David T on the credulous “partnership” between the Metropolitan Police and the Muslim Brotherhood:
Azad Ali’s post entitled Defeating Extremism by Promoting Balance is a good example of how Islamists think about these issues. In the post, he argues that the only way to ‘deradicalise’ Muslims is to promote the thinking of an Al Qaeda related theoretician: Abdullah Azzam. Azzam’s slogan was “Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues.” However, Islamists urge us to accept him as a good role model for British Muslims: because in later life he argued that global jihad should not be carried out against civilians in their own countries. You might think this is crazy. Who would give such a man the time of day?
But Azad Ali is a founder member of the Muslim Safety Forum – where apparently he “leads on the Counter Terrorism work-team for the Forum – working with the Home Office, ACPO and Security Services.” He is a National Council member of Liberty, President of the Civil Service Islamic Society. He sits on the Strategic Stop & Search Committee and Police Use of Firearms Group with the Metropolitan Police, and is a member of the IPCC’s Community Advisory Group and the Home Office’s Trust and Confidence Community Panel.
These are the sort of people who [former anti-terrorist officer] Andy Hayman thinks we ought to be using as our secret weapon against jihadism. But many of the people with whom the Metropolitan Police were partnering in the Muslim Contact Unit are very close indeed, ideologically speaking, to the jihadists. What is the rationale? [Former Special Branch detective] Bob Lambert appears to have believed that the only way to get through to would-be British Muslim suicide bombers is for the police to say: “Yes, we recognise that blowing yourself up for God, and taking as many other people as possible with you, is a truly glorious and noble ambition. You’re right to want to do so. But don’t do it on the No. 30 bus in London, please.”
Kenan Malik on learned dishonesties and other emasculations:
In 1989 even the Ayatollah’s death sentence could not stop the publication of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was forced into hiding for almost a decade. Translators and publishers were killed, bookshops bombed and Penguin staff forced to wear bomb-proof vests. Yet Penguin never wavered in its commitment to keep it published. Today, all it takes for a publisher to run for cover is a letter from an outraged academic. In the 20 years between the publication of The Satanic Verses and the withdrawal of The Jewel of Medina, the fatwa has in effect become internalised. […]
Twenty years ago, most liberals defended Rushdie’s right to publish The Satanic Verses despite the offence it caused many Muslims. Today, many argue that whatever may appear to be right in principle, in practice one must appease religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt. The avoidance of ‘cultural pain’ is seen as more important than what is regarded as an abstract right to freedom of expression. But such a policy creates the very problems to which it is supposedly a response. […] The lesson of the Rushdie Affair that has never been learnt is that liberals have made their own monsters. It is the liberal fear of giving offence that has helped create a culture in which people take offence so easily.
Regarding the above, readers may recall the obliging contortions of Jakob Illeborg, whose cowardice and dishonesty define what I’ve come to call The Guardian Position™.
Kenan Malik:
“It has now become widely accepted that we live in a multicultural world, and that in such a world it is important not to cause offence to other peoples and cultures. As the sociologist Tariq Modood has put it: ‘If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism.’…Today, we have come to accept that books do indeed cause riots and that therefore we must be careful what books we write – or what cartoons we draw, or jokes we tell, or art we create.”
It’s scary just how fast that meme caught on.
Indeed. In some quarters it’s the received wisdom and emphatically asserted, despite its obvious contradictions. (See Mr Illeborg for some vivid examples.) And, unless challenged vehemently, there’s no obvious reason to suppose that it won’t get worse. It seems to me that “subject[ing] each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism” is another term for progress. (If a person wants to be exempt from the customary testing of ideas, what are they afraid of, and why? Is it perhaps the poor quality of their beliefs?)
I scarcely need to point out that, aside from more reactionary Muslims, the people who most often endorse such exemptions call themselves “progressive” and write for “progressive” newspapers. As so often, ironies abound.
Alas, only one side can have ‘fundamental’ beliefs. Fundamental beliefs on our side, e.g. Christianity, suffer more mockery the more fundamental they are. Essentially, the Left’s position on how fundamental a belief is is how willing the holder is to kill and maim to defend it from even mild criticism. This is not a recipe for a peaceful or healthy society.
The Left is also unable or unwilling to distinguish between a ‘genuine’ murderous rage when a fundamental belief is challenged, and fake, operatic offence. The Left has spent so long pretending to be offended by our tranditional culture that they have lost the ability to see such artifice in others.
We need some sort of ‘Get Over It’ campaign.
I have just encountered the phrase ‘porridge wog’ for a Scottish person. This delights me. I plan to start using it about my mother.
“We need some sort of ‘Get Over It’ campaign.”
Yes indeed. Also a “grow up, you morons” campaign and a “wake up you tits, it’s the 21st century” campaign.
If they were to get off the ground, such campaigns might well be deeply insensitive, but they would at least have the merit of not being insufferably smug, patronising and racist, which seems to be the default mode of the Guardian, BBC et al.
‘If people are to occupy the same political space without conflict, they mutually have to limit the extent to which they subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism.’
Funny thing about Modood’s little missive: everyone, even Modood, knows that street only runs one way.
“Today, many argue that whatever may appear to be right in principle, in practice one must appease religious and cultural sensibilities because such sensibilities are so deeply felt.”
It’s the strange assumption that because something is “deeply felt” (or *said* to be “deeply felt”) it therefore warrants accommodation and deference, however impractical or unfair that deference proves to be. And the people I’ve encountered who make these kinds of claims don’t seem inclined to discriminate between things that are said to be “deeply felt”. It seems to me there’s a world of difference between dietary hang-ups or an aversion to dogs, which are rather comical ways to demonstrate religious belief, and, say, a funeral service, which isn’t.
David
“It seems to me there’s a world of difference between dietary hang-ups or an aversion to dogs, which are rather comical ways to demonstrate religious belief, and, say, a funeral service, which isn’t.”
It’s also significant that religious practitioners select which elements of religious observance are more important than others for – as far as can be detected – entirely arbitrary reasons. An obvious example is the stuff found in Leviticus which is largely ignored except sometimes, when convenient, the bits about homosexuality. I’m often bewildered by the hatred expressed towards Jews by certain Islamic spokespeople when Christians – while not particularly admired – are let off quite leniently. Does this have a genuinely religious or spiritual impetus, or is it merely politically expedient at the moment? Or, put another way, is the fact that it proves politically expedient purely coincidental?
Horace,
I’ve often marvelled at the belief that a deity would be concerned with the avoidance of bacon.
“The avoidance of ‘cultural pain’ is seen as more important than what is regarded as an abstract right to freedom of expression.”
But whose ‘cultural pain’ is more important- mine or the other guy’s?
David
If pigs had a religion you could be pretty sure that the consumption of bacon would feature quite prominently in the scriptures. Porcus dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Of course in the case of a porcine religion, extreme unction would most likely result in outstanding crackling. So watch your back.
James,
“But whose ‘cultural pain’ is more important- mine or the other guy’s?”
Well, quite. If we’re going to start feeling each other’s “cultural pain,” it’s odd how the “pain” that gets priority seems to depend on who’s feeling it, or pretending to. I suspect “cultural pain” may even be regarded by some as the exclusive attribute of certain religious or ethnic groups. It’s rather like the scenario I suggested in the thread about the “dialogue facilitators” at Queen’s University:
Student A believes that Muhammad was an exemplary figure and living proof of Allah’s most merciful intentions. He hears a stranger, Student B, sitting at a nearby table talking to a friend and explaining why Muhammad is a reprehensible figure, citing his behaviour as related in various Islamic texts. The language is fairly blunt but each claim is supported with evidence. Among the words used are “pirate,” “murderer,” “narcissist” and “paedophile”. Student A takes exception to this and complains to a “facilitator” with mutterings of “Islamophobia” and “hate speech”.
Now whose argument is more likely to be subject to scrutiny? Which perspective is most likely to be deemed “biased” or “disrespectful” – the blunt but logical critique or the pretentious fantasy? Does the person complaining of injured feelings have an advantage here? Will both perspectives be flattened into one egalitarian plane of “fairness,” in which both are somehow correct and deserving of respect? Or will Student A’s injured feelings be granted inordinate weight and then used as a pretext to dismiss as “hate speech” any reminder of his philosophical inadequacy?
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2008/11/temerity-revisited-.html
“We need some sort of ‘Get Over It’ campaign…. If they were to get off the ground, such campaigns might well be deeply insensitive….”
I’ll offer this as a deeply offensive, seasonal theme song, suitable for singing at rallies, etc.:
(I’M DREAMING OF A) BLACK WHITE HOUSE
I’m dreaming of a black White House
Unlike the days of old Jim Crow
See the gangstas glower
And whiteys cower
To hear caps busting in the snow
I’m dreaming of a black White House
Far from the streets of Hymietown
Where Reagan snoozed, and half-white jigaboos
Will smile, and spread the wealth around
I’m dreaming of a black White House
With every ballot box I stuff
Peace out all my niggaz, yo’ mama
Jesus Christ, all hail … Barack Obama
Offended? “Get Over It!”