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Reply #30 - August 21, 2014, 02:18 PM

Quote from: avalanche on August 20, 2014, 05:18 PM
And to give another example of how this all works I just watched: the Islamist obsession with 'democracy' as evidence by Masroor on this video today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyIvagRb9D4&feature=youtu.be

The Islamist conception of democracy is basically as you described it: tyranny of the majority. As soon as they take over, they'll vote to remove women's rights, establish Muslim male superiority, curb the rights of non-Muslims, etc. If you complain, they'll retort that they're democratically elected and it's all democracy at work. This is why promoting democracy in the form of ballot boxes alone is bloody stupid, it has to come with respect for and acceptance of basic human rights.

Apparently, the jihadis (who've never liked the ikhwanis btw) are pissed at the failure of democracy in Egypt. This is just absurd when you consider what type of society ISIS supporters/fighters would like He's basically saying the shari'ah should be implemented via elections instead of through jihad.
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Reply #31 - August 21, 2014, 02:33 PM

Hmm, the worst British Muslim voting blocs can produce is more sycophantic politicians like George Galloway, which is pretty bad IMO, but wide-scale Islamist violence or shari'ah or any such nonsense isn't coming to the UK.

The insurgencies always happen in places where Muslims are part of an indigenous ethnic group that doesn't identify with/aren't a part of the predominant/ruling ethnic group. Not that different from non-Muslim separatist movements anywhere else, the only thing is Islamist weirdos and jihadi ideology always seem to join the fun and turn a typical nationalist separatist movement into a caliphate-seeking suicide-fest (see: Chechnya, Palestine, Turkestan, etc). Somehow, I don't think you need to fear a Muslim insurgency in Bradford…

Honestly, I think the rising popularity of far-right neo-nazi groups in Europe is pretty scary. I'm quite certain that these types will eventually come to power or become part of ruling coalitions and crackdown hard on immigration and Muslims long before any "threat" materialises. It's already sort of happened in Denmark. Hopefully, the left will come to its senses before then and cooler heads will prevail. Wilders and other nationalistic demagogues are scarier than any Muslim if you ask me.

I agree 100% with billy.
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Reply #32 - August 21, 2014, 02:37 PM

Islamic identity politics drives far-right parties in the UK. That's why Islamism has to be defeated and why the Left should stand up against it.

"we can smell traitors and country haters"

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Reply #33 - August 21, 2014, 03:01 PM

josephus,

I'm intrigued. Let's leave aside demographics for now and focus on the statement "a rising Muslim population in the UK will eventually become problematic". What makes you think such a statement is "absurd"? At the very least it's worthy of debate. Or do you think there is 'no problem' with the Muslim community in the UK?
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Reply #34 - August 21, 2014, 03:13 PM

Al Alethia

"The insurgencies always happen in places where Muslims are part of an indigenous ethnic group that doesn't identify with/aren't a part of the predominant/ruling ethnic group."

That's true but almost tautologous: by definition jihads would happen when Muslims are in the minority or not dominant, because the moment they are in the majority or dominant there's little need for jihad.

Islam spread in a time when there was little mass immigration from non-contiguous countries (with a few exceptions like the colonial settler states). We saw a gradual spread, and obviously tribes on the border areas would be the first to convert. You get some tribes that would hold out longer for one reason or another, but generally the conversion would happen tribe-by-tribe or region-by-region. There would be a period of consolidation, then the jihads would start again.

These days, we have mass immigration from one part of the world to another, and rapid demographic changes on a scale never seen before. Your 'rule' that it's always indigenous groups only applies because it was not possible for non-indigenous groups to revolt in the past...but there's no reason to be sure that won't apply in the future.

But I do agree with billy - the initial threat will be the Far Right reaction, which I think is very close. Britain First, despite being basically a joke and only existing a few months, has more Facebook 'likes' than any mainstream political party. Ok that's not the same as a vote at the ballot box, but it's demonstrative of the (in my view justified) anger people are feeling towards Muslims for their shitty behaviour and separatism. We need a unified alliance: Right, Left and secular Muslim against Islamists; perhaps then we will see them change. But even if that alliance happens (and it will be interesting to see which way the moderate Muslims go in this polarised scenario), the Islamists wont go down without a fight.
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Reply #35 - August 21, 2014, 03:31 PM

Quote from: billy on August 21, 2014, 02:37 PM
Islamic identity politics drives far-right parties in the UK. That's why Islamism has to be defeated and why the Left should stand up against it.

It's symbiotic, they're both reactionary far-right ideologies that essentially feed of one another. Which is why it's really frustrating to see this link between the left and islamism, I bet if you take their viewpoints, strip them off their Islamic identity and present them to leftists you'll see universal condemnation, yet, tell them about the origins of these views and you'll see some try to argue against their prior condemnation.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God." - Epicurus
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Reply #36 - August 21, 2014, 06:11 PM

I think this is appropriate to this debate!

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2014/08/20/wrn-western-extremism-maajid-nawaz-intv.cnn&video_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FmpO2sNl5YZ

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #37 - August 22, 2014, 04:26 AM

@avalanche

I get what you're saying but I still don't see a Muslim insurgency in a long-established country like the UK. Do you seriously see the Pakistanis of Bradford demanding a state and fighting for it? Like you said, the right-wing backlash will happen long before any such thing could materialise.
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Reply #38 - August 22, 2014, 10:24 AM

Avalanche

Do you think that Bosnia - the exemplar of a secular European state with a nominally muslim majority population - might not be just as much the kind of reality that we might expect to see? Or Turkey?

It's very easy to get caught up in the idea that the loudest and most unpleasant voices that we hear are the normative ones; they aren't. Islam isn't some sort of fixed monolithic entity - neither are muslims. And whilst it's easy to fall into the trap that our present is in fact an authentic representations of both past and future, things change; I'm old enough to have seen the shift in Pakistani Punjabi fashions from Sari to Shalwaar to pseudo-Saudi to the bewildering variety of styles that young muslim lasses adopt these days - and this will change again in the course of the articulation of nativist British muslim identities, as will inevitably happen given that the "distance" between family origins in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia etc and the British reality of an ever-growing percentage of UK muslims can only ever increase. A hundred or so years ago there were fairly substantial Yemeni and Somali communities in the UK - they secularised, in line with the rest of the UK population.
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Reply #39 - August 22, 2014, 03:05 PM

Quote from: Naz on August 21, 2014, 03:31 PM
It's symbiotic, they're both reactionary far-right ideologies that essentially feed of one another.

The far right in Britain has always been tiny and scorned. I've no doubt it now feeds off Islamism, but had the liberal establishment not stifled dissent for 40-odd years, there would be nothing for the white far right to claw at. But Islamism would still be there.
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