More on Demographics
If, like me, you like Mark Steyn, you'll like this.
If you don't, it's still an intersting and prescient read.
Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?
Is this question scaremongering? An overreaction? Or something we should think about with clarity and honesty?
The follies of multiculturalism for its own sake aren't discussed without the requisite meaningless drivel about tolerance. We are doing a disservice to ourselves and to those of non-traditional faiths, including fundamentalist Muslims who live here, by pretending differences in philosophies on how societies should be run, are excused under the guise of progressive lovey-dovey tolerance. Stoning women who have been raped and amputation instead of a fine are not facts of daily life that any Irish person would welcome.
Read Steyn's article - even you hate him.....
If you don't, it's still an intersting and prescient read.
Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?
Is this question scaremongering? An overreaction? Or something we should think about with clarity and honesty?
The follies of multiculturalism for its own sake aren't discussed without the requisite meaningless drivel about tolerance. We are doing a disservice to ourselves and to those of non-traditional faiths, including fundamentalist Muslims who live here, by pretending differences in philosophies on how societies should be run, are excused under the guise of progressive lovey-dovey tolerance. Stoning women who have been raped and amputation instead of a fine are not facts of daily life that any Irish person would welcome.
Read Steyn's article - even you hate him.....
Labels: Islam
posted by Auds | 00:24
7 Comments:
maybe we should ban condems again. we can out breed them. Maybe the catholic church was right all along.
Could have like war poster.
your country needs you not to wear a condem.
or
Are you using a condem. Because Mohammad is not.
Or maybe like us here they will eventually move out of the muslims churchs control. and imbrace demorcracy.
The politically correct part of me rebels at the part of me that's giggling.
The demographics don't bother me as such, it's more the idea that more and more of our citizens will be rebelling against the concepts of equality, democracy etc.
And there just doesn't seem to be any real dialogue about the kind of society we are/want to become and where Muslim fundamentalism fits in. The immediate reaction seems to be to accept all under the banner of reflex multiculturalism. The recent riots in Paris shows us that that approach just isn't good enough.
irish bloggers seem to be very active after midnight. Are we all up watching Big Brother sleeping? Or Ricky Gervais? (I'm not watching Big Brother - every entry in the last hour or so on irishblogs.ie seems to be about it!)
"The recent riots in Paris shows us that that approach just isn't good enough."
Auds,
that's rather simplistic to be honest. There were and are a number of issues surrounding what happened in Paris, which even as we speak are still being discussed and worked out. But I would venture to say that it was less the accepting every and anyone was the problem and more the concentration of of the most of those every and anyone into the most desperately poverty stricken strata of French society. I don't want to belabour this point but when you have a group of people who are a) poverty stricken b) invidiously discriminated against in society and c) no way of describing that discrimination because the French don't do stats based on ethnicity precisely because it is discriminatory, then you have do have a recipe for trouble. It's very facile to assume that the problems are solely linked to the population subset concerned being Muslim but it is not strictly accurate. Endemic poverty and lack of educational opportunity is are massive problems in the banlieux of France.
That being said, I don't much like Mark Steyn for a variety of reasons. The extract you have published is borderline sickening because to my mind, it dehumanises the Muslim community on a world level through its use of language, and frankly, I'd be willing to bet that only feeds into any stereotypes about Western civilisation that they have. I can't see that helping love or understanding.
The key point about multiculturalism is that it can work. The issue is that it is a two way process. All communities must show tolerance of the other. At the moment, in this particular case, I get the impression that on both sides, that tolerance is waning. In terms of fundamentalism, there is little difference between Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism and we should not restrict ourselves to criticising the former when the latter is equally destructive. Recall that in living memory in this country, while we didn't exactly stone rape victims, we did, to some extent, cast them out of society.
This is something that deserves more attention on my part in an entry, and I will consider it in greater detail when I've finished reading this: http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2070429903/171-1975256-1282657?%5Fencoding=UTF8
unfortunately winds, my french is very poor and am unable to figure out what that book is about. I do look forward to your post when you finish.
My point about Paris is simply that multiculturalism and tolerance is all fine and well until you get major clashes over very important things. Crime, punishment, equality, democracy, women's rights to name but a few.
I think your point about Christian fundamentalism being similar to Muslim fundamentalism is quite faectious - the most radical difference between the 2 schools is that unlike the Muslim one, the Christian one believes in the dignity and value of human life; perhaps too stridently at times, but remains the most important value that our society should be built on.
If you haven't read Theodore Dalrymple's article from a few years ago about Paris I recommend you do - http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html - you're probably much more familar with what he describes than I am.
An exercpt -
Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable: there are now an estimated 8 or 9 million people of North and West African origin in France, twice the number in 1975—and at least 5 million of them are Muslims. Demographic projections (though projections are not predictions) suggest that their descendants will number 35 million before this century is out, more than a third of the likely total population of France.
Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order.
Multiculturalism is a sham. It makes a Utopian assumption that all cultures can harmoniously co-exist and that they are all equally worthy.
This ties liberal-minded people up in knots because the issues they would normally focus on - individual freedoms, equal rights for all, human dignity, the social contract etc. - are muddled by the seeming need to respect cultures that honestly do not deserve respect.
I'm all for immigration (I fully believe in the free movement of people) - generally it's a *good* thing. I also think there should be a 'two way process' - welcome people from different cultures but insist that if they want to live among us that they live by our rules (and I mean the rules of developed secular societies that promote individual freedoms in tandem with social partnership - not laws derived from religious doctrine). Then provide people equality of opportunity and allow them to contribute to our society as our partners and our equals (This is where the French have failed).
In general terms, the ideals of post-enlightenment Western Europe, rooted in a value system evolved from Christianity, are superior to many other cultures and we shouldn't be afraid to believe that or want to stand up for that. There are problems in France, Britain and elsewhere, but that does not make us wrong, it shows that we are failing to live and implement our ideals.
P.S. I know there's a potential conflict in what I wrote there between promoting individual freedom and having immigrants conform to our society's 'rules'. There really isn't, though.
There's nothing wrong with an individual living their life according to the Sharia, for example, if that's what they want. The problems start when they attempt to impose that way of life on others or attack our society for not conforming to their version of 'law'.
So if such an individual's personal beliefs can't co-exist with living in the society he has chosen to enter, then, put simply, he needs to leave again.
Thanks for all your lenghty comments. I was going to reply here but am going to just save it all up for a proper post on it in the next few days.
Yes, Dealga, multiculturism is a sham and a destructive lie which prevents authentic cultural interaction.
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