Ariane Sherine recalls an incident I am very familiar with. Though I have to say, no one has asked me that question in the UK, perhaps for fear of being branded a racist. Instead, the people who tend to ask me that question happen to be fellow Muslims.
Latest Updates: Identity RSS
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thabet
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thabet
The British Social Attitudes survey shows how ‘perceptions’ are just as important as ‘reality’:
A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.
Around 3% of the population in England and Wales, less than 1% of the population in Scotland, and barely 0.1% of the population in Northern Ireland, would be call themselves Muslim (and all these people must be considered ‘nominally’ Muslim for the purposes of statistics, unless the census is accompanied with a detailed checklist on what these individuals believe). How then can Britain be even remotely ‘divided’ along ‘religious’ lines? Where are these ‘divisions’? There is nothing even close to genuine religious divides that are part of Britain’s history. There are other, far more pressing divisions, which threaten the country; it is a shame these are not fully debated (especially not by politicians who want to have ‘debates’ on cheap political scoring points).
The attitudes identified by the BSA are not new though, and that might be most alarming aspect. How much of these attitudes are related to the drip-feed of stories about ‘cultural backwardness’ of Muslims, or magnifying problems their context, or even just outright lies?
As Andrew Brown notes, while ‘freedom of speech’ is trumpeted as a ‘core value’ by numerous liberal pundits, especially an act of faith which distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’, the survey shows many Britons don’t buy into that argument:
This makes odd reading in the face of continuing propaganda about how freedom of speech is one of the core values we defend against Islamists.
This might seem odd given the BSA also show Britons are also becoming socially liberal on issues such as homosexuality and cohabitation.
Or it may just be that liberals, like their ‘enemies’, are forced into adopting cultural protectionism when they feel under threat?
(The two newspapers I link to above also highlight their editorial biases. The Daily Telegraph concentrates on the suspicion towards religious groups, especially Muslims. The Guardian meanwhile sticks with reporting the views on social liberalism.)
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thabet
Very good article on the way immigration is covered by the press in the UK.
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thabet
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thabet
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thabet
A white South African has been granted refugee status in Canada. The African National Congress (the ruling party in South Africa) has called this decision ‘racist’, while the Canadian government is challenging the decision by the Immigration and Refugee Board.
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thabet
More protests in western China:
A witness told the BBC that as many as 2,000 ethnic Han Chinese have been demonstrating in the capital Urumqi.
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thabet
A book review (from the left) of How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon: From the American Revolution to the Present.
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thabet
I quite enjoyed this article on class and race:
Thus the primacy of anti-discrimination not only performs the economic function of making markets more efficient, it also performs the therapeutic function of making those of us who have benefited from those markets sleep better at night. And, perhaps more important, it has, ‘for a long time’, as Wendy Bottero says in her contribution to the recent Runnymede Trust collection Who Cares about the White Working Class?, also performed the intellectual function of focusing social analysis on what she calls ‘questions of racial or sexual identity’ and on ‘cultural differences’ instead of on ‘the way in which capitalist economies create large numbers of low-wage, low-skill jobs with poor job security’.
Race and socioeconomics intersect, and sometimes liberals don’t pay enough attention to this.
Life on the bottom of the pile is hard, no matter if you’re black, or white; Muslim or not (I mention Muslims because often reports like this on the state of Muslims unnecessarily ‘Islamise’ the problem).
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yahya
Welcome to a long hot summer. The English and Welsh Defence Leagues alongside Casuals United are recruiting football supporters to join their street demos against “Islamic extremism”. As is the way of the world nowadays, they don’t claim to be racist, but they are having trouble recruiting Muslims and other efniks to their version of Englishness or whatever. Two of their previous demos in Luton and Birmingham have degenrated into chants of “Muslims out” and random attacks on “coloured” members of the public.
This lot are playing on the wafer-thin line that there is no Islamophobia between anti-Islamism and colour racism — but it keeps breaking down of course, much to the embarassment and consternation of those drawing room and blogosphere types who’ve lived off the distinction for years now.
[Trevor] Kelway [spokesperson for Casuals United] denied the league was racist. “We would march alongside Muslims and Jews who are against militant Islam,” he said. “There were none on Saturday and an all-white group doesn’t look good. But they can join the EDL as long as they accept an English way of life. It is the people who threaten with bombs and violence and threaten and bomb our troops – they don’t belong here.”Kelway said he had recently taken over as spokesman because the previous mouthpiece for the organisation was “Islamophobic”.
A spokesman for the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: “There are a number of fascist elements that have attached themselves to EDL and Casuals United, but these groups are not extreme rightwing organisations.”
Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, has said the events in Birmingham were “nothing to do with us”. The clashes had reminded him “very much of the position just before the £20m riots in Bradford” in 2001 when whites and Asians fought over two nights. He accused the left and the UAF of trying to turn young Muslims “into stormtroopers for their leftist revolution”.
(Source: Guardian)
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thabet
Take the quiz, which is based on the British citizenship test. According to the people behind the website, six out of seven British citizens fails the test (the pass mark is 75%)*.
(Via Next Left.)
*The headline on the link seems to contradict the actual contents.
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thabet
Why do people who think it is ok to hate on Pakistani molvis for their lack of English language skills, at the same time big up Arab scholars who also speak no English?
(This is within the context of arguments and debates about ‘integration’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘radicalisation’.)
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thabet
Phil Woolas confirms he is an odious prick:
But, when it was pointed out that demonstrating was not illegal, Woolas suggested that an applicant could also lose points not just for breaking the law – but also for engaging in certain activities that were legal.
Sarah Montague, the presenter, asked: “Are you effectively saying to people who want to have a British passport, ‘You can have one, and when you’ve got one you can demonstrate as much as you like, but until then don’t'?”
Woolas replied: “In essence, yes. In essence we are saying that the test that applies to the citizen should be broader than the test that applies to the person who wants to be a citizen. I think that’s a fair point of view, to say that if you want to come to our country and settle, you should show that adherence.”
I cannot see this actually being made into law; this is simply another pathetic attempt by Woolas to stir a ‘national debate’ on immigration and try and gain a few votes for Labour at a time when the far right are active. As Labour’s attack dog on issues related to race, immigration and asylum, Woolas has a history of this sort of nationalistic bluster. Even when his ministerial brief was limited to the environment, he was passing comments on the sexual habits of Muslims.
And it goes without saying that a New Labour minister should think twice before lecturing others on “adherence” to the “democratic rule of law and the principle behind that”, given the government’s abysmal record on that front.
Still, Woolas has some way to go before he can compete with the likes of The Daily Wail reporter James Slack and the army of gormless Wail readers who moan about immigration into Britain… while residing in Australia (or Spain, or Thailand, or the UAE).
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thabet
Barack Obama supports the Philippines peace initiatives with Muslim separatists in the south of the country.
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thabet
Cameron Duodu notes that the Boko Haram, whose fighting with the Nigerian security forces has left around 600 dead, resembles the Maitatsine sect.
On the same story, human rights activists in Nigeria say the killing of the Boko Haram leader must be investigated.
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thabet
A mere 367 Muslim women may bring down the Fifth Republic.
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thabet
Defining ‘religion’ and ‘race’:
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thabet
Time has a feature on the rise of the far-right in culturally sophisticated and morally superior Europe.
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razib, murtad fitri
due to talk islam’s popularity i have decided to make recourse to a strategy i’ve used before to advertise my identity, just add it to my handle. where you’re coming from matters a lot unless you’re talking mathematics. even in natural science it can matter.
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thabet
Beating the censors: web keeps up to the minute with the Urumqi clashes.
Or follow Al-Jazeera’s Melissa Chan who is in the area.
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thabet
Untold story of British Pakistanis’ grandparents’ involvement in World War II ’stirs pride’:
But the young Muslim of Pakistani descent found an unexpected answer to his alienation the day he heard the story of how Muslim soldiers, many from what is now Pakistan, fought and died alongside Britons against the Nazis in World War Two.
[...]
Bin Khaled is one of dozens of youths of Pakistani descent in the industrial second city of Birmingham to have attended a workshop by academic Jahan Mahmood that uses the Muslim role in the war to wean young men away from extremism and alienation.
Jahan Mahmood is a regular on DeenPort and his research paper can be found online (pdf).
(Via DeenPort. See the thread.)
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thabet
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thabet
Muslim rebels suspected of detonating a bomb near a Roman Catholic cathedral in the southern Philippines, killing at least three people and wounding more than two dozen others.
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thabet
A Swedish city will no longer supply food to schools ‘based on ethical and religious grounds, such as halal meat’.
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thabet
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thabet
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thabet
Channel 4/YouGov has some numbers on the people who voted for the BNP. Interesting, but not too surprising. White people suffer from identity crises too.
One view that comes across from the poll is that people genuinely believe immigrants and/or ‘non-whites’ (‘Muslims’ is the current code word) receive more help than ‘white’ people from the state. This is no doubt fanned by the tabloid press (drip feeding stories about ‘Muslim demands’ on the state which are usually lies or non-controversial), and even picked up by Labour politicians like this odious prick.
I have taken a closer look at the poll. Page seven has the following question (answer split by voting EU poll voting intention: Total/Con/Lab/Lib Dem/Greens/UKIP/BNP):
Q: [W]hich if any of these groups do you often think benefit from UNFAIR ADVANTAGES in Britain these days?
[groups available to be selected as an answer:]
Muslims 39/44/27/26/22/61/70
Non-white people 36/41/25/26/22/53/62
People educated at public schools 32/19/43/40/50/27/25
Gay and lesbian men and women 23/27/16/15/13/39/36
Women 11/11/9/9/9/14/16
White people 7/6/10/8/12/5/8
Jews 6/5/5/5/5/6/12
People educated at state comprehensive schools 5/6/4/5/4/5/6
None of these 12/14/12/15/15/6/5
Don’t know 13/12/13/12/10/8/5 -
thabet
News from morally superior and culturally sophisticated Europe:
Geert Wilders and his far-Right anti-Islamic immigrant party shot to second place behind the ruling Christian Democrats by taking 17 per cent of the vote in the Netherlands.
In Austria too, two anti-immigrant far-Right parties took an unprecedented 17.7 per cent of the vote.
The far-Right Danish People’s Party won two seats and took 14.4 per cent of Denmark’s vote.
In Slovakia a low turnout of just 19.4 per cent propelled an anti-gipsy extremist ultra-nationalist into the parliament and Hungary’s far-Right Jobbik took three seats for the first time.
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thabet
I was recently reminded of Avtar Lit’s comments about the label ‘Asian’, following the September 11 attacks, the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and the attack on the Indian parliament:
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thabet
How to avoid identity politics:
Apparently the only way to avoid “identity politics” to pick white men for every job.
(Via Glenn Greenwald.)
