| | No surprise that Damian Thompson, after proposing to donate small sums to a Jewish charity every time an anti-semitic comment is posted to his blog, should waste no time in posting a blog that incites fear and loathing of Muslims.
|
Thompson, picking up on the article written for the Times yesterday by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, writes:
‘We have had to wait decades for this moment, but it has finally happened. A leading British clergyman has said something sensible about immigration.
‘Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, this week signed a declaration by the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration calling for an urgent tightening of borders to stop the British population reaching 70 million by 2029. He also gave an interview yesterday in which he called for a tougher Church.
‘Politicised Islam is at the forefront of his [Lord Carey’s] mind: he knows that Britain's evangelical Christians are fed up with being told to develop ever closer ties with their Muslim neighbours.
‘These evangelicals see Muslim communities that are increasingly hard to distinguish from ghettos; whose young men are sympathetic towards Islamist insurgents; and whose elders enforce a Sharia law that bullies young British Muslim women at home and persecutes Christians abroad. (Nothing, not even the issue of homosexuality, has done more to damage the authority of Dr Rowan Williams in the conservative provinces of the Anglican Communion than his idiotic equivocation on British Sharia.)
‘…the future of Western civilisation can be secured only by an alliance between Christians and secularists against the totalitarian ideology of Islamism.’
To be fair to Thompson, his post owes something to the crude stereotypes and false demons that surface in Lord Carey’s own article.
Lord Carey wrote:
‘The sheer numbers of migrants from within Europe and elsewhere put the resources of Britain under enormous pressure, but also threaten the very ethos or DNA of our nation.
‘Democratic institutions such as the monarchy, Parliament, the judiciary, the Church of England, our free press and the BBC also support the liberal democratic values of the nation. Some groups of migrants, however, are ambivalent about or even hostile to such institutions. The proposed antiwar Islamist march in Wootton Bassett is a clear example of the difficulties extremists pose to British society.
‘Furthermore, the idea that Britain can continue to welcome with open arms immigrants who immediately establish their own tribunals to apply Sharia, rather than make use of British civil law, is deeply socially divisive. The last thing any of us want is ghettos. And while we don’t expect groups to assimilate, there must be a willingness on their part to integrate with the rest of British society.
‘I am [not] calling for Christians as a group to be given priority in any migration points system. ...But what I am saying is that those who seek to live in this country recognise that they are coming to a country with a Christian heritage and an established Church. Just as we should expect immigrants to subscribe to democratic principles, abide by our laws, speak English, support freedom of speech and a free press, so they should also respect the Christian nature and history of our nation with its broad, hospitable Establishment.’
The nonsense by Lord Carey is not limited to his rather bizarre assertion that the monarchy is a ‘democratic institution’, or his citing liberal democratic values while denouncing those that make use of the freedom of association and freedom of assembly to march through Wootton Bassett. We certainly have no sympathy for the monstrosity that is Anjem Choudary and his band of misfits, but to cite liberal democratic values and then deny others the right to enjoy them hardly then befits the description of our society as liberal democratic.
Bizarre still is Lord Carey’s claim that Islam4UK’s proposed march through Wootton Basset is a ‘clear example of the difficulties extremists pose to British society’. Given that Islam4UK is a group of negligible significance and even more negligible support, do they really warrant Lord Carey’s attention and the hysteria that ensues?
Perhaps so if the use made of Islam4UK is to cast all British Muslims in similar light.
Carey’s remark that Muslims in Britain ‘establish their own tribunals to apply Sharia, rather than make use of British civil law, [and] is deeply socially divisive’, suggests that Muslims alone enjoy alternative arbitration methods when such is patently not the case given the longer established Jewish Beth Din courts in the UK.
Carey remarks that ‘The last thing any of us want is ghettos. And while we don’t expect groups to assimilate, there must be a willingness on their part to integrate with the rest of British society.’
Has Lord Carey not apprised himself of the numerous surveys done of British Muslim attitudes which prove just how well integrated Muslims are and that contrary to notions of ‘ghettoes’, British Muslims favour living next door to people of different backgrounds more than other Britons.
The claim of Thompson that some sort of alliance is required between Christians and secularists to preserve the Christian ethos of Britain, or of Lord Carey’s claim that Muslims should respect Britain’s ‘Christian heritage and [its] established Church’ ignores the fact that the established Church is something Muslims in Britain do favour and that interfaith dialogue has been among the earliest frameworks of encounters between British Muslims and Christians. Precisely because a belief in God and the afterlife provides Muslims and Christians with common ideals and common goals.
In ignoring these truths what Thompson (via Carey) seeks to do is to suggest that Muslims are not like other faith groups in society. In regurgitating Christopher Caldwell’s ‘Eurabia’ thesis, Thompson peddles the Islamophobic ideas of which he is so supportive. So consumed is he by his own fearmongering belief that Muslims are disinclined to accept the religions and values that inform the life choices made by others in society, he recasts the liberal democratic values Lord Carey cites as our proud heritage to forge a vision of society which is neither liberal nor democratic in its treatment of Muslim citizens.
|
