Xenophobia – a fear of people from other countries – is a natural part of human nature right across the world. Often it tips over into racism – prejudice, discrimination and dislike of other races based on the principle that ‘our’ race is superior – which is even worse.
While both of these attributes are common, even natural, they are not to be considered desirable.
In previous times different races and cultures were kept apart by natural barriers – oceans, mountains, huge rivers and deserts. Only the more adventurous would get to travel and interact. Nowadays we live in multicultural societies and mix with people from other cultures and races on a daily basis. That creates tensions.
Over time we have, in Britain, been exposed to waves of immigration. As a great sea-faring nation who set up a huge trading culture that developed into an Empire and then Commonwealth we were exposed to many cultures – African, Asian, Chinese and Russians all came as sailors or traders and set up home here where they were absorbed and integrated. We provided home for many persecuted races and immigrants – Huguenots, Jews, Jamaicans, Sikhs, Pakistanis, Turks, Greeks, Arabs, Indians, Gurkhas, Kurds and many more have all come and settled. London in particular is a cosmopolitan city. Just walking down the streets one can see the array of clothes, colours and foods that have come with the different cultures. Most gradually integrate through the generations and become more British than the British. A minority keep apart and maintain their traditions.
Just recently we have had large numbers of Muslims coming to this country as refugees from the wars in the Middle East and as economic migrants. They see Britain as a place of sanctuary and a place where they can have opportunities and a better standard of living.
Because these immigrants have arrived in large numbers and have costumes and ways that make them stand out they have drawn attention to themselves and evoked both xenophobic and racist responses.
Back in the sixties these responses were aimed at the Black and Pakistani immigrants. We can look back to Enoch Powell’s speech of ‘Rivers of Blood’. We can look back at the skinheads and ‘Paki Bashing’. The white community was fearful that they were being taken over by a flood of coloured immigrants from our crumbling Empire. They were taking our jobs and marrying our girls. It was outrageous. Our culture would be lost, our values overturned and we would be swamped. There would be civil war.
Well fortunately little of the paranoia of those times came to fruition. There have been the odd race riot and numerous racist incidents but largely we have all come to terms with each other and black and brown faces are now received with little consternation. The paranoia has subsided and people integrated. We live harmoniously. Racism has declined and black and brown faces are largely welcome in all strata of society.
However, the present paranoia associated with Muslims has caused a resurgence of xenophobia and racism. So let us talk openly and see what this is all about.
What are the issues? Here are some of the things that have come up on my blog:
Muslims wear Burqas and Hijabs – these are misogynistic and unBritish.
Women are subjugated and separated – this is misogynistic and undemocratic.
The build mosques and have a call to prayer – this is displacing Christianity.
They indoctrinate their children in madrassas – this is against the children’s rights and is not right.
They are associated with terrorism – ISIS and Al Qaeda are infiltrating the country to carry out atrocities.
They are congregating in large numbers and displacing the endemic population – soon we will be overrun and our culture displaced.
They want to replace British law with sharia law – they do not accept democracy or common law. They want to set up a theocracy.
They are involved with crime – they use knives and have gangs.
They are raping our girls – the courts are full of Muslim gangs that have targeted young girls – abusing and raping them.
They are breeding like rabbits – they are going to take over by outbreeding us.
It seems to me that all these things are fuelling the fears and paranoia that exists and are seized upon by right-wing fascist groups, such as Tommy Robinson and the English Defence League, and exaggerated in order to stir up more fear and hatred. It isn’t helped by the more extreme Muslim fundamentalists who do call for sharia law and vow to take over the country or the minority who are, or support, terrorists who commit atrocities.
In America the right-wingers talk about Europe being swamped and lost under a tide of Islam. It reminds me of Enoch all over again. Many in Britain feel the same.
But does it have foundation?
Well I have a great distaste for all religion and see the Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Jews and Muslims all as bad as each other. Fundamentalism of all hues is equally distasteful and destructive. I’d junk the lot of them. Especially the ones who turn to violence to achieve their aims. I take the view that if you’ve got to have a religion at least make it a personal experience and don’t foist it on others.
I don’t like the way women are treated as second-class people and I can’t stand the indoctrination of children.
All immigrant populations display a higher level of fertility than the endemic population. That will soon settle.
So is there any basis to all this Islamophobia?
I think not. It is paranoia created by having too much immigration too quickly. It will take time for them to adjust to our customs but most of the Muslims are law-abiding and want to integrate into society and make a go of things. They accept British values even if they keep up their traditions.
I don’t think Islam is about to take over the country. I don’t think the 95.4% of the non-Muslims need to be unduly worried by the 4.6% of Muslims just yet. The hysteria is created by their high-profile customs, the terrorism and the way they have congregated in high numbers in various areas.
Let the police and courts deal with the minority that are rapists, terrorists and criminals. They all need locking up.
The authorities need to get on the ball to sort out the schools and mosques so that we integrate better into British values, adhere to British law and do not have indoctrination and radicalisation.
I think that all this extreme religiosity is a passing phase. Back in the sixties my Muslim friends were all very Westernised. They did not go around in medieval costume. They liked the same thing as everyone else and weren’t on their knees praying or down the mosque. It was the same in Pakistan. I saw a documentary of Islamabad University in the early seventies and it was all jeans and t-shirts without a hijab in sight. It is the wars and unrest in the Muslim world that has created this extremism. They feel under threat and have responded by becoming more extreme in their culture. It will pass.
I predict that in forty years time most of the Muslims will have integrated. If the mess in the Middle East is sorted there will not be the extremism and we will see the mosques emptying and barely a burqa in sight.
British culture is a hybrid culture. We have the blood of Celts, Britons, Norman French, Norse from Scandinavia, German Angles and Saxons, Italian Romans, Africans, Chinese, Asians, Arabs, Turks and Uncle Tom Cobley and all, and we are all the stronger for it.
What is needed is love, understanding and integration. That requires systems, dialogue and good will on all sides. The onus is on the Muslim community as much as the endemic population. They have to speak out more and reach out more.
So I say, put aside your fears and paranoia, on both sides. We are all people. Embrace the differences, tolerate each other and grow together.
We will all be stronger together.
Opher, these are the words of a switched-off dullard.
There is no such word as Islamophobia. It’s just a word created to hide the evil truth about Islam. It was created to stop free speech, plain and simple.
But that’s the least of it.
Someone’s showing up their complete ignorance with the genesis of Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech. They have absolutely no idea whatsoever from where it stemmed from and why. That’s moronic.
Isn’t it just a damned shame that completely uneducated people chose to discuss and even use as a weapon of example something that they do not fully understand?
It’s like Sooty describing Quantum Physics to Sweep.
It’s not about NOW, at 5-6%, but later down the line in say, twenty years. What then?
This is simply leftist-liberal propaganda most welcomed by the Salafists whom plot in private. They shit on your opinion and your constitution. Sharia is all that is important to them. Sharia does not allow for constitution of non-Islamic law.
It’s amazing how anybody with an IQ above 2 doesn’t understand Muslims and Islam.
There is not one Muslim majority country that has freedom and treats non-Muslims as equals. What more evidence does one need?
“When Muslims are in a minority, they are very concerned with minority rights. When they are the majority, there ARE NO minority rights.” – Winston Churchill
Here we go again Andrew – more utter rudeness and bullshit. You show up under one guise and another spouting the same rudeness and ad hominems. Try applying intelligence to an argument rather than being so unintelligent and rude.
Talking to you is like turning on the Daily Express – talk about talking to Sooty and Sweep.
I have a great knowledge of Enoch Powell thanks. I was old enough to listen to him. There’s nothing wrong with my IQ.
Why are you so full of fear and hate? You talk about Muslims as if they are all the same. They aren’t. Most fit in perfectly well and have no intention of taking over the country.
You really think this 5% is suddenly going to grow and take over? Get real! That’s what they said about the Jamaicans too.
According to Enoch Powell the black man would have the whip hand over us all by 1988. He prophesised rivers of blood – quoting Virgil. Well so much for that then. The black immigrants have now been pretty well integrated and have contributed greatly to the country. So Enoch can fuck off.
My black and Muslim friends don’t need to be stereotyped and pigeon-holed.
Now we have the same doomsayers coming out with their jaundiced view of Islam. Well it’s not one of my favourite religions and I hate all religion but I’m not stupid enough to fall for the fascist propaganda that exaggerates it all. There’s much wrong with the indoctrination, misogyny and medieval attitudes that needs addressing. But adopting your aggressive stance is not the way to deal with it.
Thank you for illustrating the whole focus of Islamophobia.
Andrew (and it’s not Roger) – you are rude enough to call me a silly man for saying 1988. You ignorant fool. Enoch made his speech in 1968 and said that in twenty years there would be civil war with blood in the rivers and the black man having the whip hand. That is twenty years on dolt – 1988 – and there wasn’t.
I know all about the machinations of Islam thank you – and I despise it and its indoctrination. I despise its misogyny and stultification. I despise its violence and intolerance. The area where it started was the centre of much great science, maths, agriculture and arts until it was stifled by Islam. Religion is the scourge of mankind. Do not lecture me on such obvious things. Islam is a repulsive religion in many ways, but so is Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. They are all intolerant, indoctrinal and vicious – all misogynistic and stultifying.
But I’m not frightened by it. I don’t for one minute think that 5% are going to take over the UK. I’m not quaking in my boots no matter how much the Muslim nutters scream for sharia law. My Muslim friends, like most Muslims, are largely secular and pay lip-service to it. I look much more pragmatically than you. I know that if we integrate them well they will lose this obsession with religion and become secularised.
Opher, it’s Roger – as in Roger And Out, which you may recognise.
But you really, really don’t understand. You have buried your head very deeply and categorically deny yourself to learn of the Muslim mandate. I never said they were all the same, how can they be when there are 53 different factions?
I know Islam and it’s machinations extremely well compared to you. In actual fact, you haven’t got a clue really.
But you do some history matey and take a good note of what happens when they take over. Have a look at what Spain had to do in order to prevent that happening. Your knowledge of European history on this issue is piss poor embarrassing.
You mistakenly attempt to equate Caribbean people with Muslims. Didn’t it register with you that there exist three major social and cultural differences between these peoples? Caribbeans don’t treat their women as 2nd/3rd class citizens, they drink alcohol and they enjoy music. There is absolutely no correlation between them.
You are terribly foolish and extremely naive.
It’s not actually anything to do with fear or hate. I hate the religion of Islam, not the people. But Islam is their ever present guiding force and nothing gets between that or is ever any more important. How many times have you seen the situation now where they simply close down an entire area. There is no integration. There is no assimilation. There isn’t anything but Islamofication. They immediately open their Islamic study centres, indoctrinate and beat children, – see the secretly made films on YouTube for further clarification, separate their children and only semi-educate the girls, turn their mosques into activity centres – and none of this, absolutely none of this will ever include you or I. We are completely segregated as Kafirs by them at every single turn. You simply do not exist as far as they are concerned. Don’t be fooled by the occasional smiling public face from some Islamic official as per last year’s Manchester pop concert bombing, that only comes out on special occasions, doesn’t it?
Instead of you woffling any further loads of shite, why don’t you take yourself off and educate yourself on what I had suggested earlier regards Enoch Powell. Go and learn for yourself from where he gained this information. And no he didn’t put that date of 1988 on it. You just made that up. You silly man.
I don’t buy into any of your having black and Muslim friends. Nor could I care less.
I know some extremely lax Muslims who are very worried for themselves because of other hard-line Muslims.
Seriously, you cannot ever have read the Quran or the Hadith or the Suras.
Just one proper read through the Quran will tell you all you need to know.
When I see these stupid, stupid leftie-libtards like Corbyn bending over backwards to support the ingress of Islam, then I and the majority of this country will have something to say about it. It’s really not on.
Just you wait till they build a mosque in your area and are given the all clear for the call to prayer at 4:30 AM. You will be wishing you were already six feet under. And it will come.
I challenge you to a knowledge test on it. I will crush you. It’s absolutely obvious that your knowledge of the Quran is Sooty and Sweep level. Your lamentable.
Haven’t you read or heard about the backlash and reversal of policies that are taking place right now throughout Europe to counter this wholly anti-social threat? Are you so behind on the uptake here on vital (to your debate) information?
BTW – I’ve heard you countless times saying you’ll crush me on everything. So far you’re not doing too good. You seem to be wrong on just about everything from pyroclastic clouds to cooking pots and Enoch Powell. Perhaps if you stopped being such an arrogant jerk you’d do a little better.
You are wrong mostly all the time because either you don’t really know and second guess you way along or you don’t bother to research well enough.
1. The pyroclastic clouds. You were absolutely wrong and you know you were. The same thing just happened in Guatemala where people were almost instantly suffocated by hot ash long before any lava flow. You quite obviously have never been near an active volcano. I have, twice, some twenty miles away and it’s unbelievable.
2. Your comments on Enoch Powell were atrociously ignorant. You basically have the knowledge base of a tabloid such as the Daily Star.
What you need to know is thus and I urge you to read it properly in a timely manner in order to interpret to the fullest. It can only enhance your knowledge.
Enoch Powell was a very early member of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) founded in 1947 – an international neoliberal organisation composed of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders. The members saw the Society as an effort to interpret in modern times the fundamental principles of economic society as expressed by Western economists, political scientists and philosophers. It’s founders included Friedrich Hayek, Frank Knight, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler and Milton Friedman.
Eight members including Hayek, Stigler and Friedman have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
The Society advocates freedom of expression, free market economic policies and the political values of an open society.
The Society was a scholarly community arguing against collectivism, while not engaging in public relations or propaganda. The Society became part of an international think-tank.
In it’s “Statement of Arms”, 8 April 1947, the scholars were worried about the dangers faced by civilisation. Over large stretches of the Earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom had already disappeared. In others they are under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy. The position of the individual and the voluntary group are progressively undermined by extensions of arbitrary power. Even that most precious of possession of Western Man, freedom of thought and expression, is threatened by the spread of creeds which, claiming the privilege of tolerance when in the position of a minority, seek only to establish a position of power in which they can suppress and obliterate all views but their own.
The Society also stated that it is difficult to imagine a society in which freedom may be effectively preserved without the diffused power and initiative associated with private property and the competitive market, and found it desirable inter alia to study the following matters.
1. The analysis and exploration of the nature of the present crisis so as to bring home to others its essential moral and economic origins.
2. The redefinition of the functions of the state so as to distinguish more clearly between totalitarian and the liberal order.
3. Methods of re-establishing the rule of law and of assuring its development in such a manner that individuals and groups are not in a position to encroach upon the freedom of others and private rights are not allowed to become a basis of predatory power.
4. The possibility of establishing minimum standards by means not inimical to initiative and functioning of the market.
5. Methods of combating the misuse of history for the furtherance of creeds hostile to liberty.
6. The problem of the creation of an international order conducive to the safeguarding of peace and liberty and permitting the establishment of harmonious international economic relations.
The Society seeks to establish no meticulous and hampering orthodoxy, conduct propaganda or align with some party. It aims to facilitate the exchange of views, to contribute to the preservation and improvement of the free society.
Graeme Maxton (Secretary General of the Club of Rome) and Jorgen Randers (Norwegian academic, professor of climate strategy) note that it is no surprise that so many Mont Perelin Members have won a Nobel Prize in economic sciences, because the MPS helped to create that award, specifically to legitimise free-market thinking.
In 2014, Global Go To Think Tank Index Report is noted as having the MPS with the 9th out of 55, Best Think Tank Conference.
Powell’s speech was not a defamation of people, but a warning of the potential dangers. As a matter of fact the UK did indeed suffer Race Riots long before 1988.
Btw, Powell secured a support of at least 67% and at most 82% following his speech.
Islam has proved time and again to been the thwart of progressive civilisation.
As I said before, it’s not about the now, but the future, when our grandchildren are in the prime of their lives with maybe their own children, too. What then if the ingress of Islam has reached over 30% of the population and rising at speed? This is the basis of my objection. Or can’t you ever foresee any such problems at all? I very much doubt that and I don’t think that you are being entirely truthful. Your grandchildren may very well live to hate your generation for ruining their lives.
Oh yes the cooking pots. No Opher, you are hands down wrong. You simply cannot properly sanitise pots that are fixed into the table structure like that.
As I previously stated, these post that you have a picture of have two function.
I. for the storage of grains, pulses, all kinds of dried foods
2. heated below with charcoals for the baking of unleavened bread.
Stop being such a bloody numpty with this and learn something for a change. FFS.
Roger I have been around a number of volcanoes. I flew around St Helens a few days after it had erupted and saw the devastation. The speed of pyroclastic clouds are well documented.
I watched Enoch at the time and had big arguments with my Dad, who worked in Fleet Street, about it. The race riots that happened later were hardly on the scale that Enoch was prophesising.
Muslims and their intolerant attitudes certainly need addressing. I look at it pragmatically. They are much better integrated and secularised. That requires a set of coherent policies – something this government seems incapable of. The first stage would be to get rid of religious schools and madrassas – particularly the illegal unregistered ones (both Muslim and Jewish) – and to properly police and scrutinise mosques.
I’m not interested in whether you watched Enoch Powell at the time. I’d also doubt very much if you fully understood to any degree the conditions that he was describing. You’d be barely old enough to buy a beer.
What I wanted to know is whether today that you understand exactly where he was coming from with that speech. The sort of people he was surrounded by and the scale of implementation of ideas that he and his MPS colleagues engaged in.
Because I can determine from your reply that you’re still at the beginner’s entry at this juncture. You probably still believe that what he was saying was “racist”.
Understandably, he operated in an intellectual capacity well above average man’s general coherence and of course, many non-intellectuals were completely confused with the general pattern of his address and style of presentation. His gift for the power of language would also be an immediate obstacle for many. Hence, the inordinate sense of confusion by some 20-30%.
In simplistic form, what he was advising against was the forced co-habitation of too many diverse cultures in too small a space where ultimately the strongest group would prevail and stamp all over the others. We already know this happens within Islamic Culture and the hatred between different African tribes. Just because they travel further afield to live doesn’t mean to say that these problems don’t come with them. Liberals have an acute tendency to forget about this.
Were he to engage in the exact same example of address today, my fear would be for a far higher reactionary figure on the basis of the standard of the English language as taught today, where most young listeners would have been lost by paragraph two.
Whilst I’m not suggesting that equates to you, I do wonder if the MPS went over your head a bit.
Anyway, no point worrying about spilt milk, because you have enough information now to engage in finding out for yourself.
Btw, I have encountered this point too many times now in debates with others whenever Powell crops up. I always see the same old conjecture and I’ll ask “what about the MPS?” And all I ever get is silence. And then you find out that they never actually read the speech and everything they know (which is sfa) is all 3rd hand-me-downs. It’s a bloody joke.
I could name at least another 25 top subjects from down the decades with the exact same problems attached to them.
Why on earth adopt this tone as if only you can understand the oratory of one Enoch Powell. At 18 years old I was well able to understand the content of his speech. Strip away the Virgil and you have a man who was frightened that the immigration of so many black immigrants into the country spelt the end for the culture he stood. Well in one sense it did. But that was very much for the better. The repressed culture of the 1950s from which Enoch sprang was not one I admire. My father was part of that and there was a lot of it that stank, the arrogance of empire with its smug superiority, the implicit racism, the stifled culture. It was repressive, conservative and boring. Enoch foresaw conflict on a big scale and the subjugation of the white race. He predicted that in twenty years (by 1988) there would be civil war, blood on the rivers and the black man dominating. He did in speech at a time when there was hysteria and dire predictions. Society was inherently racist. He only served to legitimise the fears.
Those fears came to nothing. One cannot equate the minor race riots with the bloodbath he was predicting. We evolved a far superior multicultural society that was much freer, more fun-loving and more outward looking. We lost that stiff upper lip and uptightness. A far superior country altogether. Yet we retained our sense of identity and our immigrant population largely adopted British aspirations.
Once again we are in the throes of hysteria over Muslims that is being enhanced and stirred up by the likes of Tommy Robinson. We are all thoroughly aware of the problems with Muslims. But I am of the same opinion now as I was back then – the immigrants will be secularised and integrated if we play our cards right.
Now kindly don’t treat me like an idiot because I do not share the same fear as you. I do not like Islam, religion or theocracies. I think the rapists need locking up and the terrorists hunting down. I think Wahabism needs making illegal and the mosques policed for radicalisation. It would greatly help if we stopped bombing their countries and creating hatred.
It’s not a tone, but words that question. If you cannot tolerate a question, then do not make a statement. Do not make unsupported statements.
Again you seem to have categorically failed to have read the supporting piece as included above earlier.
For you to suggest that Powell was frightened is ludicrous. He was giving an intellectual account on cause and effect. That’s all. You were given sufficient information as to what he was making example of and it went over your head and your switch back into being that 18 year old again and repeat today what you thought you heard then. He was stating what was obvious to him, not necessarily the man on the street or the teenage latent school boy.
Not blood in the rivers Opher. FFS, but rivers of blood on the streets. You can’t even recite correctly the fundamental basis of the speech itself. WTF?
Then you go on to describe that he sprang from a repressed culture. Really? As a front load member of the MPS? A repressed culture? These people were planning how the world should be run and you think that’s a repressed culture?
That’s quite an incredible statement to make.
This proves that you did not even read the piece and you are still that very same semi-educated latent 18 year old schoolboy.
Nothing you can tell me will ever convince me that you have mentally moved one jot forward here. You can’t talk the walk.
For you to still think that he only served to legitimise public fears is false.
There had been many public meetings all over England with questioning why immigration was at the levels it was at. His constituency in Wolverhampton had expressed particular concerns. You have to remember that the people had never seen the likes of it before and didn’t fully understand it. In actual fact, following Powell’s speech, the government did dramatically cut down on “guest immigration”. They had already reached the required quota anyway. What Powell was doing was basically warning what could happen were the system overloaded.
Some areas have been over run by one stronger group over another. Luton, Bradford, Burnley being strong examples.
We have overload today. We have an endemically overloaded housing shortage and similar overload on the NHS and public services. Which is exactly as expected will happen when things are not planned or controlled.
It really wasn’t difficult to assimilate the West Indian community. They respect their women, they are Christian, they engage in the same social interests, they enjoy drinking, music and dancing, so no difficulties there and they speak and read English.
They are the polar opposite to Muslims.
There is a big difference between guest immigration and migrant or economic immigration. They are not the same thing.
You talk of a much freer multicultural society that we are all the more better off with having. Did you ever notice the prison ratios for blacks? The unemployment ratios for blacks? The crime rate levels today for black youths? The results are a disaster.
Had we known what was in store we very probably wouldn’t have touched it.
Yet you will go to prison for three months instantly were you to criticise a Muslim for being a Muslim in a public place, Your freedom of speech and expression has been eroded and removed from you. Don’t talk such nonsense. Please.
I and millions of others could not care less for Muslims and all the baggage crap they bring with them. They really don’t need to come here at all but because we have one of the most generous welfare benefit systems in the world, we are an obvious target and they’ve dumped themselves upon us with great style playing the victim and oppressed card to the max hilt. The liberals spoon feed this bullshit and then the eight grandmothers rock up with all the cousins, too.
We now have 1400 and counting Mosques. This isn’t immigration, it’s an invasion.
Opher, we have never bombed Pakistan or Bangla-Desh. Pakistan has bombed Bangla-Desh, but not us. We also have never bombed Somalia or Nigeria. In fact we have very few Iraqis or Afghanis living here. Also very few Syrians.
We don’t tend to immigrate those from countries we have had cause to war with.
How can Wahabism be made illegal when it is the ruling Muslim class within the 1.7 billion Muslims on the planet? What would that do with our relationship with Saudi Arabia?
We cannot afford to engage in such a luxurious desire until we have a substitute for oil.
Of course Enoch was in fear. He thought our culture was being usurped. Of course he came from a repressed culture. Britain in the fifties was an uptight repressed culture. It was hypocritical and afraid to let its hair down. My dad was part of that. Enoch represented it.
It was the sixties that liberalised it all.
Yes blacks are disproportionally in prison. It would be interesting to look into why that is.
I do not disagree that we have had immigration running at too high a level. It has created no end of stress.
Fundamentalist Muslims are a different kettle of fish. I don’t doubt that. We want rid of their garbage. But it is not all Muslims and what has happened has served to radicalise more and more of them.
We might not have bombed Pakistan but we’ve bombed next door to them and they are involved. We’ve bombed nearly everywhere else.
Obviously we should either put pressure on Saudi to change its attitude to extremism or break ties with it. That brand of fundamentalism should be banned in Britain and the imams that spout it silenced. It needs to be declared a terrorist doctrine.
Opher, you must understand the difference between issuing a guidance warning and fear. Fear is derived from a direct and immediate threat. Guidance warning is governed by understanding, facts and figures, theory and philosophy.
You still don’t understand Powell despite all the information. He spent most of his life designing how society would be best served and the optimum conditions required for its progressive existence. Yet you regard that as a “repressed culture”!
You really haven’t learned anything at all.
That’s quite sad really. You must have been a real struggle to educate and certainly to talk to as a youth, particularly being so blinkered and myopic.
You must have been particularly easy to mould by simply feeding a continuous stream of consciousness. It all fits into place now and I can readily see what I am dealing with.
Tell me Opher, what was/is the MPS? And what did it do?
I fail to understand why you can’t understand that the culture that Enoch came from was the repressed culture of the pre-sixties. What is hard to understand? Enoch was a product of that society and he was full of fear at the liberalism and immigration. He got it hopelessly wrong in one way. There was no blood in the street. He got it right in that it signalled the end of the monocultural, repressed culture he was part of. It got much better.
I have no idea what you mean by MPS why don’t you elucidate instead of trying for this one-upmanship all the time as if that gives your opinions more credence. It doesn’t.
Opher, Stuth, this is hard work. I knew you didn’t bother to read anything.
That’s your problem. You have an acute inability to digest any new information.
You operate on a very childish level where you have to like the person to accept anything of what they say. I don’t particularly like you because of your myopic views on a number of things, but I still take on what you have to say.
That’s proved by the manner in which I reply because I pretty much cover nearly every single point.
You don’t. You read the first few words and dive in feet first.
It doesn’t make for debate.
I’ve mentioned the MPS several times and you never so much as mentioned them, which led me to conclude and accurately so that you hadn’t in fact read my post.
The MPS is the Mont Pelerin Society as detailed within my post of June 7th at 12:16 PM. It’s all explained what it was and what they did.
They designed the way the world interacts on many levels, be it economically, socially, philosophically, etc., etc.
And you still rabbit on like you’re back to that silly 18 years old kid that you were who barely knew anything about anything.
I really don’t get you.
I’m sure the MPS rocked the world.
Indeed they did as we are now living with the auspices of their good works.
Didn’t doo too good then!
You’re alive, free of diseases, with ample food, clean water, weather proof house, surrounded by infrastructure, transportation, at peace from warring invaders, etc.
Think about it and be thankful that you don’t live on the western coast of Africa.
You don’t know you’re fucking born, matey.
The desire of all people is to be free to do as they please and the best way to fulfill that desire whatever their origin is money. The influx of different races and creeds into the UK is solely because the country is rich and full of opportunity compared to their countries of origin. Christianity has been modernised far more than Islam we now have same sex marriage and gay Bishops . This has taken place as society itself has changed and you can now choose what sex you wish to be. The greatest change has taken place in rich western democracies and it is only a question of time before Islam follows Christianity. Technology has opened the flood gates and the world wants it as fast as possible , we now have 300 million middle class Chinese.
I hope you are right. Christianity had an enlightenment that separated church and state but Islam never has. Hopefully they will become more secularised just like has happened with Christians.
Have you forgotten the great Ataturk who was a secularist and the Father of the Turks , sadly the country has degenerated since then but it will rise again and shake off the oppressive nature of Islam. History always takes two steps forward and one step back , the battle for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia is already making progress. It is not in the nature of man to endure endless suppression whether he is religious or not.
bfg – let us hope that you are right and that freedom and human rights will once again be prevalent in both Turkey and Saudi. I’m all for secularism. I can see there is a lot of resistance against oppression. I hope they win through.
Let me give you a subtle hint Opher.
I was born in Egypt, because of my dad’s job and we lived there until I was 11 and it was time for secondary school. I’ve eaten more street baked breads than you’ve had good night’s sleep.
That sounds interesting. Egypt is a very different experience.
We were based in Cairo – not surprisingly, for dad’s job, but got to see a lot of the country. Of course, this was decades ago when it was quite a culturally rich city, long before the force of Islam as it’s represented today in the current corrupt government. It’s turned into a much more volatile one-dimensional situation with multiple different Islamic factions all vying for position and power over one another. It’s a cauldron of a blood bath. Quite honestly the most barbaric and viciously dangerous peoples you could ever meet. I wouldn’t trust them with yesterday’s newspaper.
My life back then as a child would never be possible today. Today I’d probably be kidnapped going to or back from school. Fingers and ears thrown through parent’s house windows etc.
You have to understand just how much the Muslim leaderships all over the world hate us. It’s not about the guy you might see down your local paper shop etc, or maybe even some nice self-assuming very moderate local MP, but the people who run things from their Iman’s and upwards to Islamic Council people. You will never see them or know them. But trust me, they hate our guts and they are slowly and surely making sure that they get what they can get from us at every turn of the screw as they build up for the eventual big take-over of our lands. They already have one foot in our graves.
To be brutally honest, our only protection is to get them to leave. Not an instantly popular idea I know. But the only long term answer.
I am not surprised that many of them hate us after what they’ve been put through. I am equally sure that there are those plotting to kill us and take over. But frankly they haven’t got a hope in hell. The majority of Muslims do not think that way and just want to bring their families up in peace. The nutters need locking up or booting out. I am not for conflict I am for integration.
Yes, many Muslims do just want to bring up their families. That’s all too true as they are the peaceful moderates, the silent majority.
Sadly, they are not the 20% of hard boiled shouters of hate that are calling the shots and running things. That 20% are the problem. They hate us and wish to destroy our way of life. The Islamic Caliphate is their mission statement, their only agenda. These are the people who talk in psychobabble such as “never trust any man without a fistful of beard” and such nonsense. Sharia Law is their mantra.
We’ve got to the stage where we can recognise them a mile off and quite why we’re not rounding them all up for instant summarily expulsion and flown back home is terribly disappointing. I’d be much happier were I to witness hundreds and hundreds of plane loads stuffed full of them on the Heathrow runways awaiting take off. A pipe dream, I know.
Well I’m all for booting out the nutters. If they speak hate then they should be booted out.
Multicultural societies are the future whether we, the white minority on our planet, like it or not. Instead of fomenting hate and violence, we had better be working our asses off to help immigrants integrate and create societies that are as harmonious as possible. in addition, Western governments should be working to improve the living conditions in the developing world, thereby limiting the need for mass migrations of people seeking to escape poverty and war. It won’t be easy or happen quickly, but based on demographic trends, we truly have no choice.
Henry – at last some sense and realism. Instead of Canute trying to hold back the tide we’ve got to be working out ways of integrating and creating harmony. You’re right about limiting the need for mass migration too. Instead of fermenting war, allowing poverty and population growth. We should be creating a worldwide culture of full employment and human rights.
I’m right with you Henry.
Great article Opher! We really like the way you present such a balanced perspective on this discussion. There are some legitimate concerns underlying some people’s Islamophobia, however it is clear that more education about and contact with Muslims can only help to reduce prejudice.
This is an interesting discussion piece, commenting on ways to reduce Islamophobia, that I think you would really appreciate: https://matteovergani.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/how-do-we-reduce-islamophobia-and-prejudice-against-muslims-in-australia-new-research-evidence/comment-page-1/#comment-45
-GR
Thank you. I’m glad you found it balanced. I agree – more education and more contact. I would like to see much more integration.
I will certainly read the article you have attached. Thank you.