rhetoric of politicians.''

Then Zia recommends:

''The current problem arises from a real threat presented by extremists within the Islamic community. The message to these extremists and those who are in a position to influence their thinking must be a clear one, yes, of inclusion but inclusion only on Britain's terms. When politicians talk of celebrating differences that message becomes confused. This does not mean we should be searching for things we have in common: Islamic extremists and the great majority of Britons share very little in terms of values.''

 

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