One of the more interesting additions to the invasion narrative, that school of imagination which dreams a world of Britain conquered, invaded and changed, has been D C Alden’s self-published book, Invasion. The interest lies in the confused concoction that forms a fictionalisation of the Eurabian nightmare, the creation of a West Islam. As the blurb indicates, the imagined consequences are radical:
Britain is no more, reduced to a mere satellite state at the far western fringes of the Arabian empire, a vast domain that stretches from the dark borders of Scotland to the Chinese frontier where war still rages. London is a walled city again, its war-damaged historical buildings demolished and replaced with bronze statues, marbled mosques and landscaped memorial gardens, all celebrating the overthrow of western civilization in Europe. The city is a hub of Islamic power, a power that enslaves the British people to a life of servitude and confines them to crumbling, weed-choked suburbs outside the city.
The author acknowledges in his foreword that the script was originally written for film, and the novelisation is kitted out for adaptation to the screen. We have all of the props of the disaster novel but not of the disaster movie: an ensemble caste, cut and paste following different characters, and no protagonist to focus upon. The rag-bag conceptualisation, the overwhelming infodumps, the lack of an editor (weighing in at 641 pages) detract from the interesting kernel of a better novel. Alden can write and he can probably write better than this.
The major problem of the novel is the lack of plausibility. Whereas the invasion narrative is described as the juxtaposition of an ideologically unified Islam, politically united in a militarised and jihadist Arabia following its imperialist path, invading a supine, decadent and pacifistic Europe, the development of such a power would have caused some geopolitical concern, and downplays the Shi’a Sunni division. The United States gains energy security through the use of alien technology from Roswell. Hence, the thriller enters the realm of the unreal.
Such implausibility may reflect the sources of this cultural anxiety, of which Eurabia is a political extension. If we consider the stories told about Islamic invasion, the two most recent examples stem from chiliastic Christian fundamentalism or representations of other prophecies such as Nostradamus. These have often pictured a united Islam invading Europe with the final Pope dying in France, fulfilling Malachy’s prophecy, another fateful addition to the brew.
In the wake of Pakistan going nuclear in May, 1998, Muslim countries have, now, an easy access to the “Islamic Bomb”. And the communist China’s support to Pakistan is no secret. Could it, therefore, be that China, and a group of Muslim countries would pact up to launch an attack on Europe the next year, some time before the month of July? According to quatrain 72, Century X, “the war shall reign before and after that month”.
Mercifully, however, there is no mention of India to be involved in the nuclear conflagration, as per the prophecies of Nostradamus.
The political, the cultural and the prophetic representations of the Islamic invasion narrative all play a part in Alden’s novel. No doubt, this will eventually become a more fruitful vein of fictional endeavour, as thriller writers respond to the changes taking place around them in Europe. Thankfully, the future is more complex, more fractured and more optimistic than Alden’s take portrays.
The End of the World as we know it sells a lot of books.
I’ve read the blurb on this one too. I’d just like to add that, from what I’ve read, it’s utterly implausible. The actual “invasion” involves something like the co-ordination of a 9/11 plus-ultra style airliner attack on the UK, Islamic sleeper-cells in the UK seizing key targets and thousands of jihadis streaming out of container ships in the Thames, where they’d been holed-up in secret. That such a grand scheme could be carried out without anyone noticing is utterly bonkers.
It seemed very similar to the shillin shockers from about 100-120 years ago prophecying a “Great War” in Europe. Well, in that case it happened but what pretty much all those books had in common was that the war they predicted wasn’t anything like the 1914-1918 War.
Fiction like that always crops up, and it’s always laughably unrealistic. There was something not too long ago about how al-Qaeda militarily takes over the USA and Sean Hannity is an underground freedom fighter…? Yeah it was funny.
Anyway, I found this article through libertyup.com, it’s a site that my own blog, Last Free Voice, just launched, that syndicates all the libertarian blogs out there that we can find and hopefully give everyone more traffic and a place to hang out. The link’s in my name, check it out if you get a chance.
I find the demographic jihad narratives more compelling than the military invasion ones.
I always find it amusing that the jihadis are such great warriors while the westerners are so laughable and inept.
Odd how their REAL battles don’t pan out that way.
Also tends to ignore the reality that so few of the lowlife actually work or contribute, can’t build a new empire from whining after all.
It’s a neo-Nazi scare story, where the invading group could be Muslims, Jews, women, Germans, or whoever, depending on the author. It’s not worth anyone’s time.
Passive-aggressive invasion of Europe by immigration followed by full-ahead breeding with non-assimilation is proceding apace.
Suppressing opposition by cries of “Hate Speech !!” and “Religious Intolerance !!” keeps those Brits meek.
Remember, you must treat terror as a crime, not as warfare.
Yep, those pesky migrants are foiling our crack border police by breeding. We should sterilise the lot of them as they come in to Sangatte 2 immigration centre. Henceforth all British immigration officials will be issued with 2 bricks and an icepack – that’ll show them who’s boss.
As stated by others above, the real changes are quite different from this book.
The B.B.C. (of all people) broadcast an edition of “Panorama” showing how the English are gradually leaving the town of Blackburn.
Nothing dramatic – no invasion or mass killings, just people finding it unpleasant to live with another (and growing) group of people (in this case Muslims whose forefathers came from the Subcontinent).
“But everyone born in England is English” -well, as even the B.B.C. seem to be accepting, it does not always work that way.
For example, I am not English “by blood” (I am part Jew and part Irish), but I am accepted (and consider myself) as culturally English.
However, the growing community in Blackburn does not consider itself English – it might be nice if it did, but it does not.
There are lots of frantic efforts to “intergrate” the communities in Blackburn – but as the B.B.C. programme made clear these efforts have been a total failure.
Blackburn is just one of very many examples.
But it is hard to see how an exciting book could be made of it.
“What is to be done?” (the Lenin question). Nothing can be done (that would do any good).
The nonaggression principle lays down that one can not attack people just for practicing their culture or for having children.
And experience shows that living with the expanding Islamic community is not practical (not because the Muslims are going to engage in mass killings or anything like that – it is just that living with them is not very pleasant), so the English in these areas will have to move on.
Following from what you are saying Paul, Dave Cameron has pronounced upon the subject in what has to count as a new low, even for him
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2078446,00.html
moneyshot
I actually read another one of those “future-islamic-dystopia” narratives: “Tears of the Assassin”, wherein a good chunk of the USA is an Islamic republic, all save for the Bible Belt… the writer mapped out the possibility of this happening because a lot of celebs suddenly and publically converted, and a terrorist plot which nuked three or four American cities and which was unquestioningly blamed on Israel. I do give the writer props for at least making allowances for strict Wahabism not going down well in at least part of the USA… but everything about Islam is just so antithetical to Americans, it would be in reality an extremely hard sell. From where I sit, I can only see them making converts out of criminals and those who feel attracted towards authoritarian cults — to include the leftier sort of university campuses.
Eh, they raise the possibility to scare the ***** out of us, and to sell books, never mind the chance of it actually happening.
It is good to at least think of the possibility, though… god knows the die-hard Islamics are!
One Mighty Empire huh?
Sorry, any revived Caliphate will be as unstable and fissiparous as the original.
Sharia is all about laws for day to day living, but although it mandates a single state for all Muslims it contains almost no constitutional provisions for any state not run directly by Mohammed, and no provisions at all governing the appointment of his successors.
A severe oversight there by both Allah and his mate Gabriel.
Well, Philip, I have to agree with your last sentence.
The author apparently makes the same mistake that so many of the antagonists of the west have made—that a desire for peace is weak, and loud, blustery calls for violence and mayhem are a sign of strength.
In fact, just the opposite is true, as the ranks of defeated foes over the last few centuries have found, to their dismay.
The true danger is not to the west, but to the very survival of islam as a culture, and to the survival of anyone calling themselves moslem anywhere in the world.
There has never been any cultural entity in all of history more deadly than western, european derived, classically liberal, representative national societies when they decide, after much deliberation, that they are actually threatened with annihilation.
The lethality of the west is beyond the understanding of those who derive their idea of us from the talking heads and diplomatic types who go out of their way to say only the safest things, never threatening, never advocating violence, always cautious, always seeking the peaceful solution.
If the repeated examples over the course of the last few centuries were not enough, they should eat lunch with the guys I routinely meet. No future diplomats there. The consensus is, “more rubble, less trouble”.
And those are the quiet, thoughtful ones…
Chris Harper is bang on the money.
Muhammed was probably still warm when the Shia/Sunni schism began over who succeeded the man himself.
There is not going to be a Shia/Sunni rapproachment anytime soon. This is a religious schism with legs and the fact that us non-muslims don’t “get it” at a visceral level doesn’t mean it isn’t staggeringly important to muslims. Disunity (I forget the Arabic term they use) being a major bad thing for the Umma.
Paul,
Well, there’s another approach to the “non-aggression principle” you know. That is to stop the tax-payer funding Islamic pork-barrels (how very haram!) If we only took immigrants who were not attracted to our welfare state (imposed by the force of the taxman) then I’m sure many of our problems would soon be over. The simple fact that we rob our citizenry to pay for people who have no desire to add anything and just want to take is the problem. This, of course, is not just an Islamic problem. It applies equally to scumbags of all religious, political or ethnic shades.
That is not to downplay the very real problem we have with Islamic supremicism. They have a culture which will never get anywhere. We have a culture which is afraid of it’s own shadow. The result of this state of affairs is not nice.
We need to just hold the line. That is all. We need to believe that post-enlightenment civilisation is worth holding the line for.
Hers’s a more plausible idea- the world becomes more Islamic because the Saudis get smart, and start favouring countries which spontaneously start living up to sharia- that is, selling them more oil, and on better terms. Nothing threatening, along the lines of ‘Public decency is something we can all support- so why not longer dresses on women?’
As the world starts running out of easy oil, such an approach might well be successful.
“The nonaggression principle lays down that one can not attack people just for practicing their culture or for having children . . . . the English in these areas will have to move on.” — Paul Marks
Eventually, they won’t have anywhere to move on to.
Suppose that it is too late to reverse the growth of Islam in Britain by immigration controls, exit incentives or stopping economic transfers to Muslims. Then it seems to me the conclusion following from your premises is that the Muslims should be given an independent state within Britain as soon as possible, and confined to it. Nothing aggressive about that. However, your premises seem doubtful. Islam does not acknowledge a nonaggression principle toward unbelievers. It takes two sides to make nonaggression work.
Glad I don’t live in the UK.
very,
Maybe that should read: “The lethality of the west was…”
Times change, things change….
At least books like this are being written, however nonsensical individual ones might be.
They are a growing acknowledgment that the oldest conflict is bestiring itself once again.
Do you realise, this war has been going on since the days of the Roman Empire? Mohammed was born just five years after the death of Justinian. In this time civilisations have risen, fallen and risen again, and still it rages.
It will not be settled in our lifetimes.
nick g.
The Saudis aren’t going to get smart. Rising oil-prices will certainly not make ’em smart. Easy wealth has never made a society smart. Heard the old saying about Switzerland being a country fortunate enough not to have natural resources?
Chris,
I think it’s different this time around. This phase of the war with Islam is not about defending front-lines. Islam does not have the grand armies of Mehmet II anymore. It’s not that kind of a fight. Islam has metastisized throughout the world. What this means is anyone’s guess. We could be looking at a global civil war or God knows what else because this is a very new scenario. You’re probably right that it will rumble on for a very long time but the only way that’s going to happen is if the jihad goes into a period of remission and I’m really not sure how that will come to pass.
vr,
The potential lethality of the West is unquestioned. But what is the tipping point from jaw-jaw to war-war? Surely 9/11 should have been enough? What will it take? We’ve already painted ourselves into a corner by taking the “Religion of Peace hijacked by a small number of Very Bad Men” line. So how do we react when a former Pakistani military nuke goes off in a truck in central London? If you think that’s far-fetched you ain’t been following the news from Islamabad. Gen Musharref is a dead man walking.
I think it’s different this time around.
Nick,
Absolutely, no argument from me on that one.Never before has there been such a penetration by Islam into the countries of Europe. Nor have we ever seen such a disparity in demographic trends.
I don’t see Islam taking over Europe militarily, but I certainly see muslims increasingly choosing to be ghettoised, increasingly choosing to be marginalised, much greater population, increasing pressure on governments to concede self government to the Islamic enclaves and a permanent intifada as we are now seeing emerge in France.
And of course it was Pakistani military intelligence (not the oft blamed Amercians) who directed money to the worst interpretations of Islam. And General M. was in charge at the time.
Of course it was the secular socialist types of the Pakistan People’s Party who closed down the Christian mission schools in Pakistan in the early 1970’s – they expected the children to go to state schools (there are still plenty of people in Washington D.C. who want yet more aid for the bottomless pit of state education) – but they went to new Islamic schools instead.
Sadly the change in Islamic practices (for example the “Islamic dress” that one sees in so many towns in England was unknown to the parents or grandparents of the people who wear it) is partly due to bad luck and bad judgement.
As is widely known, the worst (most hostile to unbelivers and most hostile to personal liberty) interpretation of Islam is Wahhabism.
By bad luck the biggest oil supplies in the Islamic world were in Saudi Arabia – the homeland of Wahhabism.
The money from this oil has been used to spread the doctrines and practices of Wahhabism around the world – it has now taken on such a life of its own, that even if “our friends the Saudis” vanished, it would carry on.
There was also bad judgement.
Virtually the last action of F.D.R. was going on a ship to meet the King of Saudi Arabia. President Roosevelt then decided that the United States would support the House of Saud (a policy still followed to this day). That supporting the House of Saud means supporting Wahhabism, is something that F.D.R. did not know or did not care about.
“But the House of Saud fights against the radicals” – only when it is threatened by them. Otherwise it not allows the financial support of them, it used the oil money of the country to support their religious doctrines itself.
After all it was by adopting this interpretation of Islam that the House of Saud moved from being a bunch of desert bandits to the rulers of the land.
Shia Islam:
Western advice led the Shah of Iran to adopt crazy economic policies (the “White Revolution”). The credit money expansion inflation – and the price controls which were an absurd reaction to it. The “land reform” that undermined farming. The vast projects (in both town and country) which were so harmful.
The whole thing undermined support for his rule, and then the Americans (or rather President Carter) refused to support the man who had followed all their advice – thus giving the country to the Islamic radicals.
Gabrial:
Well I am impressed that the Muslim family in Birmingham (England) send their children to a Jewish school (although if Mr Cameron really thinks that is typical he is deluded).
But, of course, the real test is whether Muslims would be allowed to convert (to the Jewish faith or to Christianity).
For example, what if some of the people who are invited to Blackburn cathedral (so that “Chrisians and Muslims can understand each other better”) said “we wish to reject Islam and embrace Jesus as the incarnation of God” – would that be accepted by the “Islamc community”? Of course not (such people would be lucky to escape with their lives) – which is where the non aggression principle that I mentioned does not apply of course , it does not apply within the Islamic community.
The B.B.C. “Panorama” programme showed two things.
Firstly that talk of “intergetion” (or the idea of mulitculturalism still meaning there is one society as in “multicultrual society”) is nonsense. There were Islamic areas of town and English areas and their cultures were not just different they were hostile (they even used different taxi firms – and the idea of intermarriage was treated as a bad joke by both sides).
Secondly the programme showed that the Islamic areas of town were growing and the English areas were shrinking (partly because the Muslims had more children – but also because the English were moving out). With any effort to build special “mixed areas” being a total failure.
For those Americans who feel self satisfied when reading the above:
Have a look at (for example) the consequences of the growth of the Islamic community in States like Minnesota.
“What can be done?” the Lenin question again:
Modern “Red State” Americans know what to do (by instinct, or rather culture, – they do not even have to think about it).
Have lots of children and and convert people to your faith (so that newcommers may truly be part of the community). They do not have to convert all newcommers (nor put on any pressure on them to convert) just a strong active faith will convert enough.
For example, contrary to Hollywood propaganda, there is little antisemtism in Red State America these days ( one is more likely to find hated for Jews among certain “progressive” people). Indeed in the American South the biggest threat that newcommers face is obesity – due to the local practice of giving people endless amounts of food (and expecting them to eat it all). Of course this can lead to death (heart attacks and so on) but it is not exactly the threat that Hollywood suggests.
“Blue State” Americans (like British people) have few (if any) children, and when they have a religious faith at all it is not one they wish to share with other people – they wish to “understand and welcome the religion of the newcommers” instead.
So they are doomed. And one can hardly blame the newcommers for their doom.
Places like Tennessee and Alabama with a loud and confident culture, a passionate attachment to their relgion (and a desire to share it with others – together with a total hositity to any forced or false conversion), many children, and a cultural tradition of individual firearm ownership (togther with a tradition of leaving no insult unpunished), have nothing to fear from Islam (or anything else).
But places like Lancashire? Well it has nice countryside and the people have many virtues, but……..
Chris,
I don’t think they choose to be ghettoized. Nowadays, it almost just happens.The biggest supporters of this are of course the imams and “community leaders” (with the complicity of the useful idiots of the multi-culti mob) because it gives them a constituency and power-base. I doubt most of these folk are hardcore jihadis. They are just the typical demagogic gob-shites who want to be big fish in a small pond. They’re a problem though because they help maintain the muslim community and everyone else (including other recent immigrants) runnning on parallel lines.
What really bugs me is that I have no idea what these people think. The community half a mile up the road from me might as well be Martian because I can’t get a handle on their worldview. I know enough about Islam to make vague guesses as to how they look at stuff but I just can’t quite put myself in their sandals, so to speak. Especially as many of the women & older folk(including ones who have been here for decades) just don’t speak English. How must the UK look to them? I just can’t imagine living in an non-anglophone country and not learning the language. I have nothing but contempt for the Costa del Sol Brit expats who eat bacon and eggs at the Marbella Red Lion.
A few years back I made a call from a public phone in little Islamobad. The kiosk was plastered with “Magnificent 19” stickers celebrating the 9/11 hijackers and “A Towering Day in History”. I was the only non-muslim in the street. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. I think this will end in fisticuffs because Europeans of all races will fight back, eventually.
I don’t think they choose to be ghettoized. Nowadays, it almost just happens.The biggest supporters of this are of course the imams and “community leaders”
You have contradicted yourself in two sentences there. That is how this choice works.
Look at the past waves of immigrants, where are the Huguenot, Sikh and Jewish centres? And don’t say Golders Green. They gathered together for mutual support for the first generation or two, then scattered into the general community.
Ghettos start by choice, even if later they become compulsory, as did the medieval Jewish communities in latter years.
Muslim separatism is choice, not force. It is Islamic discrimination, not English.
Indeed, Chris. Witness the difference between Hindu and Muslim populations. To the outsider they were (until recently) the same, so no excuses about British bigotry being “the reason”.
Britain will eventually go the same way as Kosovo, aided by the UN and the “international community”. Realistically, the only thing we can do is to make sure our children or grandchildren have the means to escape to the US.
I think an Islamic invasion is utterly unlikely. It’s rather the other way around. Popculture, that glam and hollow late-modernism, the beast that started bimboisation with the miniskirt, churning out ever more kids of all ages who don’t even recognize their own dumbing down, is slowly gobbling up Islam from the inside. Where are muslem teens/adolescents radicalizing the most? Exactly: the middle east and other fun muslem places! Yes, there is Londonistan and all that… But: over here they’re surrounded by us. In the UK, for better or worse 😉 they’r surrounded by chavs. In the UK, apparently, you can combine Pakistani with skinhead. Telling…
Present European Culture is a systemkiller. Our High Culture hangs in virtually every museum, but there isn’t a living religion to feed it. Once every philosopher was a systemmaker (that’s also why 99,99% of all philosophers are male), now they’re not. If Scruton is right, and living religion is the basis for living culture, the present becomes perfectly obvious. What we have aren’t temples for the dying god, but tombs. Muslims now either mix&match (fundamentalism) or assimilate. Either way, their religion is changed, much like American High Culture. Pity neither is blessed with a Nietzsche. Then again, one was enough….
Chris,
I expressed myself badly and revised it even worse! Sorry, that was a poorly executed post. My thoughts on this are quite complex and sometimes trip over themselves.
I think what I meant was closer to the idea that the ghettoes aren’t even seen as a bad thing anymore by certain (self) important members of our society. It is just accepted that that is the way it is. I also think there are too many people both within the victimization “industry” and in the Islamic “community” who have a vested interest in maintaining a seperation.
Your point about Jews, Sikhs and Huguenots (I’m of part Huguenot ancestory but 100% English) is well taken. I just think that in this current case with muslim immigrants they are increasingly, by internal community peer-pressure aided by multi-cultural guff, not being given the individual choice (or having that choice made more difficult) to break from the ghetto. It is nigh on impossible for a non-muslim man to strike up any kinda relationship with a UK Muslimah without fearful consequences ensuing. Given that, how the hell can we expect integration?
I know this isn’t English discrimination. I’m well aware of that. A significant portion of the UK muslim community just doesn’t want to know about the rest of us. Or maybe, that’s not exactly the case and their “elders” are the ones imposing this apartheid. It is deeply ironic that the left which fought the good fight against South African apartheid has now been recruited as proxies for an ideological apartheid back home.
I wasn’t going to mention Golder’s Green but I was going to mention the UK’s assorted Chinatowns. I think many of the leftist appeasers of political Islam (the other sort of Islam is getting rarer though Islam has always been the “complete belief system”) regard these muslim ghettoes as being like Chinatown – a bit of international colour and interesting food. What they fail to appreciate is that the UK’s Chinatowns have long ago become a “brand” and they aren’t about cultural seperateness or antaganism towards the rest of the community, they’re just about making money selling dim-sum. They are totally different from the Islamic proto-statelets which are springing up throughout the UK. In short, they’re about as “Chinese” as a chain Irish pub is “Irish” whereas the Islamic ghettoes are the top to bottom real thing. Over the last few years increasing numbers of Chinese restaurants in the UK have switched to being buffets because the Chinese kids don’t want to wait on tables and decide to get medical degrees or go into law, engineering, software… whatever, but usually top-paid stuff, and invariably in the external, general, community.
Ghettos may be the future, but they are not necessarily a disaster. India is full of communities separated by ethnicity, language, culture and religion. But it still operates as a country, and while it has its problems, it’s hardly in a continual state of civil war. There is a general notion that Hinduism and Hindi (and to some extent English) are the ‘standard’ with wide variation.
I can imagine a Britian in 150 years where English remains the lingua-franca, where parliament is still dominated 60/40 by white-ish, nominally Christian, English speakers, but where regional areas, towns and states are ethnically and linguistically different.
Integration at a local level isn’t required for a cohesive country. I continue to be amazed at the black/white divide in many (most?) US towns and cities, and I see little indication that this is changing.
Having skimmed the book while enjoying a glass of excellent Australian red with Phil Chaston and Michael Jennings yesterday, I can state that this book will not trouble the Nobel Prize commitee. But fiction like this is not to be sneered at: it is as well that people, or some, are at least thinking through the issues.
Let me give you an example of how “ghettoisation” works without anyone but Muslims realising.
Near where I live in the north I know of a house, occupied in an area of many Muslims, which sports a stone arch over the front door painted with a saying in Arabic (I guess from the Koran). All very neatly done and no problem there as people can do what they want with their property – but should the house ever be on the market no-one but a Muslim would buy it.
A “Christian” family buying the house might not want the inscription, but imagine the local outcry if they painted over it… and such is the nature of Islam that the present owners would never be “forgiven” for removing it. So it stays, come what may.
Add to that the number of modest 3 bedroom houses in the area being extended (or two semi’s joined) to house a large family of Muslims then the local housing stock slowly becomes of interest only to other Muslims. Very few non-Muslims want a house with seven or so bedrooms, especially as in enlarging the property the back garden becomes the size of a postage stamp.
I have also noticed in this area an increasing amount of realtively high iron fences and gates being put up round these extended homes – English folk like hedges (or those damned coniers) but Muslims seem to like the prison look.
Could it be they know something we don’t about the way society is heading?
I fear it is too late for Europe now – decades of self hating leftist appeasment and multiculturalism have left it weak and feeble in the face of the islamic enemy. the only answer is to end all muslim immigration and deport muslims. Its either that or face civil war in the near future.
I would like to suggest that though the ghettoisation of the northern English rustbelt is more a feature of extremely bad luck than any bureaucratic oversight by the British immigration authorities and state planners. The first wave of guest workers on the continent largely went home after the work evaporated or they made the money necessary to accomplish whatever it was that brought them to the UK. Granted they were southern European types, but they worked, payed taxes and enriched the dull communities they settled in (improved the coffee anyway). Bringing in members of the Commonwealth with ostensible cultural similarities (Queen, cricket…) to work in primative industrial capacities for a Fordist economy, would have made good sense. In the time of mass immigration prior to ’75, I dont think anyway can reasonably maintain that anything about the immigrating groups would give a bureaucrat pause or consider that the Pakistanis would be culturally unable to transform alongside their fellow citizens and adapt to a non-manufacturing knowledge-based economy. However, these immigrant groups seem unwilling and culturally unable to adapt for religious reasons.
The great Islamic awakening caught everybody, except Middle Eastern scholars, by surprise; and even the scholars seem perplexed by the egalitarianism of the movement. All the historic paradigms of religious/political revolt have at once been outdated: Shia are working with Sunnis; European Bosniaks are accepting Iranian Shia money as well as Sunni Wahbbi
money; fringe sects such as the Nation of Islam with pretty strange and racist ideas are accepted by the Saudi government as kosher religious bodies to prostyletize in America, the willingness to allow the use of hte common language of the country for religious services and so on. I dont think anyone was prepared for it or even if he had, craft a persuasive line of argument to convince government officals; it just seems all so improbable. Yet it happened.
And now we are faced by communities encircling most European cities that are nations to themselves. Religious membership has replaced the ethnic identity, but is just as militantly policed and violently defended. A small vanguard plots and executes obscenities against the State and their fellow citizends, while a passive majority tacitly supports their efforts or abdicates responsibility. Any intrusion into the inner-workings of the nation is labelled as racist and ad hoc discriminatory. The movement has piecemeal appropriated tactics and philosophies from the two most murderous ideologies of the past century and is employing them to great effect against the State. For the mo, they are winning. What an odd, impropable and unfortunate turn of events.
Reading all the posts on this thread has me thinking that Enoch Powell was a generation too early, it looks like he is needed now. Please bear in mind that I’ve not lived in Britain for forty years.
As the Muslim community is bound to the mosque, I think this is where the solution lies.
Firstly, the obvious, is to not permit the entry/sponsorship of foreign Imams who know little or no English, hold views in conflict to the British constitution and English Common Law and are often from backward communities. Xenophobes. They are a millstone to the integration and if you get an honest answer from earlier professional immigrants, especially women, I suspect they will agree.
Secondly, the introduction of rules regarding brides “from the old country” now seen in Denmark and Holland (IIRC), e.g. over 25 only and rules about multiple “imports”.
Thirdly, the need to get women into Mosque administrations. I am not in favour of law, regulation or enforcement, but just support available if asked for from the existing laws to enable women who do want to get involved to be able to do so. A passive support of an existing initiative, not a state-orchestrated quota (though this is the knee-jerk sociofascist response to such an issue). Get women into the mosques (and this will irritate and distract the bejesus out of the beards, radicals, jihaddrim, btw) and mosques will be far less likely to be able to be sources of hatred and boasthouses for boys and their toys.
As a final point, we need to cut off the supply to the tumour that are the incestuous, self-serving “multicultural” and “community leader” parasites. Now, these people in themselves are only behaving to type. The guilt is not that such people push in the way that they do, but that the State feeds them. It is natural that they push to maintain their rice-bowls, but it is not right that those bowls are filled with food from our table.
Enoch Powell did predict communal trouble in Britain – as in India.
In short he understood that the problem would not just be about “skin colour” – the conflicts in India (as Powell explained again and again) were between people with much the same colour skin (they were ethnic-religious conflicts not skin colour conflicts).
As regarding black people – the conflicts in the American NORTH (where slavery, where it had ever existed at all, was abolished long ago – and where “Jim Crow” was not the great legal system it was in the South) gave Powell concen. For example, if black people in (say) Ohio (where there had never been slavery or Jim Crow) were getting interested in “black power” and ethnic based politics, what hope was there for Britain (where the black people comming from the West Indies had virtually no roots at all). In short it was more the “civil rights movement” (or the thing it mutated into) that concerned Powell, rather than people having different colour skin. He had no time for people who were not loyal to their country in Ulster either (and he was no more anti Catholic than he was “anti black”, it was the “civil rights moverment” in Ulster that he despised as the front for treason that it was – i.e. if you are not loyal to the United Kingdom get out, whether you are white [like the I.R.A.], black, or green with purple spots).
When the black athletes raised the clenched fist salute (they called it a “black power” salute – which would have interested the white communists who invented this salute) at the Olympic Games they shamed Jessie Owens (a man who always maintained that he was an American who happended to have black skin – not a black man who happened to be in the United States).
Enoch Powell’s downfall came from publically reading (not once but several times) letters sent to him (in order to show how upset people were), these letters often contained words that showed that the people who wrote them were indeed concerned about skin colour – so the media were able to use these words to discredit Powell.
Enoch Powell made the basic mistake of thinking that you can quote people (without formally opposing parts of their writings that are nasty) without those words being used against you.
Powell’s own view of race was complex. There is an infamous interview (made very close to his death) where he says “what is wrong with racism?” and says that it is “very difficult” for a nonwhite immigrant to become English. Although I suspect that television interview was edited.
However, in his younger days Powell did accept that skin colour was not what determined Englishness (that was a cultural thing – that people of, if you traced it back far enough, Welsh Celtic blood like him could be). And that “Britishness” was a matter of being loyal to the Queen in Parliament – i.e. a matter of political historical idenity (not even cultural ethnic idenity like “Englishness”).
At least that is what he told me – yes, I am old enough to have met Enoch Powell and I did (several times).
Paul,
Your comments about Jesse Owens reminded me of something. My Grandmother used to say “As quick as Jackie Robinson”. Well, you don’t question too much the quirks of elderly ladies do you? So I never knew who Jackie Robinson was until I got a bus in Atlanta, GA in 1997 and saw an NAACP advert. He was the first black guy to play major league baseball.
Nick M- no, here in Ozland, wese has not heard about how blessed is Switzerland, to not have natural resources, and all that. Though we do have the example of Singapore, and Japan doesn’t have much in terms of natural home-grown resources.
Despite this, I still feel that they will start pressuring their customers to conform to sharia standards, simply because even they will realise what a stranglehold they have on a diminishing resource. I often fear that China might become an islamic nation, because they want some justification for their dictatorial system, and that would undercut the muslim insurgency in some of their provinces, and the middle east would be much more inclined to give them more oil.
China turning Islamic:
I had not thought of that one – nasty.
China ain’t going to turn Islamic. They’ve got 5000 years of history and culture. They’re also one of those countries like the USA or Russia which is so bloody big they are almost a world to themselves. They are way to chauvinistic to ever embrace an alien belief system. Why should they? They do though, scare the pants of the muslims. The West has certain moral qualms that the Chinese government lacks. Muslims are not going to antagonuize Beijing because the Chinese could eliminate Islam with extreme prejudice.