Only days before police and demonstrators clashed in ugly scenes outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, now converted to house asylum seekers, one of whom had allegedly sexually assaulted a local teenage girl, the thinktank British Future published its ‘State of Us’ report warning of a repeat of last summer’s riots unless ‘a tinderbox of long-term social pressures and grievances’ were addressed. Yet though the report acknowledges the scale of the problem and the urgent need for action (as, apparently, do some government ministers), it is wilfully blind to the underlying issues.
According to the report, which serves as ‘a foundational input’ to the government’s newly launched Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion, chaired by Sajid Javid and John Cruddas, the UK is marked by ‘polarisation, declining political trust and economic pessimism’ exacerbated by residential segregation, concerns over illegal migration and asylum accommodation, ‘widespread anti-Muslim prejudice’, and ‘broader racism’ in society. The danger is that ‘alleged sexual assaults’ will act as ‘flashpoints’ for unrest, particularly when ‘tensions are stoked by far-right actors’ and ‘far-right influencers’ using misinformation ‘to amplify concerns about women’s safety and stereotype migrants and ethnic or faith minority groups’. Therefore, government should work towards a better ‘balance’ on immigration and asylum, ensure social media platforms are purged of racism and hate, and foster ‘unifying narratives of community and cohesion’.
Absent, however, is any mention of the profound sense of cultural loss among the indigenous population – the sense of being ‘a stranger in your own country’ – caused by unprecedented demographic change, which has seen the white British population of London decline from 87 to 37 per cent in two generations; or the problem of migrant crime, recently highlighted by the revelation that foreign nationals are responsible for almost a quarter of all sex crimes; or the growing sense that mass immigration and hyper-diversity are contributing to social disintegration and lawlessness, of which the current epidemic in shoplifting is just one symptom. Nor is there any recognition that the ideology of diversity and inclusion that has captured the post-Marxist liberal left and been rammed down our throats by our institutions and mainstream media for decades – the fantasy of a multicultural utopia from which the native population and their culture have been banished – might constitute part of the problem.
The elephant in the room in all this is Islam, any criticism of which is quickly branded ‘Islamophobic’ and shut down. Islam is, of course, one of the world’s great religions. The Islamic Renaissance or Golden Age saw a remarkable flourishing of the arts and sciences, and it had a profound influence on Western civilization. Many in the West have found spiritual inspiration in its teachings, especially those of its mystic branch, Sufism. But the report’s authors’ fanatical allegiance to diversity theology prevents them from acknowledging that concerns and fears relating to Islam, especially in its conservative, fundamentalist or ‘Islamist’ form, are not irrational but fully justified.
For example, they seem to have forgotten that Britain was subject not long ago to a spate of appalling terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists who, as often as not, cried ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is the greatest’) as they detonated their explosives. Or that the prohibition on blasphemy (more than half of British Muslims support the introduction of blasphemy laws) is antithetical to our tradition of free speech – something that Salman Rushdie, the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, and countless others currently in hiding or under police protection have discovered to their cost. Or that the views of many Muslims on homosexuality (more than half think it should be made illegal) are widely regarded as abhorrent. Or that the ubiquity of non-stunned halal meat, now the norm in many schools, causes offence in a nation that abhors cruelty to animals. Or that the sight of growing numbers of women dressed in the abaya or the burka causes unease in a secular society where it is not the custom to cover women from head to toe to preserve their modesty, nor to subject them to ‘moral policing’ or ‘honour’ based violence if they do not. Or that the teaching of art, music, dance and sport, especially to Muslim girls, is causing growing problems in schools and colleges. Or that living apart in parallel communities under de facto Sharia law is not a recipe for integration and social cohesion. Or that sermons by imams preaching Jihad and hatred against Jews are commonplace. Or that Jews can no longer safely walk our streets. Or that the fear of inflaming ‘community tensions’ and of being branded ‘Islamophobic’ led the police and the authorities to systematically cover up the mass rape of thousands of vulnerable white girls by gangs of predominately British Pakistani men – an issue that causes concern in the report primarily because it has led to ‘racist stereotypes’ of the British Pakistani community.
If all this has contributed to negative feelings towards Muslims and Islam, then this is hardly surprising. The brutal reality is that the mass immigration of Muslims to Britain, specifically those who hold conservative or fundamentalist views, which seems to be a growing majority, is perceived by much of the indigenous population as akin to an invasion that is transforming Britain out of all recognition.
Nowhere is this sense of creeping Islamification more evident than in the spread of mosques, and in the reactions that this evokes from the indigenous population. Take the proposed South Lakes Islamic Centre in Furness, Cumbria, which would serve local Muslim doctors and medical staff, and save them having to travel 50 miles to worship. What could be more reasonable? Demonstrators and petitioners (there were 70,000 signees) argue that the building would be ‘an absolute monstrosity’, ‘a total blot on the landscape’. Yet this area is not in the Lake District, as generally claimed, not especially scenic (there are even wind turbines lurking in the background), and it is difficult to imagine a comparable protest were the building to have some other purpose. No, the real objection – the one that cannot be expressed openly – is that local people see their area, the England of their ancestors, being invaded by an alien culture, whose ways are not their own. To put it crudely, the protestors wish to live in England – not in Pakistan. Moreover, it sticks in the craw that while local people who object to the building of a mosque are branded racist Islamophobes, including by their own MP, the persecution of Christians continues unabated in the Islamic world, notably in Pakistan, where forced conversions, abductions, sexual violence, and murders targeting Christians are commonplace. Where is the reciprocity?
Yes, the protestors are prejudiced, but their prejudice is legitimate: that in common with indigenous peoples everywhere, their preference is for their own culture, traditions, identity, loyalties, shared memories, and sense of being at home – all of which they sense is under threat as never before. In these circumstances, and with public confidence in the police shot to pieces, for the authorities to respond by censoring social media (the only platform on which people can freely speak their minds), threatening more hate crime prosecutions, framing a new catch-all definition of Islamophobia, and branding anti-migrant protestors ‘racist’ and ‘far right’, is indeed to set a match to the tinder.
