Islamophia

[cromwell]

The media's current obsession.

There was a professor interviewed from York this morning on the news. He was going on about how serious Islamophobia is, how much of it there is.

People like him seem to think that Islamophobia appeared out of a clear blue sky!

Question - why is there no Hinduphobia? Or Sikhophobia?

Or is just asking that question "hate speech"?

I'm afraid that all this talk of cracking down on extremism will just mean that you can't say anything controversial about Islam, whether it actually is truthful or not. And if you deny truth you are in denial of reality; is that what the authorities want?

[medsec222]

Was the attack on innocent people coming from a Mosque a terrorist attack or a hate crime. I would have thought the latter. Vile though it was, should it be classed as a terrorist attack. It has been called a terrorist attack by the media, so that it what it will be called from now on. I had to think a bit before posting this in case it sounded racist. It is not, as I have every sympathy for the people who were injured by this maniac and the dignified way the Iman protected him until the police arrived.

[miasmum]

We were saying exactly the same Medsec, it wasn't a terrorist attack. And somehow, and again I have thought about saying this in case it comes out wrong, but somehow calling it a terrorist attack glamorises it to the wrong people.

Its that old saying one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. But one nutter with a head full of hate, is one nutter with a head full of hate

[Suff]

In fact if most British people actually knew how Islam works in the UK, how women are viewed in their society, how their religion views the LGBT society and how their religion mandates, without any insight or reflection, that these values are absolute; then they would believe that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the vast raft of rights and freedoms which have been granted the people of the UK in the last 50 years.

Should that ever come to light, then "Islamophobia" would not just be a word. It would be a reality in the core of the UK.

Perhaps, in some ways, it is better that most of the people of the UK don't know the reality of it.

A very good friend of Mrs S, sadly now deceased of cancer, used to be hugely Liberal, hugely for human rights and often chided Mrs S when she had a minor rant on the "intransigence" of Islam.

That good friend, in an attempt to "prove" her friend wrong, found that one of the Mosques in Dundee was having an open day. She decided to go. Now to set the scene this was a lady in her late 50's, slightly spastic and due to age and disability, condemned to a wheelchair for anything other than getting around the home.

So she arrives at the Mosque and is "shown" around. Being the extremely intelligent lady she was, she asked a _lot_ of pointed questions and received the most incredible patronisation in response.

She called Mrs S at the end of the day of that visit. Her words were simple. "I don't care who they are or what they want, I just want to know when they are leaving...."

Ignorance is bliss as they say!

[miasmum]

I worked for 2 years in a town centre school. We had a lot of Bangladeshi children. The mothers were not allowed to learn to speak English, they brought the children in, refused to make eye contact with anyone other than the other Bangladeshi mothers. We had a little boy, who had been through our nursery and then when he hit school age, we discovered he had a twin sister. She was almost feral. She had never been allowed to go to nursery, or to mix with other children. Education for girls is considered worthless. To be honest they are not that much more interested in the boys, except they want them to learn English to work in the family restaurants and shops. They never attended parents evening, or any of the school activities.

[Workingman]

I do not know which parts of the UK you are referring to Suff, maybe the more rural ones or the picture postcard villages, but in the large towns and cities we are very well aware of Islam and what it entails - we have lived if for decades.

We are in an overwhelming majority yet we see Islam daily, because its followers want us to see and hear them; at the doctors, in the supermarkets, on the buses and in our schools. They might well be a small minority but they make their presence felt by being organised and by demanding to be put first in every aspect of their and our lives. Yet this very visible manifestation of Islam suddenly becomes ever so invisible when followers of the religion of peace carry out their very real terrorist attacks.

Islamophobia is on the rise, not because of the attitudes of the British people, but by the very acts of Islam's followers, act which run counter to all we hold dear. I have little sympathy.

As fort the van attack, Shell has it right, one nutter with a head full of hate, is one nutter with a head full of hate and he should not be thought of as anything else.

[TheOstrich]

We are in an overwhelming majority yet we see Islam daily, because its followers want us to see and hear them; at the doctors, in the supermarkets, on the buses and in our schools. They might well be a small minority but they make their presence felt by being organised and by demanding to be put first in every aspect of their and our lives.

I find this very interesting.

Back in the early 70's when I started working as an accountancy clerk in Birmingham, one of my co-workers was a certain Mr Dar. He was slightly older than the rest of us lads, an Anglicised Pakistani whose family had Glasgow connections from memory. He was charming, urbane, suave even, good-humoured, and quietly observed the Ramadan fast (no lunchtime pasties from Woolies over the road). Another was a certain Mr. Haji-Rousseau, from a Cypriot family IIRC; a funny guy, inveterate lunchtime card gambler for pennies, and I believe the Haji signified he'd done the family pilgrimage to Mecca. Both great colleagues, and in the summer we often played tennis together on the public courts in Cannon Hill Park after work. Neither pushed their religion in any way.

The thing is, fast forward to 21st century Birmingham, I just simply cannot equate these guys with the sullen, suspicious, in-bred inner-city communities I've rubbed up against over the last 15 years or so. That uncomfortable feeling that you are an outsider in your own city.

Where we are today is entirely the fault of unfettered immigration (thank you Blair) and a complete lack of desire by both sides of the community to want to integrate. These have played a major role in raising suspicions, stoking Islamophobia and all the liberal-leftie-luvvie Brendan Cox initiatives in the world will never change that.

[Suff]

To be absolutely scrupulously fair, MM, the Bangladeshi's at Mrs S' School in Scotland allowed their girls to join in everything, the women spoke English and when any religious festival was on the restaurant sent in dishes that they would eat for the other children to try.

However, on the other side, when each of the girls reached 13, they were sent to Bangladesh for the first meeting with their arranged husband....

I have a Bangla friend, very educated, all his children in school and he expects his daughters to get degrees. All very good. Then I was discussing with him about family and he was relating to me about his sister and the wastrel she wanted to marry. I replied that at 25 she was an adult and that she could make her own mind up surely. To which he replied, with some heat, "now that my father is gone I am the head of the household and I will have the final say in who my sister marries". He meant it and as she was "at home" in Bangladesh, he could enforce it.

If you want to be multicultural, you need to understand the cultures you are making way for and what their values are. It's best that way. Lest you bring in something unacceptable and then champion it under multiculturalism..

[Suff]

WM, Dundee is the 3rd largest city in Scotland..

[Workingman]

WM, Dundee is the 3rd largest city in Scotland..

So, if it is representative of the whole of the UK people do know what Islam is all about.

Back in the early 70's...

Yes, I remember those days, and the people. We were different, but we got along, so the outlook of the friend of Mrs S is understandable.

Islam was around, but it was not the Islam we now see. We had the Palestinian thing. the six day war, the Yom Kippur war, even the falling of the Shah in Iran, but it was nothing like today. It was still benign in the West.

I worked in the ME; Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi in the 1980s and 90s and never felt safer, anywhere, so what changed?

Was it the Iran/Iraq war? Was it Saddam? The Arab Spring? I have no idea, but radical Islam now exits, and it is in our midst, in Bradford, Birmingham, Oldham. Rotherham. Rochdale, Keighley, London.... indeed any town with a Moslem population.

We either deal with it or accept the consequences. Experts calling us all out as *Islamophobes*, as though we are the evil ones, will not work any more.