Following the lead of German Chancellor, Angela Markel, Prime Minister David Cameron took a stab at the multiculturalism debate during a speech on extremism at the Munich Security Conference. Like the Chancellor, who was sharing the stage with him, he too concluded that multiculturalism had failed in Britain and identified it as a catalyst to extremism. While Markel only implied that Muslims were the culprits, Cameron stated this quite frankly.
Perhaps it was the 6-hour lunch with the Chancellor that led the PM to make such accusations, but it is quite clear that he feels Muslims in Britain aren’t British enough. In his simplistic attempt to point out the cause of extremism amongst British Muslim youth, he blamed state sponsored multiculturalism which encourages people to live separate lives instead of assimilating with the mainstream.
David Cameron’s conclusions are flawed on levels too many enumerate. To begin with, the accusation that British Muslims live isolated lives and aren’t a part of the mainstream is completely absurd. Muslims have been a part of Britain since Victorian times and have especially played an active role in society over the last half century. They are successful politicians, lawyers, doctors, social workers, artists and athletes. From cricketers like Naseer Hussain to musicians like Yusuf Islam, there isn’t a walk a life that Muslims have left untouched. Peter Sanders explored this very theme in his exhibit, ‘The Art of Integration’, something I would strongly recommend for David Cameron.
Another thing Mr. Cameron overlooks is our natural inclination as human beings to cling onto people with shared values, customs and beliefs. Just like goths hangout with goths and homosexuals thrive in certain parts of the city, similarly, Muslims too have a subculture that they find easier to relate too. Would the former groups be the next ones to be accused of not integrating into wider society? British Muslims have their own unique identity and to dismiss this as separatism is simply injustice. While preaching for liberal democratic values, the Prime Minister wants to eradicate individualism and wants to everyone to be a part of the mainstream? Am I the only one seeing the irony in this?
While I would agree that isolation from the mainstream community is the type of the environment that would fuel extremism, I disagree that this isolation exists because of a lack of shared national values. It exists because of the constant dehumanization of Muslims and uninterrupted bigotry that they are faced with. It is because of movements like the English Defense League and politicians like Geert Wilders whose sole aim is to spread fear mongering. As a result of this prejudice and constant stereotyping in the media, anti-Muslim sentiments have become increasingly acceptable in the UK. When society as a whole sees you as the ‘other’, it is only natural for you to isolate yourself from society.
It’s perplexing to see the Prime Minister of a country as old as Britain, with its rich history and timeless legacy, questioning national identity. This is a reflection of the insecurity felt not only in Britain but all across Europe. With David Cameron’s strong nationalistic tone and a call for assimilation into mainstream society, it seems like he won’t settle for anything less than Muslim women taking on the Union Jack for a headscarf.
Also published at Iqra
June 20, 2011 at 2:03 pm
muslims do not assimilate into western society because islam is a theocracy and demands supremacy. there is no radical, moderate, hijacked or any other nuanced semanticism type of islam. there is only islam which is based on the life of a murdering 8th century warlord.
the twin fogs of political correctness & ignorance must be dispersed before western society better understands this menace. even a brief review of islamic theology & history quickly exposes the deadly roots of this evil ideology.
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islam is a horrible ideology for human rights
5 key things about islam
1. mythical beliefs – all religions have these (faith) because its part of being a religion: having beliefs without proof until after the believer dies. the problem is people will believe almost anything.
2. totalitarianism – islam has no seperation of church and state: sharia law governs all. there is no free will in islam: only submission to the will of allah as conveniently determined by the imams who spew vapors to feather their own nests. there are no moderate muslims: they all support sharia law.
3. violence – islam leads the pack of all religions in violent tenets for their ideology & history: having eternal canonical imperatives for supremacy at all costs and calling for violence & intimidation as basic tools to achieve these goals.
4. dishonesty – only islam has dishonesty as a fundamental tenet: this stems from allah speaking to mohamhead & abrogation in the koran which is used to explain how mo’s peaceful early life was superseded by his warlord role later.
5. misogyny – present day islam is still rooted in 8th century social ethics: treating females as property of men good only for children, severely limiting their activities, dressing them in shower curtains and worse.
conclusions ??
there really are NO redeeming qualities for this muddled pile of propaganda.
islam is just another fascist totalitarian ideology used by power hungry fanatics on yet another quest for worldwide domination and includes all the usual human rights abuses & suppression of freedoms.
June 27, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Hello ‘ecks why’,
I’ve noticed your misleading and bigoted comment on various blogs and I will take some time to provide refutations to conclusions you’ve drawn about Islam. I will only respond to your attacks on the religion of Islam and on our Prophet and will leave out the ‘Muslims in the West’ debate as I doubt that will have an effect on your xenophobia.
I implore you to read the biography of the Prophet Muhammad before calling him a ‘murderous warlord’. If you had done so you would have found out the battles he fought were in defense of his people and land from enemies who wanted to destroy him. You would have found out that even during battles he practiced ethics of the highest level. He prohibited the attacking of civilians, non-combatants, women, children, elderly and monks. He prohibited attacking places of worship and destroying sources of food such as trees.
If you read about him then you would have learned that he exercised unparalleled mercy towards prisoners of war and allowed the rich among them to buy freedom and the poor were set free without having to pay. You would have also learned that after the battle with the Meccans, the people that oppressed him for a decade, he freed everyone without retribution and honoured the very people that had once mocked and tortured him.These my friend are not qualities of a ‘murderous warlord’.
As for your ‘5 key aspects of Islam’,
1. Beliefs: The fundamental tenant of Islam is the belief in One God. To recognize that He alone is the creator of the heavens and earth and thus he alone has the right to be worshiped. It is also to believe in all the Prophets of God and to recognize Muhammad as His final messenger. The rationality and the simplicity of Islamic monotheism is what makes it stand out from the rest; these beliefs couldn’t be further from being ‘mystical’.
2. It is true that there is no separation of religion and the state in Islam. The sign of a true religion is that it comes with moral codes not only for the individual but for the state as a whole. It is quite misleading to call such a system ‘totalitarian’, keeping in mind the negative implications of that term. If Islam was totalitarian then it wouldn’t have allowed freedom to practice other faiths. In fact, non-muslims in an Islamic state are not even subject to shariah restrictions. For eg they are allowed to buy and sell alcohol while the muslims cannot. Also, a totalitarian system does not allow the people to choose their leader; something the Islamic electoral system mandated 1400 yrs ago.
And yes, all muslims do believe in the Shariah. 70% of the shariah deals with matters of worship; how to pray, fast, perform pilgrimage,give the annual charity etc. 20% of it deals with Business transactions with are based around the prohibition of interest. 5% percent deal with dietary laws and the remaining 5% has guidelines relating to running the state.
3. Your baseless allegation that Islam in some way promotes violence is refuted by the verse in the Quran which states that whoever takes an innocent life has taken the sin of killing all humanity and whoever saves an innocent life takes on the reward of saving all humanity (5:32). Also, the Prophet Muhammad said, “I will be the opponent of one who harms a non-Muslim, and I will speak against those whom I oppose on the Day of Judgment”. The Quran always encourages us to opt for peace as it states,“If they [your enemies] incline towards peace then you should likewise incline and place your trust in God. Surely, He hears and knows all.” (8:61)
4. This point simply demonstrates your ignorance of the Islamic sciences and history. Explaining it is beyond the scope of this response and probably that of your intellect.
5. If Islam is in fact misogynistic, then it wouldn’t have raised the status of the mother over the father. It wouldn’t would have allowed women to inherit property or own land…something that western women weren’t allowed up until the 19th century. It also wouldn’t have allowed for the freedom to choose their spouses and conduct business. Did you know that the Prophets first wife, Khadija, was a rich business woman who was 15 years his senior and who also proposed to him? Did you know this his last wife, Ayesha, was a scholar of the Islamic sciences, a military leader and an adviser to the Caliph? Obviously not; for if you knew these facts then you wouldn’t have made such horrendous allegations.
Conclusions? You are a racist ignorant who knows nothing about Islam.
Waleed
June 29, 2011 at 11:26 am
hi waleed
thanks for replying so thoughtfully 🙂 but sadly it does not seem we agree on many things…
the life of mohamed is well documented in secular history, including plenty of his violent unprovoked attacks on unbelievers, here’s a good link with much info, otherwise i can’t type enough of this material to overwhelmingly show what lies you are spinning about this evil person
http://www….link has been removed by moderator
1 – yes obviously islam is a religion, more than that i could care less about your claims for truth because compared to science with its repeatable experiments by independent observers, religion is just myths written on paper etc
2 – yes it is quite accurate to describe islam as a totalitarian theocracy, especially for unbelievers of this ideology
3 – the koran is filled with eternal canonical imperatives calling for violence against unbelievers, here’s a link with all of them clearly categorized
http://www….link has been removed by moderator
4 – never a good reply in a debate to criticize your opponent especially when they are right 🙂 easy enough to internet search for arabic terms like “taqiyya” and “kitman” and “islamic dishonesty” to clearly show just how deeply embedded & intertwined dishonesty is with islam
5 – why does islam have so many “honor killings” ? why did saudi men start a rope campaign to beat their women to stop them from driving cars ? again more links to refute your weak reply so just search for “islam misogyny”
http://www….link has been removed by moderator
here i debated this essay with absar from pakistan but you have read alot of comments to see our replies they got mixed up
http://insider.pk/life-style/religion/common-misconceptions-about-islam/
thanks again for replying but my fingers cannot type enough to refute all the islamic cow dung propagated to fool the naive & innocent before the iron veil lowers and yet more people are oppressed by this horrible ideology
June 29, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Hi,
As I had suspected, your knowledge of Islam is based on readings of misleading and inaccurate articles written by Christian evangelicals and Islamaphobes for the sole purpose of debasing Islam and humiliating our Prophet. I can’t believe that you’ve based your arguments and your entire world view by reading websites such as ‘answering-islam’ and googling random terms to refute Islam. Its like learning Christianity from Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens. At the end of this response I will refer you to some real books (yes books! things that regular people read before writing polemics ) that you can read and perhaps formed a more just view of Islam.
I am certain that my response which follows will have no impact on your views, as you’ve demonstrated your unwillingness to budge by discarding my earlier response or practice academic honesty; I write with intention to clear up the misinformation you’ve presented for other readers of this blog.
As for the verses that you and your gang frequently quote out of context which supposedly call for indiscriminate violence against non-muslims, know that those verses were revealed at a time when Muslims were being attacked by non-muslims and those versus serve as permission to fight back. And though you would easily dismiss that as a cop out, I will prove to you why those verses couldn’t possible have been revealed to be applied in an absolute sense.
One reason is that Quran permits marriage between a Muslim man and a Jewish or Christan woman. If the religion was so intolerant then how could this possibly be allowed? If your understanding was in fact true, then the first thing a Muslim would have to do is kill his own wife. Another refutation, and perhaps the biggest one, is that non-Muslims have special protected status under Islamic law. The agreement between the state and the non-Muslims is that they pay the state a tax, the jizya, and in return they are given protection and freedom to practice their religion. If the Quran was in fact calling for the killing of all unbelievers in an absolute sense, then why would it at the same time grant them protected status and religious freedom? And before you go on attacking the jizya, let me point out the Muslim are required to pay the zakat while the non-muslims were exempt from it and have to pay the jizya instead.
As for ‘Islamic dishonesty’, I tried to avoid going into this but you took that as a sign of me accepting your attacks as being true. So let me delve quickly into one aspect of this accusation i.e. the concept of nasikh and munsookh (the abrogating and abrogated). If you would have studied the principles of Islamic jurisprudence you would have learned what this is. You would have learned that the Quran was revealed over a period of 23 yrs. That is, Islamic law came down in stages and was completed at the end of this period. The fact that it was revealed in stages is an aspect of divine wisdom for had it been revealed in one go it would have been impossible to follow. Note: this refers to aspects of law only, not beliefs.
So for example, the prohibition of alcohol came in three stages. In the first stage Muslims were told simply to not pray while in the state of intoxication, next they were discouraged from consuming it and finally any recreational use was completely forbidden. Therefore the final verse on this issue abrogates the first two. Now, the Quran has been preserved as it was revealed; thus the verses that only call for avoiding alcohol during prayer are still in it. An untrained reader could read those verses and think that the Quran contradicts itself or that it is being ‘dishonest’ but this is only a consequence of poor understanding. Only qualified scholars have knowledge of such subtleties of the Quran. In conclusion, the concept of abrogation exists simply due to the nature of Quranic compilation…not some absurd attempt to deceive people as you claim. As for the concepts of taqiaay; this concept is alien to orthodox Islam and is used only by Shia.
And as for honour killing, if you would have paid attention to my earlier response you would have realized that such horrendous acts have no place in Islam (see 5:32). There is no honour in a man killing his wife or daughter….its simply murder. And murder is one of the worst sins a man can commit. It wouldn’t be fair to take all cases of domestic violence committed by Christian men in America and use that as proof the Christianity somehow endorses this. I ask you to exercise similar honesty when looking at cases of abuses in the Muslim world.
You referred me to inaccurate web articles, I refer you to reliable books:
Islam – Beliefs and Teachings by Ghulam Sarwar
The Holy Quran; Translation by Yusuf Ali
Martin Ling’s biography of the Prophet Muhammad
Submission, Faith and Beauty by Joseph Lumbard
The Evolution of Fiqh by Bilal Philips
The Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence by Muhammad Hashim Kamali
Peace,
Waleed
p.s. I am removing the links to the websites you posted as I don’t want this blog to have any part in spreading such rubbish around.
June 30, 2011 at 11:43 am
hi waleed
thanks again much useful info in that reply 🙂
i understand your concern about islam being misrepresented by unbelievers but what i’ve read at those & other links (most of them run by ex-muslims) does seem to correctly match the reality of islam on todays planet earth.
yes christianity has similar problems but so what ? all religions & all ideologies have similar problems and that does not make islam any better.
and we still don’t agree about islamic theological support for far too many negative issues as i’ve outlined above & again are well documented at websites run by ex-muslims etc. referring to qualified opponents of an ideology is a very good way to see what the problems are & see how such ideologies handle them. reading only what supporters say about an ideology is a guaranteed path to delusion and problems caused by unrealistic positive spin, ie. advertising.
can islam successfully compete against other religions & ideologies in a free marketplace without using violence & intimidation as basic tactics against their competitors and captured audience ??
so far as of today 2011 the answer to this question is a resounding NO NO NO and again 1000 times NO. yes again xnity & other religions had these similar problems in the past but has been mostly forced to change in order to survive in modern secular western society where personal faith is a free will choice (always a few troublemakers though).
islam and its muslim followers is currently unable to appropriately respond to free speech, scientific academic inquiries & harsh criticism from unbelievers and until this is resolved islam will be treated very negatively by informed rational freedom loving people and well deserves it.
so back to blogging for me 🙂