This may be a long post for which I apologise in advance but it is on an exceedingly complex subject which is difficult to precis into small amounts. It stems from two questions posed to me in a comments thread by MalcolmPollack, proprietor of the always interesting and thoughtful blog 'Waka Waka Waka' - go pay a visit if you want an explantion of his title. These are the questions:
“do you agree that allowing mass Muslim immigration to the West has been a mistake? (To put that another way: if you had it to do over again, looking at Europe and Britain today and knowing what you know now, would you?)”
“Do you agree that it would make sense, at the very least, to curtail further Muslim immigration until we can demonstrate that we can successfully assimilate those already here?”
The first question is, of course, entirely theoretical because what is - is! However, it is useful as a means of teasing out some fundamental thoughts on the subject. In theory - and I stress the word 'theory' - no, I would prefer that mass Muslim immigration had not taken place and that the mostly metropolitan bien pensants who shrugged their shoulders at it made a huge mistake. Even so, we should not shrug our shoulders with them and ignore the benefits of it either. Look at any factory shift turning out and you will see huge numbers of Asian, and probably Muslim, workers streaming away. Our IT offices (according to 'SoD') are filled with very bright Muslim men - and women! - all working, paying taxes and contributing. As in most of the countries of western Europe, our indigent populations are failing to breed in sufficient numbers to support a thriving economy. Putting it bluntly - we need people!
However, as we have all found out the hard way, with the Muslim population we do have a very specific problem. An element of them have taken up Islamist arms against not only their own homeland states but their host states, too. I am not sufficiently wel- educated in the details of Muslim theology to decide whether or not the Quran encourages or frowns upon the concept of a holy war. However, commonsense tells me that if you are sufficiently interested in one direction or another you will always find the necessary passages to support and justify your stance! It was ever thus, from communism, to the Protestant reformation, to the imposition of early Christianity on western Europe. 'The fault, dear Reader, is not in our stars, But in ourselves' - sorry Will!
To sum up, Muslim immigration has provided some benefits but now poses some problems of a deadly but so far trivial nature! What? I hear you cry, 'trivial', how dare he write that with people being murdered in our streets and offices. Well, I will repeat it - yes, so far Islamists' efforts amount to less than pin pricks. To a generation who lived through the truly mighty efforts of the Luftwaffe, and to a German population which managed to survive the sledgehammer blows of the RAF and the USAAF, the efforts of Islamists are pathetic - which is NOT in any way to understate the horror and misery of those individuals and their families on the receiving end of the "pin pricks". But we do need to keep a sense of proportion. We need to follow the sage of advice of Cpl. Jones - "Don't panic!" In fact, I would add to that injunction, 'Don't panic - instead THINK!'
First of all we need to recognise that this is a 'world war', or if you prefer the modern parlance, a global war. It is being waged sporadically from the streets of Paris and London all the way round to the Chinese provence of Xinjiang, home to a Uygher population. (It's worth pointing out that the Chinese authorities take an extremely tough line against their Muslims but it seems to 'availeth them nought'!) Far and away the most bloody 'battlefields' are in the homelands of the Muslim faith where several all too real wars are raging between Muslims of a variety of beliefs. There, in my opinion, is where we should concentrate our 'offensive' efforts but in a subtle and intelligent manner. No more Blair-Bush invasions but instead a very careful analysis by middle east experts who can discriminate between friend and foe. That done, we need to decide, again very carefully, exactly in what form our assistance should be offered - arms? training? money? propoganda? education? diplomacy? This mix will vary from situation to situation. Its effects will take decades to be felt - this will be a long game. It would be excellent if the western powers could work together to co-ordinate all their efforts into one sustained campaign but, alas, I fear that is impossible when the damage done to us remains at the pin-prick level. Even so, it is not impossible to agree on certain measures on an ad hoc basis. For example, on a different area of 'warfare', I am delighted that the Brits and the Yanks have agreed to conduct mutual e-warfare exercises with and against each other to test our mutual defences against e-attacks.
Having decided on a doctrine - I deliberately avoid the word 'strategy' because this goes beyond the purely military - for the Muslim homelands we need to do the same thing for the internal, defensive security of our own countries. If you have managed to stick with me this far let me urge you to take a break and instead read this week's editorial in The Spectator which contains much good commonsense as well as a warning against silly, lightweight politicians like 'Dim Dave' who are prone to ignore 'Cpl. Jones' and instead panic like mad. Go read it - now! - and then come back.
Well, there you are, says it all, really! We do need sensible security laws but it is essential that they are only ever passed for a strictly limited time period, say, five years when parliament has to ratify them again. Also, and this is critical, there should be a law passed that makes it a criminal offence for any agency other than the security services to make use of such laws to further their own agendas on other subjects.
The other hugely important matter, as 'The Speccie' emphasises, is for the government to re-enforce what I call the cherished 'Freedom to Insult and Offend' within the existing legal framework which already covers and blocks obscenity, libel, slander and provocation to violence. We must not allow ourselves to be muted by the superior metropolitan types who think they know better than us what's good for us. If a Muslim wishes to slag off Jesus Christ, provided he does not do it inside Westminster Abbey during a service and thus provoke a possibly violent re-action - although thinking about it the congregation are much more likey to 'turn the other cheek' but you know what I mean. Equally, if someone wants to call Mohammed a child-violator and mass murderer then they, too, should be free to do so in the right circumstances. What is absolutely essential in this state of affairs is that this freedom, with its pros and cons, is rammed home to our children including, and especially, Muslim children. Unlike 'the cousins', we Brits are not very good at extolling the virtues of our liberties, we just take them for granted. We can no longer afford that laziness or modesty. We need to emphasise loud and clear to our young people of all demoninations that the essential ethos of our way of life is that everyone, within slight limits, is free to be rude about anyone else - eventhough good manners should always be observed. Also, that the bedrock of our liberty lies in the belief that everyone is equal before the law.
This subject of law brings me to the problem of Sharia law which some Muslims hold to be superior to our own common law. I see no problem in different religious or ethnic groups settling disputes in their own way by their own customs provided that nothing occurs which breaks our British law. Again, it needs to be pressed home to them, especially the young, that British law always takes precedence. Thus, for example, genital mutilation of young girls will be punished!
The other 'defensive' doctrine that needs to be followed should be intelligence-led. The re-action of the French authorities in pouring troops out onto the streets is a nonsense. We all know that they cannot keep it up for ever so it is shown to be what it always was, an example of 'gesture politics'. What is needed is a massive but covert surveillance campaign. We have done it before in Ulster - see my previous post on 14 Intelligence Company - and it should be used here. Of course, that sort of activity needs to be targeted and thus it is critical that the security services to employ their age-old techniques to find, follow and infiltrate likely offenders. This requires a blanket coverage of all electronic means of communication but I stress that information gathered by such means must be confined strictly to security matters only. Again, anyone, including government ministers, making use of such intelligence for their own political or social purposes should find themselves in court facing criminal proceedings.
The final axis of my 'defensive' doctrine deals with the second of Malcolm's questions as to whether I would now be in favour of curtailing any further Muslim immigration. My answer is a hesitant 'yes' because I just know that any such effort will probably fail. I have lost count of the number of times different ministers have promised to ramp up border controls and failed miserably. They are hamstrung by our links to the EU and the Human Rights Court. Both need to be dispensed with if we are to stand any chance of making our border controls fit for purpose. Even so, we will then need to decide what, precisely and exactly, our immigration policy will be. I simply do not know because I have never given it sufficient thought - bit like a government minister, I suppose! But yes, the rules do need to be tightened and enforced but on a universal basis not just aimed at Muslims.
If you have read thus far you will be relieved to know that I have run out of huff 'n puff, or perhaps, huff 'n' Duff is a better description! I am dimly aware that perhaps I have not answered Malcolm's questions exactly and precisely but, truth be told, this was really an exercise in trying to clarify what passes for my own mind. I think now that perhaps I still see dimly but perhaps a little more clearly than when I started. You, on the other hand, probably remain as confused as ever - sorry!
No and no.
If being fronted with a culture that has an illiberal side to it tipped with terrorism, is what it takes for the West to re-discover what Freedom and Liberty actually mean, then the Muslims are doing us a favour.
You might ask how we lost the true meaning of freedom and liberty in the first place, and I point you to the culprit: the Left.
People like to think that they don't take the Left seriously any more, and that the Left has all but disappeared. In a sense that is true. Leftists are no longer full frontal, as they were in the 20th century. Rather, they have flanked us by: -
(1) Taking over the education system and producing cultureless "blank sheet" generations, ignorant of true Liberalism and the culture of their heritage, and ripe for brainwashing. Think this is an exaggeration? Just read this Speccie article which describes the blinkered, unquestioning, comfortable in ignorance and suppression of enquiry, output of British universities, entitled "Free speech is so last century. Today's student's want the 'right to be comfortable'".
North Korean educationalists could learn some lessons from the great success their brethren Lefties have had in education in the West.
Almost no-one who leaves a state school, and few who leave a state university, will have the faintest idea who any of the following people are, or what they discovered, developed, and gifted to mankind: -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_liberal_theorists
For the "blank sheet" generation, no progress beyond that of the basic application of power and authority as a mechanism of social, political, and economic organisation is known. Ripened for tyranny.
(2) The public sector. A sector that is still the same percentage of GDP as it ever was, but does less than it ever has. No longer makes cars, manufactures steel, digs coal out of the ground, does telecoms, or distributes gas, electricity or water, or runs the railways, all of which they had to stop doing because it was such an unmitigated basket case, but still costs the same. Still runs education, healthcare, and social services, all of which are, unsurprisingly, basket cases.
The public sector is the Left's greatest proxy asset; by destroying our productivity and driving up debt, a slow and inexorable march towards economic collapse is achieved, and thereby the prerequisite for revolution. All of which is deniable by the Left - "We weren't in charge or even around when all that happened", they'll say, when really they were the public sector.
(3) Acting by proxy through Islam, through all shades of Islam, moderate to terrorist.
(4) The false science of the green blob. Melons. Green on the outside, red on the inside. Attacking the economics of Liberty, aka Capitalism, by getting at its life blood: energy.
Anything that slaps the West in the face and wakes us up to what has been deviously stolen from us is good news. Anything that replaces the apparently absent, but actually hiding, Left to keep us focussed on what Freedom and Liberty actually mean, is good.
If it takes Islam to do it, so be it.
SoD
Posted by: Lawrence Duff | Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 15:27
SoD.."You might ask how we lost the true meaning of freedom and liberty in the first place, and I point you to the culprit: the Left". Bless you Sir.
Posted by: Whitewall | Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 15:59
SoD,
I'll second Whitewall on that citation.
I will add that it is impossible to understand the modern Left except in terms of its most essential and fundamental principle: total human uniformity. From this flows everything else. If for example, humans are devoid of innate differences, then all inequalities can only be the result of social injustice, and therefore a moral imperative exists to rip apart and reconstruct the very foundations of society, again and again, until we find a configuration that delivers perfect social, political, sexual, and economic equality.
Under such a view, to understand and assert that long-separated populations may differ in important ways, and that their profoundly different cultures are organic manifestations of those innate differences, rather than mere artifices replaceable at a whim, is the gravest of heresies. And this is why the merest suggestion that allowing the mass immigration of aliens from irreconcilably alien cultures was, for all Western nations, an enormously destructive blunder, is met with all the punitive fury one would normally associate with the breaking of a religious taboo.
Posted by: Malcolm Pollack | Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 18:52
We were waka waka for letting them in. I formed this opinion during 1993 after a confrontation I witnessed. I realised they the islamists did not like us.
Posted by: jimmy glesga | Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 19:14
Well chaps, we can all think of sensible things to do. But our rulers will take no notice. Their policy is to sit there waiting like rabbits in a car's headlights, till we are over run.
Posted by: Backofanevelope | Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 20:06
"We were waka waka for letting them in. I formed this opinion during 1993 after a confrontation I witnessed. I realised they the islamists did not like us."
I have had seven engagements with Muslims, here they are: -
(1) SP, a mate at school, carried me out of a pub in Richmond when I was unable to walk, and in close proximity to having the shit kicked out of me by the landlord's regulars, which would have been richly deserved. Drove me home and got me there in one piece. Good start.
(2) AB at university. Probably in Gitmo now. Defo got the undercurrent and vibes off him, even in the 80's. Mmm, stumbled a bit there.
(3) Befriended in a grabby sort of way on a training course by MK, nice enough sort of bloke, but pumping me for contacts and info for jobs. Fair enough. Had his missus staying with him, said he would introduce me. Met him and her in the busy student cafeteria, I stood up and extended my hand. Oh Lordy, that was a big mistake. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, room went silent, tumbleweed blew past, I aged. I retracted my hand and sat down, scarlet and humiliated. Later told by MK not to worry, it was just my cultural misunderstanding, and I was forgiven. In my own country. In Western Europe. Diving sub-zero now.
(4) Step-auntie B of whom I am very fond. Likes to live alone, proper spinster, in her 80's now. Frail, and fragile. Mater and Pater retire to Dorset, took my eye off her for just that bit too long. Two of her life long friends died in close succession. Muslim neighbour pestered her incessantly, sliding notes under her door in the middle of the night, told her she would go to hell if she didn't convert. Made that guilty phone call a year later. Discovered she had been converted. Wahabi / Salafist bunch from North London mosque. Won't do Xmas any more. Used to be a Catholic. How sad, spend most of her life being abused by nuns and priests, and her swan song days being abused by Islam. A low point, we're in serious negative territory.
(5) After Auntie B had a nervous breakdown, I found myself explaining (4) to the social services lady sent to help her out while I was picking up B's pieces. Turned out she was a Muslim too. Ah, I thought, this is going to get very fucking interesting. I was just about to do the "how can anyone follow a creed whose founder member was a paedo, murderer, rapist, thief, and corpse mutilator" spiel, when I think she saw me coming and nipped in quick with "I am a Muslim, and I can assure you that was not a conversion that I or any true Muslim would endorse or approve of; conversion under duress is no conversion, and it hurts me and demeans my religion to know that you were converted in this manner." Fair play, a few pluses there. Not back to zero yet though. B still thinks she'll go to hell if she celebrates Xmas.
(6) MK, attractive Muslim women, all wrapped up, but ready baby, if you know what I mean. There's a certain glint in the eyes, isn't there, sometimes? Even a Burkha can't hide that. Joins my project team in whacky Silicon Roundabout, or Islington Wankersville, as I prefer to call it. MT, half Irish, half Austrian, wild woman, wild as a tiger on acid, crashed in mid morning on a Monday. "Got absolutely wasted on Saturday, and spent the whole of Sunday fucking this guy and his girlfriend in the Holiday Inn across the way, sorry I'm late." I would give my left and right arms to be able to show you a picture of the expression on MK's face; the combination of longing, yearning, for the freedom to be able to do that, or whatever her proclivity variation on the theme might be, I will carry for a long time. She'll go back to Pakistan with some views of her own that the Mullahs wouldn't be too pleased to know. See how subversive Islington Wankersville is when all these young Muslims process through and bring the news back to their "ancestral shitholes", as Jimmy likes to call them? There's an undercurrent going in their direction as well as ours, I tI think I know which one is going to win. We're up a fair few, maybe nearly back to break even, I think.
(7) Sat at work in the Thames Valley, the spinal column of middle England. 5 times a day KM and OM's mobiles go off with the call to prayer. Support desk grinds to a halt while they roll their eyes etc. My phone goes off with Liberty Bell, Monty Python style with a great fat raspberry at the end. We're even.
So, Pater, when you said, "Get out there everyone, and make the effort to embrace the immigrants in our community", you'll see I've been no laggard.
It seems one needs to retire to Dorset to have missed the fun.
Lord SoD, descendant of Ap-Lake, Knight of the Round Table.
Posted by: Lawrence Duff | Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 20:58
come on. You all stopped breeding.
the government doesn't like that.
It wants taxes and voters.
So soon you will all be redundant or even gone.
Posted by: john malpas | Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 21:42
I said something.
What happened to that??
Posted by: Andra | Monday, 19 January 2015 at 00:00
Mistake or not immigration has happened and you can do nothing to stop more immigration - bluster and puff yes but nothing more. Integration comes from economic activity - trade - and sharing experiences (even sexual ones). Over time rabid enthusiasms become moderated and die away. The French ignored this shoving their immigrants out to rotten banlieus, if we do the same then the result will be the same. Just remember, we Europeans only gave up burning at the stake in the 19thC.
As for listening at keyholes, that game is over for now, what we have created is a multi billion dollar white elephant with powerful well paid people looking at eventual redundancy. They lost credibility by siding with the politicians - concealing really actions like the WMD farrago and sullying themselves by seizing evidence of kiddy fiddling and sleeping with tree-huggers. We need to de-politicise the spies - take them way from looking after politicians and give them the remit to defend the people, from the politicians if necessary. This means keeping tabs on politicians and police as well as malefactors. Done openly and honestly the techies may be less uncooperative. America may be able to lean on the techies a bit but no-one else, we shall have to see how credible their efforts are.
Posted by: rogerh | Monday, 19 January 2015 at 08:09
And with perfect timing: Watermelons.
Imagine a coalition of them and Miliband.
SoD
Posted by: Lawrence Duff | Tuesday, 20 January 2015 at 08:50
Good grief, Lawrence, I always suspected they were loony but not eye-ball swivelling insane!
Posted by: David Duff | Tuesday, 20 January 2015 at 14:46
"Watermelons". Some terms are universal it seems, especially when they are that dead on right.
Posted by: Whitewall | Tuesday, 20 January 2015 at 14:53