Eurislam – A Model for Australia?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
—
Population, the sleeping dog of politics, and its kennel companion immigration, have been off the national debate agenda in
I arrived in England four months after Enoch Powell had shared with the country his vision of “the River Tiber foaming with much blood” if the new Race Relations Bill became law. Politicians of all stripes were still foaming at the mouth. In the hypocrisy of their efforts to condemn Powell to outer political darkness and shut down debate on the real issue he raised—the forces acting against integration with a view to domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population—they overlooked his second, more important speech. Addressing the politically neutral Rotary Club of Eastbourne in November 1968,
How appropriate then that
Reflections is the study of a still-accelerating demographic revolution that has changed the face and faces of Europe, the story of a continent still trying, but failing, to cope with consequences nobody foresaw.
It was
Caldwell’s book is not politically correct. But it poses an important and universal question: is political correctness merely fear posing as tolerance?
Of
These are some politically incorrect points
• European countries have fallen into the “fertility trap”. Instead of the 2.1 children per woman necessary to maintain the native population,
• By 2050,
• In France, native French women have 1.7 children each, foreign-born women have 2.8, while Tunisians, Turks and Moroccans average between 3.3 and 3.4—more than in their home countries.
• From the south of
• Many British neighbourhoods are ethnic islands which are not integrated and where the young people are dis-assimilating.
• Native Europeans are getting old. A quarter of them are over sixty.
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours.
Let him think of the glories of
And get knock’d on the head for his labours.
How did
On the banks of the
Living in
A series of amnesties for illegal migrants in
The speed with which the Canaries became recognised as a traversable wormhole between the parallel universes of Africa and
With this example available, it seems scarcely credible that the Australian government should continue to pretend that the abolition of temporary protection visas and its more accommodating policies have not encouraged the
The
There is a de facto blasphemy law available unilaterally to Muslims—the violence of religious fanatics; so, in
In 2006, when the
“Nothing in this [Act] shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.”
“a chilling effect on legitimate expressions of religious freedom because of the impact that ‘folklaw’ and risk-averse management have on people’s behaviour. They may also create conflict by establishing a new forum for disputes that courts can never resolve.”
In its anti-discrimination legislation,
Australians were brought face to face with this cultural conflict when Sheik Hilali defined scantily dressed girls as cat meat, an unfortunate, perhaps even dangerous analogy. Public outrage at the assumed implication that bodily exposure legitimised sexual attack obscured the determination to defend Australians’ right to offend with revealing clothing. Few stopped to reflect that Sheik Hilali’s attitude to modesty was not so far from the strictures of Christian morality of times past.
As in
“Before the age of mass immigration, assimilation was an imperative, because not assimilating meant ostracism, loneliness and non-participation in the economy. If the need to assimilate was never spelled out legally, this was only because it was too obvious to have to be.”
He is correct, up to a point. Incorporating
Caldwell’s summary is that for a lot of Western liberals it is an article of faith that the course of Western history will be imitated or submitted to by everyone else: “it can be a pathetic spectacle to watch them waiting around for Islam to modernise”. On the contrary, in
The cornerstone of the European strategy against terrorism (as in
All European countries pursue roughly the same strategy for accommodating Islam—elevating Muslim pressure groups to pseudo-governmental status, and declaring that doing so will produce an Islam that reflects the values of Europe rather than vice versa.
Inter-faith dialogue has not been any more successful.
The final myth that
With its rapidly ageing population,
“They would emerge from the desiccated and starving hamlets of the
The Australian government is keen to shut off debate on population and immigration.
What might safeguard
There is more diversity in Islam than many imagine —even non-practising Muslims—but inevitably, the focus will be on the question of integrating an alien culture, and dealing with the dissident fanatics it is known to harbour.
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