Comment at end
9th July, 2008
UPDATE 12th July - M Sarkozy says “Non”
(I await with bated breath the civil righters screaming that this woman has the right to be subjugated to her husband’s will. The European Human Rights Act, surely? Well? I’m waiting.)
This thoughtful article by John Laughland at the conservative-thinking Brussels Journal, has been referred to at several places on the internet. It should be required reading for all who wish to live in a free land. There are holes to be picked in it, and I’ll make a few here. But, right now we in Britain are no longer free, in my humble opinion. And not because of increasing use of CCTV cameras, looming 42 days detention laws for terror suspects, or the government’s burgeoning collection of data on us.
We are not free because NONE of today’s politicians - not one major political party in Britain, nor even it seems Ruth Kelly or Jack Straw - will take the bull by the horns and stand up for our right to stand up for our rights in the face of Islam!
We have already carelessly lost the leader who warned us in December 2006, as he prepared to leave office six months later. His successor talks mealy-mouthedly about Britishness, while Britain sinks.
Blair:”If you come here lawfully, we welcome you. If you are permitted to stay here permanently, you become an equal member of our community and become one of us.
“The right to be different. The duty to integrate. That is what being British means.”
And meanwhile, we, they, government bodies and the legal profession apologise for our rights! And the legion of looney civil righters have the gall to accuse
the government of taking our rights away!
Still, there are a couple of holes in the argument below. Read it here first, if you prefer.
ACCEPTING THE IMMIGRANT LAND
For a start, let’s look at the USA - THE land of immigration. It seems, though many of my American friends are still very wary, that Muslim immigrants to America think of themselves as American first, Muslim second. Here in the UK, when Muslims are asked, it seems to be the other way round if recent surveys are reliable.
This survey reveals that 81% of British Muslims consider themselves Muslims FIRST and a Citizen of Britain second. Only 7% think they are British citizens first. This compares with 59% of Christians who consider themselves British citizens first c/w 24% who consider themselves Christian first.
Therein lie the seeds of unrest and conflict. To fully accept democracy attachment to your country must come before your religion. Especially in modern secular lands, where religion is only part of what we are, not the defining part.
THE BLOOD TIES
Immigration would never have been successful if, on landing in a new land, people did not almost immediately transfuse with the local blood. Europeans and Africans would never have been integrated into the USA for a start. America is not all white Christian.
Here in the UK, and in much of Europe, the problem may have to do with the slippery slope argument. With us having a multitude of disparate “family” groupings from many lands, and with their inculcation, successful or otherwise, but a fait accompli, into the fabric of our societies. The numbers are now too large and liberalism has been too forgiving and too, well … liberal to draw up the ground rules in good time.
A UNITED STATES OF EUROPE?
So, I hear you ask, why is it so different here in Britain from the position in the USA? Mainly, perhaps, inasmuch as the EU is NOT one country, saluting one flag.
Is this a call for a United States of Europe? Possibly. That thought does not terrify me, though it does many of my countrymen and women. In any case it may already be too late for that. But it is certainly a call for us to understand that once past a certain level of immigration, where “integration” is NOT required by law, as in Britain, but just a hoped for side-effect, some groups of people - Islamists - let’s call a spade a spade - will revert to a different (’higher’) order than is acceptable to us in a secular and multi-faith land.
So if it’s not acceptable - TELL THEM! NOW, PLEASE, Mr Politician! And then DO something about it. That’s what you’re paid for.
RELIGION’S LOSS - ISLAMISTS’ GAIN?
While most of us native-born, historically rooted Brits recognise the role of religious argument and disagreement in shaping the country we live in today, we have a reasonably healthy disregard for the “God on our side” argument. We are NOT tied to our Christianity/Judaism as the be-all and end-all to our democracy. Our democracy’s shaping has been multi-faceted and largely unwritten.
But there is an underlying weakness.
Although we in Britain have shied away from the written constitution argument for centuries, today we are considering (or some of us are) incorporating an external group of laws into the fabric of our legal practice. It is being suggested that some criminal, civil or matrimonial disputes could be relegated, painlessly, to Sharia for some members of our supposedly integrated society. Referred to recently by the Archbishop of Canterbury and more recently still by Lord Phillips this should be anathema to us. Written or unwritten, THIS would be WRITTEN IN STONE … AND IN BLOOD by those who support it.
The weakness is that our fond attachment to liberal openness is in itself leading us to accept the creeds and mores of those who completely reject but selfishly use our very freedoms against us.
To equate Islamic Law to Jewish Law is to compare apples to oranges. No-one attached to Judaism threatens us and western society in general.
And when Mr Blair left the door open for some use of Sharia Law in civil courts in Britain, I have to say I disagree with him strongly on this.
I would not emigrate to lands such as Saudi Arabia and expect them to allow me to introduce British liberalism to our courts, because it was more in keeping with my Christian traditions. I wouldn’t get it, but I wouldn’t ask for it either. I just wouldn’t emigrate.
Easy choice for those who push for Sharia Here. Forget it! If not there are daily/weekly flights from all main British airports.
SHARIA HERE? NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!
Phillips, 4th July, 2008:
‘Sharia law could play a role in some parts of the legal system, the most senior judge in England and Wales has said.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, emphatically ruled out the possibility of sharia courts sitting in this country or deciding penalties.
But in a speech at the East London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel last night he said there was no reason why sharia principles could not be used in “mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution”.’
SHARIA “PRINCIPLES”?
No, no no! Never. This, even at the level of lending money or settling marital disputes is a slippery slope.
If Sharia Law is forced into our system, as it will be if ever it is allowed to permeate, we should pick and choose.
My choice is easy: I pick Sharia punishments for those who eschew British (English/Scots) law and continue to push for Sharia Law in our land.
Too heavy?
Isn’t it similar to the punishment that you and I would receive if we decided to break Sharia in many an Islam land? There it would be - and we abide by it - no alcohol, no travelling in a car with someone else’s wife, no driving if you are female. Or take the punishment, be it whipping, stoning, hand-chopping or … well, you know the rest.
Article follows:
“What is a nation?” Ernest Renan famously asked in 1882 and concluded that it was a group of people who had decided to live together. The definition has stuck because it encapsulates the most cherished belief of all liberals, which is that human life is essentially about individual choice. The belief has remained popular for over a century and is today seen in concepts such as the German idea of Verfassungspatriotismus (patriotism towards the constitution of one’s country) and, more importantly, in the very widespread notion of multiculturalism.
Even Renan’s definition, however, contained a fudge – a fudge which was essential to prevent his idea from descending into obvious absurdity. He said that a nation was a group of people which had done great things in the past and which wanted to do more in the future. The use of “wanted” was essential to preserve his key notion of choice, but his reference to the past made a nonsense of it. The people who have done great things in the history of the nation are not the same people (not the same individuals) who are alive now. It is therefore wrong to elide the two uses of the word “people” into one. A people cannot be defined by choice: if members of a nation find or believe that their country has a glorious past, then that past is precisely something inherited and not chosen, like one’s parents. One’s parents determine an individual in a way the individual has not chosen and cannot control.
The doctrine of multiculturalism derives directly from Renan because it affirms that people can live together in a state on the basis of simple choice. The idea is that individuals can come from all over the world and live peacefully and in harmony while preserving elements of their various different cultural backgrounds.
However, much hostility to multiculturalism is also fundamentally liberal and Renanian. As it happens, although multiculturalism has been a left-wing shibboleth for many years, it was formally abandoned in Britain in keynote speeches given by Tony Blair and one of his ministers in 2006. In the heat of the “war on terror” to which they had given energetic support, and which raised the temperature of feeling against Muslims in Britain, the Prime Minister and Ruth Kelly – who was at that stage “Minister for Communities” – said that in fact multiculturalism was now out of date. They argued that immigrants needed to conform to basic British values if they wanted to stay in the country, and they attacked multiculturalism for having undermined social and national cohesion.
Kelly said, “In our attempt to avoid imposing a single British identity and culture, have we ended up with some communities living in isolation of each other, with no common bonds between them?” (Speech, 24 August 2006). And Blair’s speech, entitled “The Duty to Integrate: Shared British Values” (delivered on 8 December 2006) concluded with a muscular and rather aggressive sentence which, only years previously, would have marked him out as extreme right: “Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. So conform to it; or don’t come here.” [My italics]
Gordon Brown has continued in this vein with his rather lumbering emphasis on Britishness and the need to promote it. He has even introduced a rather Soviet and American-sounding “Veterans’ Day” celebration to reinforce it. Yet in spite of their conservative appearances, these views remain fundamentally liberal. This is because, although they have inverted the multicultural paradigm for social cohesion, they retain the key element of choice. Immigrants are told that they must choose to conform or choose to leave, while Britons generally are told that their nation is constituted essentially by values. But has recent experience shown that, in fact, the inculcation of a single set of values cannot create cohesion in multiracial soceities?
My thoughts on these matters have been stimulated by recent photographs of a large crowd of youngsters demonstrating against the murder of their friend, Ben Kinsella, stabbed to death in the streets of London ten days ago. There has been an explosion of knife crime in London, which is itself partly the consequence of a rise in knife culture among principally black gangs, and partly of the catastrophic collapse in policing and in social cohesion generally. As in many Western societies, ordinary people in Britain no longer respect the police and the police themselves hardly invite it. In my street in London, everyone knew the local shopkeepers but no one knew the local policeman because they were never anywhere to be seen. When they tried to investigate petty crime (such as the theft of my bike, which they did only under intense pressure from me, exerted over a period of many months) they typically found that people they questioned refused even to give their name.
The photographs of the demonstration are remarkable for the fact that almost every youngster in it is white. This is a rare sight in London, especially in the East End where immigration is particularly high. It strongly suggests that decades of preaching about inter-racial tolerance have failed to make people in Britain unite across the racial divide. Now, it is obvious that a street demonstration by group of youngsters outraged and saddened by a senseless murder is not a nation. But since I absolutely rule out the possibility that this group of white people actively chose to exclude blacks from their public meeting, their unspoken choice – their instinct – to rally together reveals a good deal about the nature of human action. It reveals, in particular, that choice and forms of behaviour are, in fact, partly determined by ethnicity – very often without people being aware of it.
The Renanian attempt to carve out a sphere for the liberal ideal of free individual choice is therefore doomed to failure. Just as Joseph de Maistre said that he had never met “a man” but only Frenchmen, Englishmen and so on, so our free individual choices are in fact influenced by factors we have not chosen. These include our parents, our nationhood and our ethnic background. They form part of what we are as individuals – we are all members of various human groups – and the human condition is unthinkable without them.
A nation, in other words, is not a “community of values” or an impersonal social construct governed by certain laws. A nation – as the word suggests, derived as it is from the verb ‘to be born’ – is a family. A family can be a source of great love, indifference or even fratricidal conflict, just as a nation can experience cohesion, social exclusion or civil war. Nations can certainly welcome into their midst people who are not originally members of it, just as a family can expand to include in-laws. Both can and should show tolerance and friendship towards them. But at the end of the day, nations like families are bodies of people related to each other by blood.
This basic fact remains, whatever choices the individuals themselves may make. It does not absolutely determine human choice but it does influence it. The experience of second and third generation immigrants in Europe, whose parents or grandparents have chosen to come to a new country, and who have themselves chosen to remain in it, often shows the truth of this: in spite of their individual choice, people’s behaviour often remains ethnically based and culturally separate from that of the host nation, especially if they are of a different race.
Through left-liberalism, European nations have systematically destroyed the values which, as extended families, they once embodied. The admission into their midst of very large numbers of people who will never be part of the family aggravates what is already a serious problem of social dislocation. The attempt to reverse this trend by emphasising values may be a laudable one, but it can never succeed because the liberal paradigm on which it is based is wrong. It assumes that human societies are comparable to private companies and based on contract, when instead they are in fact comparable to families and based on the principles of blood relationship and paternity. That is a something which no amount of political sophistry can hide.
Back to start
The Telegraph’s report, 9th December 2006: Blair - “Paying Religious Groups Is A Mistake”
Tony Blair formally declared Britain’s multiculturalist experiment over today as he told immigrants they had “a duty” to integrate with the mainstream of society.
In a speech that overturned more than three decades of Labour support for the idea, he set out a series of requirements that were now expected from ethnic minority groups if they wished to call themselves British.
These included “equality of respect” - especially better treatment of women by Muslim men - allegiance to the rule of law and a command of English. If outsiders wishing to settle in Britain were not prepared to conform to the virtues of tolerance then they should stay away.
He added: “Conform to it; or don’t come here. We don’t want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed.
“If you come here lawfully, we welcome you. If you are permitted to stay here permanently, you become an equal member of our community and become one of us.
“The right to be different. The duty to integrate. That is what being British means.”
Mr Blair’s volte face - just eight years ago he was a multiculturalist champion - was the culmination of a long Labour retreat from a cause it once enthusiastically embraced. In recent weeks, Jack Straw, Ruth Kelly, John Reid and Gordon Brown have all played their part in a concerted revision of the Cabinet’s stand which began in earnest after the July 7 bombs in London last year.
Mr Reid, in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday on GMTV, said he was “sick and tired” of the sort of the “mad political correctness” that led to Christmas being devalued. “I think most people just find this completely over the top and I would rather have a bit of what I call PCS - Plain Common Sense - than PC - Political Correctness,” the Home Secretary added.
Although Mr Blair, speaking in Downing Street, said the diversity of cultures in Britain should still be celebrated, the whole tone of his speech was against the ideology that became known as multiculturalism.
“The right to be in a multicultural society was always implicitly balanced by a duty to integrate, to be part of Britain, to be British and Asian, British and black, British and white,” he said.
The suicide bombings in London on July 7 last year had thrown the whole concept of a multicultural Britain “into sharp relief” and had highlighted the divisions in society. While it was right that people should enjoy their own cultures, they should do under a single set of overarching values.
“Integration is not about culture or lifestyle,” said Mr Blair. “It is about values. It is about integrating at the point of shared, common unifying British values. It isn’t about what defines us as people, but as citizens, the rights and duties that go with being a member of our society.
“Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other faiths have a perfect right to their own identity and religion, to practice their faith and to conform to their culture. This is what multicultural, multi-faith Britain is about. That is what is legitimately distinctive.
“But when it comes to our essential values - belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage - then that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common; it is what gives us the right to call ourselves British. At that point no distinctive culture or religion supercedes our duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom.”
The speech was greeted with a mixture of anger from Muslim groups and scepticism from his political opponents. A spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain called it “concerning and alarming”. He added: “Mr Blair should be investing in our society to help the deprived, rather than investing millions and billions in illegal occupations which had not helped to promote multiculturalism in this country.
“Rather than standing up and lecturing us, it’s time he puts his money where his mouth is.”
Dominic Grieve, Conservative spokesman for community cohesion, said the speech was a “remarkable turnaround”. He added: “Many of the problems in relation to the issues he addresses are at least in part the consequence of a philosophy of divisive multiculturalism and political correctness that has been actively promoted by the Labour Party over many years at both national and local government levels.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, which has campaigned against historically high levels of immigration, said: “We certainly have a duty to integrate but the Government has its own duty to promote suitable conditions in which this is possible.”
He added: “The massive levels of immigration which they have deliberately stimulated in recent years makes effective integration almost impossible.”
Mr Blair said he was optimistic that integration was possible while conceding that Muslim extremism posed a problem both to cohesion and security. The fact that other cultures and religions all got on together harmoniously proved it was possible. But his specific proposals were aimed directly at the Muslim community.
He suggested that women were not treated well and should be allowed access to mosques. “Those that exclude the voice of women need to look again at their practices. I am not suggesting altering the law. But we have asked the Equal Opportunities Commission to produce a report by the spring of next year on how these concerns could be practically addressed, whilst of course recognising that in many religions the treatment of women differs from that of men.”
There was also no question of Islamic Sharia law being imposed in any part of the country, though there was room for the agreed settlement of civil disputes by religious courts, something that happens in the Jewish community.
Return to continue reading above
Islamic Lw, by the way, does not only extend as far as Sharia. There is also Hudud Law. Hudud usually refers to the class of punishments that are fixed for certain crimes that are considered to be “claims of God.” They include theft, fornication, consumption of alcohol.
You know something? I DON’T CARE! It’s nothing to do with MY country what medieval, religious systems of law other countries have developed (if that’s the word). In Muslime lands are they interested in understanding the difference between ScotsLaw, English Law, EU law. Oh yes, that third won will do. They are interested in THAT. That’s the one all liberals, Islamist terrorists and their like can walk all over.
This was an interesting comment from a Muslim woman - she does NOT want Sharia Law here - despite knowing that many of her menfolk do.
Scroll down to “a wench” comment here:
Who, precisely, is asking for Islamic law to be part of the British legal system? Who is going to be alienated if it isn’t allowed?
Which particular bit of Shariah are we talking about - contract law, family law, inheritance law or criminal law?
Has anyone done a poll of Muslims - the full range, I mean, not just the men hanging around the radical Mosques after Friday prayers. I’m talking about the conservative, the religious, the modern, the secular, the first generation immigrant, the second and third generation, the local convert? And, of course, as many women as men?
Britain is nominally Christian. Ask yourselves, do the majority of Britain’s Christmas-weddings-and-funerals-only Christians ask for Christian law to be implemented? Do these Christians feel themselves to be alienated under the current system of civil (rather than religious) law? Would you ask Christian fundamentalists, nicely “what sort of law would you like us to adopt, then”?
What about nominally Muslim countries - I dunno - let’s take Malaysia!
Does Malaysia operate all parts of Sharia, or only family, inheritance and some contract law?
Do its citizens feel alienated that their criminal law and penal codes are based on British law, not Islamic law?
Does Malaysia force any non-Muslims to abide by those parts of Sharia that it does operate, or are its sizeable Confucian, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist minorities governed under civil law?
There is such a lot of ignorance about this subject that it makes me want to tear my hear out. And our own religious establishment are the bloody worst. As if they have any right to recommend what laws should be adopted under a secular system!
I’m a non-religious Muslim and I’m female. I most certainly do not want Shariah law here. No part of it, not even the family law.
You will find that many women in Malaysia are also militating against the Sharia marriage laws - to the shock and horror of their menfolk who have had it all their own way for far too long.
That is just my opinion - but I am one of many that don’t fit the stereotypical Muslim mould.
So, when are we going to empower Muslim women, then? Good, British Muslim women, I mean. Like the one who wrote the above?
UPDATE - Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, has a new project to counter Islamist extremism. Called “PREVENT” it is better late than never, although some see it as too little too late.
I do wonder if they are running out of words to describe these projects. Blair’s “Respect” agenda went down the tubes with the help of Ed Balls, if you recall.
The Observer:
One cabinet minister said Gordon Brown had made a serious mistake in dropping Tony Blair’s anti-yob ‘respect’ campaign and was now belatedly reviving it. The shift suggests that Balls, Brown’s protégé in Cabinet, who had pushed hard for a more liberal approach, is losing influence as cabinet rivals jockey for position around the beleaguered Prime Minister.
And now government hands are rummaging in the hastily discarded dregs, trying to breathe life back into it. Unpalatable task for some, I’m sure. How many more of Blair’s policies are we about to revive before we get the message?
They’re working through the alphabet nicely. Although whatever happened to the letter “q”? What about - “Question”? That’d be good. Asking the people, perhaps. ALL the people?
The Times:
The government is to sponsor a theological board of leading imams and Muslim women in an attempt to refute the ideology of violent extremists.
The committee, to be announced this week, will issue pronouncements on areas such as wearing the hijab and the treatment of wives and is part of a government strategy to counter radicalism.
It will rule on interpretation of the Koran and promote the moderate strain of Islam practised by most British Muslims. It will also comment on controversial issues affecting Muslims living in Britain, including whether or not they should serve in the armed forces.
Its members have been recommended by leading moderates in the Muslim community and will be technically independent, although the government is expected to provide civil service support, a secretariat and members’ expenses.
I don’t dismiss the government’s attempts to bring people together as easily as some do. But I’d like to see a few more sites like this one from Muslims willing to question themselves. After all, that’s what freedom, liberty, democracy are all about - questioning oneself.
Aye, and there’s the rub … to paraphrase Burns & Shakespeare.
The post-Gordon era is upon us. Some within the Labour Party talk about the Prime Minister as if he were gone already. Ministers avoid the subject where they can, and his old enemies are openly hostile. Tortured discussions among backbenchers twist around turning points and tipping points. Was it George Osborne’s inheritance tax speech, the election that never was, or the 10p tax rate that really did for him? Will it be the Glasgow East by-election, Labour’s policy forum later this month, or the autumn party conference season that will definitively mark the end of the Brown era?
