· http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/10/thought-europes-muslims-gradually-blend-britains-diverse-landscape-known-better/
UK Equalities and Human Rights Commission Chief Who Popularised The Term ‘Islamophobia’ Admits: ‘I Thought Muslims Would Blend into Britain… I Should Have Known Better’
The former head of Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, has admitted he “got almost everything wrong” on Muslim immigration in a damning new report on integration, segregation, and how the followers of Islam are creating “nations within nations” in the West.
Phillips,
a former elected member of the Labour Party who served as the Chairman
of the EHRC from 2003-2012 will present “What British Muslims Really
Think” on Channel 4 on Wednesday. An ICM poll released to the Times ahead of the broadcast reveals:
- One in five Muslims in Britain never enter a non-Muslim house;
- 39 per cent of Muslims, male and female, say a woman should always obey her husband;
- 31 per cent of British Muslims support the right of a man to have more than one wife;
- 52 per cent of Muslims did not believe that homosexuality should be legal;
- 23 per cent of Muslims support the introduction of Sharia law rather than the laws laid down by parliament.
Writing in the Times on the issue, Phillips admits: “Liberal
opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most
Muslims are just like everyone else… Britain desperately wants to think
of its Muslims as versions of the Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya
Hussain, or the cheeky-chappie athlete Mo Farah. But thanks to the most
detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet
conducted, we now know that just isn’t how it is.”
Phillips commissioned “the Runnymede report” into
Britain and Islamophobia in 1997 which, according to both Phillips
himself and academics across the country, popularised the phrase which
has now become synonymous with any criticism – legitimate or not – of
Islam or Muslims.
Durham University’s Anthropology Journal noted in
2007: “It has been a decade since the Commission on British Muslims and
Islamophobia was established, a Commission that through its 1997
report, “Islamophobia: a challenge for us all” (“the Runnymede report”)
not only raised an awareness of the growing reality of anti-Muslim and
anti-Islamic hostility in Britain, but also marked the onset of what
might be described as ‘the first decade of Islamophobia’. In doing so,
the Runnymede report propelled the word ‘Islamophobia’ into the everyday
common parlance and discourses of both the public and political
spaces.”
Phillips
says his new data shows “a chasm” opening between Muslims and
non-Muslims on fundamental issues such as marriage, relations between
men and women, schooling, freedom of expression and even the validity of
violence in defence of religion. He notes – echoing an article on Breitbart London just two weeks ago which
reveals a growing disparity between older and younger Muslims in
Britain – that “the gaps between Muslim and non-Muslim youngsters are
nearly as large as those between their elders”.
And
while he is cautious to note that many Muslims in Britain are grateful
to be here, and do identify with role models such as Hussain and Farah,
there is a widening gap in society with many Muslims segregating
themselves.
“It’s not as though we couldn’t have seen this coming. But we’ve repeatedly failed to spot the warning signs,” he admits.
“Twenty
years ago… I published the report titled Islamophobia: A Challenge for
Us All, we thought that the real risk of the arrival of new communities
was discrimination against Muslims. Our 1996 survey of recent incidents
showed that there was plenty of it around. But we got almost everything
else wrong.”
His
comments will come as a blow to those who continue to attack elements
in British society who are concerned about Muslim immigration and
integration, and in fact may even go some way to shoring up comments
made by U.S. Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz seeking to slow down or pause the rate of Muslim immigration into the West.
“We
estimated that the Muslim population of the UK would be approaching 2
[million] by 2020. We underestimated by nearly a million. We predicted
that the most lethal threat to Muslims would come from racial attacks
and social exclusion. We completely failed to foresee the urban
conflicts of 2001 that ravaged our northern cities. And of course we
didn’t dream of 9/11 and the atrocities in Madrid, Paris, Istanbul,
Brussels and London.”
“For
a long time, I too thought that Europe’s Muslims would become like
previous waves of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways,
wearing their religious and cultural baggage lightly, and gradually
blending into Britain’s diverse identity landscape. I should have known
better.”
And
Mr. Phillips even acknowledges that the mass sexual grooming and rape
scandals that are plaguing heavily Muslim populated towns across Britain
are because of Muslim – not ‘Asian’ – men. He writes: “The contempt for
white girls among some Muslim men has been highlighted by the recent
scandals in Rotherham, Oxford, Rochdale and other towns. But this merely
reflects a deeply ingrained sexism that runs through Britain’s Muslim
communities” – in a nod to those who have long protested this to be the
case in the face of political, media, and even police cover ups.
Even
left wing columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown told him: “[W]e [liberal
Muslims] are a dying breed — in 10 years there will be very few of us
left unless something really important is done.”
Phillips comments: “Some of my journalist friends imagine that, with time, the Muslims will grow out of it. They won’t.”
And indeed he lays the blame at the feet of the liberal, metropolitan elite, media classes:
“Oddly, the biggest obstacles we now face in addressing the growth of
this nation-within-a-nation are not created by British Muslims
themselves. Many of our (distinctly un-diverse) elite political and
media classes simply refuse to acknowledge the truth. Any undesirable
behaviours are attributed to poverty and alienation. Backing for
violent extremism must be the fault of the Americans. Oppression of
women is a cultural trait that will fade with time, nothing to do with
the true face of Islam.”
“Even
when confronted with the growing pile of evidence to the contrary, and
the angst of the liberal minority of British Muslims, clever, important
people still cling to the patronising certainty that British Muslims
will, over time, come to see that “our” ways are better.”
In
terms of solutions, Mr. Phillips opines on “halting the growth of
sharia courts and placing them under regulation” ensuring that school
governance never falls into the hands of a single-minority group,
“ensuring mosques that receive a steady flow of funds from foreign
governments such as Saudi Arabia, however disguised, are forced to
reduce their dependency on Wahhabi patronage” and an end to the
“silence-for-votes understanding between local politicians and Muslim
leaders — the sort of Pontius Pilate deal that had such catastrophic
outcomes in Rotherham and Rochdale”.
Mr. Phillips’s comments echo those of the Czech president, and research from
across Europe that revealed attitudes amongst Muslims on the continent
have hardened. The younger the Muslim, the more likely they are to hold
hard-line views, one recent study found.
What British Muslims Really Think is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Wednesday
Saudi TV host: Time to face facts, terrorists are Muslims
Video attached to link
Saudi journalist rips into 'hypocritical' clerics who encourage Jihad, then claim terrorists have nothing to do with Islam.
By Ari Soffer
4/10/2016,
A
Saudi Arabian TV host has urged Muslims to face up to the fact that
Islamic terrorists are indeed Muslims, and do more to combat the
phenomenon instead of denying it.
In
a rare - and scathing - moment of introspection for an Arab TV
host, Nadine Al-Budair insisted no one should be surprised that Islamist
terrorists had emerged from "our schools and universities."
"Whenever
terrorism massacres peaceful civilians, the smart alecks and the
hypocrites vie with one another in saying that these people do not
represent Islam or Muslims," she said in her monologue on Rotana
Khalijiyya TV, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research
Institute (MEMRI).
"Perhaps one of them could tell us who does represent Islam and the Muslims," she suggested sardonically.
Al-Budair
noted that many Islamist apologists tend to write off jihadist
terrorists as "homeless alcoholics and drug addicts," in order to avoid
facing up to the Islam-inspired ideology which drives them.
But
there are plenty of homeless, drug- and alcohol-addicted non-Muslims
too, she pointed out, "but we do not expect these addicts or criminals
to even consider coming here and blowing up a mosque or a street in our
city."
"Don't
these perpetrators emerge from our environment?" she asked of Islamic
terrorists. "After the abominable Brussels bombings, it's time for us to
feel shame and stop acting as if the terrorists are a rarity."
"We
must admit that they are present everywhere, that their nationality is
Arab, and that they adhere to the religion of Islam," she said. "We must
admit that it is the schools and universities that we established that
told them that the 'others' are infidels."
She
shared a complaint often made by some more moderate clerics, that the
vast majority of Muslims were basing their faith and ideology on a
specific set of commentaries and interpretations of the Quran, instead
of the book itself, rendering them largely ignorant of the foundations
of their faith and beholden to increasingly extreme ideologues.
"What
makes us laugh and cry at the same time is that the people who spilled
the blood walk at the dead man's funeral and cry," she concluded,
referring to Islamist apologists.
"Now
the old supporters (of terrorism) have the audacity to declare that
they denounce bombings everywhere and that the killing of civilians is
an attack on the religion (of Islam).
"Why
don't they have the courage to declare that they were the ones who said
that Jihad is obligatory, and who legalized political wars, using
futile and disgraceful exegeses which permit killing, enslavement and
destruction?"
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