“British Shift on Muslims Is Ominous”

John Vinocur in today’s International Herald Tribune, the international edition of The New York Times:

Like Mr. Sarkozy and Mrs. Merkel in their assertions of the death of multiculturalism — not disputed here — the prime minister [Britain’s David Cameron] has offered nothing of sufficient size and impact to fill its notional space and deal with the scale of the problem of Muslim immigration. A groundbreaking, daring trade of an affirmative action program packed with jobs in exchange for a zero-tolerance regime combating all manifestations of parallel societies? Not now, not here, no way.

Vincor’s piece is generally fine, till you get to the final para above, which seems to argue for massive government intervention to shovel money at Muslims to solve the problem of Muslim alienation in the UK. (my emphasis).

There are two problems with this. 
First the assumption that it’s just a problem of money and jobs.  But the connection between terrorisms/extremism and poverty is an inverse one: that is, the average extremist Islamist is more educated and more wealthy than the average.  See SuperFreakonomics.

Also note that there are many other groups who are poor and disadvantaged and who don’t turn to blowing people up in response. The alienation amongst British Muslims is more likely a result of the doctrines of Islam, and their “doctrine of enmity and hatred” which require Muslims to be separate from unbelievers.  So, the more “educated” they become, the more they know about the Koran and Hadith, the more pious they are, the more they will, of necessity be radical and separated.

Second, it would alienate even further the traditional British working class, who are now a distinctly ignored group.  The white working class – perhaps because they’re white – are left wondering where the “affirmative action program packed with jobs” is coming for them. It’s not, cause they don’t resort to violence to make their point.  But they might.

Article here. PDF here.