Yuri Prasad interviews Liz Fekete of the Institute of Race Relations about her excellent new book A Suitable Enemy: Racism, Migration and Islamophobia in Europe.
Category Archives: Multiculturalism
Where will we find the perfect Muslim for monocultural Britain?
Labour’s anti-terror strategy depends on mythical figures as elusive as WMD, argues Gary Younge.
Well, not entirely mythical. The Quilliam Foundation and the Sufi Muslim Council have done their best to fill the role demanded of Muslims by the government.
‘Jason Kenney is promoting racism’
On March 18, 2009 the Canadian Minister of Multiculturalism and Immigration, Mr. Jason Kenney made good on his threats to cut funding for Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) programs that help settle newcomers to Canada. The Toronto Star reported that neither of the two [Language Instruction for New Canadians] contracts with CAF “will be renewed, Alykhan Velshi, director of communications and parliamentary affairs, said in an email.” In the same article, Mr. Kenney also referenced this decision by stating that “he is an ‘unapologetic supporter’ of Israel”.
A few days earlier, it was reported in the National Post on 3/14/2009: “Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says the Canadian Arab Federation will have to change its leadership and adopt a more moderate stance or risk losing federal funding… Mr. Kenney said taxpayers should not be footing the bill for an organization whose leader ‘promotes hateful and extremist views.’ Mr. Kenney said there are many moderate organizations that could do the job… He suggested the decision could be reversed if more moderate leaders were in place.”
Mad Mel explains the rise of the BNP
“Last week, the British National Party won a council seat in Sevenoaks, Kent…. Around the country, the BNP is making an ever stronger political showing. Last month, it only narrowly failed to take a council seat in Bexley, South London, and last week it did well in wards in Yorkshire, the Midlands and Lewisham, another South London borough. It is also strongly tipped to win at least one European Parliament seat in the forthcoming elections.
“The reason for its increasing success is obvious. Like all populist, neo-fascist parties, the BNP is opportunistically exploiting the failure by the political establishment to address issues of pressing and legitimate concern to the public…. Britain is changing before our very eyes. As a result of the current rate of immigration, within half a century the projected steep increase in the UK’s population will be entirely made up of people not born in Britain – most of whom will have come from the Third World.
“Meanwhile, the fanatically imposed doctrine of multiculturalism has brought about the erosion or denigration of Britain’s history, religion and identity, leaving generations of children – both indigenous and immigrant – appallingly ignorant of the common culture they need to share.
“It is entirely reasonable to want one’s country to express its own culture through its institutions, laws and practices. Yet those who defend this principle are called ‘racist’. Britain is witnessing an alarming growth of separate Muslim enclaves ruled by a parallel Islamic Sharia law. It is entirely reasonable to want one system of law for all. Yet those who say so are called ‘Islamophobic’.”
Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, 23 February 2009
Of course, Phillips omits to mention one important factor in the rise of the BNP – the legitimisation of their racist politics by bigoted right-wing commentators like herself whose anti-Muslim tirades are often barely distinguishable from the sort of thing you might read in a BNP propaganda leaflet.
Muslim schools ban our culture
A number of Muslim schools are promoting Islamic extremism and encouraging pupils to grow up despising Britain, a think tank report claims today.
Youngsters are discouraged from playing cricket and board games, listening to western music and even reading Shakespeare plays or Harry Potter books by fanatics targeting classrooms, the research says.
Some children are even being told to shun “the evil system of western culture” and encouraged to live in “ghettos”.
The vile diktats to Muslim pupils, some of primary school age, appear on school websites or on other internet sites linked directly to school sites and operated by fund amentalist groups. Critics last night called for strict vetting of Muslim education to root out extremist influence. Moderate Muslim groups welcomed the findings and called for the attempts by extremists to target children to be stamped out.
The propaganda is highlighted in a report called Music, Chess and Other Sins from the Westminster-based think tank Civitas. Author Denis MacEoin investigated hundreds of school websites and Islamic websites linked to schools to uncover the material.
Daily Express, 20 February 2009
The Express editorial is headed “Britain must stand up for its time-honoured values”. We are told: “Before mass immigration got under way in the middle of the last century, Britain was a country blessed with a cohesive culture. It isn’t now….Things have now reached a point where some Muslim schools ban such pillars of British life as chess, Shakespeare and even the very idea of women’s equality….This is a disastrous state of affairs, meaning young Muslims are bound to grow up confused and alienated. Experience tells us that some will become the Islamist terrorists of tomorrow.”
The Telegraph went with “The Muslim children taught to hate Britain” and the article began: “Islamic fundamentalism that encourages children to despise British society is being promoted on websites at Muslim schools in the UK, think tank Civitas has revealed.”
This has now been amended so the headline reads “Islamic fundamentalism promoted on websites at some Muslim schools in the UK, think tank finds” and the opening sentence now also includes the word “some” before “Muslim schools”.
MacEoin himself contributes an article headlined “We must stop Muslim schools teaching that integration is a sin” although the online version now carries the standfirst: “Some Muslim schools make it their mission to prevent assimiliation – and it is time the Government changed that, says Denis MacEoin.”
And a Telegraph editorial recycles the familiar right-wing myth about Christians being discriminated against in favour of Muslims: “Sneering at Christianity is routine. Perhaps that is an inevitable consequence of living in a free society – but it is interesting that militant atheists clam up when it is suggested that Islam might be a target for ridicule. [What planet do Torygraph leaders writers live on? Have they never come across Richard Dawkins?] And when was the last time a Muslim woman was banned from wearing a small symbol of her faith? This double standard runs through the government sector and the intelligentsia.”
The Times announces: “Ofsted accused of soft line on Muslims.”
Amanda Platell’s comment piece in the Daily Mail is headlined: “Schooling children to hate our values” (“schools like these risk breeding a new generation of Islamic fundamentalists, whose hatred of the West may very well spill over into acts of violence – or even murder. How can we tolerate such hatred in our midst?”).
The Daily Star has “Islam kids taught forget Potter and prepare for jihad“.
See also ENGAGE which reproduces the following poll from the Star:
Christian civilisation succumbs to Islam
“In our allegedly multicultural society, there is one religious group which is apparently not to be afforded equal respect, let alone treated for what it embodies – the foundational creed of this nation. That group is Britain’s Christians.
“Somerset community nurse and committed Christian Caroline Petrie has been suspended and faces being sacked and even struck off for offering to say a prayer for an elderly patient…. Would the same action be taken, one wonders, against a Muslim nurse offering to pray for a Muslim patient? It is but the latest in a growing line of incidents where people find themselves singled out for opprobrium for expressing their Christian faith….
“It was particularly telling to compare this incident with the astounding video footage featured in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday, showing police officers running away from chanting demonstrators who took part in a violent protest in London against Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip.
“The ten-minute amateur film shows 30 officers being chased by a crowd of up to 3,000 people who broke away from an official protest march last month. Absurdly, the police claim they were ‘going backwards’ but not running away. But the video clearly shows the police retreating under fire, being chased through central London by protesters chanting ‘Allahu akhbar’ as they pelted officers with traffic cones and screaming ‘cowards’ and ‘they’re going to get it’.
“It is hard not to reach the dismal conclusion that a society faced with violence in pursuit of the goal of overturning Christian values and conquering Britain for Islam turns tail and runs away – while at the same time coming down like a ton of bricks on any expression of those Christian values which underpin British society, in the interests of ‘equality and diversity’. This is the way a society dies.”
Melanie Phillips (who else?) in the Daily Mail, 2 February 2009
See also the discussion of Phillips by the fascists at the Stormfront UK forum. The comments, though not uncritical, are broadly supportive: “she seems to agree with many of our views”; “her book Londistan is a very good read”; “some of what she says is usefull to our cause so she has some merit”.
The migrants who just don’t belong, by the Archbishop of York
Immigrants to Britain in the past five decades have been treated like hotel guests who “do not belong”, the Archbishop of York said yesterday. Dr John Sentamu said the failure of migrants to integrate had contributed to the collapse of a common British culture and the lack of a national sense of direction. He called for recognition of the Christian heritage which used to bind the nation together.
The Archbishop’s powerful attack on uncontrolled immigration and on the Left-wing interpretation of multiculturalism that encourages migrants to ignore traditional British values, was made in a speech to Gordon Brown’s think tank, the Smith Institute.
Ugandan-born Dr Sentamu, who came to Britain in the 1970s, said it was important to remember that Britain had always provided refuge for economic migrants. He said 250,000 Jewish people had come before the First World War, and had integrated and been accepted. “What happened after the Second World War was a different phenomenon,” Dr Sentamu continued. “For the first time, significant numbers of immigrants from a non Judaeo-Christian background settled in the UK.”
He referred to the view of Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks that until the 1950s immigrants were like guests in a country house, who were expected to assimilate British values and to belong to the existing society. But with the decline of empire and the growth of Commonwealth immigration, the pattern had become more like a hotel.
“Guests are entitled to stay if they can pay their way and receive basic services in return for their payment,” he said. “But they are guests – they do not belong. In the same way, migrants to Britain from the 1960s onwards have made their home with their cultural rights protected under legislation framed under a multicultural perspective. Consequently, any sense of a shared common culture is eroded, risking increasing segregation.”
Dutch Labour Party joins attack on Muslims, migrants and multiculturalism
Under the headline “From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance”, John Vinocur reports from the Netherlands (“a country whose history of tolerance was the first in 21st-century Europe to clash with the on-street realities of its growing Muslim population”) on the latest attack on migrants and multiculturalism, this one by the chair of the PvdA:
“Two weeks ago, the country’s biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch ‘tolerance’…. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims’ obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor’s chairperson, was exceptional.
“The paper said: ‘The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance.’ Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of ‘loss and estrangement’ felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs. Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid ‘self-designated victimization’. She asserted, ‘the grip of the homeland has to disappear’ for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.
“Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be ‘bringing our values into confrontation with people who thinkotherwise’…. And that comes from the heart of the traditional, democratic European left, where placing the onus of compatibility on immigrants never found such comfort before…. Labor’s line seems to stand on its head the old equation of jobs-plus-education equals integration. Conforming to Dutch society’s social standards now comes first. Strikingly, it turns its back on cultural relativism….
“Ploumen says, ‘Integration calls on the greatest effort from the new Dutch. Let go of where you come from; choose the Netherlands unconditionally’. Immigrants must ‘take responsibility for this country’ and cherish and protect its Dutch essence.
“Not clear enough? Ploumen insists, ‘The success of the integration process is hindered by the disproportionate number of non-natives involved in criminality and trouble-making, by men who refuse to shake hands with women, by burqas and separate courses for women oncitizenship. We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society’.”
Vinocur’s article concludes with a quote from Frits Bolkestein, former leader of the right-wing VVD (“who began writing in 1991 about the enormous challenge posed to Europe by Muslim immigration”): “The multi-cultis just aren’t making the running anymore. It’s a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country.”
New York Times, 29 December 2008
Daniel Pipes hails what he terms “A Dutch fissure in the Leftist-Islamist alliance“.
Update: Under the heading “Dutch Left calls for an end to suicidal notion of tolerance” Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch also applauds the PvdA’s stance:
“For years I have insisted that the resistance to the jihad and Islamic supremacism is not a Left/Right, liberal/conservative issue, but one of the defense of our common civilization – however, hardly anyone on the Left has ever demonstrated any awareness of this, perhaps because they have increasingly discarded the values of that common civilization altogether. However, harsh reality is causing some people to wake up in the Netherlands.”
‘Do Cameron’s Tories secretly admire Islam?’
The question is posed by Damian Thompson, who claims that, when it comes to countering “the spread of Islamic ghettos” in the UK, “there’s so little to choose between the two main parties that I can’t see a case for voting Tory”. He continues:
“Conservative political correctness is normally more funny than alarming, especially when practised by deeply snobbish Old Etonians. But when it extends to taking advice from Muslim radicals about the correct posture to take towards the ‘religion of peace’, then it is positively dangerous. Leading Tories think that they can demonstrate their intolerance of Islamic extremism by fulminating against one or two loopy Jihadist pressure groups. It’s as if Margaret Thatcher, confronted by the threat of socialism in 1979, had simply called for the banning of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Expel Vanessa Redgrave from the country and the unions will come to their senses.”
Daily Telegraph, 27 December 2008
That would be the same Tory Party whose leader pledges to break up “Muslim ghettos” and regards “rising Muslim consciousness” as a threat to social stability, whose security spokesperson Pauline Neville-Jones produces reports labelling the Muslim Council of Britain as extremist and accuses the entirely peaceful and apolitical Tablighi Jamaat of association with terrorism, a party whose MPs include the likes of Philip Davies, Michael Gove and Patrick Mercer, and whose supposedly “pro-Muslim” wing enthusiastically adds its voice to the assault on multiculturalism.
If this is amounts to politically correct admiration of Islam, as Damian Thompson believes, then you wonder which political party is conducting an anti-Muslim campaign aggressive enough to meet with his approval. The obvious answer is the BNP, who only the other day approvingly reproduced another anti-Muslim piece by Thompson on their website. Perhaps they should consider sending him a membership form?
Update: Well, no actual invitation to join the party as yet, but the BNP have again reproduced Thompson’s piece on their website. See “Tories accused of ‘secretly admiring Islam’ by leading Daily Telegraph writer“.
Established Church needed to hold Islam at bay, says Mad Mel
Melanie Phillips warns against proposals to disestablish the Church of England:
“Christianity is not just any faith. It lies at the heart of British values and Western civilisation. Breaking the link would mean Christianity would be cast adrift, along with many of this country’s values. The Church might not be destroyed, but the country’s core identity would undoubtedly suffer.
“And the plain fact is that Britain is not multicultural. Parts of it are multi-ethnic, with large pockets of immigrants from other nations, but that is a very different matter. Britain remains a Protestant Christian country, and most Britons define themselves as such.
“… the undermining of Christianity from within is being exploited by militant Islamist fanatics who want to turn Britain into an Islamic state. This might seem an impossible notion, until you recall the way Dr Williams – followed by the senior judge Lord Phillips – said there was nothing to be feared from the encroachment within Britain of Islamic sharia law, regardless of the fact that such law is based on principles which are inimical to Christianity and liberal democracy.
“The only way to defend British and Western society from such cultural attack is to re-assert a confident Christianity. Yet Dr Williams spends all his time apologising for the faith he supposedly represents….
“Maybe we can’t any longer hold off the demand for ‘equality’ between Christianity and the other faiths that make up modern Britain. But in that case we have to accept that Britain and its values will be utterly changed, and not for the better.”
Update: See the response from ENGAGE to Phillips’ article.