Can Social Cohesion Be Imposed?

Islamic adept and professional obfuscator Kenan Malik is at it again.  In his post “Can Social Cohesion Be Imposed?” he rightly posits the issue as one of “widespread social disengagement”, yet fails to realise why he is even having the discussion in the first place.  This lack of insight may by politically motivated, or it may be ignorance due to Islam’s doctrinaire world-view that everything that’s wrong is someone else’s fault.  Giving him the benefit of doubt does him no credit.  His conclusion that “cohesion … is shaped primarily by civil society [rather than by the actions of the state], by the individual bonds that people form with one another, and by the organizations they establish to further their shared political and social interests” leaves as inevitable the creation of hundreds of self-governing Islamic microstates at odds with the host nation.

My comment, with minor additions, is as follows, but is unlikely to show up on his site.

It’s nice to see my concept of mandated heterophily is getting some attention!  However, the problem with the conclusion drawn here is that it is formed without reference to the underlying issue.  He’s right when he says it wasn’t just Asians who rioted [in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham, 2001], but nor was it Chinese or so many other races that make up ‘Asia’.  ‘Asian races’ not caught up in religious absolutism such as Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, and indeed all the others including reformed Aum Shinrikyo, weren’t present either.  This does a grave disservice to these groups who manage integration far better, as their respective employment rates and household wealth show. 

It is Islam that is the problem.  The effect of a dominant and supremacist ideology will, just as it did in post-Weimar Germany, lead to severe disruption of the status quo in a way that no other category of identity is able to.  As with any inflexible ideology, it will blame its failure on external forces and require its adherents to increase their doctrinal devotion.  Combine Islam’s innate ressentiment and its unifying ‘brotherhood’ nature with the quorum-sensing nature of crowds and a youthful demographic, and a riot is inevitable with the lightest of trigger pressure.  ‘White’ involvement in these riots seems to be a reactionary force against Muslims, since they didn’t seem to be targeting any other racial or religious group.  Indeed, it seems likely that race riots are a thing of the past.  The deliberate conflation of ‘race’ and ‘religion’ in this context confuses the issue and the causes and consequences of this are highly distortionary.

He is right also about the “fragmentation of identity”.  This is a result of the progressive effects of cultural repudiation, a Marxist directive so slow, subtle and successful that few seem aware of its ‘long march through the institutions.’  It has, of course left Europe less able to defend itself against stronger forces, which is no doubt part of the goal.

Malik quotes an 1864 edition of The Saturday Review’s description of the denizens of Bethnal Green being “a caste apart, a race of whom we know nothing”, and clearly different from its readership cohort.  London’s sewage system would have made the greatest contribution to Bethnal Green’s redemption.  A similar solution for violent Islamic fundamentalists is being advocated now.  Social cohesion will only be solved when all Muslims reject 7^th morality and accept modernity.

Fat chance.

You can see Malik’s original essay here:  https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/can-social-cohesion-be-imposed/#comment-16350