Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Muslims in dispatches

I watched the excellent channel 4 Dispatches documentary last night entitled "lessons in hate and violence" it was an undercover expose of lies, hypocrisy, bullying, intolerance and outright sedition apparently going on every day in some of the 2,000 Muslim faith schools up and down the country. The program was a follow on from a previous undercover sting by the same production team at certain British mosques which showed anti-Semitism and hate speech being openly preached. The program was particularly topical because of the recent controversial comments made by David Cameron regarding the failure of the multicultural state and a suggested re-evaluation of relativism.

The program was shocking, in that it showed teachers (so called) instructing pupils to dehumanise and hate non-Muslims and also to detest the very society they derive their freedom and living from; it also showed teachers and child carers beating, kicking and abusing young children in their care. No doubt there will be a flood of drivel from the accommodationists in the press now; no doubt we will hear all about how this is the fault of extremists and not Islam, that these views don't represent the views of the majority of Muslims bla, bla, bla. Except that these are straw-man fallacies, the problem for the Government and indeed all of us is that there are clear warrants for all the things seen on the program last night in the various holy books that with alarming cognitive dissonance we are supposed to "respect", to the extent you could be arrested for burning one. This obvious contradiction and the Tory policy of encouraging more and more faith schools will surely result an increase in ghettoisation of peoples via faith schools, along religious, racial and cultural lines, this in turn will spur on an inevitable back-lash from people who look for any excuse to persecute out-groups.

If the Koran, Bible, Torah etc. didn't exist and the EDL (or some such organisation) created and published the same elitist, intolerant, racist and misogynistic philosophies in a book now it would be banned by moderate governments everywhere. It seems obvious, the problem is these religions and what they say is true without evidence, what they define as moral and how they indoctrinate the children to believe it. We are fortunate as a species that most sensible people choose to ignore the vast majority of the teachings of their religion because a) its clearly bronze age quackery, b) because the secular societies they live in don't tolerate it and c) they don't derive their morality from a literal reading of the words in those books, morality clearly comes from somewhere else; these people we call moderates and the ones who actually follow the instructions (we're supposed to respect) are the extremists - it's a funny old game.

2 comments:

Oranjepan said...

I'm gonna take you up on this one.

You are partially right that "there are clear warrants" for this sort of thing, but that depends on a selective quotation and then a politicised interpretation.

Extreme views are never defeated by their polar opposite using the same methods, as you've done here. However it does serve to allow the intervention of third voices which can effectively moderate the excesses of both sides through the art of compromise (though it's a difficult balancing act only the best can pull off).

Steve Borthwick said...

Hi OP, long time no see, nice to have you back!

Phew, I was just strapping on my "Atheist suicide bomber kit" and you managed to talk me down... ;)

What are you on about?

In what way is asking for an open discourse on the morality of these books in anyway comparable to indoctrinating children with hate speech? What do you think I'm suggesting here that is in any way comparable to the horrors of theocracy - I'm baffled..

You say you want "compromise", explain how if you are faced with an ideology which wishes everything you stand for and possibly even you eradicated, how would you compromise?

Implement the best bits of Sharia and just chop off one leg perhaps?

What's wrong with having a secular government and a secular constitution; kick religion out of schools and public office, give people freedom of speech and freedom of religious belief and enforce this through the law?

Why compromise, why do you need to impose bits of voodoo into all our lives?