Immigration and Racism in Britain and USA

Quote:

Jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has been told to pay back more than £1m in legal aid spent defending him against race-hate charges.

bbc

she's woman now nimh. Old enough to know her own mind. Or would be had the poor kid not been brainwashed by Islam.

0 Replies

Steve 41oo wrote:

she's woman now nimh.

She's twelve!

But yes, I agree that she's old enough that she should be allowed to decide with which parent she would like to live.

Unfortunately, thats not how its going. And the British press have played their role in the fiasco, with their premature witchhunts (oh, girl has gone to live with her father and siblings in, gasp, Pakistan! She must have been kidnapped by them evil Muslim fundies and brainwashed!)

0 Replies

BBC wrote:

The jury heard that one order for hydrogen peroxide from Pak Cosmetics in Finsbury Park, north London, was so large that the manufacturing company had to make a new batch.

Mr Yahya is accused of helping to plan the alleged attacks while the others are all said to have set out on 21 July 2005 to carry out suicide bombings as part of an "extremist Muslim plot".

Interesting that. A Muslim plot. Surely thats a racist thing to say? and in a court of law dear dear.

0 Replies

"Muslim" refers not to race, but to religion.

0 Replies

Steve 41oo wrote:

Interesting that. A Muslim plot. Surely thats a racist thing to say? and in a court of law dear dear.

I have no idea what your point is. And I have no problem with the BBC's wording. An "extremist Muslim plot" = a plot by extremist Muslims. Which is what it was.

0 Replies

McTag wrote:

"Muslim" refers not to race, but to religion.

Well of course you are right. And I was being deliberately provocative. But it does seem that singling out for criticism a person's choice of religion, football team or sock colour is tantamount to racism in 2007.

0 Replies

Steve 41oo wrote:

But it does seem that singling out for criticism a person's choice of religion, football team or sock colour is tantamount to racism in 2007.

Except even that is not, of course, what the BBC item did. Why would one pretend that the article read,

Quote:

"as part of a "Muslim plot"

rather than, as it actually did,

Quote:

"as part of an "extremist Muslim plot".

?

It seems the BBC, at least, is perfectly able to still make the distinction.

It doesnt, therefore, lend itself for a "they do it too" justification for those who do think that singling out people for criticism just because they are Muslim is the same thing, and as wholly logical and reasonable a thing, as citicizing extremist Muslims.

0 Replies

I'm going through this Notepad file with old news items, that I had, at one point, still wanted to process for both my work + for A2K. Found the item below for this thread.

Can I just remark that there's two things here that strike me as improbably stupid, in a "wouldnt even happen in Holland (at least I bloody well hope not)" way?

1) Having your detainment centres for foreign criminals as well as illegal immigrants and failed asylum-seekers run by a private company;
2) throwing these two groups together in one place.

Quote:

Riots wreck immigrant detention centre

November 30, 2006
The Times

Summary:

Quote:

Prison officers in full riot gear were battling to regain control of Britain's largest immigration centre after more than 18 hours of rioting, as an emergency evacuation of a "majority" of the 482 inmates began.

The trouble is understood have been erupted when a custody officer switched off a television broadcasting details of a critical report on the centre, which is run by Kalyx, a subsidiary of Sodexho, by the Chief Inspector of Prisons. Ms Owers said her report was the poorest ever on a removal centre. Many of the rules and systems would have been overcontrolling in a prison, let alone a removal centre'.

Furniture, lavatory and bathroom facilities were wrecked and fires lit. The director-general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate accused those behind the disturbances of plotting to prevent the Government deporting foreign criminals and immigration detainees held at the centre.

The centre holds a mixture of detainees. One third are foreign national criminals awaiting deportation and the remainder are immigration detainees facing removal from Britain.

0 Replies

nimh wrote:

Steve 41oo wrote:
But it does seem that singling out for criticism a person's choice of religion, football team or sock colour is tantamount to racism in 2007.

Except even that is not, of course, what the BBC item did. Why would one pretend that the article read,

Quote:
"as part of a "Muslim plot"

rather than, as it actually did,

Quote:
"as part of an "extremist Muslim plot".

?

It seems the BBC, at least, is perfectly able to still make the distinction.

It doesnt, therefore, lend itself for a "they do it too" justification for those who do think that singling out people for criticism just because they are Muslim is the same thing, and as wholly logical and reasonable a thing, as citicizing extremist Muslims.

I was just surprised they used the word Muslim at all. I thought the argument ran that terrorism was just terrorism and that use of the word Muslim is unnecessary at best, and at worst racist, even if its qualified by the word "extremist".

0 Replies

Steve 41oo wrote:

I was just surprised they used the word Muslim at all. I thought the argument ran that terrorism was just terrorism and that use of the word Muslim is unnecessary at best, and at worst racist, even if its qualified by the word "extremist".

Either you have different informations or I don't get your irony.
(Your National Statistic Office stil says that "Muslims are the largest non-Christian religious group in the UK".)

0 Replies

OK I'm being taken to task here for deliberately blurring the distinction between Muslim and extremist Muslim. But where do we draw that distinction? I suppose you could say law abiding/non law abiding. But how do we get around the paradox that (in the case of the 7/7 bombers) it was their religious beliefs that motivated them to do what they did?

0 Replies

How did or do you do with Roman Catholics? Medium terrorists are kind of nearly fine because they are in Parliament, others are terrorists because they are members of IRA and some are juts ... well, Catholics?

And Hindus are extremely fine when they bomb Muslim villages in Asia?

0 Replies

Yeah I'd say, like Walter, that after decades of Northern Ireland violence the British should be as capable of making such distinctions as anyone.

0 Replies

Didnt know about this magazine yet, looks good. This article is by far the most exciting of what they have to offer, and doesnt come up with exactly earth-shocking findings ("Overall, then, while the differences are by no means striking, there is some evidence to suggest attitudes to migrants and minorities in Scotland are rather more positive than in England"), but still, interesting enough.

Quote:

Distinctly different

15 January 2007
Catalyst

Summary:

Quote:

The context within which issues related to migrants and minorities are debated in Scotland differs from other parts of Britain. Ross Bond reviews policies and survey results, and finds that there is some evidence to suggest attitudes to migrants and minorities in Scotland are rather more positive than in England.

0 Replies

Steve 41oo wrote:

I was just surprised they used the word Muslim at all. I thought the argument ran that terrorism was just terrorism and that use of the word Muslim is unnecessary at best, and at worst racist, even if its qualified by the word "extremist".

Straw man. I usually figure in your descriptions as something like the worst in multicultural apologism, and even I have hardly ever heard this argued.

"The Muslim terrorist M.D." is dubious yeah, like "the Afro-Caribbean criminal B.A." -- but even at the minority media organisation I worked for, noone would object against "the Muslim extremist terrorist", the "Muslim fundamentalist terror group", etc.

0 Replies

Walter Hinteler wrote:

How did or do you do with Roman Catholics? Medium terrorists are kind of nearly fine because they are in Parliament, others are terrorists because they are members of IRA and some are juts ... well, Catholics?

And Hindus are extremely fine when they bomb Muslim villages in Asia?

Roman Catholics do not let off bombs in the name of Jesus, as far as I know. Moreover one can only have respect for the central tenets of the Christian faith...forgiveness, love one's enemy, turn the other cheek etc. I know its an impossibly high standard to live up to, but I dont seem to hear similiar messages coming from within Islam. I would say the situation in N Ireland was not primarily religious, although the communities divided along religious lines. The IRA were originally marxist, fighting for a unified socialist workers republic. It was a struggle for control of all the territory of the island of Ireland, specifically to kick out the British who had been the dominant group for 300+ years. Catholics in the north experienced appalling discrimination in housing, jobs etc. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed to fight for equal rights and modelled on the black struggle for equality in the USA. They were of course mainly catholic but those who took the fight further and engaged in violence with IRA/PIRA/INLA and other republican groups were not inspired to do so primarily by religious ideals, which seems to be the case with Islamic terrorism.

0 Replies

Well Catholic Guy Fawkes did try to blow up James I and most of Parliament. However, I do agree with the main points you make.

There was a radical Marxist or Nihilist element in the IRA, but it was never more than a small segment for its most radical members. Even then its political program was no more radical than that of the British Labor party. It was a minor component of the whole, though its relative size grew after the split in the civil war. The truth was most Irishmen just wanted the same political freedoms long enjoyed by Englishmen, The revolution was at times bloody, but there was no retribution or injustice inflicted on the losing side after independence.

I agree with Steve that there does seem to be something in the Moslem culture & governance that encourages religious zealotry and intolerance. These things are certainly not unique to Islam, but they do seem to be far more present in it than any other major faith (if it can be truthfully said that there is any remaining serious religious faith in the Western world).

I believe all of this has been amplified by their collective failure to keep up with the West in the modern world, and by the unhappy (for Moslems) experience of European colonialism over the last century or so,

0 Replies

Zealotry has no name or religion. It's people with belief systems that do not change over generations even while contradictory information becomes available.

0 Replies

georgeob1 wrote:

...and by the unhappy (for Moslems) experience of European colonialism over the last century or so,

The usual scapegoat, he, George? Twisted Evil

0 Replies

georgeob1 wrote:

Well Catholic Guy Fawkes did try to blow up James I and most of Parliament.

I didnt think Walter wanted to go back that far. But even so, was this plot inspired by religion, or by a desire to assert Papal authority in England? In actual fact the Gunpowder plot was thoroughly penetrated from the outset. They allowed it to go well down the path into execution, then arrested Guy and his crew. The Government made good use of the reaction against the plotters, which was always the object of the excercise.

0 Replies

Immigration and Racism in Britain and USA

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know