Centre for Social Cohesion
that sounds familiar.
Who remembers when they fabricated receipts to try and prove Mosques were selling extremist literature?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2008/05/policy_exchange_dispute_update.html

How many times must these people be proven to be liars before they stop quoting them?

Hear hear.

Craig,

There is a broader point here:-

" Apparently you only should be allowed to participate in politics if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as Andrew Gilligan's."

We could make a broader point about Western ( and in that sense in these times - I have the US particularly in mind) foreign policy.

Let's modify your sentence a little:-

" Apparently you only should be allowed to participate in politics if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as ( the one supported by the dominant power espousing 'demoracy' 'freedom' etc. etc. etc. ). so - delete Andrew...

In my lifetime there have been a series of CIA sponsored invasions, coups and general global mischief making because the dominant power thought that the regime, election results or power base in a soverign country was not to its liking - Iran - Guatemala....onwards... Chile - Haiti - Iraq...etc.

All in the name of 'demoracy'and 'freedom' so long as the brand of freedom and demoracy is in accordance with a particular power's determination of what kind of freedom and democratic expression is to be allowed.

SORRY - SHOULD HAVE CORRECTED MY SPELLING MISTAKES BEFORE POSTING...

Craig,
There is a broader point here:-
" Apparently you only should be allowed to participate in politics if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as Andrew Gilligan's."
We could make a broader point about Western ( and in that sense in these times - I have the US particularly in mind) foreign policy.
Let's modify your sentence a little:-
" Apparently you only should be allowed to participate in politics if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as ( the one supported by the dominant power espousing 'democracy' 'freedom' etc. etc. etc. ). so - delete Andrew...
In my lifetime there have been a series of CIA sponsored invasions, coups and general global mischief making because the dominant power thought that the regime, election results or power base in a sovereign country was not to its liking - Iran - Guatemala....onwards... Chile - Haiti - Iraq...etc.
All in the name of 'democracy' and 'freedom' so long as the brand of freedom and democracy is in accordance with a particular power's determination of what kind of freedom and democratic expression is to be allowed.

"Surely we should be delighted that these Muslims are seeking to advance their views through participation in the democratic process and not through violence? In fact, is this not the sort of activity we should be encouraging?"

You know, Craig, this is such a staggering simple and obvious point that one wonders if our political and media elites have the even slightest chance of grasping it.

Spot on Craig - I'm completely against most of the aims of Muslim fundamentalist parties, but
that doesn't make it right or sensible to ban them - and, as you say, they'll always be a minority in the UK (even among immigrants despite a lot of alarmism).

There were a couple of books i was reading - 'The Far Enemy' and
"Insurgent Iraq" and lots of Islamic political parties that participate in elections and campaign for their views democratically and peacefully are targeted by various Jihadist groups for "collaboration" just as much as they're targeted by secular dictatorships like Mubarak's and the Saudi monarchy's.

That gives the lie to arguments from Gilligan, Nick Cohen and others that assume all Islamic parties should be banned as if Islamic parties were a gateway to violent Jihadism when they are the alternative to it.

I'll back those calling for a ban on Muslim entryism in UK politics when the same people also demand a ban on entryism by Christians and Jews.

One rule for all, chaps.

Yes it seems about right that when dispatches is in safe territory, like finding out how much fat goes into yoghurts, or seeing if postmen sometimes get bored and throw letters in the bin, it is fine to admit it is a respectable programme.

Of course if they ever try and tackle something remotely controversial, they must surely be racist 'nutters', showering the impressionable proletariat with misinformation in order to influence them for their own gain.

I would also draw a conclusion that although dispatches can make fair, balanced, and compelling documentaries most of the time, the very thought of them being able to replicate this feat on the subject of islam and muslims is laughable. Unsuprisingly, no muslims took part in the making of the documentary as they could see it was nothing but devicive, islamaphobic propoganda.

"These Muslims actually wanted society to be ordered in an Islamic way on Islamic principles. To try to achieve this they were - shock horror - undertaking political activity and joining political parties!"

I notice that the fact that their agenda was also to bring about political change by converting a country under secular law to one under islamic law was omitted here.

Maybe you have to write a certain amount of articles, or perhaps couldn't think of what to write about so chose this subject. You may think it is necessary to always have a strong, punchy opinion. But this article is so insipid. I'm bored of white, middle aged politically-correct politicians and journalists and their nauseatingly predictable and comfortable stances on all devicive issues. You have marked yourself out as being firmly within that camp.

An American Mormon friend angrily denounced my comparing the way our governments were heading with characteristics of fascism, and declared "One day soon, every knee shall bow before Him, and every tongue confess, and ... " so it went on at some considerable length.

The Mormons certainly have an opinion on how the rest of us, non-Mormons too, should be behave. Look at their massive interference in Proposition 8 in California, which succeeded in denying gay marriage rights. Every time assisted suicide is brought up for debate on the BBC, a priest, Bishop or whatnot is wheeled in to pontificate on the sanctity of this God-given gift.

I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of even casual acquaintance who attend church. Yet this fringe group of Christianists is claiming to speak on our collective behalf - and I don't hear Gilligan or anyone else presenting this as a shocking, dangerous affront to our British values.

Wrote this on control orders some time back: http://glennbarder.livejournal.com/4246.html
It describes what it's like to live under these conditions with a few examples, and shows how they are designed to mete out punishment, not out of any genuine concern with dangers from such individuals. It might be worth a glance.

The article referenced above mentioned a Dispatches documentary with Gilligan, and it's remarkable how much of a turnaround he's made since then (Feb. 2007). Back then, unfair treatment of minorities actually appeared to trouble him.

Anon poster at 12.40am

"I notice that the fact that their agenda was also to bring about political change by converting a country under secular law to one under islamic law was omitted here."

No it isn't omitted. My post says
"These Muslims actually wanted society to be ordered in an Islamic way on Islamic principles." That is hardly calling them secularist, is it?

The point is that, as Muslims only account for 3% of the population, and many of those are secularist anyway, it is only in the foetid minds of ludicrous fearmongering dunderheads like yourself that there is any danger of an Islamist society being imposed in the UK.

"The point is that, as Muslims only account for 3% of the population, and many of those are secularist anyway, it is only in the foetid minds of ludicrous fearmongering dunderheads like yourself that there is any danger of an Islamist society being imposed in the UK."

All it took was 100,000 Brits to rule India - the Jewel in the Crown.

If I recall correctly there are some 80 odd Sharia courts already operating in England, Muslims are allowed multiple wives in the UK although to marry more than one wife is illegal in the UK. Muslims openly practice what would be classified as child abuse if a non Muslim were involved. Here you can see children being encouraged to beat themselves - some have scars from self flagellation. tinyurl.com/ye9wljt

It is alleged that Muslims in the UK continue to practice under age marriage and first cousin marriage. The numbers of Muslim children born with congenital defects in the UK seems to confirm this. Islam is a misogynistic, homophobic, intolerant, paedophilic
( tinyurl.com/yhp7kyh ), and violent ideology which, if it were the product of a Western mind, would be banned.

That Islam continues to attract apologists from seemingly intelligent people I find baffling.

I agree with Craig, this is exactly the type of hysteria-inducing media circusing I've spoken about on various threads.

I would like to work against the entryism of such views (and funding) of those expoused by some of the people concerned into politics; there is much peaceful debate to be had within the Muslim communities on this; but I would not ban them, just as I do not support a ban on the BNP. It's morally wrong and is utterly counter-productive.

I totally agree about the doubtful provenance of many of the massively-funded quangos who have been ardent supporters of Blairism (and, in the USA, of the military).

A rock and hard place.

It's a pity that Gilligan is using the goodwill and credibility he accrued over the Iraq-gate affair in such a manner. I agree too that we should not reflexively believe him, but I fear that many will. He's telling us nothing new. The Daily Mail tried to get me to a similar type of expose some years ago; I refused.

Classifying Muslims as one, single, collective; is ridiculous.

Muslims are as diverse a group as... Christians are. They are not some vast mass of humanity with a single will bent on world domination. This fantasy is a crude racial/cultural/religious stereotype, devoid of real meaning, at least in relation to Muslims. What is does do, however, is illustrate *our* attitude towards Muslims, and tell us more about us, than it does about them.

For example; Newsweek has recently published an internal debate about "terrorism." This was sparked by the suicide of Joe Stack, who torched his house and flew his light plane into the local IRS headquarters in Waco, Texas.

Stack left behind a suicide letter explaining his feelings of hopelessness at his personal circumstances and the dire trajectory the United States was on.

Newsweek's journalists debated whether Stack should be defined as a "terrorist" or not. Basically they were of the opinion that Americans couldn't, per definition, be described as terrorists, because they didn't have beards, weren't Muslims, didn't hate America and its values and way of life, and didn't live in caves! Also American extremists didn't deliberately set out to kill innocent civilians as a primary goal, like Muslim's did. American terrorists, sorry, extremists, weren't "evil men" but rather misguided individuals, who were disturbed, angry, and desparate.

I believe this "debate" shows that Newsweek's journalists have a truly remarkable ability to allow ideology to trump the evidence of their own eyes.

Stack's actions were, I would argue, classic terrorism, a suicide bombing aimed directly at the state, a form of martyrdom. Yet because of ideology, which blinkers one to reality, one can ignore facts that stare one in the face, in favour of a fairytale.

Anon (again)

Racist nonsense. Polygamy or bigamy by Muslims or anyone else is not legal in the UK. Anyone can marry their first cousin including you if you wish. Sharia law does not have legal standing in the UK anywhere.

Britain indeed ruled India with 100,000 people due to a long and exceedingly bloody process of military conquest dependent on superior military technology and organisation. Nothing remotely comparable is happening here.

Npw run along back to the BNP with your fears and lies.

I also saw the programme, it was in two parts and the first half looked at how much influence the very organised muslim sector of Tower Hamlets has, how it has managed to influence funding and how they are using our democratic system to achieve change towards their communities aims and objectives.

Part two showed legitamit objections to a specific IFE induced diversion of cultural funding, away from other, much larger parts of the community, from Bangladesh for example, to their own aims and community projects.
It questioned the IFE's two faced arguments about their aims, how they berated the cultural habits of other ethnic minorities and more. The objections seem to have come from within their own muslim community as much as politcal persuasions, other than that of the Labour party.
It also highlighted a legitamit lack of oversight on spending that is supposed to be directed to limiting the physical excesses of extremist views, nothing new here.

That said, I believe there is an anti muslim agenda permiating society at large. I say this because of personal experience.
I happen to own some garments from that area and the looks I get when walking through Norwich in a Pashtun hat, are legend. In a fashion orientated society young people are usually OK with Afghan attire but one lady was so taken aback, she tuted and turned away.
I considered talking to her, but something inside me said 'don't, no need to spoil the day for the sake of prejudice.
I do not know whether I would like to live under sharia law, it is a debate we should have one day.
Because some of our 'libertarian' habits would come under attack from religious missionary zeal, any of which should not be entering political life,imho, or claim any more resources than others, local funding should reflect all sectors of the community.

That Andrew Gillingan has turned it into tabloidal TV was to be expected, I do not like the man's patter in the slightest.

We have to decide whether we want a radical separation of church and state? Do we want our laws to be legitimated by scripture or by something else?

Personally I don't give a flying greek olive what some old book says about how we should live. We were born free under nature and we will decide how to live for ourselves.

This preposition "ourselves" includes muslims as well, of course. They are entitled to participate as equals in the process.

But to the extent that they want our system of government based on Koranic doctrine I say go to hell in a handbasket. They're no better than Christian fundamenalists. Think Iris Robinson.

Finally, I'm puzzled by this line:

"The fact is of course that no matter how much devout Muslims may want to campaign to ban alcohol and push-up bras in the UK, they have not a hope in hell of succeeding."

What is the relevance of this? Are you suggesting we should not oppose people, no matter how odious, if they have little chance of succeeding? Do you apply this principle equally to other groups: the BNP, for example?

The problem is, Craig, that there are bigotted muslims and there are liberal muslims. And the former think you are subhuman and will ultimately kill you. They won't stop at telling you what to eat. When in human history has rolling over constrained an attacker. Does it stop us in Iraq? Does it stop Israel in Palestine? Did it stop Germany in Poland?

These people will kill us because we are subhuman swine-eating dogs and unbelievers who don't pray, don't perform ablutions, don't comprehend the true word, and simply go about trying to have a good time.

It always starts out the same. First you brand others as inferior. Then you put them to death by slow torture. Christians do it, Jews do it, Muslims do it.

We need to take a stand on tolerance, and we need to apply it uniformly. The BNP are right to say that we should not be required to tolerate people who come to our country and refuse to tolerate us.

You are quite correct to say they should be encouraged to participate in the process. Note, however, that it will be some time before many of these people regard themselves as British. They despise this country and everything it stands for. They are deeply, deeply conservative. They knew no 1960s. They would ban the whole benefits system and take to neoliberalism like a duck to water. Gays would be banned. Their position on women would perhaps be more ambiguous, but don't get your hopes up.

Now, are these people entitled to vote? Yes, of course. Are they entitled to say their piece? Yes, of course. But just don't forget to say yours. You may come to regret it.

RAND's strategist Cheryl Bernard will be so proud of the background work that
Douglas Murray and Ed Hussain have managed by engaging Andrew Gilligan to serve as a presentable front for host a Channel 4 documentary.

Both the sensational title of the documentary and the timing of its screening, just weeks prior to national elections, suggests that there are political motives at work to create divisions among Muslims who pursue the legal political course to pursue their rightful place in the society

Look how closely the documentary fulfils the required remit in following a the stepwise approach as spelled out by Cheryl Benard in her work Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies.

Below are just a few selected quotes that refer to focus on the following fourteen points.

“The West should fight the fundamentalists in these ways:
1.Challenge their interpretation of Islam, and expose their inaccuracies.
2.Reveal their linkages to illegal groups and activities.
3.Publicize the consequences of their violent acts.
4.Demonstrate their inability to develop their countries and communities in positive ways.
5.Target the messages to youth, pious traditionalists, Muslim minorities in the West, and women.
6.Portray violent extremists and terrorists accurately as disturbed and cowardly, not as heroes.
7.Encourage journalists to investigate hypocrisy in fundamentalist circles.
8.Encourage divisions among fundamentalists.
9.Support the traditionalists enough to keep them viable against the fundamentalists
(if and wherever those are the only choices). Among the traditionalists, the West should embolden those who are the relatively better match for modern civil society: the reformist traditionalists.

The West should support the traditionalists against the fundamentalists in these ways:
1. Publicize traditionalist criticism of fundamentalist violence and extremism.
2. Encourage disagreements between traditionalists and fundamentalists.
3. Discourage alliances between traditionalists and fundamentalists.
4. Encourage cooperation between modernists and reformist traditionalists.
5. Where appropriate, educate the traditionalists to debate the fundamentalists.”

Source:
http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/spring2004/pillars.html

i thought andrew gilligan, ok - has a so-so journalistic past but thought give him a hearing;

then i saw centre for social cohesion, so i thought ok - has previous history with regard to muslims and islam;

then i saw jim fitzpatrick, ultra blairite, pro war and so i thought ok - has previous history with regard to muslims , islam and the London Muslim Centre ;

then i thought labour party, lord levy, murdoch and then i thought friends of israel amongst so many others - lord ashcroft anyone?

so what was the actual grievance, no real issue of council abuse or misappropriation or wrong-doing other than by hearsay, no real evidence beyond hearsay of enforcing of islam on the local population.

so nothing above and beyond normal party politics and vested interest groups be they muslim or non muslim.

so what was missed out, george galloway is standing against fitzpatrick at the next election .. and the threat of an ultra blairite pro war mp being deselected and/or losing his seat.bingo!

i think what was actually revealing is that nothing was said of fitzpatricks recent anti muslim anti islam politics. it was probably this that has led to some of the local community wanting him deselected against nu-labour hierarchy wishes.

and as for ife being some sinister clandestine movement, look how easy it was for dispatches to 'infiltrate' their meetings -- by just turning up

Christian Tories rewrite party doctrine

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/12400596-16ac-11df-aa09-00144feab49a.html

"They’ve campaigned to change the processes so that they can bus in their voters, stuffing the selection meetings with their people. They don’t outnumber us, but they can out-organise us. They’re taking over the party."

Stephen

I don't think you need worry about me forgetting to "say my piece".

You are making the silly jump that because I am sympathetic to someone's right to participate in the political process, I endorse their views. Bollocks.

But is their a danger of the most conservative Muslms winning a democratic majority in the UK among the whole population? Of course there isn't.

"We have to decide whether we want a radical separation of church and state? Do we want our laws to be legitimated by scripture or by something else?"

so do you intend to abolish the house of lords and the queen and most of our laws?

"The BNP are right to say that we should not be required to tolerate people who come to our country and refuse to tolerate us."

are you seriously quoting the neo fascist BNP as a source of your political viewpoint?

"Note, however, that it will be some time before many of these people regard themselves as British. They despise this country and everything it stands for. They are deeply, deeply conservative. They knew no 1960s. They would ban the whole benefits system and take to neoliberalism like a duck to water. Gays would be banned. Their position on women would perhaps be more ambiguous, but don't get your hopes up."

oh dear more garbage politics. do you really believe, i mean seriously do you believe the crap you are writing here?

Thanks Wendy,

Yes I do believe it, but I may be guilty of unclarity.

Firstly, you are quite right about the House of Lords and the monarchy. I could go on. You are wrong, however, to suggest that our laws are based on Biblical scripture in the way that Sharia law is based on the Koran. In any case, you and I are both agreed they should be based on neither.

Secondly, I am not "quoting the neo fascist BNP". I campaigned against them at the last election. I took to the streets in opposition to them. We didn't do so well. I think we would have done better to acknowledge that it is indeed inconsistent and hypocritical of rich middle-class white liberals to go around berating poor folk for their intolerance, when these same rich middle-class folk wouldn't actually have anything to do with muslims but instead want to preserve their precious conceits about their own superior "tolerance". The reality is tolerance has to cut both ways. It doesn't always and there's no use preaching to one group only. We would do better to acknowledge the simple logic of this point. Nothing follows from it about closing down immigration, or about ethnic purity and repatrating the unclean. You do realize that muslims can apply the majority principle as well in their ghettos, don't you? I'm guessing you don't live in one. I share a house with muslims. We cook and eat together. I'm talking to them every day. As a matter of fact I will have to go now to get ready to tidy up with Kashif. What do you do?

What I'm saying here I believe because it's just based on what some of these muslims have told me. I also organize politically with muslims. One of them sat me down one night and started telling me about the wonders of Sharia law. The Koran says this, the Koran says that. He made is sound not so bad. Maybe it isn't, but it's legitimated by scripture in a way that our laws simply aren't.

You won't get anywhere by dismissing me and using phrases like "garbage politics", any more than we got anywhere at the last election. You should know better than that. You persuade people first by listening to what they have to say and then by patiently explaining where you think they may have gone wrong, as I am trying to do now with you. Anything else is a kind of bigotry: in your case liberal elite bigotry. This is no way to win elections.

The thoughts are my own, but this one thought of theirs is correct. You haven't said what's wrong with it.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Thanks Craig,

You made three points and I would like to reply to each.

1. You are indeed outspoken. Just don't forget not to draw back from criticising sharia law out of misplaced political correctness. That is all I ask.

2. Maybe I am making the silly jump you suggest but I can't quite bring myself to believe it because I know well you don't support their views and I specifically stated that they have every right to participate. In any case, I think we agree here. No such jump should be made.

3. Finally you write:
"But is their a danger of the most conservative Muslms winning a democratic majority in the UK among the whole population? Of course there isn't."
This doesn't answer my question, I'm afraid. Please re-read my post.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Thanks for your thoughts on this Craig. I was begining to think I was living in the twilight zone. I can't work this one out. Until corruption is reduced in politics we can't expect the wrong sort of people not to go all out for their share of power, but this behaviour is not confined to muslim groups. I suspect the message Andrew G managed to convey last night was "if you were frightened before, be more afraid now".
My question is why? Ihave enormous respect for Andrew but this feels alien to who I thought Andrew to be. I've given a little time to looking into this (retirement has some advantages) and how channel 4 is funded is quite interesting. I'm going to devote time and energy to get to the bottom of this. I have a horrible feeling this could be more about Jim Fitzpatrick trying to hang on to his seat. I truly hope I can prove my suspiscions wrong.

Posted by: Craig at March 2, 2010 8:46 AM

Craig you should check your facts as polygamy is legal in the UK as long as the extra marriage(s) are/were performed in countries where it's legal. Furthermore, Islam is not a race but an ideology so no grounds to call me racist. Also, I am not a resident of the UK or a member of the BNP.

Sloppy.

Craig, why do not you watch BBC Panorama programme named "Spooks". In that, one liberal patronising head teacher allowed a Muslim fundamentalist Mullah to come and addrerss some Muslim students: result was a bomber emerged after that brainwashing. Same kind of ignorant views the headmaster also held that let us allow everybody to express themselves. You should ask these Muslims (from Pakistan and Somalia) why their country is still an Islamic republic where minorities have been subjected to third and fourth class treatment, and who will take that place once Sharia will be imposed in this country.

"The BNP are right to say that we should not be required to tolerate people who come to our country and refuse to tolerate us"

It's always good fun to be lectured by the BNP on the subject of tolerance. It reminds me of the Monty Python joke: Britain is noted for its tolerance, so why should we waste it on a bunch of coons, wogs and kikes?

This country is packed to the rafters with intolerant people, of all colours and creeds. Most of them were born here. Some are members of the BNP.

We may do and say as we please, within the law. This is the only tolerance to which we are entitled and can reasonably expect. We have no absolute right not to be offended by others or indeed to be tolerated by others, provided the intolerance does not impinge on our right to do and say as we please, within the law.

Must say I'm disappointed that Gilligan would descend to this kind of comedy documentary-making. So sharia law is a rigid, tyrannical thought-system whose proponents are keen as mustard to see us all living under its precepts. Well, honestly, who gives a rats ass (in the context of UK politics)? Anyone - ANYONE - who puts on a worried face and gets into a lather over this clearly has little faith in democracy, tolerance and the open society. If they (being Gilligan et al) were properly schooled in the principles of democracy and the open society, then their confidence in the strength of the democratic argument would preclude such panicky sharia-fear mongering.

And in any case, the intolerant ravings of a miniscule minority only have relevance if they have the power to put their programme into practice. On the other hand, the Christian fundamentalists of the West certainly have access to the kind of power that permits them to put their programmes into practice. Which led us to Afghanistan and Iraq.

If we were using bodycounts as a measure of radical extremism, the West is way, WAY out in front.

Thanks, MJ. A very central point. Ana, I would suggest that you oughtn't to believe everything you watch on TV; study history instead. I write as someone who consistently has opposed such extremist preachers.

Now, an intersting observation, if I may. Every time 'Muslims' are mentioned on cyberspace (mentioned by Craig, for all the best reasons), as writerman, I think correctly, suggested earlier, it seems it tends to bring out the worst in some people. Funny, that. Hence, perhaps, my frustration and my comments on another thread about 'sneezing': A Muslim person sneezes, and the country (or at least the media) catches 'flu.

I am married to my first cousin. Be afraid, be very afraid.

!!Achooo!!

On quite another note, is anyone a fan of Cecil Sharp and black wax cylinder recordings?

"If we were using bodycounts as a measure of radical extremism, the West is way, WAY out in front"

Yup. If the Iraqis and Afghanis were told they were not required to tolerate people who came to their country and refused to tolerate them they'd think it was some kind of sick joke.

Thanks MJ, you write:

"If the Iraqis and Afghanis were told they were not required to tolerate people who came to their country and refused to tolerate them they'd think it was some kind of sick joke."

I agree that the Iraqis and Afghans should not be required to tolerate people who come to their country as does international law, all the more so when we slaughter them in such numbers without even bothering to count. What is your point?

You appear to be saying that if we are going to require tolerance of others we should also require it of ourselves. This is exactly my point: the principle of tolerance should be applied uniformly.

It's quite illuminating that it should provoke such controversy.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Thanks Suhayl Saadi,

I agree with what you are saying, except that I don't quite understand. You write:

"Every time 'Muslims' are mentioned on cyberspace (mentioned by Craig, for all the best reasons), as writerman, I think correctly, suggested earlier, it seems it tends to bring out the worst in some people. "

Are you referring to my post? Are you saying it is bad to say that while we should tolerate muslims and let them into this country (personally I'm in favour of completely open borders and have demonstrated at the offices of Phil Woolas in support of them) muslims should show tolerance towards non-muslims. Your tone seems to suggest that saying this somehow represents the bringing out of the worst in me and that I should be a good boy and go off into the corner and hang my head in shame. Is that what you are saying?

I'd be interested to know. What is your position on, say, muslim youths taunting a white boy saying he smells. I would say that's racist. Does that view constitute the worst in me. Is it somehow bad?

I ask you sincerely as, I presume, a muslim. It is an example brought up in conversation by a muslim friend of mine. He said he intervened to upbraid the muslim youths for being just as racist as the whites. Wouldn't you have some sympathy with this position or do you think it's bad, or even, the worst in someone.

I would hope you would agree with this position. You are correct to say that all things muslim are played up and exploited for the fear-factor. I agree. That's why I campaigned on behalf of the ten Pakistanis arrested on bogus terror suspicions, never charged and then handed over to the Border Agency to be detained indefinitely pending appeal for deportation mandated by the Home Secretary on the basis of secret evidence.

This is the worst in us, surely. Is it so bad to say muslims should show tolerance towards non-muslims? I can think of worse.

Perhaps you were talking about another post altogether, or no post here at all. Forgive me if that's the case.

Salam! and Best Wishes,
Stephen

Stephen you make some interesting points, but I do have one problem...

You say: "the principle of tolerance should be applied uniformly." Surely you can't be suggesting the imposition of tolerance. Otherwise one might think that you have taken something of an intolerant position.

Maybe you could teach tolerance by example but I hope you are not suggesting it can be imposed...

re: tolerance. Compare and contrast the eagerness with which expat Brits abandon their native customs in order to conform to the local culture. Would we have any sympathy with someone who fancied a cool beer in Saudi Arabia ?

re: Sharia law. here's a thing that intrigued me, from a few years ago. I never found any more about it :-

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.html?s=hns

Synopsis - Judge offers to debate theology with Islamist prisoners, including the possibility of having his own mind changed. I think what impressed me was the suggestion of the possibility of mutual respect.

Craig - "Britain indeed ruled India with 100,000 people due to a long and exceedingly bloody process of military conquest dependent on superior military technology and organisation"

Whatever happens, we have got
The Tomahawk. And they have not.

(updated from G.K. Chesterton, I think)

Thanks Chris,

I am grateful to you for these stimulating and penetrating points.

I would argue that the one thing we should be intolerant towards is intolerance. I am very well aware of the paradoxical appearance of this formula and I'm frankly not sure how to get around it. Does it invalidate tolerance by reducing it to absurdity? Maybe, but I hope not. I'm still holding out for tolerance.

I doubt that the paradox can in any case be resolved by the formula "teach by example". The problem arises when, teaching by example, the lesson is rejected. We might hope that we can escape one horn of the dilemma, namely the question of imposition, by simply applying the mantra to ourselves and leaving others to do as they wish. Indeed we can, provided we stick to ourselves. But the problem returns when we come the question of how to collectively regulate the boundaries of individual freedom in particular cases. If you believe in the need for groups to agree some sort of formula, even if unspoken, for their mutual co-operation, or even in the need for a people to legislate for its common good, then you can no longer evade this problem. If you reject both of these then I would find it difficult to understand you.

Finally, your suggestion that I should consider teaching tolerance by example is well taken. Nobody is perfect, but I believe I have tried. I have welcomed muslims into the house where I live. I campaign for open borders, civil rights for Pakistanis and an end to imperial wars. I accept cultural differences when I find them and try not to make an issue of them, etc.

I would like to illustrate by point above by means of an example of a particular case of the type I was alluding to. Suppose I am told I should not bring pork products into the house because they offend the religious sensibilities of some of the others.

This example case remains unresolved by MJ's formula above. I hope I am not doing him an injustice if I paraphrase it as follows: We have a right to do and say what we please, no matter how offensive, provided we do not impinge on the right of others to the same. Can I fry up a few rashers of Asda Lincolnshire sausages or not? I will be told it offends against the deeply felt religious beliefs of others and that it therefore impinges on their rights and harms them. It was ever thus with religion. The formula cannot help us judge what constitutes harm impingement and therefore fails to resolve the conflict.

The example can be drawn out further. Suppose I elect to turn the other cheek completely. I give up on the bacon. And suppose further that I come to be regarded as some sort of second class human being because my lifestyle contains elements forbidden by the Koran. Perhaps I am gay, or a free-living woman, or I enjoy sex outside marriage. You know how these dumb religions can be. And you know how this tacit label of moral inferiority can develop quickly into discrimination and intolerance which so isolates and constrains its bearer. Indeed, this is just the basis of the mistreatment and discrimination we are showing towards muslims and Pakistanis in particular in this country right now.

I conclude, then, that "teaching by example" may not suffice and that we may need to legislate for a principle of tolerance. Does this constitute an imposition? Perhaps. But what would you suggest as an alternative, or would you suggest abandoning tolerance altogether?

My own view is that whatever way we work this out we need to do so collectively and as a single people. I have a right as a member of that illustrious body to state my preference. My preference is for a thorough-going separation of church and state and for religious nutters who want to impose their scripture-based doctrine on others, because their way-of-life somehow offends them, to have the decency to exercise a little tolerance themselves, which may not be easy, because it's the only way we can live together in harmony in a multicultural society. I am delighted that they are free to worship their god as they please and wouldn't want to change that.

Does this amount to legislating for tolerance and therefore paradoxically imposing it? Perhaps it does, but what else would you propose? Infinite turning of the other cheek on an individual basis is at least consistent on an individual level. But what should we do as a people?

I continue to maintain that consistency demands that we should uniformly apply the principle of tolerance, if we apply it at all.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Stephen, I do agree with most of the points you make. The bigoted types of views to which you allude need consistently to be argued against and confronted and please do keep arguing!

And for God's sake (whichever god that might be!), please do keep on frying those sausages!

A small point (I realise you're an anti-Fascist and were not meaning to express support for the BNP):

I think, if I may say, that it was probably imprudent of you to write, "The BNP are right to say..."

This is because, as you know, the BNP will mix truisms with definitive mendacity; it's a common political tactic to try and hook people. They're not the best example of tolerance themselves, and everything they say comes from a very deeply forked tongue (!) and a white supremacist basis. We don't need them as sources of reference; there are better sources.

This the thing with blogs - they're midway b/w conversation and 'proper' writing. In the heat of keyboard...

I also agree with your social class analysis, I think it's spot-on.

I respect your activism against the wars and all.

I think that we (meaning us here in Britain) need to cool the temperature of the discourse.

TV programmes which constantly raise the same spectres are not helpful.

Please be reassured that my comments about 'the worst' in people refer to a general observation from my cyber-travels and to some of the posts here and on other threads, and not to your posts. I think you are making some valid arguments.

Richard, I take your ex-pat beer point; it's well-known, isn't it, about ex-pats, and not just British ones. But I do think we (we in the Muslim communities in Britain) do need to tackle some of these issues. But not in an hysterical manner, that's my point, really, and not to fuel some neocon agenda - there is an enormous amount of activity right now as we write, part of which is being mediated by ex-pat Pakistani Americans who have bought into neoconia in a big way, in places like Pakistan, which is a consequence of a massive injection of US power at all levels.

A rock and a hard place, as I said somewhere else.

Now, back to Cecil Sharp and wax cylinders...

..although if a similar programme had been made about unacceptable Zionist preaching in London synagogues, or BNP activism in Dagenham, everyone on here would be lauding the brave campaigning journalist.

By the way, why do you have so much time for this revolting mediaevelism?

No, actually, I wouldn't have, Alan Campbell. It is likely that it would have been more of the same, too. A social class thing, or whatever. Easy reportage. 'Stick a camera in front of the peasants' kind-of-thing.

Thanks Suhayl,

Firstly, I'm delighted about the suasages. It's been ages. I just can't tell you how I've been hankering.

Secondly, I take your point about the BNP mixing truisms with mendacity. But my tactic would be to acknowledge the truism and reject the mendacity. Surely, against such cleverness, denying both is fatal. It was for this reason that I chose to formulate my thought, provocatively for the left, as "The BNP are right to say...". Indeed they are. We need to learn elementary discrimination in argument and rise above these ad hominems and cloaked liberal insults. They do not persuade, nor should they.

Finally, I didn't intend to suggest the BNP as a source of reference for the truism in question, merely that they are right in stating it. Indeed, truisms don't need sources. But if the BNP, in their use of truism, appeal to the elementary truism that moral principles ought to be applied equally to all, we need to be able to disarm them by saying without hesitation, "I agree".

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Suhayl - not hysterical. Yes. WIBNI !

If anything's going to come and kill us all, it's more likely to be the road system, can we close that down in favour of something more sensible ?

But, okay, these wax cylinders. What have they got on them ? (oh, and, bless you !)

Cecil Sharp ... not sure. I'm a player of The Tunes, I hear the old trad. music's supposed to owe him a lot, but I'm not aware of knowing any tunes that came through him. Song & dance, maybe, but many of those don't seem to have been bothered much about what the tune was you did it to. We just go on passing them around among each other, and no-one else notices much. (I've also heard that we owe the practice of "pub sessions" to the London Irish of the '50s. A really ancient cultural thing, see ? I don't know if that's true either. Historians, we are not).

The eponymous library is alleged to have bucketloads of interesting stuff, which I'd like a look at if they could ever webbify it.

Why ? are you going somewhere with it, or is it Fish ? English purism ? Oswald Mosely ?

Craig,

Do you think violence and democratic process are the only options for Muslims? Interesting how you have absorbed the underlying anti-Islamic thought (the one that the current Pope endorses) that the default position of the Muslim is violence to reach his ends. Thankfully, it is not, and we should be pleased that Muslims are engaging in the democratic process for general civic reasons, and not because Muslims are, by nature (or religion), drawn to violence.

Stephen, thanks, I take your point. Much appreciated.

Richard, of course I know that you're not hysterical - how was last Friday's beer, btw? - I wasn't meaning you - I was meaning the kind of 'Rasputinised' media circus attendant upon the public discourse.

I love wax cylinders, and the concept of 'voices captured on the cusp of living memory' fascinates me. Old England...

Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson, two central figures in the exploration of this nexus, are both Muslim. As is Ian Whiteman, ex-of-The Action, premier UK (Kentish Town) Mod band (and arguably "the best white soul band of all time" and the cosmic Mighty Baby. This is what it's about, in my view.

It's one of the things (along with Old Scotland, of course, and the Magus of Selkirk) that drives my writing. In 1969, I met a woman who, like Orwell's carp, was 100 years old.

When she was a girl, she had met a miller who was 100 years old...

Stephen you must know, with your impeccable credentials, that the BNP are apparently only too happy to say all sorts, including this kind of thing:
"I honestly can’t understand how a man who’s seen the inner city hell of Britain today can’t look back on that era [Hitler's Germany] with a certain nostalgia and think yeah, those people marching through the streets and all those happy people out in the streets, you know, saluting and everything, was a bad thing."

When you say: "The BNP are right to say that we should not be required to tolerate people who come to our country and refuse to tolerate us", who did say that, and in what context?

In any case, I don't think it is a particularly 'clever' statement, no. Who is the 'we' in that sentence? Who is 'us'?

Suhayl; a friend of mine, who was in a jazz band in the 20's (called the Jazz Bandits) played the first ever UK version of 'Tiptoe through the Tulips' at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, after he and his band had listened to it coming down the wires that afternoon from America. He played it for me, nearly eighty years later, on his banjo. Magic.

Since when making secret recordings of
naive braggers, nimpty blabbers and
nutty loudmouths qualify as primetime
documentaries?

Are we stooping to such 'standards' where each community in UK makes a undercover documentary of another, where conversations recorded with hidden microphones are edited to generate a narrative the way we wish to portray the others?

James, not sure how you reached your conclusions about CM's view in your former post, but as for your last, it can feel like that in the UK. Possibly because we are told all the time that we are the most filmed society in the world, blah blah, and possibly because there are stickers with a helpful little picture of a camera on just about everywhere (mostly CCTV picture quality is rubbish, you know) and possibly because the council can tap our phones, and there are cameras in classrooms and -

And yes, I suppose that in this undercover world, anyone is fair game for the film cameras. The trouble, as you say, is that the game is not fair. Dispatches are under pressure to make tabloid headlines with their documentaries, not under pressure to make documentaries.

It's very interesting, from a psychological point of view.

technicolour: magic, indeed. The Jazz Bandits live on!

James: exactly.

Excellent post Craig;

I have no respect for Gilligan since his cheap campaign against Livingston, which was motivated by the desire to return a favor to Boris Johnston who offered him a Job in the Spectator after being kicked out of the BBC.

I would like to point out that Mr Gilligan used to work for the IRANIAN satellite channel PressTV; but his program (Forum) was stopped since December 2009.

Gilligan is a cheap mouthpiece for rent.

Andrew Gilligan had his finger on the pulse about wmd and I suspect he has his finger on the pulse now.
The strategy of the Pistakani scholars to establish Islam in the UK was to cancel Shari'ah in all but name and to encourage the Muslims to play the non-Muslim's game. Their intention was to make it impossible for any future bout of racist government bullying from left or right to intimidate or even throw out Islam in the UK.

The scholars did an unholy deal with the powers that be, that they would deliver Moderation in exchange for material benefits, cash, soft treatment for breaking the law etc etc. The challenge of Muslim youth meeting in the mosque is firstly to the position taken by their own scholars, to cancel Islam in order to achieve deep roots in the UK and 'de-privatise' later at a time of their own choosing. These young Muslims point out the obvious,that Islam is a rational and peaceful religion which is promoted by good example and discussion, not by political machination. The second challenge is to the UK establishment that sees its 'deal with Islam' being broken. No problem if people from different countries protest on Craig's blog about Iraq and the dictatorstans because they are not bound by the satanic deal of the Muslim scholars.

Andrew Gilligan is flagging up a very real and worrying panic. What if the deal that was struck with the Muslim leaders 'You avoid confrontation about our foreign policy and in exchange you receive special treatment under multiculturalsim' has been a complete waste of time. The new generation of Muslims has seen that Islam has been badly treated by this deal with the devil.

All the efforts of the establishment to buy off Islam will never in a million years satisfy the idealist minds of true Muslims. They see the injustices in the world that Craig sees and they know with absolute certainty that it's not part of their religion to compromise about injustice and shut up, for the sake of the elders or the government or public opinion or anyone.
Good on them. Allahu Akbar!

Thanks Technicolour, You ask:

"who did say that, and in what context?"

Nobody said those words exactly, that I know of. As already explained, and as should be clear by the context and the punctuation, I was not quoting. I was paraphrasing a recurrent theme of proponents of the BNP. In any case, its truth status is independent of facts about the speaker.

The personal plural pronouns "we" and "us" refer to those who live in and bear the cultural traits of this country. I think an important point is that it is not possible to define precisely the boundaries of this group. If that is your point I agree. There are, nevertheless, undeniable differences between cultures across the world. When people migrate they bring with them the traits of their own culture. It hard, then, altogether to deny sense to the use of a pronoun to refer to those who lived here already before they came.

By the way, as previously mentioned, these pronouns may just as well refer to the people of Iraq, who have no obligation to tolerate us when we go to their country if we won't tolerate them.

It is only a clever statement if, as Suhayl and I believe, it is a truism and is coupled with willful mendacity.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Stephen,

thanks for your response. Once again you raise interesting points.

However, I still feel the idea of imposing tolerance to be a self contradictory position. You seem to suggest that the problems we face are intractable and therefore a pragmatic approach is required to this argument. That, perhaps is true but is it not interesting to note that not all countries (even those with immigrant Muslim populations) suffer the perceived threat that we do? Surely there would be no need to 'impose' tolerance if our standpoint in the world were not so belligerant and touched on issues of justice / fairness etc.

It is very difficult for any outside group to have influence over young people if those young people see, in their daily lives, that we are not striding around the globe clinging to the coat tails of the global bully but are representing ourselves - and by extension, them - with truth and honour.

There would surely be no easier way to inculcate tolerance in our society than to recognise the beam in our own eye and learn to treat others with respect.

In the meantime we should each fight our own battles of ideas remembering, always, that the pen is mightier than the sword.

"the pen is mightier than the sword"

Given that you're a good few yards away from it, anyway.

We are talking about a fully automatic 9mm pen....

Chris & RR: :) Am avoiding penis jokes.

Stephen: I still don't get your point. You seem, at the end of your last post, to draw an equivalence between Iraqis not having to 'tolerate' UK soldiers who invade them, shoot their children and bomb their houses; and the people of the UK who 'lived here already' not having to tolerate people from other countries who move in peacefully next door. A difference there, surely?

Also have no clear idea of what you mean by people who 'bear the cultural traits' of this country. I have an image of a large pink person clutching a can of Carlsberg, but perhaps you mean liberal secularism? Judging by the way you used the word 'liberal' earlier possibly not?

Thanks Chris,

Firstly, you appear to be confusing two quite different questions. The question of how to deal with the external, so-called terrorist, threat, such as it is, is different from the more general question of how we all get along together in a multicultural society. I think I am guilty of sewing the seeds of confusion by talking about the latter when Craig's original post was probably more about the former.

Secondly, we don't disagree on the first question. The reason we perceive a threat is because there is a threat. This is because the vast tracts of humanity which we slaughter with impunity occasionally seek to offer a pinprick of resistance in return. This is obvious. How to deal with it is also obvious: stop practising and participating in terrorism.

Finally, regarding the paradox of imposing tolerance, I've done the best I can to show how it can be resolved by the idea of a people legislating singularly for its common good, rather than by a single individual imposing tolerance on others. You haven't shown me where I've gone wrong in this.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

It's a common argument amongst neocons and their muppet followers that Islam is about to take over the whole world. The whole idea is so preposterous that you'd assume such nonsense would be easily dismissed as some crank conspiracy theory.

But no. You'll see such arguments regularly in the mainstream, from the likes of Melanie Philipps, and others.

It has the feel of a conjurer's distraction.

Stephen,

you suggest legislating for tolerance. I cannot see how this would work. The reason people in this country see the world the way they do (and I generalise!!) is surely no more or less than an accident of birth.

If you are born in - for the sake of argument - Saudi, then you will almost certainly see tolerance in a different light. Therefore you are almost immediately in a battle over whose tolerance is more tolerant which seems counter productive.

I would postulate that we live in a country that suffers a great deal of intolerance where most of it is focussed upon minority groups and led by a media chorus.

Almost all arguments seem to miss the political need for a bogeyman. Once it was Soviet and the end of the USSR was supposed to bring a peace dividend. That of course didn't suit those who make money from defence which in itself gave rise to the concept of Islamic radicalisation and the creation of the new bogeyman who happened to be called Osama bin Laden but could just as easily have been anyone else that suited.

Until we face up to the reality of the lies we encounter on a daily basis then any ideas of tolerance are beyond the scope of our, so called, political leaders.

The menace - such as it is real at all - is purely self created and it is this that needs addressing before - as technicolour says - we end up imprisoning people for intolerance which is surely the only end result your proposal offers.

Please enlighten me if I have the wrong end of the stick.

Dear Stephen, OK, let's agree that you used Iraq as an arbitrary example of pronouns. It would be a shame if you didn't feel able to answer my questions about a) cultural traits b) how you would legislate for tolerance c) how you would define intolerance, apart from as a form of thought crime and d) at whom would any such legislation be directed. One can't have a debate without establishing the parameters!

I bumped into this a few weeks ago :-

http://faultline.org/index.php/site/item/incendiary/

On the gentle art of predictable argument. Too long, possibly, but terribly familiar.

Thanks Chris and Technicolour,

Let's take an example.

A man takes a job in a supermarket. He is muslim. He refuses to handle pork products at the checkout. Should he be required to do so?

The example is not just hypothetical: http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?p=824

Any answer you give, so long as it is sufficiently general as to apply equally to all, legislates for tolerance.

Best Wishes,
Stephen

Jesus!

What did you make of the "Spot the Fag!" quiz game at the beginning of that programme?

Stephen,

Your question appears to have arisen regarding alcohol in Sainsbury's already, in 2007:

http://tinyurl.com/2gmtee

Richard,

"On the gentle art of predictable argument", was good craic, thanks.

Yes, thanks Richard. Oh, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..

Dreoilin, hello, are you well? Meant to say, for RSI try (a good person who knows how to do) acupressure, really worked for me. It comes from the shoulder blades, you know.

Stephen: why are you so against the BNP? And thanks for that link: those poor people, handling slimy pork with no gloves, eurgh. And the health implications! Thank heavens they took a stand, and now wear gloves.

Stephen, sorry, ignore the bit about the BNP: it was meant flippantly.

I'm grand, Tech, thanks. I must look up what you say about acupressure. Never thought of the shoulder blades. :)

A young Sikh guy who wanted to join the Irish Garda Síochána (police force) was told he couldn't wear his turban. There was a bit of a fuss about it but the force held firm. A uniform is supposed to be uniform, but more to the point is the necessity to keep religion and State separate. You'd have some Ban Garda sticking a crucifix on her uniform before you'd know it. Echoes of BA.

As I understood it, the turban was originally used to keep the long hair tidy, anyway, and wasn't a matter of faith. They didn't allow the turban, and the fuss went away. I think these issues have to be sorted one at a time, case by case. You can't legislate for them.

This comment is a sunny, cheerful one designed to repost Richard Robinson's:

http://faultline.org/index.php/site/item/incendiary/

and thereby share in some reflected glory. Since it gets funnier the more you read it.

"Since it gets funnier the more you read it."

It is quite fiendishly to the point, isn't it ? I'm glad it seems to have gone down well, actually, it struck me afterwards that it may have looked more pointed than I quite meant it.

What I'd really like would be to see it as a numbered list. A vast amount of bulk (again, not pointed, not even just on this blog) could then be dealt with simply as "this is #67", etc, like the "prisoners' jokes" joke, for a vast saving in all our time.

I find it a very frustrating and depressing thing, about this whole bloggycomment format. See if there are any new comments, refresh the page and look down, trying to remember where you left off. Have I seen this one before, that one before ? Oh FFS yes, 175 times, over N years on 93 different thread on 43 different sites. All, supposedly, on different topics, but all the same going-nowhere moves.

This comment is guiltily aware of the term 'displacement activity'. This next sentence would like to come up with something cheerful and encouraging but in fact is going to mutter something about firefighting sometimes being necessary, especially if one likes the blog owner, and then slink off and have a cup of tea. This concluding sentence nevertheless reminds itself that without all these comments, it would never have heard of Chris Clarke, obviously a top chap, or 'shillshits'. A PS will explain it could have lived without the latter,

Hi Craig,

I really appreciate the article you wrote. We in Tower Hamlets usually get the brunt of all the rubbish after gutter journalism of programs like Dispatches are produced! My colleagues in various work places including the council have had all sorts of comments (tantament to Islamophobia) being thrown at them.

One of the negative impacts of this Islamophobic and politically biased Dispatches program was that it has caused a large number of parents to pull out from an event happening today in which the London Muslim Centre is trying to (along with many other organisations out there) help achieve the World Reading Day Record (Guiness Book of Records) in London for the most number of children reading books at the same time.

The current record holder is Dubai. Sadly, rubbish like this has no doubt made a great negative and disturbing impact on people's mind.

Ahmed, I'm sorry. Have you written to Dispatches? They are human, last time I looked, though publicity driven, and they should know this.

Ahmed, can I ask which parents pulled out of the World Reading Day? And why?

" Apparently you only should be allowed to participate in politics if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as Andrew Gilligan's."

No, you only should be allowed to participate in politics as a member of the Labour Party if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as the rest of the Labour Party's.
That isn't true of I.F.E. and East London Mosque. No, they aren't out to impose sharia on all of us; they are out for what they can get, which is probably a rather worse reason for being in politics.

"they are out for what they can get, which is probably a rather worse reason for being in politics."

Depends what sort of thing you want, maybe ? Once upon a time, they wanted, & got, things like a National Health Service.

Accumulated backlog, I can't keep up :-

"We are talking about a fully automatic 9mm pen...."

9mm seems a bit thick, but automatic would be good, my handwriting's illegible these days. Penis jokes ? There's a whole thread for them.

Suhayl - Old England, etc. Dodgy business, there's a lot of mythologising around 'folk music'. Collect the Authentic Music Of The English People, reject the corrupting foreign influences ... nice picture on the chocolate boxes, gets uglier on the streets. (As a player, I'm a bit dubious about 'collectors'. People were busy doing it, and then other people came from a different class background and noticed that they were doing it and told other people of their class, and that's what's important. For them). But the last couple of generations have done a better job of keeping it out of the hands of the nasty people than they might have done. As witness, yes, Richard Thompson. I knew he was Muslim at one point, is he still ? I haven't been so impressed with his more recent work, but he was very glorious for a hell of a long time.

Yes, Richard Thompson is Muslim, as far as I am aware.

I agree about collectors - there was that Smithsonian guy, what's his name? I suppose the irony is though that without the colonial-era 'collectors', there would probably be no record at all. A bit like some of the Colonial Residents in the Raj - they wrote about 'local customs' from a truly psychotic point-of-view, but it makes very interesting reading - as long as one doesn't confuse it with truth.

An interesting interview with Richard Thompson, from 2007:

http://nightlight.typepad.com/nightlight/2007/09/publish-and-be-.html

Thanks for the interview, I hadn't known of it. And, yes, I see he does talk of his Islam in the present tense (2007) - I notice I've only heard it mentioned before in the context of that photo-with-a-turban LP, a sense of "we all experimented superficially with exotic ideas in those days, of course we've all stopped now" kind of thing. Hmm.

This veers wildly away from the purposes of Craig's blog, and probably from most peoples' interests. But it's a thing I've been concerned with for a long time, so I'm going to indulge myself, I hope no-one minds. (Or maybe the threads have moved on and no-one's looking any more ?)

The Smithsonian are strong on recordings, aren't they ? Back to the wax cylinders. And that, I have nothing to say against. Listen to the way people did it / do it, lovely. That's what matters. (Apart from, it all comes out of a particular bunch of people, there are attitudes, stories, functions. You can't just buy that stuff off a global-supermarket shelf).

"I suppose the irony is though that without the colonial-era 'collectors', there would probably be no record at all"

That's a bit I have trouble with. Yes, on the assumption that it's going to die. What if they'd joined in ? Learn to sing/dance/play something ? Help keep it alive. The whole attitude of 'look at the quaint customs of the peasant class, which of course we are not involved with'.

Aural culture in an age of literacy, I think. We learn to speak of the sheets of notation ("the tadpoles") as The Music, and in the "classical" tradition, this is indeed the case, one person's ideas working as a set of instructions to the performers (though even there, there are oral traditions). In a word-of-mouth situation, the paper is not that, it's a second-hand report, a description of what actually happened. Not a very good one, in many respects.

Pause for breath, scratch head, what am I wittering on about ? Cecil Sharp hears Untutored Rustic singing song, writes it up and draws it to peoples' attention, and it might become part of a different culture. But the next generation of Rustic, don't they just learn it from the person who sings it ?
Do they need the 'educated' intermediaries ? Or, of course, rustics find they can no longer go on quietly starving in their rustic abodes and shift to the city slums to die of TB instead, and it all shifts into something else, and what was abstracted out and written up is indeed safely dead. But the people who were doing that music will be doing some other music. There's continuity, of a sort. Not of the forms of the music, maybe, but of the process.

Illustration: you might have guessed I have something personal here, to be banging on like this ... As I said before, I'm a "tunes" player. I had, for a long time, a web site, hosted in Leeds Uni. music dept., holding a monster collection of transcriptions (originally, all my own. Then other people started contacting me with theirs, since I was in a positin to put it up somewhere ...). I was copied an internal memo. once, during one of their intermittent fits of "who is this person, and what's he doing on our website ?" (it disappeared a couple of years back; final takeover of the suits, after an annoyingly-few months short of 15 years). The memo was justifying the collection's existence, on the grounds that one day it would be a "valuable source of ethnomusicological data for some future researcher". That's the 'collector' attitude I'm talking about. From the ground, what I knew was that the overwhelming bulk of the feedback I got in connection with it was from people looking for/finding tunes for people to play - people finding it useful in carrying forward the things it was reporting. But all that, the main point and purpose so far as I (whose work it was) was concerned, seemed completely invisible to those who had the thumbs up/down on it.

("static" is a tricky point in itself, though, when publishing for free. Copyright is a minefield, in an aural-transmission setup. The bulk of the content was necessarily originally made by those who are 70+ years dead; or those of whom I have to claim ignorance ... *ahem*).

[ For the sake of completeness - I had seen Leeds' takedown coming and tried to prepare a replacement. It's been vastly more work than I expected, the current version is ugly, confusingly presented, and the code is a nightmare way beyond fixing (I'm terrified of bug reports). But for what it's worth, the current state of play is at http://livetunebook.qualmograph.org.uk/

I ought to be working on the next, long-term-maintainable version, instead of woffling on here. ]

3% would be 1.8m Muslims. Some sources give believable estimates of 2.0 to 2.5m and, of course, it is growing faster than the rest of the population.

As many Muslims don’t integrate preferring to live amongst fellow Muslims, some areas and some towns are becoming Muslim areas and Muslim towns. You won’t need many to bring about some kind of Balkanisation

Also note, the Gallup Coexist study found only 10% of British Muslims were integrated. http://libertyphile2.blogspot.com/2010/01/gallup-coexist-study-2009-headlines-you.html

A handful of extremists can have an effect out of all proportion to their numbers (I won’t trouble you with examples.)

We are already feeling the consequences of this disproportionate effect with the establishment of Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (you are wrong to say Sharia has “no standing” in English law, it is having a most decided impact – for example, child custody, inheritance, and Muslim men in domestic violence cases being sent on anger management courses), new limitations on free speech (take the ridiculous business at John Lennon airport – another cartoons outrage) and recognition of polygamy by the social services, to name a few examples.

The critical interest in the IFE and what it really stands for is fully justified.

BTW, personally I would be in favour of a lot less alcohol and slightly higher bras.

Hi Craig thanks a lot for such a locely read, thank you very much indeed.

I think the main reason we respect and admire you is certainly because of your utmost honest interst and active effort on pro-human right activites. Keeping it in mind I woould like to draw your attention into another side of IFE.

IFE is infact is the European outpost for the Jamayat E Islami Bangladesh. Jamayat activists and their killer student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir memebrs openly admits this fact here in the UK and in Bangladesh.

I can name quite a few IFE executives who are directly representing Jamayat E Islami Bangladesh, the extremist group behind Bangladeshi genocide during 1971 and raping of CHILDREN and women. Jamayat also believes killing an anti Jmayat activist is not going to have a long lasting effect so Jamayat activists cut opposition activists vein to cripple them for rest of their lives and they do it in the name of Islam, what a disgrace! Your IFE comrades may have an innocent face in the UK but when they repeatedly invited and organised meeting and public engagements for Jamayat leaders who publically called for the mass murder of the British and American troops in Afghanistan and in Iraq (Please don?t get me wrong I am a life long anti war protester, I hate war and weapon as much as you do)
Jamayat and some of IFEs executive/founding members still believe killing of 3 million people in months and raping of 200000 women and CHILDREN are justified (as it was done by pious Pakistani soldiers and Jamayat leaders)
IFE can be a well run organisation in the UK but we should never forget their roots, their motif.

Finally, now a days I honestly believe Andrew Gilligan is nothiong but a good pro neo-Nazi blogger who preys on innocent people's fear and ignorance

Richard, that's absolutely fascinating! Important - and joyous - work.

Yes, you're right, anthropology, with its various associated fields, has been a contentious discipline for a long time. Issues of the colonial eye, social class, subject-object, centre-periphery and various assorted 'isms cannot be avoided in this discourse - and so really it is not that far from many of the concerns raised on Craig's blog's threads.

Btw, I read in Leeds once, a few years ago, at a super place on the edge of the suburbs called 'The Old Police Station', which had been converted into a restaurant/ bar and downstairs (? originally the cells), an events space. A good evening it was, too!

Libertyphile, while I agree with your points about Sharia Law, which I do not think should have any place in UK law/ practice and I share your valid concerns about monocultural ghetto-isation, I do feel I must take issue with your statement that "many Muslims don't integrate preferring to live among fellow Muslims" presented as a bald statement in that way.

Inner-city (we are usually talking inner-city here) ghetto-isation is a very complex socio-economic phenomenon to do with many factors, including the nature of certain forms of migration, socio-economic status in the 'source' country and many other factors, all of which simply cannot be distilled down to the sentence as you've presented it.

It does not affect only 'poor Pakistanis/ Bangladeshis' but lots of other 'poor' sections of society. However, we are talking here primarily about 'poor' people, aren't we. The rich Arabs of Knightsbridge and the highly-engaged Arabs of Edgeware Road, not to mention the Turks of North London, do not fit the paradigm, do they?

So the manner in which the religion has developed - or shall we say been developed among certain subsets - in the cultural and socio-economic contexts of post-industrial Britain (Metropolitan England, to be accurate) is an hypothesis worth exploration - but not in the sloganeered way you've presented it.

Also, LibertyPhile, we are not talking about wealthy and middle-class Pakistani/ Bangladeshi/ Indian-Muslim families living in the suburbs of UK cities and towns, are we? Many of them are very well-'integrated' (whatever that strange word means; like the word, 'cool', it used to be 'good', then it was 'bad', now it's 'good' again!) in their own social class (this is Britain; to ignore class is not merely to pass by a confounder, it is to ignore everything). And if they're not well-integrated, often it's not for want of trying! Silent racism is still a big problem among the upper classes.

Around 1900, The Daily Mail and other media organs used to iterate that 'The Jews' (recently-arrived from Russia and Eastern Europe) were 'dirty, breed more than us, don't eat our food and speak funny languages'. The spectre of 'being swamped' (Ah, Maggie T, you were far from original, and were simply one more in a very long line of racists!) was raised constantly. In some circles, the word, 'Jew' provoked the same response then as the word, 'Muslim' does now. I alluded to this earlier in this thread: it brings out the worst - or perhaps, the core - in some people.

I am the last person to be in denial about the very real problems that beset some parts of our communities today - I think we need to tackle these problems with courage, cleverness and proportion, not with fear-mongering slogans deriving from highly questionable agendas - from a position of 'bad faith', one might say.

Suhayl Saadi

I was trying to be brief but you are right. There are many reasons why people stick together, nearly all of them reasonable.

However, for the sake of social cohesion and to avoid Balkan enclaves over time people need to mix, and inter-marry. Education and economic progress help but in the case of Muslims, especially, religion is a great hindrance.

Regarding "integration" have a look at how the Gallup Coexist survey defines it.

http://libertyphile2.blogspot.com/2010/01/gallup-coexist-study-2009-headlines-you.html#integration

And BTW, Gallup Coexist is run by Dalia Mogahed, Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Centre for Muslim Studies, and an advisor to the US President.

Interesting comments Suhayl; thanks, Libertyphile, for generating them.

"3% would be 1.8m Muslims. Some sources give believable estimates of 2.0 to 2.5m"

Dear Libertyphile, you do know that there are 61 million people in this country, don't you?

"and, of course, it is growing faster than the rest of the population."

Ah, this old scare story, last used about the Catholics in the Six Counties, since though heavily outnumbered, Catholics tended to have more children than Protestants. Just to reassure you, if there are two blue people and they have 6 blue babies, and 60 red people, who have 30 red babies, the blue population is not 'growing faster' than the red population. But logic aside, it wouldn't matter if it was, would it?

Are there 'Muslim towns' in the UK? How interesting. Where?

"Around 1900, The Daily Mail and other media organs used to iterate that 'The Jews' (recently-arrived from Russia and Eastern Europe) were 'dirty, breed more than us, don't eat our food and speak funny languages'. The spectre of 'being swamped'"

Several years back, I played a gig in a pub in Bradford. They had a whole load of old newspapers & other 'victorian nostalgia' stuff by way of decoration. Most of it was ugly rantings about The Foreign Outsiders who weren't like us. They come here and do the jobs we don't want to, with their foreign religion, foreign language, foreign habits, filthy foreign-muck food, all those tatties, cabbage and bacon ... Wave after wave after wave of 'incomers', all starting out in the same places and functions. (Not always quite the same places, I doubt the London docks work quite sthe same way these days).

Think of pub gigs, re: integration, ghettos, etc. I keep hearing all these 'we know best' people pontificating about how Muslims Must Integrate Into Mainstream Society, but I've never heard any of them put it together with just how much of 'mainstream' social life happens in pubs. And I wonder how that works for people who start from just not expecting alcohol ?

@technicolour

"Just to reassure you, if there are two blue people and they have 6 blue babies, and 60 red people, who have 30 red babies, the blue population is not 'growing faster' than the red population. But logic aside, it wouldn't matter if it was, would it?"

Just to correct you,
"if there are two blue people and they have 6 blue babies, and 60 red people, who have 30 red babies, the blue population is not 'growing faster' than the red population."
- the reproductive population of the blues has tripled
- the reproductive population of the reds has halved
yet you say that the blue population is not "growing faster"

In 6 generations the blue reproductive population will be having 0 babies and the red reproductive population will be having 2,916 babies.

"But logic aside," what logic?
I can only assume you are looking at the first generation plus the parents giving a population of 8 for the blues and 90 for the reds completely missing the point that even within just that one generation the blues have increased by a factor of four while the reds have only increased by a factor of 1.5
Worse yet, I emphasise again, the blues reproductive population has increased by a factor of three while the reds has halved
Assuming no parental deaths on either side after six generations the blues will outnumber the reds by (roughly) 18 to 1
At this stage the blues are no longer reproducing whatsoever and the reds continue to have 3 babies each which in turn go on to have 3 babies each so that 18 to 1 becomes 54:1 then 162:1 (ish)
Does the term "exponential growth" mean anything to you?

"it wouldn't matter if it was, would it?"
Well, it is. So my answer to your question would be that it depends to what extent the blues and the reds value secular principles as opposed to supernatural principles from strange old books interpreted by even stranger old men.

Yeah, golf-clubs, etc. too. In fact this affects many white people don;t drink or who don;t enjoy a drink culture; women too to some extent.

It's also a point of interest that in general, if you look at immigration into North America from Muslim countries, those incomers achieve a far greater degree of integration into mainstream society than is the case in the UK. This applies also to Hindus and Sikhs and other groups, btw. There are several reasons for this. One, North America is an immigrant society (a cliche, but basically true). Two, the social class demographic of migration to N. America was entirely different from that into the UK. Three, there is a residual colonial relationship in the UK which does not exist for S. Asians in, say, France, the USA, etc. but which is likely to exist for North Africans in France, for obvious reasons.

Extremism knows no class, of course, and many of the 'actors' have been from middle and upper class backgrounds, which is where it began. But social ills do provide a ripe substrate for the fertilisation of extremism. The provincial towns of England, in some cases, have been that substrate. Of course, there is the catalytic element of extremist religious views, distortions of Islam (though we must accept that it is our problem, not some great plot foisted on us).

Richard, what do you play?

Oh, come on, basicmath, let's not get into the silly paranoia about black people outnumbering white people in Britain. Because that's what it's about.

Irish people in the UK no longer have the big families they used to up to the 1960s, for many reasons. One of these reasons is capitalism and the nuclear (as opposed to the exteded) family. The other is the reduction in infant mortality. They third is advancing socio-economic status. The last is probably the availablility of contraception (unlike in Roman Catholics, this is not really an issue in Muslim families).

@Suhayl Saadi

First, read the post i was responding to

Second, I am non-white, mixed race, call it what you will my post has nothing to do with skin colour

technicolour

3% of 61m would be 1.83m, so what’s the difference?

The upper estimate of the 2.0-2.5m range I quoted is supported by Mohammed Ami, the Chair of the Business & Economics Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain who says Muslims are just over 4% of the UK population. See: http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2010/03/06/powerful-or-powerless/

That would be 2.44m Muslims at least.

If a small population grows at 300% it will in time overtake a larger population that is growing at 50%. It is growing at a faster rate.(see basicmath) Perhaps you have a different idea of what the word faster means.

I didn’t say there are Muslim towns. I said some towns are becoming Muslim. If you want examples, you might consider those cites and conurbations where Muslim Arbitration Tribunals are operating.

"Irish people in the UK no longer have the big families they used to up to the 1960s"

Go back just a couple of generations. My grandmother, ordinary mainstream white English, was one of a mind-boggling number of children. 15, I think. Many of them died in infancy. It wasn't particularly abnormal, I don't think.

Not so many die so young any more, and nor do we any longer have the lebensraum to export the survivors to. The US, yes; it was _about_ building itself up out of incomers, in ways the UK never saw itself.

(clarinet).

basicmath: basic terminology. By all means bring in exponential growth of populations, or even logistic growth of populations, if you wish to speculate. To me, any future looks positive.

But in the meantime, let's say I have 60 pence, and you have 2 pence. Someone gives me another 30 pence, and they give you another 6 pence. Would you say you were getting more money than me? Or faster?

Still, this is a diversion, of course. To repeat: the original post said that the Muslim population is 'growing faster than the rest of the population.'

Apologies for belatedly realising that the poster can only mean 'than other religions'. There is no 'rest of the population'. And in fact, the statement that 'Muslims are growing faster than members of other religions' in this country is brilliantly untrue. The accolade of 'the largest increase in numbers of a religious group' since the previous Census goes to the Jedi Knights.

Libertyphile: You did say "some towns are becoming Muslim areas and Muslim towns"; I'm quite disappointed, but OK.

I looked at the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, thank you. They're campaigning against forced marriages I see, very good. They seem to run consultations in Nuneateon, Birmingham, Bradford, and Manchester. At the last census it seems Nuneaton was 95.1 percent 'white' while Muslim people made up 1.6 percent of the population. Some of those 'white' people will be Muslim too, of course, but it still sounds quite dull.

Statistics are quite dull too, in fact. Sorry, all. Off to play in the park.

basicmath, I respect your numerical erudition and I agree that it's important one is accurate about such matters. However, please be aware of what you're feeding into here; I think technicolour expresses that well in their later posts.

Also, anti-Irish and anti-Jewish prejudice has nothing to do with skin colour either, but it's prejudice all the same. Please note, I'm not saying you're prejudiced! Just that it would do well for all of us - of all skin colours, creeds, etc. - to be wary of divide-and-rule and supremacist agendas - let's not get fooled again.

Richard - clarinet! Magical!

technicolour

Nuneaton happened to be where one of the founders of the MAT inherited a “stately home” which is used as the MAT H.Q., I believe.

Try Bradford for population statistics.

Another thing the MAT has been doing is to get Muslim men sent on anger management courses in domestic violence cases. You might also be interested in the the House of Lords view on Muslim child custody rules.

See http://libertyphile2.blogspot.com/2010/01/one-law-for-all-yes-and-no.html

for a good overview of Sharia law as unfolding in the UK.

Yes, LibertyPhile, I do agree that the insidious spread of Sharia in the legal system is of substantial concern. I think it's misguided and seems to be being inserted by degrees through the back door; initially as an innocuous, and even a progressive and /or feminist (at the risk of waking-up Jimmy Giro; eh, Jimmy {as we say in Glesga}, how's the music going!), measure (i.e. as opposed to patriarchal interpretations). I think this is a worrying precedent. There was an article in the Sunday Herald (Scottish 'paper) today about it, synchronistically enough.

I think that if people want to advise people on religious matters, that's fine and it ought to be done in that sphere - i.e. as a spiritual advisor and/ or mullah/ priest/ rabbi as already happens in any case and not as part of a legal process or as part of (a) law practice, in either English or Scottish Law. I believe that the same should apply to all religions - Jewish, Christian, Hindu, whatever.

... though I think that scare tactics used by (or at least from the bit quoted) the opposition spokesperson (hand amputation, etc.) in the article were predictable and OTT in the UK context.

Amusingly, the 'ex-Muslim' spokeswoman is ironically named, Miriam Namazi. 'Namaz' is the Urdu word for a Muslim prayer, so it's a bit like calling someone, 'the ex-Roman Catholic, Mary Massie'! Proof positive that reality is always stranger than (even Swiftian) fiction!

Hold on Suhayl! In the example given, of anger management courses for domestic violence offenders, Sharia law not insidiously doing anything; it is merely following general UK law:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/apr/12/crime.penal1

Interesting, but nothing to get excited about. Similarly, Libertyphile, I don't see anything sinister in the idea of inheriting a 'stately home', unless it's the central heating bills.

I was referring actually to the piece in the Sunday Herald, not to the anger management classes. The law firm providing services makes it all seem innocuous and maybe in their case it is, but it is dependent on this kind of moral due diligence being applied across the board and it won't be. I'm also against it in principle; I know the agendas of some of the people behind it - not fearful, terrorist agendas, not 'swamping, baddie agendas', but ongoing agendas of social manipulation and control of the Muslim community (ies).

I'm part of the IFE and I've never had to take any tests... It's not school... and frankly I think that episode of Dispatch was very 1 sided. Slightly upsetting for us. Besides if a community opens their heart to us I think it's our duty to give back to the community.

frankly I think that episode of Dispatch was very 1 sided. Slightly upsetting for us. Besides if a community opens their heart to us I think it's our duty to give back to the community.

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