Silent Betrayal

Thanks to Pastorius for emailing me to cal my attention to this February 3, 2008 article in the Telegraph:

A deafening silence that betrays our values

Four weeks ago, the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, expressed on these pages his concern at the lack of integration into British society of some Muslim communities living here. He has since received an enormous amount of support from private individuals for his remarks - as well as death threats from fanatics who said they would kill him unless he stopped criticising the religion of Islam (something which he insisted he was not doing).

The most striking aspect of the response to his article, however, has not been that bigoted and offensive reaction from a small number: it has been the almost complete silence from the Government on the issues he raised. Despite recent claims by ministers that they want to revise the policy of multiculturalism, and that they wish for a vigorous national debate on what should replace it, their reaction to this - and indeed to all other attempts to generate debate - has been deafening silence. You could be forgiven for thinking there is a conspiracy to prevent discussion of the issues that the bishop, and millions of other Britons, are so concerned about.

The official reluctance to confront those issues acts far more effectively than death threats to suppress their discussion. Yet questions of immigration and integration are amongst the most critically important faced by Britain. As we report today, thousands of women in Britain are being beaten, bullied, intimidated and indeed sometimes murdered by members of their own families - and it is being done in the name of their religion and of "traditional values". An investigation by the Centre for Social Cohesion has established that whole communities have been involved in suppressing their female members' wholly legitimate desire to marry whom they choose, to follow careers of their own, and to dress and live according to their own will, rather than at the command of a male relative.

No one in Government could possibly endorse the cruel denial of elementary freedoms to women. An absolutely basic value of the free and tolerant society in which most of us want to live is that every adult should be able to choose whom they will marry, where they will work, and what they will wear. No one who believes in liberal values (and every member of the Government insists that they are committed to those values) can accept that women should be denied an education, or should be bullied into marriages which they oppose, or denied the right to go outside their homes without being accompanied by, or getting permission from, a male relative. Yet that is precisely what is happening in some of the tightly knit immigrant communities in Britain.

The brutal coercion of women has been aided and abetted by Government policy, and thus by the ministers who make and implement it. The attitude of the state to those who would deny women fundamental freedoms should be one of active engagement to prevent any such appalling abuse: it should be an aggressive campaign to ensure that the law is enforced and that illegal coercion of women is prevented; and to ensure that "traditional" attitudes change. People who come from cultures where coercive behaviour towards women is the norm should be made to realise that it will not be tolerated in this country.

And yet what do we actually get from the Government? So far, a failure to tackle cultures that endorse the brutal oppression of women.

Now, for a real jaw-dropper, even for most of us counter-jihadists:

...[T]he Government has just taken the dismally retrograde step of recognising polygamy: men with more than one wife will be able to claim benefits for each additional spouse....CLICK HERE to read the comments to the above article. The comments indicate that the UK government no longer represents the desires of many of the governed, who find themselves more and more appalled with each step of appeasing fundamentalist Muslims.

How long before revolution comes to the UK? In my view, the next step is either total surrender or revolution.