This post was published over 700 days ago and therefore may not represent current Outside Context thinking or opinion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoyment of it! Todays paper calls the UK Muslim Clerics guilty of treason. I respond:
Treason? Proof on that one is easy since the intent on the part of the tube bombers is to play a part in bringing down the government. Anyway we have certainly got them on “Breech of the peace” right?
Guantanamo Bay is a moral grey area and disaster zone and a damning indictment on the US. Simply reclassifying the detainees as prisoners of war (on terror) is enough for the yanks to leave them to rot? Before you condemn them for that remember that they did have a senior AQ leader in Guantanamo (the one who has one leg) and then they let him go!
As for the UK clerics. Inciting RELIGIOUS hatred is a crime. Inciting POLITICAL hatred is an election. These clerics are absolutely nuts, and they will do anything, anything to cause mayhem. I saw some guys on TV yesterday chanting that yes one day the UK will be a Muslim nation… I even had my boss (who is married to a Muslim) say to me that there will be a “uprising” and “revolution in the streets” over the arrest of these “innocent” tube bombers! (Thankfully she has been sacked over another issue last week).
The Muslim clerics preaching hate create a fictional reality, which incites hatred of whites and the west. This is counter productive to integration (to say the least!) and now has spilled over to stupid kids carrying bombs to get to heaven. Well fuk that. Not in England they won’t.
If they are visitors deport them.
If they are British arrest them, try them and lock them the *fruitcage* away from Muslims.
On the other side of the coin, everything in the government’s power must be used to find out exactly why these clerics are being listened to. I suspect that the government has already done this and unfortunately come to the conclusion (which they can never say in public) that:
1. Muslims consider themselves Muslim first and British second.
This doesn’t sound like much, but is in effect the REAL PROBLEM here. I consider myself British, my faith (or lack there of) is nothing to do with it. This mixing up of faith and the British way of identifying yourself as British first just doesn’t work.
2. Muslims want the rules of the game to change, but not change themselves.
They in effect cannot change and the laws of their faith are in stone. Therefore it must be the entire country that changes since our laws are mutable. This is *fruitcage* tragic. Britishness may not be written somewhere but it is in every way a joint social contract. This states that the man next to you on the tube is one of you, is British (born and bred). It is in effect an article of faith. You cannot sit next to a Muslim and be sure he shares this view. In fact to listen to their leaders it is clear that they don’t. Muslims cannot integrate until they can say this and mean it and more importantly, until the rest of us believe it.
3. “Asian” kids are completely disenfranchised.
Their teachers, fathers and leaders have NO CONTROL over them. We live in a country where most children reject their parents during teen years to some extent and Muslim kids are no exception. Their children identify themselves as “Asian” and have nothing to do with “whities” (except perhaps to mock them). This environment is perfect for the visiting asshat cleric looking for recruits to forwards his stupid aims. Remember those of you who are Christian, that they way we look at the suicide bombers is the way the Romans looked at the Christians and they even started feeding them to *fruitcage* lions and IT DIDINT STOP THEM.
So what to do? How the *fruitcage* should I know? All I do know is that the Blair responses so far are knee jerk. I would start by doing away with anything after British. So British Asian, British Muslim, British Christian would all be simply what they really are: British. Stop *fruitcage* pandering to division! How can we integrate with people who literally call themselves something else?
Anyway, back to work
Basho
