I know this kind of thing has long been known about and talked about, but the single thing that I most like about David Cameron’s speech about multiculturalism, terrorism, and so on, which he gave in Munich on Saturday, is that I can read it, in its entirety. I don’t have to rely on a journalist, however conscientious he may or may not have tried to be, to pass on to me whatever small fragments of the speech he considers to be significant, along with hostile reactions to such fragments that he has got or read from various people with axes to grind, many of these reactions having probably been supplied by people who haven’t actually heard or read the original speech and are only going on what the journalist tells them it said. And then somebody else gets angry about one of these critical reactions, and it all spirals away from anything that actually got said in the original speech. And the bloke who gave the original speech says to himself: why do I bother? Time was when that kind of thing was all that most people had to go on. But those days are now long gone. Good riddance. Disintermediation, I think this is called.
As I say, hardly a blindingly original observation, but in the matter of this speech, I have never before felt this internet-induced improvement so strongly. The subject matter of Cameron’s speech is a minefield. Although I do not agree with everything that he said (see below), I am glad that he is at least talking about this stuff, at a time when many of our more thoughtful political leaders are scared to. The existence of the internet is the difference between a much-overdue, semi-intelligent public conversation about these vexed issues and mere mudslinging.
So, given that I am able to read it all, what did I make of it? Here are a few early thoughts.
One of Cameron’s most important points is that insofar as “multiculturalism” means double standards in how Muslims are treated by the British law, them being allowed to behave far worse than us indigenous ones, then multiculturalism is a bad idea. It is also a bad idea if it involves state support and encouragement for groups which encourage terrorism. Well said, and about time too.
He makes many other points, which I agree with rather less. He uses, for instance, the now established habit of curtailing the freedom of speech of racists and fascists to justify further curtailments of free speech, for Muslims. But if we all get to hear what they all have to say, fascists, Muslims, (fascist Muslims?), then we can take issue with such notions. And whenever something nasty happens that some nasty has said should happen, the police will at least know where to start looking. Free speech, quite aside from being a human right and everything, is actually quite a practical policy for maintaining civil peace. It helps a lot that most of us think that merely saying nasty things shouldn’t be a crime, and that in a world where people can say pretty much what they like, the police must confine themselves to chasing after those who actually do nasty things.
I also take issue with the way that Cameron muddles together two distinct, although related ideas. On the one hand there is the idea that Islam itself is a problem, rather than just “Islamic extremism”. And then there is the further idea that therefore Muslims ought to be deported, forbidden from speaking their minds, from building mosques, and generally from going around being Muslims. He opposes the second idea, but makes it seem like that necessarily means opposing the first idea also. I support the first idea, but not the second. I definitely think that Islam itself is a problem, but I believe that the answer (see my previous paragraph) is to argue with it, to tell it that it is a problem and why it is a problem, and to invite people who are wondering about it to leave or stay away from it, rather than stick with it or join it. If you must be a believer in something religious, let that religion be something like Christianity rather than Islam, because Christianity, although at least as odd from the merely is-it-true? point of view is, at the moment, so very much nicer than Islam.
Everything I observe in the reactions of the nastier kinds of Muslim tells me that they are acutely sensitive to such arguments, to the point where they would very much like such arguments to be banned, whether such arguments include deportation demands, mosque-banning and so forth, or not. To me, Cameron’s thinking says, first, that banning free expression for racists and fascists is absolutely fine, and that therefore banning free speech for “Islamic extremists” is fine also. But what next? Banning people from even saying (as I do not say) that Muslims should be deported and mosque-building banned? Or even from saying (as I do say) that Islam itself is a disgusting and evil body of thought and that the only absolutely morally correct thing to do if you are a Muslim is to damn well stop being a Muslim?
Which means that I was disappointed, but not surprised, that Cameron made no mention of the right of a person to stop being a Muslim, without being subjected to death threats and worse. Disappointed, but not surprised. For Cameron, being a “devout Muslim” (as opposed to an extreme Islamist) is more than sufficient, as far as he is concerned. As Prime Minister, he is not in the business of wanting anyone to convert this way or that, other than in the very feeble sense of wanting people to vote for him and for his political party. I see that. But he ought, I think to be ready to defend the rights of those who really do want to convert, from anything to anything else, and in particular out of Islam. Cameron called for “muscular liberalism”. So, when push next comes to shove in the form of a big ruckus (will this be that?) concerning someone who has stopped being a Muslim, will Cameron apply a dose of muscular liberalism to that argument, to allow such a person to believe whatever they want to believe, and to be as public as they like about it?
I confess that the phrase “muscular liberalism” did appeal to me when I first read it, and no doubt this phrase has tested positive with the focus groups. But what exactly will it mean in reality? Might it mutate into the government telling people like me that we can’t be rude about devout, law-abiding Muslims and the things that such people say they believe in? (“Muscular liberalism” in the USA would be a terrifying idea.) I am sure that many Muslims already fear – are being encouraged by each other to fear – that it may degenerate into a mere excuse for Muslim bashing, in the physical and wrong sense, by the government and its employees, and by many others. Perhaps (actually I’m inclined, as I read this through before posting it, to make that: probably), as we all challenge the phrase from our various different positions, muscular liberalism will degenerate into one of those mush phrases that mean whatever anyone listening wants it to mean, and then by and by, whatever the powers that be want it to mean. In other words it may degenerate into meaning nothing, just like the words “Big Society” have, in the minds of nearly everyone I meet or read.
But I want to end where I began, with the pleasure I feel that I and all others who choose to comment on this speech, here or anywhere else, are at least able, if we want to, to read the speech itself. Last night, for example, at the Christian Michel evening that I alluded to in an earlier posting, I got talking with an acquaintance about Cameron’s speech. After he had begun to opine about it, rather intelligently, I asked him: Have you actually read the speech? Yes, he said. Me too, I said. This exchange pleased me then and it pleases me still.
Well, I’ve been arguing for some time that a “muscularly liberal” West is the best answer to Islamismism, but I suspect I mean something different, or at least more extreme than Mr Cameron does. Our own weakness as a civilisation currently is IMV entirely a result of our own self-hatred. There is widespread support on both Left and Right that our society is morally “decadent”. While that view continues, the Islamismists proclamations that their system is the “cure” will remain a compelling narrative. We cannot gain any traction for promoting Western values like individualism, secularism, etc when we agree en masse that those values have reduced us to a state of moral ruin.
I’ve been watching a lot Bernard Lewis on youtube the past week. In one interview, about a book what he’d wrote called “What Went Wrong” about Islam, he describes how Islam was used to winning everything for centuries, then they suddenly started losing everything, and have been struggling with that ever since. They were once a great civilisation, far more advanced than the barbarians beyond their North Western frontier. Then suddenly the barbarians leapfrogged past them. From winning every battle, suddenly they lost every battle. From being more advanced, they became less advanced. They tried emulating European military systems, and that didn’t work. They tried programmes of European style industrialisation, and that didn’t work. They tried emulating our political structures, and that didn’t work. So, nothing having worked, this idea of going back to a fundamentlaist Islam- the supposed Islam of the Glory Days- has arisen.
That isn’t going to work either.
So the interviewer asked him what it was about Europe that made us successul. One thing, says Lewis, is the Atlantic. The need to build big strong ships capable of braving it gave us an enormous military advantage. But he plumps for treatment of women as the main advantage. Even some muslim writers recognised that their society was hamstrung compared to ours by not utilising half the population; one said “we are like a body, with one half paralysed”.
The great genius of the western world is liberalism, which only arose once we had got our religious element under control after the Reformation. It’s not just the treament of women, in which I think Lewis has confused a symptom with a cause. A liberal society treats all its citizens- including women- well, and allows them to seek their potential. It also leads, from a puritanical perspective, to “decadent” behaviour.
Since we are now in full retreat from liberalism- the “decadent” behaviours are still tolerated but the individualist liberalism that originally justified them is being eradicated- the Western advantage is collapsing.
So the answer to Islam is easy. We’re not going to stop people being muslim. That’s a foolish hope. What we can do is start being liberal individualists again. A return to individual and economic liberalism would rapidly restore our civilisation. Even for those of a socially conservative bent, surely a few lap dancing bars would be a small price to pay for that. A confident West could then proceed to export those liberal values to the Islamic world.
But it is not going to happen. We are ourselves now in the grip of mullahs in red/green turbans. It is frustrating.
I agree with Ian up to a point. I think a coupla years back I used the term “culture bombing” Islam.
I disagree that Europe pulled ahead at the Reformation. The religious turmoil of that would have been the time par-excellance for Islam to charge into Europe. It didn’t. It had become decadent by then. The rot set in round the C12th when Islam ossified on the question of the fettering of Allah’s hand. Basically the debate had been between an essentially ordered universe and one run entirely on the caprice of Allah. The later view prevailed and Islamic science ground to a halt amidst inshallah fatalism.
Western science though (full of rediscovered Greek learning from the Crusades) got going round the same time. It’s easy to think it “just happened” with Copernicus but there was a long, slow upward slog to get there. Essentially from around the time Islam ossified, Christendom was on the up. If there was a crossing point perhaps it was Lepanto.
As to a body half-paralysed… Well, women yes, but there is another explanation and it might be right on top of your nose. Spectacles were invented about C13th or so in Europe. The edge this gave Europe in enabling craftsmen and scholars to keep on going longer into their lives was enormous. Optics didn’t just change the world with Galileo.
The Atlantic, I buy. Whoever got the New World won. Simples. Could have been China, could have been the Caliphate. It wasn’t. And the rest is history.
As to iDave. I was very iffy about his talk of “British values”. It was either a bone chucked to Mail readers or vaguely sinister. maybe that’s just me and the fact the speech was made in Munich but when someone of such proggie tendencies as iDave starts talking “national values”…
PS. Question to iDave. Would he tolerate an Islamist party which renounced and didn’t use violence but in it’s foundational constition called for britain to become a shariah state? Moreover would you or I?
What I find amusing is that now that multi-culturalism is held to have failed, our “guests” are to integrate. What if we, the English, don’t want to integrate? When is someone going to ask us?
Fuck, but that is an astute para. SQOTD material.
Ian B makes some good points.
Insofar as “muscular liberalism” is concerned, my take is that you can be liberal up to a point, that being when you encounter an anti-liberal ideology, or an aspect of an ideology that is fundamentally anti-liberal.
This is the essentially the banning of swastika/burqua argument. It’s all been said on Samizdata before, but there are still those who believe we shouldn’t ban anything at all, staying pure to the altar of liberalism, but that trait is exploited by the anti-liberals (a.k.a. fascists) and unless you are willing to put up a coherant argument against why such things are anti-liberal (and they are), then you lose, inch by inch.
Referring to the original article, I am a firm believer that the apostasy laws are the thing that is holding up the entire shoddy edifice of this hateful ideology, without it there would be a mass exodus to other faiths, and the hardline Islamists know that, and that’s why not talking about it is bad, and why at least Cameron has dared to point out the elephant in the room, it’s a bold start, I’ll give him that.
UDHR Article 18, that’s all you need.
Again, and this is a “muscular liberal” thing, do we “respect” a faith that includes such anti-liberal (a.k.a. fascist) extremes as killing or violence against an ex-adherent ? If not, why not go the whole hog and include the burqua, shariah courts, honour killings, child brides, adoption rules, etc, as well ?
The great genius of the western world is liberalism, which only arose once we had got our religious element under control after the Reformation.
Yes, that’s exactly it, getting the “religion element under control”, because it is, fundamentally, anti-liberal (a.k.a. fascist) – so grow a muscle.
Off topic, but since this is Brian’s thread;
I’m just listening to your interview with Paul Marks and having to restrain myself from shouting, “Shut the fuck up, Brian!”
At least he has started the conversation, here in the States it’s largely forbidden to even try that because of assumed racism!
Something along the lines of ‘muscular liberalism’ is probably as good as anything right now, but it needs a better name – the word ‘liberalism’ is too insipid. Also, the word ‘secularphobia’ needs to go mainstream otherwise gullible people might end up believing that ‘Islamophobia’ is actually a bad thing.
“Evangelical individualism”?
Ian B, and NickM, I would add tolerance of diversity. Europe is a fractured land, which would be hard to naturally unify anyway, until recent technology made it at least feasible. Thus differences flourished, and were allowed to do so, whereas any innovation is automatically discouraged in Islam- indeed, there is only supposed to be one Polity embracing the entire Earth, the Kaliphate.
Christianity grew up with no such political ambitions. Therefore, innovation in politics was not automatically blasphemous.
Also, Islam suffered what we might call Early Success Syndrome- the very fact of winning early in it’s history made it rigid, unwilling to change. Napoleon and Hitler also suffered from this, where easy wins make it seem inevitable that you will always win, so there is no need for you to change, or innovate. If your opponents innovate and beat you, you have a catastrophe on your hands!
Roman civilization fell in the West with the invasion of the Germanic tribes, and in the East with the rise of the Arab tribes. I think the resulting civilizations in both regions were inferior to the Roman in engineering, architecture, literacy, manufacture, and administration. Both areas underwent a dark ages with the West falling further. Yet the West recovered. I don’t think the Islamic areas ever recovered.
Nuke,
I almost said something similar. Shortly before Columbus the Chinese commissioned a massive state of the art fleet. The next emperor left it to rot. The pesky little European states in eternal competition (if not outright conflict) with each other were never going to have that happen. I mean if the King of Spain decided the hell with this exploring lark then France or England or whoever would think “opportunity!”. Competition not only drives towards excellence but it mitigates against one grand high poobah making a stupid decision.
I always said that just so long as we don’t raise the relatively inconsequential issue of anarchism, I agree with just about everything Ian B says. This is another of those times.
Quite right, NickM! So the whole point of the Eurotopia project (EU to you) seems self-defeating! Europe should be just united enough to avoid war, but no more!
Heard some of Mr Cameron’s speech on a nationalized but local radio station here in Seattle and was so impressed, I Googled it first thing on arriving home.
I’m just an old gun owning white guy American of German, Scot, English, Irish, Portuguese descent and I envy the Brits this man’s leadership.
God Bless him.
Thanks to you, too, for allowing me to access his words.
George Crotts
North Bend, WA, USA
Let’s see what Demagogue Dave does, shall we? If he lives up to his words, and isn’t just cozying up to Frau Merckle, things might get a bit better in Britain.
“I’m just listening to your interview with Paul Marks and having to restrain myself from shouting, “Shut the fuck up, Brian!” ”
Is this something anyone can listen to? Is there a URL? It would be nice to put a voice to the words.
Endivio, I found it via this posting on Brian’s blog. It reveals a Paul who sounds nothing like I expected, and a Brian who won’t let him get a word in edgeways, which Brian does admit to.
It’s kind of frustrating because there’s half a dozen interesting things Paul starts saying, but doesn’t get to finish. I think Brian needs to do a follow-up interview…
Thanks, IanB. Listening to it now, I concur with your sentiments. As an interviewer, Brian makes Robin Day sound like someone with Avoidant Personality Disorder. I haven’t gnashed my teeth in a long time, but I did when Paul Marks was prevented from finishing what he was saying about Glass Steagal. I’ve lost count of the times this has come up on discussion threads recently.
I wish I had a tenth of this man’s erudition.
Richard Garner: I wonder what do you make of this basket of goodies then.
That thread’s going to follow me around forever, isn’t it Alisa? 😉
As long as we both live:-)
Thanks, Brian M. for bringing that speech to our attention. I found it very interesting – as is your post and the subsequent discussion in this forum.
Looks like the PM in the UK might not be asleep at the helm, after all, and is not afraid to at least start to confront some real internal societal and security issues that have been dogging the country – and the rest of Europe for that matter.
He sort of makes the point that not all terrorists are Muslims, but he did not go as far as echoing Ann Coulter in the US who put it thus:
It’s the religion stupid – it promulgates an ancient, consistent, unchanging, unchangeable, self-perpetuating, implacable, hugely successful and powerful politco-religious ideology – all in the Koran.
Every good/devout Muslim who has read, understood and learned the Koran knows that Islam draws a clear distinction between the world of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the world of heresy (Dar al-Harb). It’s just a form of religious absolutism, and it’s potentially deadly for those in Dar al-Harb.
The poor Islamists are charged by Allah (in the Koran) with establishing Islamic supremacy wherever they find themselves, by whatever means, and this effectively includes the onerous task of converting all people on the planet from Dar al-Harb to submit to Dar al-Islam (under threat of death if necessary), excepting the Jews, who are not to be allowed to convert and whom the Muslims are obliged to expunge from the face of the Earth for their sins against Allah. It’s probably curtains too for all those who won’t convert, and not forgetting those Christians who stick to their blasphemous belief in the Holy Trinity.
Pretty clear-cut really.
Brian M., I note where you say
Do let us know how that works out for you. Should be a piece of cake really, reasoning with a 1,400 year old ideology that holds 1.6 billion people (and counting) in its thrall with a paradigm/belief system that is currently systematically promulgated, enforced and funded by the most extreme form of Islam, Wahabism (courtesy of the hugely wealthy Saudis).
I’m sure nobody’s thought of trying to actually reason with it before.
Slarti! Why so many Fjords in Norway? The public wants answers! you eventually won some sort of award for it, but why did you do so many in the first place? (And not the old joke, because you could affjord to!)
Slartibartfast
If I were the only one with the plan of arguing with Islam, it would indeed be as ridiculous as you make it sound, but I’m not.
The point is that what is at stake here is not only urging Muslims to abandon Islam (which quite a lot of ex-Muslims have done, according to what I have read and been told by Christian friends), but the right to urge Muslims to abandon Islam, and the right of Muslims actually to do that, and to say publicly that they have done this. This is not just about whether Islam is threatened by such debate, but the right of people even to have this debate with Islam without Islam suppressing such debate.
The claim that Islam is vulnerable to reason is a big one. That Islam quite clearly fears reasonable (or for that matter unreasonable) criticism suggests to me that it is.
Many Muslims now think that if a famous person (as opposed to little old me) could make the case against continuing to be a Muslim very loudly and eloquently and confidently, on Question Time, say, without even fearing that he would then be persecuted and hounded (as people in Britain have long been able to make a similar case against continuing to be a Christian), that would change things big time.
I think that such Muslims are right. I think that in those changed circumstances the steady flow of people out of Islam that is happening now might very well become a torrent so large as to actually change the course of present history.
FWIW, Sarkozy is jumping on the anti-multiculturalism bandwagon. Mirabile dictu!
Brian M.: sorry for the belated response, but I’ve been in hospital and nowhere near a computer for a few days.
You say:
I don’t quite see how that substantiates your “plan of arguing with Islam”. All you seem to be suggesting here is an appeal to the consensus, which I was always taught was a classic logical fallacy. For example (and I could have got this wrong, I suppose, but) I gather that most of the German people probably thought that Hitler was a great leader with some pretty solid forward-thinking ideas for mankind.