In these dark times it is unavoidable to be nervous that the terrible attacks that happened in Paris on Friday could happen in any major city. But I am more nervous about the consequences of the reactionary backlash that has already started. So it's worth examining a couple of myths that have already become a mantra:
The myth that terrorists have piggy-backed the refugee crisis and by implication the asylum doors should now be slammed shut: Many refugees are fleeing because they are trying to escape from these kind of terrorist attacks. And these attacks are happening on a regular basis in parts of the Middle East with no media coverage at all. The day before the Paris attack suicide bombers killed 40 people in Beirut - and this hardly caused a ripple in the world's media.
The myth that multi-cultural society is a breeding ground for radical Islamism. It is sadly no accident France has been targeted - it is a very different kind of society to Britain - or most of Northern Europe for that matter: The official policy of aggressive secularism that bans the headscarf and obliges schools to serve pork; the ghettoization of major cities that have created a marginalised immigrant underclass in the suburbs; and the systematic racism of French police who still exercise stop and search in the manner of British police in the 1970s. It is the very lack of multiculturalism that has created layer of angry Muslim young men has been created that is a fertile recruiting found for Islamo-fascism and this is reflected in there being more French nationals fighting with IS than from any other European country.
1 comment:
I do not want to disagree with your entire argument, but simply focus on the piece about a lack of multiculturalism in France Despite France's secular policies, there has been significant aspects of multiculturalism in Paris, encouraged by Hollande whom over 80% of the Muslim voters supported, and the relativism and apartheid style segregation that goes with it has divided, not united communities. Perhaps the left need to focus on multiculturalism. It really does need to be distinguished from a multi-racial society of the sort advocated by Martin Luther King and others who argued for equality of all based on character not ethnicity or culture. In fact, the left have not helped matters by their advocacy of multiculturalism, where incompatibility between some cultures has not been examined,and of course the over use of buzzwords like 'racist' against anyone who questions identity politics of this sort. Multiculturalism began in the days of the British Empire, was referred to as the woad policy by the Colonial Office in the 1930s because it maintained distinct cultures ruled by the most conservative elements within them. And that today is what the left offer in opposition to the Enlightenment ideal of universal equality.
But all of this aside, the left are treating the jihadists with a patronizing level of contempt. Why not listen to what they say? They are not asking for a multiculture, some kind of campus relativism divorced from reality; they demand supremacy. Note that you mention killings in other places that our media have ignored Would campus relativism eliminate that?
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