Normalising Muslim Britain

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BBC, Blog, Britain First, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, EastEnders, Facebook, Islam, Islam and the West, Islamification of Britain, Islamisation of London, moderate, Moderate Muslims, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, trum, trump, Twitter, wordpress

• First published on this blog in January, 2016

The presence of Islam in 21st century Britain is no more natural or inevitable than the presence of Sikhism in Chile. It’s worth repeating this fact whenever possible or appropriate. This is because many fake liberals continue to push the argument that Islamophobes such as you or I are somehow unworldly, retrograde, or unrealistic for opposing Muslim settlement in the contemporary West.

Some commentators go even further, saying that far from being a new and foreign element in our society, Islam is a traditional part of Europe, citing irrelevant factors like the antique conurbations of Muslim Sicily, Malta or Andalucía. Islamic influence, they claim, can be found in Europe’s system of law, code of social ethics, philosophy, medicine, architecture and geography. Given that this is so, why shouldn’t Muslim Pakistanis, Turks or Arabs live in present-day Leeds or Stockholm? They are as responsible for the greatness of these places as the natives…right?

No. Not right at all. It is certainly true that Islam’s Andalusian Golden age imparted a great number of ideas to European elites, many of which are now claimed as entirely and originally European. However, such contributions were mostly limited to disciplines of what we would now call ‘academia’ and in-any-case are dwarfed many times over by the influence of European ideas on Muslim civilisation. Do Europeans have the moral right to settle in Muslim countries on that basis? No, of course they don’t. And vice versa.

Leftists like to push the myth of European-Islamic co-development for one reason above all; they think it will normalise the presence of Islam in Europe and erase the memory of a Europe without Islam. For if the Muslim presence in Europe can be made to seem normal, traditional or ancient, objections to it will naturally seem irrational, unreasonable and unrealistic.

Another way the same effect can be achieved is via the media, and especially the screen media. Over Christmas, like most Britons, I found myself slouched in front of the television for extended periods of time. During that time I witnessed an astonishing barrage of British Islamic subject matter. There was the Citizen Khan Christmas special on BBC One (Note: CK is a woefully unfunny Muslim sitcom). There were the quiz shows with a disproportionate number of Muslim contestants, many of whom wore Hijabs or prayer caps. There was Eastenders – perhaps the most popular show in Britain today – with gripping plotlines involving characters called Shabnam, Kush, Tamwar, Masood, Fatima, Kamil and Ali. National (and even more so) local newsreaders and weathermen/girls were disproportionately Muslim. And so on. Over time, this normalises something abnormal; the slow bleed of east into west; the merging of two contraries into a single untenable consensus.

This is new. This is unnatural. And this is not something we should be tolerating.

D, LDN

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There Are No ‘Moderate’ Muslim Countries.

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Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Islam, Islam and the West, Islamism, Jihadism, Moderate Muslims, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Rihanna Muslim, Tunisia

Like the world of Christianity, the world of Islam is more culturally diverse than many observers give it credit for.

There are countries with an Islamic majority that are in many ways ‘European’, or at least insofar as their architecture, language and colonial history are concerned. Such countries include Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

Other Islamic countries – by contrast – are identifiably foreign and third-world. The nightmare-states of Pakistan and Afghanistan for example, are totally devoid of Western influence, and look today, with the odd exception of a ceiling fan or satellite dish, much as they looked one hundred years ago. Women there are afforded no liberty whatsoever. Murder is considered morally equal, if not superior to adultery. Rape is not always punished, and is even deployed as a punishment (including mind-bendingly enough, as a punishment for rape, should the victim be judged to have encouraged the assailant).

And then there are countries, like Iran or Uzbekistan, which fall somewhere in-between.

Responding to such realities, a few optimistic observers suggest that we create a distinction between a category of ‘moderate’ Islamic countries, and a separate category of ‘hardline’ ones.

This distinction will achieve, they say, two things –

Firstly, it will serve to isolate the more problematic countries the West must deal with most urgently. And secondly, it will spare the reputation of those countries (and peoples) judged to be more moderate.

I’m sure this is a perfectly well-intentioned enterprise but for me at least, it has too many flaws to be taken seriously.

For a start, what exactly are we to mean by the word ‘moderate’? Are we suggesting that the Muslims of such places do not take the threat of hellfire or the promise of paradise as seriously as in others? Surely not.

I think what people really intend by this phrase, is ‘more like us’.

By ‘moderate’ they mean countries in which there are as many cafes as there are mosques, and where European languages are spoken by the natives.

But surely the error in all this is clear.

No adaptation to Western secular culture makes for ‘moderation’ in religious culture. Secular culture (cafes, television, newspapers), fills spaces religion doesn’t fill. But the spaces religion does fill remain filled by the same religion as existed in the 7th century.

Think of it this way – There are millions of Muslims living with us right now in the West, many of whom speak fluently the languages of their adopted lands, and who spend hours each week not only in cafes, but in Tesco, ASDA and other places we might recognise too. They are, in this respect ‘like us’. They may even live next door to us… But as the 7/7 bombers showed, this is no guarantee against the most radical religious fervour and extreme behaviour developing in those internal spaces still occupied by their religion.

Since the 7/7 bombers were born and raised in a Western environment, and still emerged as terrorists, why should the presence of a few Western characteristics in North Africa or Anatolia reassure us that such places are themselves peopled by moderate Muslims?

Islam of the most extreme variety can co-exist (or co-develop) quite smoothly with some aspects of modernity, but only up to a point. At such a point radical Islam feels compelled to demonstrate a moral supremacy over it. The perceived moral laxity of the modern world acts as fuel to the Islamist fire. Our freedom is a provocation.

Just the other week, one of the countries most often suggested as a beacon of moderation, Tunisia, saw an outbreak of Islamist violence as well as the assassination of an elected official. Another commonly suggested ‘moderate’ state, Turkey, has an Islamist government apparently determined to roll the clock back a century at a time. I seem to remember even Egypt being suggested as an example of Muslim modernity, just a few months before the ‘spring’ which set in motion the Muslim Brotherhood’s seizure of power.

Even if you call a spade a rake, it remains a spade. So let’s dispense with the lies.

There are no moderate Muslims, and as importantly, there are no moderate Muslim countries either.

D, LDN.