@becs
he's lying with every post, you are lying and you are a racist.
The random Muslim scare story generator: separating fact from fiction
Halal meat is on every menu; sharia law is taking over; the niqab is
undermining the nation. Ever noticed how often the same old stories keep
appearing about Muslims in Britain? Here's the truth about these and
other media myths
In
Britain, there is now a cycle of Islamic scare stories so regular that
it is almost comforting, like the changing of the seasons. Sadly, this
rotation is not as natural, or as benign, although it is beginning to
feel just as inevitable. We had the niqab winter last year, as the
country lurched into the niqab debate for the second time in three
years. Now we are in the spring of halal slaughter.
Add to this schedule the routine reports about gender segregation
in UK universities and Muslim schools (as if the concept of gender
segregation was somehow exotic to non-faith schools in the UK), claims
of grand plans to "overthrow" non-Muslim heads of certain schools and you have a steady flow of creeping sharia messages, stoking a fear of a stealthy, incremental Islamicisation.
Underpinning it is a common theme: that there is an ever more
muscular and intimidating Muslim minority demanding special rights from a
cowed and pandering, lily-livered body politic muzzled by
"multicultural Britain" – rather than simply attempting to adapt and
integrate, as immigrants of all religions have been doing in the UK for
centuries. It's not hard to see how this constant blurring of facts
generates the mood music of anti-immigration rightwingers and
establishes common misconceptions about Muslims.
But the threat of a creeping sharia never seems to materialise. It
seems to be more of a crawling sharia, so slowly has the Islamist
takeover of Britain been, in contrast to the constant media warnings of
its imminent arrival.
The focus far outstrips the size and political activity of the
minority, which number 2.7 million (less than 5% of the population), not
all of whom are practising Muslims. The Islamic scare story plays to a
nexus of easy media sensationalism, a portion of the public primed and
ready to believe the worst, and an interested rightwing element for whom
it is a convenient vehicle for their anti-immigration views,
xenophobia, or just Islamophobia.
But with each reincarnation of a creeping Islamic threat, the gulf
between the facts and what is reported widens. The following are some of
the most popular examples – and the facts that discredit them.
Sharia courts
There have been two recent flare-ups of the sharia courts and
"parallel Islamic law" scare story. In 2011, a bill was tabled in
parliament to address concerns over sharia arbitration, and in early
2014 solicitors were allowed to draw up sharia-compliant wills, leading
the Sunday Telegraph to pronounce that "Islamic law is adopted by British legal chiefs".
Since 2009, there have been sharia court investigations by the Independent, the Telegraph and the BBC. The political momentum against these courts is primarily from Baroness Cox,
a crossbench member of the House of Lords and self-proclaimed "voice of
the voiceless" Muslim women, who she claims are being victimised.
Of all the Muslim threats, this seems the most potent. It actually
has "sharia" in the name. UK law has some scope to acknowledge the customary or religious laws of both Jews and Muslims.
But going by the coverage, it would seem it is only Muslims that have
both demanded and been granted exception. On closer inspection, it is
clear sharia courts only have jurisdiction on civil matters and everyone
must opt in to a sharia court. They only have an advisory capacity and
address mainly property and financial matters, and rulings are then only
enforceable by civil courts. In many cases, they are understaffed
affairs, where one official settles petty disputes and draws up
rudimentary documents.
The creeping sharia courts' "astonishing spread" was first reported by the Daily Mail in 2009. At the time, there were reportedly "no fewer than 85". In the most recent Daily Mail report on the issue in 2014,
the number was, despite the warning about the pace of change whereby
Islamic law was cannibalising British secular law, still "no fewer than
85".
Halal slaughter
According to recent tabloid newspaper "revelations", halal meat is being slipped into food at major supermarkets, and Pizza Express has been "exposed"
for stealthily replacing its chicken supply with halal poultry. Halal
meat must come from animals that were killed with a cut to the throat,
allowing all the blood to drain from the carcass. In the past four
years, the UK media has broken the story to the British public at least a
dozen times, warning about the widespread use of halal meat, yet
somehow every new headline presents it as a new finding. In the latest
Pizza Express episode, where the claim was that the chain was
surreptitiously slipping halal chicken on to its menu, there was no secrecy at all: the chain's website clearly states it uses halal chicken.
The "secret" element, a popular angle in the halal story, serves to
support the alarm that people are being hoodwinked by Muslims sneaking
their way of life into the mainstream.
The supposed objection is that halal slaughter is a less humane method of terminating an animal than the supposedly more palatable methods of stunning, electrocution and gassing. But according to a 2012 Food Standards Agency report cited by the RSPCA,
97% of cattle, 96% of poultry and 90% of sheep slaughtered using the
halal method in UK abattoirs are stunned first, desensitising the animal
to pain. If the objection were really about the distress of slaughter,
it would therefore apply to only a tiny proportion of halal meat.
The most recycled of stories, the halal debate began in earnest in 2003, with a Farm Animal Welfare Council report
that recommended stunning for halal and kosher slaughter. Since then,
every time the issue of religiously compliant slaughter has been
resurrected, the kosher element has been less and less prominent,
rendering it less an animal rights issue, and more an irrational
rejection of halal slaughter as something tainted with something
intangibly Muslim. In a nation that has been enjoying halal meat for
years in curries, kebabs and shawarmas, the halal debate has distorted
and hijacked the welfare dimension, in order to channel nasty resentment
that a minority you don't like is being accommodated.
Muslim grooming gangs
In 2012, nine men were convicted of child exploitation and grooming of vulnerable young girls in Rochdale. Similar grooming gangs were identified in Derby, Rotherham and Oxford.
Rather than the colour or religion of the assailant being incidental to
the crime – which is taken for granted when they are white or Christian
– the fact that these grooming gangs were Asian and Muslim, and their
victims white, became central to their offences in public discourse and media coverage. How was this done?
Newspaper articles, radio shows and TV panel discussions
adopted, discussed and repeated the claim of Muslim grooming and abuse.
By popularising a notion that their crimes were somehow mandated by a
sharia law that condoned sexual exploitation of non-Muslims. That is,
not only is their religion relevant, it is blessing their crimes, or at
least informing their culture. This was simply not true but it was
repeated and sublimated into fact. Rod Liddle in the Spectator
approached this pivotal point, the purported reasoning for the entire
grooming phenomenon, by saying: "Is there something within the religion
or ideology of Islam which somehow encourages, or merely facilitates,
extremist Muslim maniacs to maim or kill non-Muslims? I think there
probably is. But you can't say that."
There you have it. He thinks there probably is. Never mind reports that Muslim girls were abused as well.
Conveniently, this worldview chimes with the politically correct
liberal somewhere out there who would rather your daughters were
sexually groomed than dare call something out as related to religion.
Since Operation Yewtree started, there has been a healthy debate
about sexism in the UK – the impunity of male celebrities, the cultural
tolerance of sexual activity with minors and so on. But this nuance was
not applied to the "Muslim grooming gangs", a description about as
unhelpful as the "Christian paedophile Jimmy Savile". It was a scenario
in which a factually erroneous religious justification was used to
explain an anomalous episode.
The niqab
One of the most helpful exercises is to present some estimation of
how many women actually wear the niqab, the face veil, in any given
European country in which there is controversy about it. The estimates
are so small that they cool a usually heated debate. In France, which
banned them in public in 2011, it is estimated as between 400 and 2,000,
ie not even 0.1% of the population. In the UK, approximations suggest that the numbers are "extremely low".
Among practising Muslim women, niqab wearers are more of a minority
than women who do not even wear the hijab, the head scarf. You are far
more likely in the UK to meet a Muslim woman in jeans and a T-shirt than
you are to meet one in a niqab. It seems embarrassing that politicians
and media professional should dedicate so much time to agonising over
the issue.
Politicians are the worst culprits for recycling the niqab debate.
Philip Hollobone, a member of parliament, was so moved by the plight of
women in niqabs that he proposed to ban them from his constituency office. Security concerns over ID and testifying in court are utterly unfounded:
women are required to take off their niqabs for identification purposes
– for drivers' licences etc – and they overwhelmingly comply. Once the
security concerns are dispensed with, the last retreat of the niqab
botherers is that the debate is out of anxiety for these women. But
there has not yet been a single incident where the niqab debate was
instigated by Muslim women themselves.
Islamic banking
The most recent episode of this was a report that Lloyds TSB in the UK had reduced or eliminated overdraft fees on its Islamic bank accounts.
This apparently "special treatment" might suggest that banks are
overturning their commercial interests to keep customers happy. This
alone should be a clear alert that the story is bunkum. When have you
known a bank to do that? The reality is that Islamic bank accounts
are, in fact, on average more costly for customers. Interest rates
(yes, they are charged on Islamic bank accounts, under different
mechanisms, usually fixed transaction fees) are often higher than the
secular high street. More crucially, as Lloyds itself has explained,
Islamic accounts "do not offer credit interest or other features that
are available on our other products. A comparison with the overdraft
charging structure on other accounts is meaningless." The question
shouldn't have been, "Want to avoid overdraft fees? Open an Islamic bank
account", but: "Want to avoid overdraft fees? Open an Islamic bank
account where you will not receive any interest on savings or deposits."
Again, this is a recycled story from 2009, so it is not an exposé.
