The UK media have a wonderful genius for understatement. I particularly remember a memorial to the pianist Liberace, in which the author noted with deadpan grace that “Mr. Liberace never married.”
Thus the conclusion to the complaint of UK MP Shahid Malik that Muslims in Britain feel like “the jews of Europe.”
Shahid Malik, the UK’s first Muslim minister, said it has become legitimate to target Muslims in the media and society in a way that would be unacceptable for any other minority.
The MP for Dewsbury, West Yorks, said many British Muslims now feel like “aliens in their own country” as society turns a “blind eye” to their persecution.
Mr Malik, a minister in the Department for International Development, said this has the negative effects of segregating society and undermining efforts to deal with extremism and terrorism.
Never mind the fact that the position of Jews in Europe is already taken. Ignore Mr. Malik’s self-serving contention that dealing with terrorism is harder because the cultural isolation of Muslims in Britain is somehow imposed by society at large rather than freely chosen, in fact insisted upon by significant segments of that population. Let us pass right by the campaign of hate designed to push a female Muslim councilor off her city’s council and back under the veil, and focus on the closing line of the article carrying Mr. Malik’s jeremiad:
Mr Malik’s constituency was home to July 7 suicide bomber Mohammad Siddique Khan.
It is wrong for anyone to be discriminated against because of their faith or ethnicity. But even as it is true that not all Muslims are terrorists, so is it also true that nearly all terrorists these days are Muslims. An immigrant culture which insists upon an separate identity from the nation at large, and which does little to actively prevent murderers from acting out from within that identity, and which – having been taken to task for enabling such atrocities – turns and claims for itself the mantle of victimhood?
Might have a hard time getting along with others. Might even, in time, come to feel “alienated.”
Those are the breaks.
This guy reminds me of the old joke about the person who murdered his parents and then asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan. Tend to get quite livid about folks who come into my country, seek citizenship, and then try to change all the qualities, like freedom of speech, which attracted them in the first place. Nasty pieces of work, IMHO.
Marianne
It’s the cultural version of moving near the airport and complaining about the noise.
Does anyone notice the similarity in the demand of some Muslims for separateness and non-integration, with that of the Trinity Union Church with its message of black separateness?
Contrast that with the Amish who hold themselves separate and unintegrated yet do it in a peaceful way. Certainly an example of holding firmly to religious principles without demanding special status in society.
Is this something worth mentioning to those who demand both separation and victimhood status?
Here in “Doity Joisey” that’s known as “Trying to work both sides of the street”.
Jimmy, you said a mouthful. When my daughter was in the NICU, there was a Hutterite family with three premature boys in the same ward, just a few doors down. We scrubbed at the same sink, saw each other often, but we never exchanged greetings or did more than gesture to each other, “You use the sink, I’m not done scrubbing yet.” They spoke German, mainly, but knew English.
They lost two of the three boys. One was simply too young, the other acquired an infection and was unable to surpass it. All the while, I’m sitting in my daughter’s room and she’s having no difficulties.
They call it theNICU Roller-Coaster, one day your child is in good shape and the next they don’t expect her to live, then she fights back and you gain hope and another problem arises.
There arises a bond in that facility not unlike the bond that men form under combat, albeit with different consequences. We become mates.
My family didn’t experience that. We had little hope of her living, but she continued to gain and never had a setback. I felt, I dunno, guilty, or at least rewarded beyond what I deserved for the ease I had of those three months.
So the next time I saw one of the ladies in the hallway I made a point of stopping her. I merely said, “I would have a word with you. The next time your family prays, I should like to be part of it. Tell your family, I’ll be in room X should they agree.”
We prayed together, no longer Hutterite and Christian, but all appealing to the same Creator for a blessing, for mercy, for comfort should His Will be to take what He created home before we could love it so.
At that point in time, we were all of the same family.
In a way it’s too bad we can’t all agree we’re sons of Abraham, distant cousins and of the same family. It’s also too bad one side of this family seems to think that murder of the other is approved, even laudable.
If you are a guest in my home you get the food I prepare. If that is not to your liking you are free to exit my home. You do not come into my home as a guest and order me, the host, about. If I am the host I accommodate your demands only at my whim.
Nations might do well to take this personal lesson to heart. We may be cousins, but I’m still the owner and you are only a guest.
– Max
Least anyone forget:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/14/london.attacks/index.html
Now, tell me again why exactly ya’ll feel put upon?
In any society healthy enough to have a sense of self preservation, this would already be over. Let’s say Christians were bombing Muslims in Saudi Arabia, how long would there be any significant Christian population in Saudi? Oh, that’s right, they’ve long ago solved that problem.
And this is how it starts.
Shipmates,
If European Muslims feel oppressed, how would they feel if we just ignored them completely? Even better, why not keep laughing at them and keep waving Maggies Drawers whenever they make yet another attempt to bring anarchy to law abiding countries?
Kris…I wonder if this school also teaches kids how Christians pray…because to many, that’s probably pretty unfamiliar and exotic. Or how Jews pray, which I’m pretty sure is unfamiliar and exotic to the majority of Brits.
Hindus? Sikhs? Buddhists?
Doubt it very much…
Kris, it’s worth noting that part of the prayers is the proclamation, in Arabic, There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. That simple statement, made in front of two witnesses, is the profession of faith that makes someone a Muslim. Nothing else.
In other words, every one of these “cultural exposure” episodes in which students are compelled to participate in is, if not actually making Muslims out of the children (there is an out for age, now known as the Obama clause), training them to submit.
Feh.
Max,
Your anecdote is such a lesson in tolerance and acceptance. Too bad so many don’t accept the lesson.