Another dopey article by the reliable dhimmi Roger Cohen. In this one he celebrates the fact that “Mohammed in its various spellings, is now the favourite name for newborn boys in the UK”. That is, that there is an increasing number of Muslims in the UK and this creates “churn, a wondrous thing…”. Cohen assumes, as do many with nary a scintilla of analysis, that more such immigration is necessarily a good thing, for it will bring “diversity” and “churn”.
A quick declaration here, lest I be thought to be a xenophobic, racist, bigoted anti-immigrant knuckle-dragger (heaven-help that). I have seen the benefits in my own country Australia, brought by successive waves of immigrants. I'm old enough to remember the anodyne fifties, when dining out meant a milk-bar, and then the rapid change brought about by multiculturalism, by vibrant heterodox communities. When I first came to Australia in the fifties, it happens that I could only speak Italian, and was put in a "migrants' class" to learn English, so I have some personal feel for the early immigrant experience.
All these changes, these contributions by immigrants, this "churn" if you will, through the sixties and up to today has immeasurably enriched Australia. So I've no issue on immigration, and not a skerrick of a thought that it should be racially based. Nor should immigration policy be faith-based. But it ought to be careful about the ideologies of potential immigrants. And indeed, in Australia we are careful about that, as far as I'm aware. So, for example, we do not allow those who are identified as Nazis. The thing about Islam is that it's more of an ideology than a religion. It is an "ideology" not on my say-so or my own biased or bigoted judgement. It is an ideology according to its own most authoritative spokesmen. It is a "whole of life" ideology, which rules every fact of ones life. Belief in the one god, Allah, is but a part of that ideology, but only a part. A much larger part is its hostility to many (indeed, most) of the values that we hold dear: free speech, equal rights of women and minorities, freedom of belief. If you doubt this, if you think that this hostility to our core values is but the province of a "minority of extremists", then read the Koran, read the Hadith (records of the sayings and actions of Muhammad, which have almost as much authority as the Koran) and read the Sira (the authorised biography of Muhammad) and read the classic manual of Islamic law ("The Reliance of the Traveller"). I have read all of these, and they're scary.
That Islam is inimical to freedom, to women’s rights, to the rights of minorities and non-Muslims; that it is a supremacist religion – the only “religion” in the world which mandates war against unbelievers – that it is stridently anti-Semitic and against freedom of speech, all these things, beyond dispute, are nonetheless ignored by Cohen.
All these changes, these contributions by immigrants, this "churn" if you will, through the sixties and up to today has immeasurably enriched Australia. So I've no issue on immigration, and not a skerrick of a thought that it should be racially based. Nor should immigration policy be faith-based. But it ought to be careful about the ideologies of potential immigrants. And indeed, in Australia we are careful about that, as far as I'm aware. So, for example, we do not allow those who are identified as Nazis. The thing about Islam is that it's more of an ideology than a religion. It is an "ideology" not on my say-so or my own biased or bigoted judgement. It is an ideology according to its own most authoritative spokesmen. It is a "whole of life" ideology, which rules every fact of ones life. Belief in the one god, Allah, is but a part of that ideology, but only a part. A much larger part is its hostility to many (indeed, most) of the values that we hold dear: free speech, equal rights of women and minorities, freedom of belief. If you doubt this, if you think that this hostility to our core values is but the province of a "minority of extremists", then read the Koran, read the Hadith (records of the sayings and actions of Muhammad, which have almost as much authority as the Koran) and read the Sira (the authorised biography of Muhammad) and read the classic manual of Islamic law ("The Reliance of the Traveller"). I have read all of these, and they're scary.
That Islam is inimical to freedom, to women’s rights, to the rights of minorities and non-Muslims; that it is a supremacist religion – the only “religion” in the world which mandates war against unbelievers – that it is stridently anti-Semitic and against freedom of speech, all these things, beyond dispute, are nonetheless ignored by Cohen.
I’ve been listening to a BBC Radio 4 series — how polarized America would benefit from a national broadcaster of this quality! — called “Five Guys named Mohammed,” conceived to mark the name’s first-place surge. The programs are a good antidote to the simplistic caricature that conflates Muslim with threat, and a useful barometer of an integration that is uneven, certainly, but ongoing.
The “simplistic caricature” is his, and the BBC show’s. For poll after poll shows that a large minority of UK Muslims – a majority in some polls – favours the imposition of Sharia in the UK. Are these the “moderate Muslims” we hear so much about? The ones that want to see a system of theocratic laws that do mandate the cutting off of hands and stoning of women? Oh, and killing for apostasy (see “Reliance of the Traveller” the classic manual of Islamic law). You don’t have to be strapping on a bomb-vest to be a danger to the hard-won rights of a western democracy.
In this context, the readiness of European Muslims, many bearing the Prophet’s name, to stand up for values of free speech assumes bridge-building importance. It reflects the experience of faith as practiced within a modern secular society.
I follow Islam issues closely, and I don’t know where is this “readiness of European Muslims… to stand up for values of free speech…”. If he means the likes of Tarik Ramadan, the Left’s favourite “moderate European Muslim” (see “Brother Tarik”), then he’s been taken in by that Swiss charlatan, and his unctuous prevarications: Islam is “against the killing of innocents” says Ramadan, but fails to mention – and gullible westerners like Cohen don’t know – that in Islam a non-Muslim is ipso facto not an innocent (see the Koran). Ramadan, in his sophistry, fails to denounce stoning of women, or to recognise the odious Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Is this the sort of European Muslim standing up for the values of free speech, in Cohen’s judgement?
Or there is the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the body representing the 56 Islamic countries in the world, is pushing the UN to pass a law banning the “defaming” of religion – read “Islam” –which would mean the criminalisation of any criticism of Islam.
Those bridges do not come easily. Britain has been riled in recent weeks by the conviction of Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, the ringleaders of a gang that raped and sexually abused several white girls aged between 12 and 18 in Derby.
The reaction of Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, was to say a problem exists with “Pakistani heritage men thinking it is O.K. to target white girls in this way.” He said they were “popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically” — so they seek the “easy meat” of white girls.
It was a neat — and explosive — argument. Vigorous debate has ensued. Racial slur? Courageous frankness? I don’t think Straw’s argument stands up to scrutiny of overall sex-crime patterns, but I do think Britain’s Muslim community needs to take a hard look at…
“I don’t think Straw’s argument stands up to scrutiny of overall sex-crime patterns…”.
What? Does Cohen know nothing of the UK police reports, which show that such Muslim on non-Muslim violence and rape is rampant? This is the case in all European countries – Sweden, Holland, France – which have substantial Muslim populations. The disproportionately high incidence of rape of non-Muslim women by Muslim males is a simple fact. Yet to Cohen – "one, two, three…. close my eyes!" – this "doesn’t stand up to scrutiny". This is an ipse dixit statement, with nothing to support it. Indeed, it does not itself stand up to scrutiny.
There’s a saying: “the plural of anecdote is ‘anecdotes’, not data”. That is, quoting a few nice-sounding stories does not tell the big picture. For the big picture you need data.
The data show that the more Islamic a country is, the fewer are its political rights and civil liberties. A tipping point percent for the beginning of the erosion of those liberties seems to be a bit above 6%, for Holland is the country with the highest percent of Muslims (6%) which still has a "perfect score" for civil and political liberties. The UK has 2.7%. Cohen would clearly -- and with nary a scintilla of analysis -- like to see this rise, for that would create the wonderful "churn" he craves. Craven man, himself.
I have done a chart of the relationship between political/civil rights and percentage of Muslim population, which you can see here.
By ROGER COHEN
LONDON — Goodbye Jack Smith, hello Mohammed Malik, model British subject. Mohammed, in its various spellings, is now the favorite name for newborn boys in the United Kingdom, edging out Oliver. Those named for the Prophet of Islam ride the Clapham omnibus.
Churn is a wondrous thing, grease in the wheels of vital societies able to adjust their self-images over time. But what to think of the Mohammedization of this murky isle?
Say Luton or Bradford, and the vision that leaps is that of the alienated Muslim radicalized by jihadist teaching and ready — like the Luton-incubated Stockholm bomber Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly — to blow himself up to kill the Western infidel. The London bombers of July 7, 2005, also set out from Luton.
These are potent images. Exclusion exists; its other face is danger. But so does a particular British elasticity that registers Mohammed and shrugs.
Having lived in France and Germany, I’m struck on returning to Britain after 30 years not by the hard lines hiving off immigrant Muslim communities as in those countries but by the relative fluidity that produces Faisal Islam, economic editor of the influential Channel 4 News, or Sajid Javid, a bus driver’s son and Tory MP.
British identity has proved more capacious than French or German, perhaps because, even before the legacy of empire, it had to absorb the English, the Scottish and the Welsh (as well as fail to absorb the majority of the Irish.) The variegated texture of London — projects full of immigrants hard by upscale housing — stands in stark contrast to ghettoized Paris.
I’ve been listening to a BBC Radio 4 series — how polarized America would benefit from a national broadcaster of this quality! — called “Five Guys named Mohammed,” conceived to mark the name’s first-place surge. The programs are a good antidote to the simplistic caricature that conflates Muslim with threat, and a useful barometer of an integration that is uneven, certainly, but ongoing.
There was Mohammed Yahya, Mozambique-born rapper and creator of a Muslim-Jewish band. Or Mohammed Anwar, of purring Scottish brogue, the manager of a Glasgow Muslim day care center, waxing lyrical about Damson Jam and the crush he once had on actress Diana Rigg (who didn’t?) and his 21-year-old daughter, who could do big things if she was not “so laid-back, it’s just unbelievable.” And there she was, more Scottish even than he, laughing over his premature hunt for a husband for her.
Or Muhammad Hasan, a bubbly Birmingham real-estate dealer in his mid-30s, explaining his Islamic investment theory: Because under Islam you cannot charge or pay interest, Muslim investors in his property deals have to take equity rather than lend money — and that spurs motivation.
Bent on business, Hasan has had little time to look for a wife who, in his mother’s view, “has to be a Muslim and from Pakistan and a Princess Diana clone!” He’s now sipping tea with potential spouses while his binocular-armed Mom observes.
Overall, these Mohammeds see themselves as British citizens, not Muslims in the United Kingdom. Their universes may be distinct, as in attitudes to marriage, but distinct in a way that, at best, complements rather than confronts. “There’s an upward mobility and optimism that is much higher than in continental Europe,” said Muddassar Ahmed, a 27-year-old college dropout and chief executive of Unitas, a public relations firm.
Ahmed is involved in the drafting of a letter by 50 British Muslim scholars denouncing Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the 26-year-old killer of Salman Taseer, the Punjab governor assassinated this month for denouncing Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws that prescribe the death sentence for anyone insulting Islam. Qadri, self-described “slave of the Prophet,” has been feted in Islamabad.
In this context, the readiness of European Muslims, many bearing the Prophet’s name, to stand up for values of free speech assumes bridge-building importance. It reflects the experience of faith as practiced within a modern secular society.
Those bridges do not come easily. Britain has been riled in recent weeks by the conviction of Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, the ringleaders of a gang that raped and sexually abused several white girls aged between 12 and 18 in Derby.
The reaction of Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, was to say a problem exists with “Pakistani heritage men thinking it is O.K. to target white girls in this way.” He said they were “popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically” — so they seek the “easy meat” of white girls.
It was a neat — and explosive — argument. Vigorous debate has ensued. Racial slur? Courageous frankness? I don’t think Straw’s argument stands up to scrutiny of overall sex-crime patterns, but I do think Britain’s Muslim community needs to take a hard look at repressive attitudes toward women. The debate is salutary.
There’s a Mohammed — in fact there are many — in Britain’s future. Oliver’s prospects look more dubious given the ties between the name’s popularity and the heady success of the chef Jamie Oliver — but that’s another story of positive British change.
