On Muslim Integration

In a Radio New Zealand programme Asian Report, Muslim Women’s Camp, broadcast on the 4^th of October 2011, a 13 year old girl makes what to my ears is an extraordinary statement, “I’m from India and I was born here.”

I am sure my attitude is commonplace when my national identity is questioned, to describe myself as, “I am a New Zealander, born in England but have lived here fifty-two years.”  My primary identity is as a New Zealander, notwithstanding having been born overseas. Yet here is an NZ-born girl who considers her primary identity to be Indian.

This programme was useful in highlighting other issues of New Zealand Muslims as they attempt to integrate without assimilating, to become New Zealanders while holding onto a culture, society and religion which are antithetical to so much that mainstream New Zealanders unwittingly take for granted.

The camp participants wear hijabs when in public.  Yet one of the leaders says, “It’s about connecting the youth to the land so that they feel because they are here, they are Kiwi Muslims, they are New Zealanders and recognising that this is their land as well as knowing the traditions… We are teaching them the history of New Zealand knowing what it is and allowing them to see themselves as part of this community.” Yet keeping themselves apart.

The girl quoted above, and others on the programme, make themselves identifiably Muslim by the way they speak.  There is, in England, and no doubt in all countries with high levels of Muslim immigration, a trend to a Muslim accent which the TV character Ali G reifies.  It is an overlay on the regional accent, yet common to all regional accents when spoken by Muslims.  I’ve seen little research on this and its origins, though I suspect it may be faux Arabic via Middle Eastern imams who are contracted to mosques in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.  Having frequently heard such speech on BBC news and documentaries, it seems to operate on the level of a patois without a vocabulary, in contrast with, say, that of a Jewish or Black enclave.  Put another way, its culture is not living or creative; it is simply one of vocalised identity.

The accent stems in part from the shibbolethic pronunciation of ‘Muslim’ by Muslims.  The ‘u’ is a sound not heard in NZ or native English, lying midway between ‘moon’ and ‘mud’, whereas the English / New Zealand pronunciation is as in the latter.  Other words with a similar ‘u’ sound to ‘mud’ are changed in the same direction.  An example from this broadcast is ‘culture’, and this may be due to a high use of the word in terms of their identity.  While I’ve not seen this commented on, G K Chesterton made mention of it in The Flying Inn of 1914: 

It was fully four minutes before she could understand a word the man was saying: he spoke English with so extraordinary an accent that she supposed at first that he was talking in his own Oriental tongue.  All the noises of that articulation were odd; the most marked was an extreme prolongation of the short “u” into “oo” as in “poo-oot” for “put”.

It is interesting then, to hear this accent develop in New Zealand, making it a worthwhile pursuit for a phonetician. 

Muslim Women’s Camp was brief, just eleven minutes, but carried insights into NZ Muslim’s attitudes to integration which are unlikely to be commented on elsewhere.  The reason for this will be difficult to understand for people whose culture and sense of history has been diluted to the point where they no longer recognise it.  To them, ‘all people are basically the same,” without realising that their underlying assumption is “like me.”  They could not be more wrong.

In Defence of Koran-Burning

Pastor Terry Jones’ action of burning a copy of the Koran drew inflated condemnation from many people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and gave him undue publicity. His entry in Wikipedia does him no credit, so I’m not about to support his rather fundamentalist beliefs. On the other hand, what’s so wrong with burning the Koran?

After all, burning the Koran is not in any way forbidden. To dispose of a tatty copy one can, as The Islamic Party Of Great Britain’s Dr Sahib Bleher says, “. . . not in a ceremony, but we would burn it.” So it's not burning that is at issue, but the motivation.

Book-burning has a long history, much of it in a role of censorship but also as a form of protest. Both sides see the book as a symbol of threat, but the difference lies in the position of power held by the burner – is it dominant or is it in some way subjugated? Is the book to be permanently obliterated, or is it a mere icon, one of many? In the Pastor Jones case it was purely symbolic, and the only power he has is in making his own decision on the action. The consequences of his action then lie in the hands of others, and it was the excessive publicity that caused the greater harm.

In burning it as a form of protest, the Koran acts as a proxy for the sins carried out in its name. It is not an attack on the religion the Koran represents. In this manner, it carries the same value as an effigy, burnt or hanged, of which Pastor Jones has had such a distinction. For various reasons, mostly due to a ban on missionary work in Muslim countries, Bibles are routinely destroyed by authorities. This is, of course, book-burning of the censorship type. In general, the purpose of such protest is to diminish the values, and thus the perceived threat, of the antagonist.

Does a Koran-burner have just cause for criticising adherents of the religion the book represents?

Consider the fate of Christians in every Muslim-majority country. They are treated as second-class citizens, they are hounded out of their village or country, they are discriminated and killed, their churches and religious possessions are destroyed, and there is a deliberate policy to eliminate them and apostates from Muslim areas. While governmental policy is often contrary to these actions, no government has taken effective action to terminate this violence.

Consider also the actions of the Taliban in destroying the giant two thousand-year-old statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan province in Afghanistan.

Consider further the word ‘martyr’ – in Christianity it is a person who died at the hands of others for his or her beliefs. In Islam, it is a person who died while trying to kill as many innocent people as possible. Consider their fate – in Christianity they will spend eternity in paradise with a somewhat amorphous description. In Islam the martyr, often a young male starved of female company, feels a visceral thrill as he contemplates the services of 72 virgins.

Consider finally the absolute fanaticism, in some cases indistinguishable from insanity, exhibited by Muslim believers. They have a record of the use of unrestrained violence to obtain their goals, both in the East and in the West. It is this very fanaticism that creates the overwrought reverence Muslims have for the Koran, and their reactions to the merest slight. Burning the Koran is less a cause of violence in the Middle East than an excuse for it. Compare this to the protest in the West, which was limited to verbal criticism.

In the above, and indeed all, situations a devout Muslim’s actions are based either on the Koran or the Hadith. It is for this reason that the Koran is a suitable symbol for protest.

Amidst all the criticism of Koran-burning, few seem aware of the real issue here – the right of legitimate protest in the Western world. Depreciating any act of legitimate protest, whether it is marching, banner-waving, letter-writing, song-writing, flag-burning, cross-burning or book-burning, is not just an ad hominem attack on an individual’s or groups’ rights. It is an attack on the very liberties we take for granted in the West. This is a lesson that has to be learned in the Islamic world. Muslims’ extreme reaction, of murder and mayhem in response to an individual’s essentially legal, harmless and ineffective act, is totally unacceptable. At the same time, people in the West must realise that this is how Muslims will react when Islam is given a privileged status, and that this poses a real and present danger that must be addressed.

There is another factor, unacknowledged in the West but well-understood in the Islamic world, that of the fallacy argumentum ad baculum.  This is where violence is used in consequence to a stimulus and thereafter remains as a threat, inhibiting repeats of similar stimuli.  The utterly extraordinary level of reaction against the West on the basis of such a trivial cause was not criticised at all.  It remains as a restraining factor in allowing the Western world to criticise the 7^th Century precepts that underpin the Islam of today.  This process was vital to the Islamic conquest of Europe, and in the future, of the United States.  

 

The Americans were completely wrong in apologising, which was seen as an act of submission to Islamic definitions of grievance, and encouraging acts of punishment.   In doing so, they demonstrate their inability to understand the Muslim mind.  It’s a bit late, but the response should have been to point out that the Muslims having used the Korans that were burned had desecrated them and thus deconsecrated them.  The ultimate disposal would then have been no mistake, of no consequence, and will be repeated under similar circumstance.  The demented response in the Islamic world would have been the same, but the West will be living with that for centuries to come anyway.  But NATO and the West would have saved face instead of grovelling.

With freedom of speech already under severe attack from both the politically-correct and Islamic groups in the West, our standards of freedom are things we are going to have to fight very robustly for, now and in the future. If we don’t, the future will be Islamic.

Returning reluctantly to Pastor Jones, he is portrayed in Western media as an extremist, raising the idea that there is some sort of equivalence with other extremists. But Jones doesn’t advocate for a global organisation of the wholesale slaughter of people who offend him. Muslims, both radical and conservative, do just that. Pastor Jones is not an extremist.

Post script, 19 March 2013

Jihad Watch carried a video clip of a soldier disarming a bomb contained in a Koran with the caption, "Actually the perpetrators were Islamic jihadists who not only misunderstood the peaceful teachings of the Book of Peace, but actually cut them out to make room for their bomb."  There was no record of protests about this, demonstrating the duplicity of these devout Muslims and the contempt  have for the West.  Jihad Watch

On the Relationship Between Internecine Conflict and Belief

Russell Jacoby, a history professor at UCLA, writes in “Bloodlust – Why we should fear our neighbours more than strangers” regarding the actual threat from those we know being greater than the perceived threat of unknown and dangerous strangers.

In the article he mentions 18 conflicts. Analysing and simplifying the cause, we find that of these, the predominant cause of 11 relates unambiguously to religious differences (the Lebanese civil war, the World Trade Centre bombing, Southern Sudan, Israel/Lebanon 2006, Somalia, Iraq Sunni v Shi’ite, Bernard Lewis’ “Clash of Civilisations”, Huguenots v Catholics, Germans v Jews during WWII, and Cain v Abel), four to extreme political conflict (the Ghandi assassination, the Russian civil war, the Peloponnesian War, Bosnia-Herzegovina) and two to tribal or ethnic conflict (Tutsi vs. Hutu in Rwanda, Hema v Lendu in north-eastern Congo). Nine of the conflicts Dr Jacoby mentions involve Islam.

Looking at what motivates much of this extreme violence, it’s clear that it involves ‘belief’ which, for the purpose of this comment, I define as “an opinion held to be true on the basis of faith, in that it can be neither verified nor falsified.”

Belief as a motivating factor to quash dissenting opinion by means of killing is clear where religion is concerned. I would suggest that belief is also a common factor in political situations, where in extremis, a believer holds that the political view espoused is so true and so right, that any means to institute and maintain it are justified. In this respect it becomes tyrannical, and little different to religious tyranny.

And that covers pretty much everything! So watch out for extreme belief. Indeed, it could be living next door.

On the Nature of Arabic Revolutions

An impression is given, and probably accepted, that objective of the ferment in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and to a lesser extent in other countries in the region, is to bring secular democracy to a welcoming public. But changing leadership is not enough. The question that must be asked is, “Has the nation’s paradigm changed?” I see no evidence that it has.

An example of this, and the interpretation that individuals put on ‘freedom’, came from a BBC interview with a Turkish university student who wanted freedoms that she did not have now. That is, she wanted to wear an Islamic headscarf to university. At present, she wears a poorly-fitted wig over a headscarf as a form of protest. So the freedom this woman wanted, and we can assume she is not a lone voice, would give direct support to the increasingly conservative Islam threatening to dominate Turkey. This is a country that wants to join the secular European Union, so it is hardly surprising that there is strong opposition to it within the EU.

Almost universally in Islamic states (and in almost all African states regardless of the predominant religion), government is to a greater or lesser degree despotic. Inevitable social change is not acknowledged and pressure builds up resulting in the protests and riots seen across the region.

Tribalism is inherent in these areas. Its hierarchical and conservative nature restricts the ability of society to master the essential quality of civilization, that of continuous refinement. Islam is the perfect religion for managing the expectations of diverse tribal cultures regardless of what sort of government is imposed on them. There is nothing in tribalism or Islam that prevents a despot from obtaining and holding onto power. Citizens will look at the ability of the West to change and to accommodate a variety of views without the need for violence. They will want it for their own country but the structure required to hold such a system in place does not exist anywhere south or east of Israel, the easternmost ‘Western’ country. Even such an expression as ‘country’ will have little meaning in this region, since such a recent concept hardly relates at all to the important factor of tribal hegemony. But it suits a despot because it gives the opportunity to obtain international recognition.

The outcome of these calls for liberation is unlikely to benefit anyone. There is already an increased flow of the disaffected trying to get into Europe. The leadership of some countries may change (although I predict that Gaddafi will hold on to power in Libya, short of an external force removing him) and there will be compromise and appeasement to restore order. Freedoms will be granted, then, as circumstances inevitably change, they will be removed.

It has to be recognised that waiting quietly and patiently in the wings is government by conservative Islam. There is no need for the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood to push for recognition during tumultuous times; they are best served by establishing themselves as an organisation with the structure in place for governing the country in an equitable and stable manner, and wait for popular acclamation to place them where they want to be. The imposition of Sharia law would then be a matter of due process, and the West will have another conservative Islamic state to deal with. Still more people will try to escape religious oppression in the Middle East and the Maghreb.

The alternative to this is that another despot will arise by force or ‘democratic’ vote, and the cycle of rapacious tyranny and repression will begin again. The West will be saved from having to deal with radical Islam, but will have a secular tyrant instead. This may be preferable from the West’s point of view. Still more people will try to obtain asylum in Europe.

Given the rise of conservatism in these countries, I consider that Islamist governments are inevitable, although some may need one or two more despotic cycles before that occurs. What will never happen is that they will reshape themselves into states along the lines of the European democratic model.

Recently, the BBC ran a debate in the Doha Debate series entitled This House believes that Arab revolutions will just produce different dictators. It was held in post-revolutionary Tunis with academic Tunisian and Arab debaters and a presumably a largely Tunisian audience. The consensus at the end of the debate strongly supported the negative, 3 to 1. This indicates to me that these ‘educated’ people do not understand their own or Arabic culture, the role of Islam, the nature of tribalism, their countries, or even human nature.

POST SCRIPT, one year later

The BBC’s This World episode Children of the Revolution, broadcast on 12 February 2012 will leave the viewer with a clear impression of the confidence and success of the Salafist subject of the three Egyptians profiled. The other two, an unemployed man with a telecoms qualification and an American-educated daughter of a wealthy businessman, became appalled as the dreams they had of the revolution turned to dust as the results of the election became known.

The lasting impression of this documentary is of the sharply increasing strength and the intensity of belief of the Islamists. “In victory: magnanimity” has never ever been a virtue of Islam. It was made abundantly clear that the Egyptian Islamists intend to enforce their mandate without compromise or mercy. The Egyptian result will not be the exception in the 'Arab Spring' countries, it will be the new rule.

Agnostics and the Right Question

While the evident rise in spiritual self-expression hasn’t left atheists behind, even their statements are made to seem conditional – “There is probably no God . . .” Probably? From an atheist?

This essay was prompted by seeing a BBC HardTalk interview of Brian May, lead guitarist of Queen. Intelligent, educated and introspective, as a physicist he was asked about Stephen Hawking’s recent statement that he is “confident he can say that a god was not necessary for the creation of the universe.” May didn’t think it was Hawking’s right to speak on matters of belief. “I don’t think any scientist has the right to say whether there is a god or not. I really don’t think science has any bearing on whether there is a god or not. I think it stops at that boundary; you have physics up to this point and metaphysics beyond that point. I don’t see how you can possibly prove the existence or non-existence of something which is outside the bounds of your logic.” He described himself as a ‘spiritual person’ who believes in a higher power, which he subsequently refers to as a ‘he’.

That’s all right; he’s a believer and can make such statements. But it struck me that agnostics make similar statements about gods’ existence. AND THEY ARE ASKING THE WRONG QUESTION!

It’s not a question at all about whether God [for it is only He about whom the question is asked!] exists or does not exist. The question needs be stated, “Was God invented by man?” This leads down three paths.

Firstly, what is the evidence for a singular god emerging from the plethora of pantheons, and especially one who could be detached from the system of human existence? For this we can consider the path of Akhenaten’s creation, in the early 14th century BC for political reasons, of Aten as a transcendent and spiritual god superior to others. The concept was carried by Moses to Israel and set the stage for the creation of monotheism.

Secondly, consider the vast tracts of literature explaining God in terms of vicissitude. This is the word I use to describe the misfortunes, and they are almost invariably ‘mis-’, that befall people, from causes as divers as weather, geological events, other species including agents of disease, and the evil actions of other humans, whether it be individuals, groups, or ruling elites. Is this more easily explicable in the absence of a transcendent deity? The answer is un-blindingly obvious.

Thirdly, we can look at the societal requirement for gods, and the religions that convey them. Gods have traditionally been used to explain the unknown, but scientific progress is leaving less and less to the spiritual imagination. Religion is used as a vehicle for morality, and its gods as judges and punishers of transgressors. But secular society has proved its ability to act in place of these gods, and furthermore, allow for change where society requires it. One of the major problems for religions is to balance ancient ‘truths’ with social progress. While mainstream Christianity is sufficiently integrated into Western culture to allow, usually belatedly, for such change, Islam is not. The rise in the West of a religion based on immutable 7th century principles is a recipe for disaster.

An agnostic could say that the existence of God is a Rumsfeldian 'unknown unknown', but this is manifestly untrue for an obvious reason. God as a human construct is thus ‘known’.

Doubts about the existence of God therefore fall into an ‘unknown knowns’ category. What resides in the ‘unknown unknowns’ of the cosmos are, well, unknown.

A thinker is a person whose part it is to symbolise time according to his vision and understanding. He has no choice; he thinks as he has to think. Truth in the long run is to him the picture of the world which was born at his birth. It is that which he does not invent but rather discovers within himself. It is himself over again: his being expressed in words; the meaning of his personality formed into a doctrine which so far as concerns his life is unalterable, because truth and his life are identical. This symbolism is the one essential, the vessel and the expression of human history. Spengler