Islam in Britain - One Year Later

[epepke]

This doesn't follow. Most Muslim immigration int for instance the UK has taken place in the last 40 years -that is hardly anytime in terms of past immigrations for "blending" in. And I do find something quite strange about this attitude in that it doesn't seem to be applied to other groups (today at least) so I don't hear people in the UK complaining in the same way about "China Town" in Manchester, as they do about a section of a town that is predominately (but in fact is probably still less then 50%) inhabited by British people who are Muslims. It would appear that Muslims are to held to a different standard then what we hold other "immigrant" groups to.

Many people feel threatened by Muslims and do not feel so threatened by Chinese, and it isn't entirely racist paranoia. Prejudicial, yes, but that's the way people behave.

However, since you mention it, there's a large Chinatown in New York City. When I had my childhood there, it was always a fun place with friendly people, and even non-Chinese New Yorkers were proud of having such a good Chinatown. About 15 years ago, however, there was a new wave of migration of older people from China into New York's Chinatown. A lot of these immigrants think that White people are "ghosts" who are less than human and go out of their way to be rude. Now there's some friction between Chinatown and the rest of NYC.

 

[Apollyon]

Which is as I understand the structure of Islam.

My point is that if al-Sistani wishes to remove a preacher in a mosque in Bradford there is no formal hierarchy that can make this happen.

Agreed. I wasn't implying that was even possible. Your comment also points out one of the problems of Islam in regard to tempering or controlling the more radical imams - The lack of a central governing religious authority.

I agree that at the moment we have problems that are definitely "Muslim" in origin (I use speech marks as it's not all Muslims or all of the Islamic faith), and there are some things which are specific to the Muslim faith which I think at least exacerbate the problem.

Therein lies another problem. I don't believe anyone in here, when speaking of the current problems with Islam, means to indict every single Muslim. Even implying that is silly. At least, when I talk about Muslims I am generally speaking of the radicalized ones. People who truly want to practice a religion in peace and good faith are of no concern.

Today I suspect very, very few, however back in the Victorian times when we had one of the larger immigrations of Chinese into the UK we have reports of gang trouble, incitement to violence and so on. Which again supports my overall contention that problems with immigration into the UK is nothing new (caveat my comments regarding external influences).

Yes there are some new elements to the current problems, but lets not get confused with what are the new elements and what are the "traditional problems".

The sentiment that all immigrants and cultures are the same in behavior or temperment is a gallant one. I'm not so sure that sentiment jibes with reality though. Of course, that's a touchy subject and tends to raise hackles of some who seemingly are unwilling to believe that we are not all one big, happy human family. So that's all I'll say on that particular subject.

 

[Ziggurat]

You mean like this?

Please post sources next time, it helps when evaluating such statements.

As for the content of your quotes, well, a lot of "moderate" muslim organizations engage in essentially a double standard regarding extremism and terrorism. They say the condemn extremism, terrorism, the murder of innocents, and "those responsible" unconditionally, but are often actually pretty flexible on the definition of those terms. Military action by the West, for example, becomes "terrorism", real terrorists (particularly in Israel) becomes "resistance", anybody who supports hated governments is no longer innocent, and "those responsible" can be someone other than the actual terrorists. It's doublespeak, and even when the speaker may mean it honestly, the audience is trained to substitute their own meaning. You've found a good many quotes condemning things that probably don't mean to them exactly what they mean to us. But here's a much more difficult challenge: can you find quotes where they actually condemn, BY NAME, an Islamic terrorist? None of your quotes do, and I think the reason is because without their names, the doublespeak can continue. But if the condemnation is to mean anything, the doublespeak must end, and the only way to do that is to start condemning terrorists by name, and not by ambiguous labels.

 

[CapelDodger]

Thank you, Dr Adequate, for providing a solid context.

The OP context, based on the Torygraph's interpretation of "understand" as "support", is not worth arguing from. And then Melanie Philips ...

Anyone who gets their understanding of the UK from the Torygraph and the Daily Mail is going to be sorely misled.

 

[Elind]

Please post sources next time, it helps when evaluating such statements.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...ent.html?in_page_id=1787&in_article_id=394120

 

[CapelDodger]

Please post sources next time, it helps when evaluating such statements.

As for the content of your quotes, well, a lot of "moderate" muslim organizations engage in essentially a double standard regarding extremism and terrorism. They say the condemn extremism, terrorism, the murder of innocents, and "those responsible" unconditionally, but are often actually pretty flexible on the definition of those terms.

The flexibility of "terrorism" is notorious. Remember the Contras?

Military action by the West, for example, becomes "terrorism" ...

Says who? The mainstream Muslim argument against the Iraq War is that it's illegitimate. There was no mainstream argument against the Afghan War.

... real terrorists (particularly in Israel) becomes "resistance" ...

In Israel, "resistor" means "terrorist", and anyway mainstream Muslims do not justify terrorism. They understand it. So can I, while condemning it. Attacking civilians is reprehensible. Killing for its own sake is reprehensible. Hamas should have struck at infrastructure, not people. Israel would still have called it terrorism, of course, just as the Brits did when PIRA switched to economic and military targets.

... anybody who supports hated governments is no longer innocent ...

Where do you get these ideas from?

... and "those responsible" can be someone other than the actual terrorists.

There was no terrorism in Palestine before the zionists introduced it. The zionists won, the Palestinians lost. They took that as a lesson (amongst others). So who's responsible? Would you have understood Irgun terrorism but honestly condemned it at the time? Surely you would.

It's doublespeak, and even when the speaker may mean it honestly, the audience is trained to substitute their own meaning.

Trained by whom? The people speaking are the establishment, if anybody's been trained over the last few decades it's been by them.

You've found a good many quotes condemning things that probably don't mean to them exactly what they mean to us.

Of course they mean the same thing. Mass Muslim immigration to the UK started post-war, but Western political discourse arrived in the sub-continent long before. The quotes Dr Adequate has provided set out in the clearest terms possible utter condemnation and abhorrance.

No matter how clear a condemnation there will always be some who respond "they don't mean it", with no basis for the opinion. Waddya gonna do?

 

[Ziggurat]

No matter how clear a condemnation there will always be some who respond "they don't mean it", with no basis for the opinion. Waddya gonna do?

I already pointed out the criteria for clear condemnation: condemn terrorists by name. It's really quite simple, it's been absent from the start, and I don't believe a single one of them is really condemning terrorism if they can't do that. Point me to someone who DOES do that, and I'll believe that person is truly condemning terrorism. Hide your head in the sand all you want, but what gets said in the mosque in arabic isn't what those same people say in English at a press conference.

 

[Lucky]

This does show how perceptions colour our opinions. I would state that the the total opposite of your statement "secular society that is becoming increasingly unsympathetic to any manifestation of religion" is the case in the UK today!

We have had a government that for the last almost 10 years has promoted like no other government in modern history the setting up of faith schools, whether they be Islamic, Christian, Sikh, Judaic or whatever. We have new legislation (and further planned legislation) that for the first time ever in the UK has made non-Christian religious hatred a criminal offence. Employment law has been changed to both stop discrimination on religious grounds yet also to make employers consider someone's religion in the course of employing someone.

Religion and religious beliefs are more "protected" and in a way promoted by the state then any other time in modern history.

Perceptions do indeed colour our opinions!

I find your assessment of religious vs secular trends in our country as way off the mark as you evidently find mine. From this survey (the most recent I could find on the YouGov site), you are clearly in a small minority on that.

It is often said that Britain is becoming a more ‘secular’ country in the sense that fewer people then in the past are religious and fewer regularly attend places of worship. Do you believe that Britain is, in fact, becoming a more secular country or not?

Yes: 81%
No: 8%
Don’t know: 11%

Blair, I don’t doubt, is genuinely religious, though not in a flirting-with-fundamentalism way. I’m not aware that any other member of the government has shown any signs of religious belief. New Labour’s faith schools policy is not primarily religious; it has much more to do with their barmy Thatcherite agenda to privatise education.

In any case I am not talking about government policies, which are obviously transient, but about a long-term, pervasive trend affecting all aspects of society. The point is that the government is very much out of step with public opinion on this issue (and many others, of course). From the same survey:

What do you think the Government’s policy towards ‘faith schools’ should be?

The Government should encourage the parents of children of all faiths, including Christians, to send their children to the same schools: 56%
The Government should encourage the parents of children of minority faiths, such as Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to send their children to separate faith schools: 5%
The Government should give financial support to nondenominational and faith schools of all kinds and should not express any view about which type of school children should attend: 28%
Don’t know: 11%

By any measure I can think of, such as religious observance, divorce, proportion of co-habiting couples who are married, proportion of children born to married couples, sexual permissiveness, society is becoming steadily more secular. I am not expressing an opinion here about any of these things, but the evidence is staring you in the face and it’s quite unusual for anyone to dispute it.

It’s too much of a stretch to claim the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill as an example of religious beliefs being ‘promoted by the state’. The original idea was to close a loophole in the racial hatred legislation, which allowed the courts to define whether a particular religious group is a ‘race’ (and therefore entitled to protection).

I think the idea was misguided and I don’t support the legislation, but then I’m also against any legislation that treats racism as a crime different from any other kind of bigotry.

In the couple of generations or so for which we’ve had a substantial Muslim population in this country there has been an enormous decline in the status and influence of religion. As Muslims tend to be more religious than society in general, and religion is an important part of their group identity, this social trend is acting against integration

 

[CapelDodger]

Agreed. I wasn't implying that was even possible. Your comment also points out one of the problems of Islam in regard to tempering or controlling the more radical imams - The lack of a central governing religious authority.

Would that be a weakness of Judaism as well?

Christianity moulded itself from the Roman Empire. It hitched a lift. Judaism is anti-hierarchical, anti-monarchist and has been exploited by David et al. Islam had no mould, it was religion and empire at the same time.

The price paid by Europe for a hierarchical attitude to religion is immense. The gain from successfully struggling against it is also immense. Democracy as a principle, for instance. In a non-hierarchical religion democracy is a given. Respect derives from the person, not the office. It's a devolved system.

 

[Elind]

I already pointed out the criteria for clear condemnation: condemn terrorists by name. It's really quite simple, it's been absent from the start, and I don't believe a single one of them is really condemning terrorism if they can't do that. Point me to someone who DOES do that, and I'll believe that person is truly condemning terrorism. Hide your head in the sand all you want, but what gets said in the mosque in arabic isn't what those same people say in English at a press conference.

Some of them, many even, do condemn it, and I'm sure do so sincerely, but the problem I see is that they nevertheless still sound like they see these people as Muslims along with themselves and what they do is call them misguided in most of what I read. Is that all they can do? They know, just like everyone else where and who the radicals are. In the US there are similar gangs in some areas, except they are mostly defending the sale of drugs. Those neighborhoods often organize and have loud demonstrations against the dealers and often neutralize them, if only to make them run somewhere else.

When was the last time we saw a Muslim demonstration against the "misguided" supporters of UBL?

The other relevant item is that they tend to make most of these statement when an atrocity has occurred, as per some of the quotes posted here, but not forcefully enough, if at all, to make the news in between.

What I seem to hear in between attacks is instead complaints of profiling.

 

[Mephisto]

Didn't we go through the "All Muslims Are Extremists," once before?

 

[Mephisto]

You mean like this?

And like this?

And like this?

And like this?

And like this?

And like this?

And like this?

And like this?

And like this?

You're poisoning the well! Dammit, you can't use facts and examples to prove that all Muslims aren't fanatics!

 

[Mephisto]

Ahhh. Gross generalizations. Hold them dear to your heart and lump all those "American neighbor(s)" together while preaching about condescention and intolerance.

You're accusing ME of making gross generalizations for making YOU support your views that all Muslims are dangerous fanatics bent on taking over the world? Sweet.

 

[Apollyon]

You're accusing ME of making gross generalizations for making YOU support your views that all Muslims are dangerous fanatics bent on taking over the world? Sweet.

You might have had a point if you actually read my replies.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1754589&postcount=102

Therein lies another problem. I don't believe anyone in here, when speaking of the current problems with Islam, means to indict every single Muslim. Even implying that is silly. At least, when I talk about Muslims I am generally speaking of the radicalized ones. People who truly want to practice a religion in peace and good faith are of no concern.

 

[Mephisto]

Talk about a lumping everyone. Unless that was sarcasm. They don't teach creationism in america. At least not in the last 30 years as I have known it.

I was being sarcastic, but I was also making the point that no one can convince an religious extremist of anything in opposition to his beliefs. You may be right that creationism isn't taught in America, but it's certainly not for not trying, but here I go poisoning the well again.

 

[Lucky]

This may betray my ignorance as an ugly American, but I still can't get over the Jean Charles de Menezes thingummy. There was a BBC program on this a couple of months ago. I have it on disk, but I can't find it right now. It demonstrated, fairly compellingly, I think, that the standards of the police unit with guns for avoiding killing civilians are considerably lower even than the state of Israel. There was an inquest promised at the end of February that never materialized. And when I bring it up here, I get told that I will have to wait seven years for someone to be charged, and in the meantime it's perfectly fine that they're out there with guns. What gives?

The inquest was initially adjourned for a standard six month period as there were several investigations to complete, including the one by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. When the inquest resumed in February the IPPCC report was being considered by the Crown Prosecution Service, so it was adjourned for a further six months.

I agree we need a full public discussion about the use of weapons by the police: the extent, the training, the operational guidelines. Unfortunately that’s impossible, largely because of obligatory media ****-stirring whenever there’s anything important (or unimportant, for that matter) to discuss.

I don’t know that there’s any particular difference between the way these things are handled here and in the USA: there’s a major catastrophe or blunder, so the thing to do is to find someone to prosecute. It will probably happen.

 

[Mephisto]

You might have had a point if you actually read my replies.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1754589&postcount=102

Well, I read this one . . .

Muslims are not going to convince people they are moderates when they profess a goal of imposing their religious beliefs on an entire nation.

and this one . . .

Yeah. There's always that interpretation difference between myself and Muslims as to what the term "getting stoned" means.

and this one, which is the first one where you finally DIDN'T include all Muslims, yet made the condescending remark at the end.

imo, the problem is the lack of willingness of some Muslims to meld into a society or culture. They desire an entire culture to adopt their ways instead. The response of every western culture in which they make that desire known is basically going to be "tough [rule8]." Regardless of any economic situation that culture clash is going to cause problems.

That's where Christianity and Islam part ways as well. Christianity learned long ago to adapt to cultural changes, albeit that change often comes slowly. Islam remains inflexible and that attitude is bound to cause even more problems in the future.

Maybe the answer is to teach Muslims to adapt, if that's even possible? Either that or cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Do I have a point, now?

 

[Apollyon]

Do I have a point, now?

No.

The transparent tactic of attempting to dismiss someone by portraying them as a bigoted cretin is an old trick I'm well aware of. It's precisely why I clarified my statements as I did in the post that I linked previously. I knew someone would come along and try to pull that lame, old stunt.

And waddya know? Here you are.

 

[Elind]

You're poisoning the well! Dammit, you can't use facts and examples to prove that all Muslims aren't fanatics!

Exactly the type of comments expected from one who ignores the posts you pretend to reply to. Are you padding your resume for a job with Fox News or what?

 

[Tailgater]

You mean like this?

And like this?

Have we not heard some of those same statements from the leaders of terrorist countries? Right before they smoke a cigar and high five each other. Like I said before, where are the protests? the masses of angry muslims? the intervention of the majority actively saving the minority from the wrong road they have taken? If the "majority" of muslims feel that there is evil among them trying to divide them, why do we see....Google "muslims celebrate 911(insert any terrorist attack) Uk (insert any country)" and take your pick.... instead.