Counterpoint on UKIP

Wayne Brittenden’s profile of UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, (Radio NZ Sunday Counterpoint, 1 June 2014) was irredeemably negative.  While five minutes doesn’t offer much scope for detail, there was room for hints of subtlety and nuance, but there were none.

He didn’t mention democracy, for instance, but it’s the one form of governance which takes into account changing societal attitudes.  That UKIP is successful in representing a section of the populace that considers its governance is off-track is firstly a sign of a healthy democracy, and secondly an indication of the direction which major parties need to take. 

UKIP is a party with a narrow platform, so it is unlikely to outlast its original purpose.  But Mr Brittenden’s polemic goes too far in stating that its supporters are wishing “to preserve a mythical Britishness” along with his blatant ad hominem description of them and the party itself. 

Let me add a bit of objective balance. 

People with a knowledge of history, the arc of Islamic expansion, and an awareness of current affairs have realised that the Islamic conquest of Europe is a virtual fait accompli.  Prominent in the background is the sort of extremism which even now is rewriting history in the Middle East across to India, western China, North Africa and the vast sub-Saharan region.  Even in Avondale we see their destructive influence.  In Europe this has led to a burgeoning sector which has no intention of integrating in the way that non-Muslim immigrants from anywhere else in the world manage to do.  Given the manifest inability of Islam to create a society that people actually want to stay in, it is hardly any wonder that European natives have no wish for this to be recreated in Europe.

UKIP is the only party that offers a policy which may go some way to mitigate the rapid changes which are deeply discomfiting to citizens who had experienced relative tranquillity since the Second World War, and this is the reason for its success.  It may delay but not otherwise affect the progress and consequences of Islam’s conquest, which are likely to be as great as the Industrial Revolution’s with none of the benefits.  It’s not “purity of British culture” that is under threat.  It is four hundred years of European culture, by far the greatest the world has ever seen in depth and breadth, which is terminally imperilled.  Voting for UKIP does not involve criticism of race; it can be a vote to maintain a successful culture in the face of a takeover by a savage one.  Some people find a choice like that easy to justify.

Since New Zealand has experienced this period with no serious disruption, the solipsistic insularity that Mr Brittenden exhibits is perhaps excusable, but not for a journalist.  His presentation was unacceptably shallow for a premium broadcasting slot.  Discerning listeners will not have a problem with his polemics per se, but this example of Mr Brittenden’s has no saving graces.  It could have been phoned in by a tabloid journalist in his cups.  Counterpoint’s role is to present “a fresh attitude on current affairs” but clearly there are areas in which Mr Brittenden’s comprehension is limited, and it is incumbent on Sunday’s producer to guide him away from these.  For the most part his commentaries are quite acceptable.

NZ Muslims & Shadow of ISIS

Insight’s programme broadcast on 7 December 2014 titled NZ Muslims & Shadow of ISIS again shows Insight’s poor grasp of matters Islamic.  The result was an obsequious, heavily biased and uninformative tract promoting Islam as ‘just a religion like any other’ even as the programme’s guests demonstrated it was anything but.

A programme dedicated to ‘insight’ should have been picked up on the many discrepancies, but it did not.

Take Professor Edwina Pio’s comment about the heterogeneity of Muslims.  This contrasts sharply with Umarji Mohammed’s comment about “our people,” meaning the ummah or the global Muslim community.  Pio and Mohammed can’t both be right and Insight should have queried the paradox.

Pio also commented that “Islam’s emphasis on peace is not well understood.”  It’s hard not to raise a cynical laugh, but Insight could have asked where this could be seen in practice in a manner understood in Western terms.

In regard to jihad, Pio struggled in describing it as “an effort to cleanse oneself of impurities that one has within oneself.”  Her reference to the lesser jihad, “Later on this became … against other people,” is part of an 11^th Century contrivance referring to ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ jihads and used for dissembling.  The unqualified term jihad is almost always used in a military sense as part of Islamic conquest.  This negates her contention that “Muslims do not believe in killing others.”¹ 

In her book, Work and Worship, Pio finds that Muslim’s employment difficulties means that acceptance of Muslims and their way of living still needs work.  Why doesn’t Insight question Pio on the need for Muslims to integrate here in the same way Europeans need to behave in Islamic states?  Why should New Zealand bend its culture to suit an alien import which has manifestly failed in every country in which it forms a significant proportion, as many national standards surveys can attest to?²

The Federation of Islamic Associations’ president Anwar Ghani condemns IS with some heavy-hitting ambivalence.  Well, he would, wouldn’t he, since supporting it risks some serious scrutiny from the SIS.  But why didn’t Insight question him on his statement that “Their method or their action have nothing to do with Islam”?  All Islamist terrorist groups operate according to their interpretations of the same Islamic scriptures that members of the FIANZ use, along with Islam’s robust prescriptive nature with its rules of halal and haram, that which is permitted and that which is forbidden.  Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is reputed to have a PhD in Islamic studies – would Ghani care to debate the issue with him?

Ghani conflates the behaviour of veterans returning with post-traumatic stress disorder with the potential threat that IS returnees pose.  No vets ever came back inculcated with a murderous ideology, though, and Insight should have queried this.

The major logical and factual conflict occurs with comments by Umarji Mohammed. 

He says that Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and France have intervened in Middle Eastern conflicts “and they all have had problems” meaning, one assumes, domestic terrorism courtesy of radical Muslims.  He says Japan and [South] Korea have “sizeable communities” and “In Brazil there are millions of Muslims” which have not intervened and have not had such trouble.  According to Wikipedia the communities are, respectively and approximately, 100,000 or 0.08 % of the total population; 35,000 or 0.07%; and 30,000 (2010 census) or 0.015%.  Insight did not query this aggrandisement.  Isolationism has not protected Japan from attacks by Islamists, with the 2010 strike on its super tanker M Star in the Straits of Hormuz, UAE.  The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, linked to al Qaeda and based in the Sinai Peninsula, claimed responsibility “to avenge the plunder of Muslim wealth.”  And 44-year-old Hitoshi Igarashi, Tsukuba University assistant professor of literature and translator of the novel The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, was murdered in 1991 with Muslims in Japan applauding the murder.

He goes on to say, “If New Zealand does get involved then obviously there will be people who [inaudible, contextually meaning ‘say’] ‘You’re killing our people so let’s do something to you.’”  Why did Insight not query his personal attitude to this threat, and whether he would assist the Police in reporting it?  His use of the phrase “our people,” should have been challenged on the basis of identity.  How can any New Zealand Muslim be trusted if their primary allegiance is to the ummah, much of which is involved in violent turmoil?  Mohammed opens a window onto the thinking of local Muslims which makes Pio’s views look disingenuous to the point of dissembling.

Teacher Aliya Denzeisen, an American Muslim émigré, collects reports of anti-Muslim acts, funding Muslims’ grievance industry.  She gets calls every day regarding assaults or insults from women wearing Islamic dress, yet the answer lies with these women – adapt to New Zealand modes of behaviour and the problems stop.

Finally to the comments of Musa Taukuri who says, “I’m just like everyone else.”  This obviously doesn’t apply to his daughters who he sends to school wearing Islamic dress, resulting in negative comments.  Is Insight aware that Islam does not require any of the costumes characteristic of the Middle Eastern states to be worn by its women?  All it requires is modest dress, which his girls could wear and attract no comment.  He could be accused of hypocrisy, child cruelty, religious obsessiveness and bigotry, but not by Insight.  Why not?

There are several comments that need to be made in conclusion.  Firstly, Insight needs to consider the perspective it projects to its listeners when discussing Islam.  It demonstrates ignorance of the subject but the listener does not know whether this is genuine or is driven by ideological motives.  Such motives may be deliberate or unconscious, or a projection of Radio New Zealand (and by extension, government) intent, implicit or explicit.  

Secondly, balance.  Listeners can assume that Insight strives for balance but the example here and with an earlier programme, Culturally Motivate Crime, leaves too much room for doubt about some subjects it covers.  For example, none of the people interviewed had any academic knowledge of Islam or its extremists, or the New Zealand terror threat and the governmental response with respect to the Muslim community.  There were no disinterested social commentators.  There was no critique of any sort on the views presented.  The inflexibility, demands for societal compliance, and the absolutist views of the Muslim community were not challenged.  Yet Insight could have interviewed Dr Mark Durie³ or Dr Paul Buchanan⁴ for example and achieved balance and expertise in pertinent aspects of the subject under discussion.

Finally, the implied criticism of New Zealand society in its failure to change, appease, and accept Muslims, notwithstanding the incompatibility of their religion with the Western world’s democratic and conciliatory norms.  Insight, along with many if not all media representations (I am not aware of any exceptions) promotes what I call ‘mandated heterophily’.  This is not the place to expand on the concept, suffice to say that this is an ethical reinterpretation of ‘multiculturalism’.  The obverse of this is socio-cultural homophily, that is, the tendency for humans to associate with others with whom they share characteristics of one sort or another.  We are all familiar with the slight kick we get from shared first or last names, birthdays, age, school, religion, country or city of birth, cultural background and so on.  Predominantly, people will associate with, live near, and marry, those of similar background.  This is the natural state of every person on earth; it is an essential part of the human condition.  In contrast, heterophily is not a natural state.  It has to be imposed and supported to avoid reversion to normative behaviour, and it does this by ad hominem epithets such as ‘xenophobic’, ‘racist’, 'bigoted', and ‘Islamophobic’.

Why is Insight inclined to take a didactic and unthinking approach to the imposition of Islamic culture and the consequent erosion of Kiwi identity, instead of a deep, robust, independent and intellectual analysis of this issue?  Or even of defending New Zealand values.

¹  http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Lesser_vs_Greater_Jihad. 

“Jihad is a foreign policy to expand the Islamic authority all over the world.”  Omar Bakri Muhammad, former leader, Al-Muhajitoun

"Violent Islamic Jihad is the most ambitious imperial project that the world has seen for many, many years – an attempt to re-establish a caliphate which brings the sharia law across large parts of the world.  And the sharia law, let's not forget what it does. It tortures people, it executes people, it cuts people's hands off, it subordinates women, it deprives women of rights. It deprives women of education."  Colonel Richard Kemp, Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan.

Shortly after he founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, Hassan al-Banna made very clear what jihad was about: "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire world."

What distinguishes a jihadi terrorist from a more peaceful Muslim, therefore, may not be any fundamental difference in belief, but, as in the West, merely in a given instance, how the religious legal principles of his faith should be applied.  Mark Durie

“Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. . . . Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! . . . Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!" Ayatollah Khomeini

² International surveys covering social progress, peacefulness, slavery, ‘good country’, life satisfaction, Christian persecution, competitiveness, corruption, democracy, stability, female genital mutilation, gender inequality, press freedom, happiness, life expectancy, women’s progress, and well-being show consistently that the greater Muslim population a country has, the more likely it is to score poorly.  Two things save these countries from total failure – oil money and failed African states.  And a significant reason that African states fail is because of Islam.

³ http://www.markdurie.com/

⁴  http://36th-parallel.com/our-people/