Muslims In England

I was going to stay out of this discussion but I gotta jump in to defend my man scratcho who I doubt very seriously has a racist bone in his body.

sharia law is real. Supporters of sharia law are real. Muslims living in the west who support sharia law are real. Are they in the minority? Sure. I'm sure scratcho understands this. Does it make him racist to recognize the fact that a small minority of Islamists in the west support imposing sharia law in the west? Of course not, silly.

 

I wouldn't ban only Muslim faith schools, but all faith schools - Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish too.(Also private (paid for) education would get the axe. But that's a different issue)

Muslims have a right to believe as they do. But I don't think they decide on their own values as they get them from the Koran.And most are born into the religion and don't ever look at what other choices might be on the table in terms of values.
The idea that they live in a state hostile to their personal freedom wouldn't arise, because no-one would be allowed to set up faith schools. Muslims are free to practice their faith here, and should be allowed to continue to do so. At the same time they have to accept that others too have rights and freedoms.

Ignorance is a basic problem I agree. Probably the most fundamental problem on the human horizon. Many people in this country are totally ignorant about Islam,, and really don't have any idea of it's history or the content of the Koran. That is a problem.

Many Muslims don't understand the cultural history of Britain, and how we became what we are today, or why things like personal freedom of thought and choice are so important.

As I said on my initial post in this thread, my main fear is not of the Muslims, but of the potential in the UK for a right-wing backlash, and I feel that the country is moving further to the right all the time. So I'd use our basically socialist education system to try to create more cohesion and to enable people to make their own choices in an informed way, as well as be able to contribute to society and be economically successful.

 

Anyone who has read scratcho's posts over years like I have would know it's completely absurd to accuse him of racism.

But it's easy these days to get accused of racism or even Islamophobia just for bringing up these issues.

 

Muslims want to establish "Kingdom on Earth". Allah's kingdom, Allah's law, Allah's rule. Allah means all and they want ALL the world to be one under Allah.

Tell 'em good luck fighting "the great satan America" (as Iran calls it). One sure way to unite the whole entire world, and all religions, isn't even God. It's satan.

You can hear and see Melanie's alarm in this video.

http://youtu.be/bH6QO9MfaH4

 

I just want to see them all gone. Back to the Third World.
They hate our way of life, but they LOVE to come over here.
Let them live their way, back in squalor and slaughter. They can't get on with themselves, so no one can expect them to get along with us.

Its already ruined huge swathes of Britain. I've actually been friends with a few Muslims. So much that they've let their guard done on occasion and I can see the reality of the mindset that is so, so prevalent.

I can't think of a single place on Earth that has had a sizeable Muslim (Shi'tie/Sunni/Wahhabist minority) alongside Christians and it hasn't descended into mass bloodshed.
India-Pak, the Caucuses, Africa, Middle East, ALL OVER! If they don't clear off now, it will be a British civil war in 20 yrs time. Whether its the paedophile gangs, fraudsters, cult extremists, British people are just sick of them.

Britain never needed millions of immigrants from extremist hellholes, it was just corporate greed that facilitated it.

 

Thanks Meliai and Bill. You folks know me. Only thing I can think of presently is--'Thick as a Brick.'

 

You said it's sad to see, as you advocated being just like them.

You cannot win freedom through suppression.

These are difficult issues - they have difficult solutions - but pretending we can just squash them will only grow them, by their very nature.

It's sort of like US conservatives - it's mainstream among them to be totally fucking insane - but many people who vote for those crazy fucks have no clue what they really think or exactly how bad they want it, they have not honestly considered a world in which their own beliefs reign supreme.

 

One can be liberal, and one can be anti-religiously liberal. But the problem of being religious and against liberalism, because one hates the self being oneself is a graver problem; there is a problem of ultimately shallow politics. Seek the abstract in one's traditions, and thus the muslims in particular, or any other citizen of fellowship, can find the perfect impartial judgement in spite of that shallow science. One's future family can be determined in deep denial of one's Faith.

Sounds good to me. Liberalism in my family was always the despair of morals never quite being justice principled.

 

Too bad we don't have a don't like or thumbs down option for ^.

From your world wide travels and adventures, I would have thought (quite mistakenly, apparently) you would have more sense than to say "the OP is a racist".

With your intelligence and analytical skills, why/how can you honestly compare what Scratcho is saying to (then, according to you) his having a hissy fit driving through dry counties...then we're on to gay marriage debates and abortion...and from this line of thought to saying he is racist ? :dizzy2:

It gives me heart to see that being foolish and/or intentionally petty and stupid is not restricted to poor, untraveled people.

 

I am also pretty sure Scratcho is not a racist (although muslims aren't a race so I guess we're talking about discrimination here). I also think he's not out to discriminate But albeit subconscious, the thread title is already slightly off. The majority of muslims in the UK aren't putting signs in the street proclaiming they want sharia law. This may be a subtile and unment (as scratcho made clear he wasn't talking about englands muslim community as a whole) wording of the situation but if it can avoid people like Sitka assuming he's just another generalizing islamophobe or something it seems worth to mind such details. Doing so might cause us to skip all these urges to make sure he wasn't generalizing or simply hating on islam or middle eastern immigrants as a whole Even if I am already pretty sure OP isn't the discriminating kind of guy I still felt like making it sure anyway after the first post.

 

So you think mono culture should be part of the solution? Who decides what the nature of that culture should be? Religious education is part of being religious so the idea that banning religious schools while allowing everyone freedom of worship is a less than fundamental approach. The lurch to the right that you notice is a reaction to strangeness. Banning education or burning books seems to me a fearful ultra right response not socially considerate one. The lack of knowledge goes both ways. How many Brits understand the cultural history of the immigrating muslim? Use accreditation to make sure a civic curriculum is taught by every school private or public as part of it's lesson plan. Graduates of non-accredited schools would be at a disadvantage in the workplace if credential is meaningful and that everyday decrease in access to opportunity would more likely cause one to reflect meaningfully on his choices. Also you make the civil education part of the requirement for granting permanent residence to emigres.

 

No. But it makes him racist to care exclusively about Muslims imposing faith-based laws while ignoring those that Christians impose.

Explain to me how this is not comparable to the existence of "dry counties" in the US. Either laws based on the faith of the majority in an area are acceptable, or they aren't.

I shall spell it our for you. The very countries protesting the use of Sharia law themselves have a large number of laws that have religious roots (including, but not limited too, blue laws, laws restricting business on Sunday, and laws restricting birth control and/or abortion and/or gay marriage). Scratcho, likely being either English or American or Australian or Canadian (countries which all contain religious law), is complaining about only one set of religious laws. So yes, that is racist.

And yes, while religion is technically not a race,most modern definitions of racism include religious and national distinctions.

And for the record, I am currently living under Sharia law.

 

where do you live now?

I can't really speak for scratcho but as a person living in the southern region of the United States I've always found blue laws quite annoying. Luckily my city did away with the Sunday blue laws about 8 years ago, right around the time I turned 21.


i find anyone who tries to impose their religious beliefs on society as a whole to be quite dangerous.

 

Yes , I am racist because I don't like homicidal maniacs. You got me!

 

We already have what's nearly a mono culture in education anyway,as all schools have to teach a national curriculum which is set by the govt. All children are required by law to attend school. All faith schools do is add on their own stuff. Often, there's no choice but to send a child to a Church of England affiliated school if it's the only one close by. But C 0f E are relatively mild with the religious stuff.

I'm not sure 'strangeness' has anything to do with the swing to the right. We've had Muslims living here since the 50's, so that's nothing new. There's also a lot of fuss about immigrants from the EU who have come in increasing numbers in recent years. To tell the truth I think that's more what's behind it than Muslim related issues. Also it's a part of a long game where the British establishment backed by the gutter press want to reclaim full power, leave or renegotiate membership of the EU so we wouldn't have to accept European immigration - even though it's been shown that they contribute billions to the UK economy.

I said before that hardly any Brits know much at all about Islam or its history. Which actually may be a blessing in disguise, as I suspect that if the history were more widely known, they'd be even less keen on Islam as a religion.
That's not a failure of the secular education system. In Christian and other faith schools only their own religion is generally taught.

 

So what about white British muslim converts like Samantha Leithwaite, the so called 'white widow' who want Sharia law globally?

Is it racist to criticize them too?

 

Well I think that's pretty much sitka's point.

Arguing against one kind of crazy when we've got a much more influential kind much closer to home and much more entwined in politics is a huge problem. We don't have christians calling for sharia, we have christian sharia. I'm all for keeping church and state seperated, but telling them they can't have their crazy repressive shit in government, while we have a bunch of crazy repressive shit in government? Can't do that.

We need to get the crazy repressive shit out of government - unfortionately, crazy repressive shit creates a positive feedback loop, because people act like the class you put them in. If people become poor and desperate, they act like poor desperate religious loonies, and if they become middle class, they gradually act like secular middle class. Our religious nutjobs have political power and are doing everything they can to drive the US into squalor, which only greatly bolsters religious looneyism and right-wing radicalism, which in turn increases the squalor, and so fourth and so on.

You can't say "you people" can't come here - you can say we don't have any religious looney shit in our politics from anyone's looney book, and we are going to take care of our population well enough that they don't need to turn to a looney book full of murderous fascist imaginary friends who demand that they subjugate the world to their stone-age beliefs.

In the US, a belief, even one that runs totally contrary to reality, is justification for things like telling your employees what kind of birth control they can use, or if abortions are okay, or what time of day (or if) you can buy alcohol or other drugs, etc. That's religious law that greatly and wrongly limits freedom - if we want to set a precedent where religion stays in the head of the religious and out of the lives of those who don't subscribe, we've got to uproot that crazy shit - making muslims feel persecuted won't keep out sharia, it only greatly bolsters the most radical among them.

 

It'd be neat if people practiced their personal agenda in the comfort and privacy of their own home. =]

 

I'd agree with you there - as regards the situation in the USA. But this was about radical extremists in England, where we do have a very secular system, and religion plays virtually no role in formulating laws. There's no capital to be made by politicians here by playing the religion card, By no stretch of the imagination do we have anything like christian sharia. A recent poll here shows over half the population think religion does more harm than good. So it's not the same situation you have in America.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/03/religion-beyond-belief_n_6094442.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular,beyond-belief

 

When a whacked out bunch of Christians start killing, beheading, raping and kidnapping==I'll get back to you.

And Sitka==as you mentioned that you live under sharia law, I guess you're OK with it. You want us to have it here in the US? Worldwide?