Channel 4 Dispatches used to be a haven of serious documentary, but has degenerated into a stream of Islamophobia. It touched rock bottom today with a truly pathetic effort by Andrew Gilligan which found – shock horror – Muslims in the East London mosque!
These Muslims actually wanted society to be ordered in an Islamic way on Islamic principles. To try to achieve this they were – shock horror – undertaking political activity and joining political parties!
Gilligan’s piece turned on the Daily Express trick of attempting to inculcate fear that suddenly you and I will wake up under sharia law. The fact is of course that no matter how much devout Muslims may want to campaign to ban alcohol and push-up bras in the UK, they have not a hope in hell of succeeding.
But surely they have a right to their beliefs and ideology and a right to espouse it? Surely we should be delighted that these Muslims are seeking to advance their views through participation in the democratic process and not through violence? In fact, is this not the sort of activity we should be encouraging?
Apparently not. Apparently you only should be allowed to participate in politics if the ideology you are offering to the electorate is broadly the same as Andrew Gilligan’s. We were apparently supposed especially to be shocked by Gilligan’s revelation that Muslim activists campaigned for George Galloway because of his opposition to the Iraq war and support for the Palestinians. Wow! Whatever next?
Gilligan went on to introduce a number of neo-conservative nutters from wild eyed groups such as the Centre for Social Cohesion, to condemn all this “extremist” activity, without giving any context to explain where his “Independent” commentators were dredged up from.
Gilligan’s only useful point was about the waste of taxpayers’ money being pumped in to various Muslim groupings. Sadly he confined his criticism on this point only to financial support for those Muslim groups who did not wholeheartedly support the Bush/Blair foreign policy, when in fact twenty times more public money has been wasted on tiny but grasping Muslim groups who proselytise Blairism.
All in all, the most risible piece of half-baked Islamophobia I can recall. Gilligan – a man for whom I have had respect – should be ashamed of himself.
Thanks MJ, you write:
“If the Iraqis and Afghanis were told they were not required to tolerate people who came to their country and refused to tolerate them they’d think it was some kind of sick joke.”
I agree that the Iraqis and Afghans should not be required to tolerate people who come to their country as does international law, all the more so when we slaughter them in such numbers without even bothering to count. What is your point?
You appear to be saying that if we are going to require tolerance of others we should also require it of ourselves. This is exactly my point: the principle of tolerance should be applied uniformly.
It’s quite illuminating that it should provoke such controversy.
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Thanks Suhayl Saadi,
I agree with what you are saying, except that I don’t quite understand. You write:
“Every time ‘Muslims’ are mentioned on cyberspace (mentioned by Craig, for all the best reasons), as writerman, I think correctly, suggested earlier, it seems it tends to bring out the worst in some people. ”
Are you referring to my post? Are you saying it is bad to say that while we should tolerate muslims and let them into this country (personally I’m in favour of completely open borders and have demonstrated at the offices of Phil Woolas in support of them) muslims should show tolerance towards non-muslims. Your tone seems to suggest that saying this somehow represents the bringing out of the worst in me and that I should be a good boy and go off into the corner and hang my head in shame. Is that what you are saying?
I’d be interested to know. What is your position on, say, muslim youths taunting a white boy saying he smells. I would say that’s racist. Does that view constitute the worst in me. Is it somehow bad?
I ask you sincerely as, I presume, a muslim. It is an example brought up in conversation by a muslim friend of mine. He said he intervened to upbraid the muslim youths for being just as racist as the whites. Wouldn’t you have some sympathy with this position or do you think it’s bad, or even, the worst in someone.
I would hope you would agree with this position. You are correct to say that all things muslim are played up and exploited for the fear-factor. I agree. That’s why I campaigned on behalf of the ten Pakistanis arrested on bogus terror suspicions, never charged and then handed over to the Border Agency to be detained indefinitely pending appeal for deportation mandated by the Home Secretary on the basis of secret evidence.
This is the worst in us, surely. Is it so bad to say muslims should show tolerance towards non-muslims? I can think of worse.
Perhaps you were talking about another post altogether, or no post here at all. Forgive me if that’s the case.
Salam! and Best Wishes,
Stephen
Stephen you make some interesting points, but I do have one problem…
You say: “the principle of tolerance should be applied uniformly.” Surely you can’t be suggesting the imposition of tolerance. Otherwise one might think that you have taken something of an intolerant position.
Maybe you could teach tolerance by example but I hope you are not suggesting it can be imposed…
re: tolerance. Compare and contrast the eagerness with which expat Brits abandon their native customs in order to conform to the local culture. Would we have any sympathy with someone who fancied a cool beer in Saudi Arabia ?
re: Sharia law. here’s a thing that intrigued me, from a few years ago. I never found any more about it :-
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.html?s=hns
Synopsis – Judge offers to debate theology with Islamist prisoners, including the possibility of having his own mind changed. I think what impressed me was the suggestion of the possibility of mutual respect.
Craig – “Britain indeed ruled India with 100,000 people due to a long and exceedingly bloody process of military conquest dependent on superior military technology and organisation”
Whatever happens, we have got
The Tomahawk. And they have not.
(updated from G.K. Chesterton, I think)
Thanks Chris,
I am grateful to you for these stimulating and penetrating points.
I would argue that the one thing we should be intolerant towards is intolerance. I am very well aware of the paradoxical appearance of this formula and I’m frankly not sure how to get around it. Does it invalidate tolerance by reducing it to absurdity? Maybe, but I hope not. I’m still holding out for tolerance.
I doubt that the paradox can in any case be resolved by the formula “teach by example”. The problem arises when, teaching by example, the lesson is rejected. We might hope that we can escape one horn of the dilemma, namely the question of imposition, by simply applying the mantra to ourselves and leaving others to do as they wish. Indeed we can, provided we stick to ourselves. But the problem returns when we come the question of how to collectively regulate the boundaries of individual freedom in particular cases. If you believe in the need for groups to agree some sort of formula, even if unspoken, for their mutual co-operation, or even in the need for a people to legislate for its common good, then you can no longer evade this problem. If you reject both of these then I would find it difficult to understand you.
Finally, your suggestion that I should consider teaching tolerance by example is well taken. Nobody is perfect, but I believe I have tried. I have welcomed muslims into the house where I live. I campaign for open borders, civil rights for Pakistanis and an end to imperial wars. I accept cultural differences when I find them and try not to make an issue of them, etc.
I would like to illustrate by point above by means of an example of a particular case of the type I was alluding to. Suppose I am told I should not bring pork products into the house because they offend the religious sensibilities of some of the others.
This example case remains unresolved by MJ’s formula above. I hope I am not doing him an injustice if I paraphrase it as follows: We have a right to do and say what we please, no matter how offensive, provided we do not impinge on the right of others to the same. Can I fry up a few rashers of Asda Lincolnshire sausages or not? I will be told it offends against the deeply felt religious beliefs of others and that it therefore impinges on their rights and harms them. It was ever thus with religion. The formula cannot help us judge what constitutes harm impingement and therefore fails to resolve the conflict.
The example can be drawn out further. Suppose I elect to turn the other cheek completely. I give up on the bacon. And suppose further that I come to be regarded as some sort of second class human being because my lifestyle contains elements forbidden by the Koran. Perhaps I am gay, or a free-living woman, or I enjoy sex outside marriage. You know how these dumb religions can be. And you know how this tacit label of moral inferiority can develop quickly into discrimination and intolerance which so isolates and constrains its bearer. Indeed, this is just the basis of the mistreatment and discrimination we are showing towards muslims and Pakistanis in particular in this country right now.
I conclude, then, that “teaching by example” may not suffice and that we may need to legislate for a principle of tolerance. Does this constitute an imposition? Perhaps. But what would you suggest as an alternative, or would you suggest abandoning tolerance altogether?
My own view is that whatever way we work this out we need to do so collectively and as a single people. I have a right as a member of that illustrious body to state my preference. My preference is for a thorough-going separation of church and state and for religious nutters who want to impose their scripture-based doctrine on others, because their way-of-life somehow offends them, to have the decency to exercise a little tolerance themselves, which may not be easy, because it’s the only way we can live together in harmony in a multicultural society. I am delighted that they are free to worship their god as they please and wouldn’t want to change that.
Does this amount to legislating for tolerance and therefore paradoxically imposing it? Perhaps it does, but what else would you propose? Infinite turning of the other cheek on an individual basis is at least consistent on an individual level. But what should we do as a people?
I continue to maintain that consistency demands that we should uniformly apply the principle of tolerance, if we apply it at all.
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Stephen, I do agree with most of the points you make. The bigoted types of views to which you allude need consistently to be argued against and confronted and please do keep arguing!
And for God’s sake (whichever god that might be!), please do keep on frying those sausages!
A small point (I realise you’re an anti-Fascist and were not meaning to express support for the BNP):
I think, if I may say, that it was probably imprudent of you to write, “The BNP are right to say…”
This is because, as you know, the BNP will mix truisms with definitive mendacity; it’s a common political tactic to try and hook people. They’re not the best example of tolerance themselves, and everything they say comes from a very deeply forked tongue (!) and a white supremacist basis. We don’t need them as sources of reference; there are better sources.
This the thing with blogs – they’re midway b/w conversation and ‘proper’ writing. In the heat of keyboard…
I also agree with your social class analysis, I think it’s spot-on.
I respect your activism against the wars and all.
I think that we (meaning us here in Britain) need to cool the temperature of the discourse.
TV programmes which constantly raise the same spectres are not helpful.
Please be reassured that my comments about ‘the worst’ in people refer to a general observation from my cyber-travels and to some of the posts here and on other threads, and not to your posts. I think you are making some valid arguments.
Richard, I take your ex-pat beer point; it’s well-known, isn’t it, about ex-pats, and not just British ones. But I do think we (we in the Muslim communities in Britain) do need to tackle some of these issues. But not in an hysterical manner, that’s my point, really, and not to fuel some neocon agenda – there is an enormous amount of activity right now as we write, part of which is being mediated by ex-pat Pakistani Americans who have bought into neoconia in a big way, in places like Pakistan, which is a consequence of a massive injection of US power at all levels.
A rock and a hard place, as I said somewhere else.
Now, back to Cecil Sharp and wax cylinders…
..although if a similar programme had been made about unacceptable Zionist preaching in London synagogues, or BNP activism in Dagenham, everyone on here would be lauding the brave campaigning journalist.
By the way, why do you have so much time for this revolting mediaevelism?
No, actually, I wouldn’t have, Alan Campbell. It is likely that it would have been more of the same, too. A social class thing, or whatever. Easy reportage. ‘Stick a camera in front of the peasants’ kind-of-thing.
Thanks Suhayl,
Firstly, I’m delighted about the suasages. It’s been ages. I just can’t tell you how I’ve been hankering.
Secondly, I take your point about the BNP mixing truisms with mendacity. But my tactic would be to acknowledge the truism and reject the mendacity. Surely, against such cleverness, denying both is fatal. It was for this reason that I chose to formulate my thought, provocatively for the left, as “The BNP are right to say…”. Indeed they are. We need to learn elementary discrimination in argument and rise above these ad hominems and cloaked liberal insults. They do not persuade, nor should they.
Finally, I didn’t intend to suggest the BNP as a source of reference for the truism in question, merely that they are right in stating it. Indeed, truisms don’t need sources. But if the BNP, in their use of truism, appeal to the elementary truism that moral principles ought to be applied equally to all, we need to be able to disarm them by saying without hesitation, “I agree”.
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Suhayl – not hysterical. Yes. WIBNI !
If anything’s going to come and kill us all, it’s more likely to be the road system, can we close that down in favour of something more sensible ?
But, okay, these wax cylinders. What have they got on them ? (oh, and, bless you !)
Cecil Sharp … not sure. I’m a player of The Tunes, I hear the old trad. music’s supposed to owe him a lot, but I’m not aware of knowing any tunes that came through him. Song & dance, maybe, but many of those don’t seem to have been bothered much about what the tune was you did it to. We just go on passing them around among each other, and no-one else notices much. (I’ve also heard that we owe the practice of “pub sessions” to the London Irish of the ’50s. A really ancient cultural thing, see ? I don’t know if that’s true either. Historians, we are not).
The eponymous library is alleged to have bucketloads of interesting stuff, which I’d like a look at if they could ever webbify it.
Why ? are you going somewhere with it, or is it Fish ? English purism ? Oswald Mosely ?
Craig,
Do you think violence and democratic process are the only options for Muslims? Interesting how you have absorbed the underlying anti-Islamic thought (the one that the current Pope endorses) that the default position of the Muslim is violence to reach his ends. Thankfully, it is not, and we should be pleased that Muslims are engaging in the democratic process for general civic reasons, and not because Muslims are, by nature (or religion), drawn to violence.
Stephen, thanks, I take your point. Much appreciated.
Richard, of course I know that you’re not hysterical – how was last Friday’s beer, btw? – I wasn’t meaning you – I was meaning the kind of ‘Rasputinised’ media circus attendant upon the public discourse.
I love wax cylinders, and the concept of ‘voices captured on the cusp of living memory’ fascinates me. Old England…
Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson, two central figures in the exploration of this nexus, are both Muslim. As is Ian Whiteman, ex-of-The Action, premier UK (Kentish Town) Mod band (and arguably “the best white soul band of all time” and the cosmic Mighty Baby. This is what it’s about, in my view.
It’s one of the things (along with Old Scotland, of course, and the Magus of Selkirk) that drives my writing. In 1969, I met a woman who, like Orwell’s carp, was 100 years old.
When she was a girl, she had met a miller who was 100 years old…
Stephen you must know, with your impeccable credentials, that the BNP are apparently only too happy to say all sorts, including this kind of thing:
“I honestly can’t understand how a man who’s seen the inner city hell of Britain today can’t look back on that era [Hitler’s Germany] with a certain nostalgia and think yeah, those people marching through the streets and all those happy people out in the streets, you know, saluting and everything, was a bad thing.”
When you say: “The BNP are right to say that we should not be required to tolerate people who come to our country and refuse to tolerate us”, who did say that, and in what context?
In any case, I don’t think it is a particularly ‘clever’ statement, no. Who is the ‘we’ in that sentence? Who is ‘us’?
Suhayl; a friend of mine, who was in a jazz band in the 20’s (called the Jazz Bandits) played the first ever UK version of ‘Tiptoe through the Tulips’ at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, after he and his band had listened to it coming down the wires that afternoon from America. He played it for me, nearly eighty years later, on his banjo. Magic.
Since when making secret recordings of
naive braggers, nimpty blabbers and
nutty loudmouths qualify as primetime
documentaries?
Are we stooping to such ‘standards’ where each community in UK makes a undercover documentary of another, where conversations recorded with hidden microphones are edited to generate a narrative the way we wish to portray the others?
James, not sure how you reached your conclusions about CM’s view in your former post, but as for your last, it can feel like that in the UK. Possibly because we are told all the time that we are the most filmed society in the world, blah blah, and possibly because there are stickers with a helpful little picture of a camera on just about everywhere (mostly CCTV picture quality is rubbish, you know) and possibly because the council can tap our phones, and there are cameras in classrooms and –
And yes, I suppose that in this undercover world, anyone is fair game for the film cameras. The trouble, as you say, is that the game is not fair. Dispatches are under pressure to make tabloid headlines with their documentaries, not under pressure to make documentaries.
It’s very interesting, from a psychological point of view.
technicolour: magic, indeed. The Jazz Bandits live on!
James: exactly.
Excellent post Craig;
I have no respect for Gilligan since his cheap campaign against Livingston, which was motivated by the desire to return a favor to Boris Johnston who offered him a Job in the Spectator after being kicked out of the BBC.
I would like to point out that Mr Gilligan used to work for the IRANIAN satellite channel PressTV; but his program (Forum) was stopped since December 2009.
Gilligan is a cheap mouthpiece for rent.
Andrew Gilligan had his finger on the pulse about wmd and I suspect he has his finger on the pulse now.
The strategy of the Pistakani scholars to establish Islam in the UK was to cancel Shari’ah in all but name and to encourage the Muslims to play the non-Muslim’s game. Their intention was to make it impossible for any future bout of racist government bullying from left or right to intimidate or even throw out Islam in the UK.
The scholars did an unholy deal with the powers that be, that they would deliver Moderation in exchange for material benefits, cash, soft treatment for breaking the law etc etc. The challenge of Muslim youth meeting in the mosque is firstly to the position taken by their own scholars, to cancel Islam in order to achieve deep roots in the UK and ‘de-privatise’ later at a time of their own choosing. These young Muslims point out the obvious,that Islam is a rational and peaceful religion which is promoted by good example and discussion, not by political machination. The second challenge is to the UK establishment that sees its ‘deal with Islam’ being broken. No problem if people from different countries protest on Craig’s blog about Iraq and the dictatorstans because they are not bound by the satanic deal of the Muslim scholars.
Andrew Gilligan is flagging up a very real and worrying panic. What if the deal that was struck with the Muslim leaders ‘You avoid confrontation about our foreign policy and in exchange you receive special treatment under multiculturalsim’ has been a complete waste of time. The new generation of Muslims has seen that Islam has been badly treated by this deal with the devil.
All the efforts of the establishment to buy off Islam will never in a million years satisfy the idealist minds of true Muslims. They see the injustices in the world that Craig sees and they know with absolute certainty that it’s not part of their religion to compromise about injustice and shut up, for the sake of the elders or the government or public opinion or anyone.
Good on them. Allahu Akbar!
Thanks Technicolour, You ask:
“who did say that, and in what context?”
Nobody said those words exactly, that I know of. As already explained, and as should be clear by the context and the punctuation, I was not quoting. I was paraphrasing a recurrent theme of proponents of the BNP. In any case, its truth status is independent of facts about the speaker.
The personal plural pronouns “we” and “us” refer to those who live in and bear the cultural traits of this country. I think an important point is that it is not possible to define precisely the boundaries of this group. If that is your point I agree. There are, nevertheless, undeniable differences between cultures across the world. When people migrate they bring with them the traits of their own culture. It hard, then, altogether to deny sense to the use of a pronoun to refer to those who lived here already before they came.
By the way, as previously mentioned, these pronouns may just as well refer to the people of Iraq, who have no obligation to tolerate us when we go to their country if we won’t tolerate them.
It is only a clever statement if, as Suhayl and I believe, it is a truism and is coupled with willful mendacity.
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Stephen,
thanks for your response. Once again you raise interesting points.
However, I still feel the idea of imposing tolerance to be a self contradictory position. You seem to suggest that the problems we face are intractable and therefore a pragmatic approach is required to this argument. That, perhaps is true but is it not interesting to note that not all countries (even those with immigrant Muslim populations) suffer the perceived threat that we do? Surely there would be no need to ‘impose’ tolerance if our standpoint in the world were not so belligerant and touched on issues of justice / fairness etc.
It is very difficult for any outside group to have influence over young people if those young people see, in their daily lives, that we are not striding around the globe clinging to the coat tails of the global bully but are representing ourselves – and by extension, them – with truth and honour.
There would surely be no easier way to inculcate tolerance in our society than to recognise the beam in our own eye and learn to treat others with respect.
In the meantime we should each fight our own battles of ideas remembering, always, that the pen is mightier than the sword.
“the pen is mightier than the sword”
Given that you’re a good few yards away from it, anyway.
We are talking about a fully automatic 9mm pen….
Chris & RR: 🙂 Am avoiding penis jokes.
Stephen: I still don’t get your point. You seem, at the end of your last post, to draw an equivalence between Iraqis not having to ‘tolerate’ UK soldiers who invade them, shoot their children and bomb their houses; and the people of the UK who ‘lived here already’ not having to tolerate people from other countries who move in peacefully next door. A difference there, surely?
Also have no clear idea of what you mean by people who ‘bear the cultural traits’ of this country. I have an image of a large pink person clutching a can of Carlsberg, but perhaps you mean liberal secularism? Judging by the way you used the word ‘liberal’ earlier possibly not?
Thanks Chris,
Firstly, you appear to be confusing two quite different questions. The question of how to deal with the external, so-called terrorist, threat, such as it is, is different from the more general question of how we all get along together in a multicultural society. I think I am guilty of sewing the seeds of confusion by talking about the latter when Craig’s original post was probably more about the former.
Secondly, we don’t disagree on the first question. The reason we perceive a threat is because there is a threat. This is because the vast tracts of humanity which we slaughter with impunity occasionally seek to offer a pinprick of resistance in return. This is obvious. How to deal with it is also obvious: stop practising and participating in terrorism.
Finally, regarding the paradox of imposing tolerance, I’ve done the best I can to show how it can be resolved by the idea of a people legislating singularly for its common good, rather than by a single individual imposing tolerance on others. You haven’t shown me where I’ve gone wrong in this.
Best Wishes,
Stephen
It’s a common argument amongst neocons and their muppet followers that Islam is about to take over the whole world. The whole idea is so preposterous that you’d assume such nonsense would be easily dismissed as some crank conspiracy theory.
But no. You’ll see such arguments regularly in the mainstream, from the likes of Melanie Philipps, and others.
It has the feel of a conjurer’s distraction.
Stephen,
you suggest legislating for tolerance. I cannot see how this would work. The reason people in this country see the world the way they do (and I generalise!!) is surely no more or less than an accident of birth.
If you are born in – for the sake of argument – Saudi, then you will almost certainly see tolerance in a different light. Therefore you are almost immediately in a battle over whose tolerance is more tolerant which seems counter productive.
I would postulate that we live in a country that suffers a great deal of intolerance where most of it is focussed upon minority groups and led by a media chorus.
Almost all arguments seem to miss the political need for a bogeyman. Once it was Soviet and the end of the USSR was supposed to bring a peace dividend. That of course didn’t suit those who make money from defence which in itself gave rise to the concept of Islamic radicalisation and the creation of the new bogeyman who happened to be called Osama bin Laden but could just as easily have been anyone else that suited.
Until we face up to the reality of the lies we encounter on a daily basis then any ideas of tolerance are beyond the scope of our, so called, political leaders.
The menace – such as it is real at all – is purely self created and it is this that needs addressing before – as technicolour says – we end up imprisoning people for intolerance which is surely the only end result your proposal offers.
Please enlighten me if I have the wrong end of the stick.
Dear Stephen, OK, let’s agree that you used Iraq as an arbitrary example of pronouns. It would be a shame if you didn’t feel able to answer my questions about a) cultural traits b) how you would legislate for tolerance c) how you would define intolerance, apart from as a form of thought crime and d) at whom would any such legislation be directed. One can’t have a debate without establishing the parameters!