h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

SWL: 'Fleeing religious oppression, they welcomed the secularism of Britain and rapidly flourished with the opportunities at hand. But as soon as they hit a critical mass, the Establishment made a crucial mistake. Recognising that such large groups might have specific needs,'

What 'specific needs' would these be?

'Secular' or 'religious'?

I would find it difficult to think any specific secular with no religious link.

Any specific needs that are 'religious' one would have thought the mosques were the ideal places?

The specific needs were a mixture of cultural/religious: Halal food, language, polygamy, inheritance, banking etc. Sikhs, Hindus and the like seem to have no problem seperating the culture from the religion, but the peculiar nature of Islam intertwines the two.

Potholer: there are certainly not as many religious schools as some groups would like and there is a clamour for more. The factories and mills were examples of the economic advantages they found. Certainly it was low-paid, but it was a vast improvement on doing the same work in their homelands. There are certainly points of contact with business leaders and councillors now, but these took time to come about. To become a councillor you need votes and you don't get enough until you have a majority in an area. To be a business leader, you need a track record of success, which again takes time. The easy option is to talk to religious leaders.

In Christianity there is the notional idea of the vicar as being a shepherd of the flock. A Vicar will have studied, trained and been appointed to a particular parish for a period of time. Imams are largely self-appointed and only need to impress Mosque visitors with their apparent knowledge of Islam.

The Muslim Parliament was largely made up of religious figures and was pretty reacionary and strident - far too much so for politicians pre 9/11 to stomach.

There are many Muslims whose voices go unheard because the loudest voices belong to the zealots and *that's* who the govt co-opt onto committees and advisory boards. Many Muslims I have talked to are dismayed at this. "Why do they talk to that idiot? He's never done a day's work in his life and has no inkling what it means to be a Muslim trying to work in a secular society whilst bringing up a family".

"If we are going to enjoy a peaceful and ordered society ( ecluding criminality of course) then it has to be, as I think Fanny alluded, ONE Culture, and that is British.

OK you can be any colour, any faith, any origin, but esssentially we need to be British first, with our own culture second, thoug as important as our difering opinions are."

My Lord that sounds to me like a nightmarish place. And one in which I would be first up against the wall for being a full on non-comformist.

What about counter culture? I define myself in many ways by the fact that i "rage against the machine". What about "punk rockers" in the last 70s? Crikey do we really want to live in a place where conformity is the rule and we all live in a society based on the "albion" of the Daily Mails imagination?

I for one think variety and diversity is the spice of life.

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I agree thoroughly. But I don't think you can order people to respect other cultures and I don't think you can persecute people with legislation to stop criticism either.

Respect is something to be earnt and I would say Hindus, Sikhs etc have certainly achieved this. It is something that Islam actually teaches Muslims too - they are taught to lead by example. But, partly media-driven and partly extremist-driven, most of what we see, hear and read are images of Muslims stridently demanding.

We may struggle to define Britishness, but one thing we might agree on is that we collectively dislike pushy & loud people.

Yeah. Pushy and loud people get nowhere. Does anyone remember a TV show from back around the beginning of the decade? "Big Brother", I think it was called. Lots of pushy, loud people in a house, filmed 24 hours a day and broadcast.

Of course, because the British don't like pushy and loud people, that show was a miserable failure, nobody watched it and hardly anyone remembers it...

SoRB

"We may struggle to define Britishness, but one thing we might agree on is that we collectively dislike pushy & loud people."

Do *We* or do you mean *you*?

This is one of my problems when people talk about "British Culture" even if you take away the diversity that has come from migrant propulations there is still an incredible ammount of diversity amongst the other 40 million of us.

People who drone on and on aobut British culture always extrapolate their own values onto everyone and say "this is the british way". Total crud of ocurse, loads of people are pushy and loud (and lets just say hands up those here who are not ever like that in RL on this thread even eh?).

Fair enough, *I* don't like pushy and loud people, but I think a lot of people feel the same way. How many times do we hear people complaining about loud, overbearing Yanks? Is it the Duchess of Kent who's known as "Princess Pushy"?

As to BB, don't the loud overbearing ones get voted out first? Can you remember the names of the winners?

Halal food - not 'culture' it's a religious issue therefore talk to mosque leaders,
Language - there are plenty of English night-schools around, no need for discussion with anyone...people from other foreign countries seem to do OK.
Polygamy - not 'culture' it's a religious issue therefore talk to mosque leaders
Inheritance - not sure of relevance here? Is there a religious aspect? Otherwise the UK laws have that sorted out just like for the rest of us.
Banking - not 'culture' it's a religious issue therefore talk to mosque leaders

What we call 'culture' is simply religious requiements that are taken so much for granted that it does not *seem* to have any religious context.

Halal meat is purely religious.

'Integrated' muslims are still muslims so their leaders should be sorting religious things out.

If you went to a country that 'defined' you as Christian and went to the Church leaders to sort things out what issues would you want to sort out with the government yourself of secularly and not via religious avenues?



Then *they* should sort their own house out shouldn't they and get some 'normal' rounded Imams in.

But it always seems to be the pig-headed zealots who sem to get organised into pressure groups and get their voices heard in any arena.

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I disagree. Halal is based upon the cultural practice of avoiding stuff like pork because it goes off quickly in hot countries. Perfectly sensible.

The people in the area where Islam began were used to not eating pork because of this.

Islam was a religion based upon existing culture, like all religions.
It's actually based on moon worship/Judaeism/Christianity. Mo just mixed the three up into something that appealed to the most people. A bit like New Labour

e.g. - "What,you lot practice FGM? Well, I don't like it but if it's the only way to get you on board then, yes, our club approves of FGM. Just let me write it into the rule book"

Does that make FGM religious or cultural?

Hey FB you do realise that I'm essentially agreeing with you, yes? I made the point that I did not want us all to be subsumed into one grey mono culture. We are all Brits in terms of nationality, but for me *Britishness* itself in terms of identity is about multi cultural diversity. I also agree with you about the loadness thing. There's of loadness and pushiness going on in round here, whether it be markets or various open air music events and that's what makes it so dynamic and exciting.

I find that the people who are most against the general concept of multiculturalism are those who feel insecure in their own identities. I certainly feel where I live that there is as much respect for more traditional enjoying that. That's why I think it is so important to at least acknowledge a different history. A country being confident enough to acknowledge that difference in its peoples and admit to such things as *slavery* in the past is a country that can move on confidently into the future. And like I said I want mty local Carribean market to stay essentially Carriberan. I want to be able to cook both jerk chicken or goat curry, (admittedly in my own way) as well as roast beef and yorkshire pudding, I can always get the ingredients for the latter from the local Sainburys, but they never sell goat for some reason, although the market does

"The people in the area where Islam began were used to not eating pork because of this. "

Yeah, but newsflash - this isn't a hot country (yet), and us palefaces have developed something called "refrigeration".

So the only reason for continuing to avoid pork is... religion.

If Muslim "culture" advocates that particular dietary requirement because of the hot temperatures of their original home country, why do I not see Muslims walking round in clothing appropriate to those temperatures as well? Answer: because it's ducking COLD in this country. They don't mind ignoring their "culture" when it suits them - i.e. when the alternative is hypothermia. And since it's perfectly possible to safely eat pork or shellfish in an advanced technological society like this, the only reason for avoiding those *specific* types of meat is... religion.

SoRB

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I disagree. Halal is based upon the cultural practice of avoiding stuff like pork because it goes off quickly in hot countries. Perfectly sensible.>

OK, the *killing* in the Halal manner i.e. by saying a prayer to God and slitting the throat IS religious...the only reason Muslims and Jews are allowed to kill in this manner is that it is a religious requirement otherwise, like everyone else, they would not be able to do as it would simply be animal cruelty.

It was perfectly sensible in hot countries...we aren't in a hot country...we have refrigeration...cultures change(ours is) therefore they can 'get used' to eating pork etc and start enjoying the meat...it's great stuff. However, hardcore Muslims thing pigs are 'dirty' so there is the religious inbred issues there.

There is absolutley no logical, non-religious reason in this country why anyone, culturally, has to stick to Halal or Kosher food.

for some reason some of my post is missing. I said* there is as much respect for more traditonal whitey culture as for other cultures*

>>"The specific needs were a mixture of cultural/religious: Halal food, language, polygamy, inheritance, banking etc."

Food: Various religions/cultures have dietary requirements. Presumably they are catered for in any given location when the combination of their numbers and vocality are large enough. Much is a numbers game - if I had a very rare religion that required a particular approach to meat, I might be given the option of vegetarian or nothing.

Language: Personally, I can see the point in some limited multilingual communications from the state (helps avoid people being dependent on translators), but I do think it should be limited and taken as a transitional measure, along with good access to English classes. In fact, maybe adverts for English classes should be added to each multilingual publication, if they aren't already.

Polygamy: Still illegal, as far as I'm aware.

Inheritance: Within limits relating to dependents, people can leave money to whoever they want. What opt-outs are there for Muslims?

Banking: Allowing people to lend money without charging interest doesn't seem an issue to me.

Effectively, the language thing seems the only area one could arguaby accuse the state of pandering excessively to immigrants (though there are arguments in both directions), and I'm not aware that there's a huge Muslim bias in that respect - all kinds of languages appear on official literature.

>>"Sikhs, Hindus and the like seem to have no problem seperating the culture from the religion, but the peculiar nature of Islam intertwines the two."

How do Sikhs separate religion from culture?

>>"Potholer: there are certainly not as many religious schools as some groups would like and there is a clamour for more."

Really? I'd *never* have guessed.

However, that wasn't your point, you implied that the state had created ghettoes by funding Muslim schools.
In fact, the numbers are so small (1100 Muslim children), they'd be hard pressed to even help create a single small ghetto

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=963&Pos=&ColRank=2&Rank=448

"In January 2004 there were almost 7,000 state-maintained faith schools in England, making up 36 per cent of primary and 17 per cent of secondary schools. The overwhelming majority of these faith schools (99 per cent) were Christian. Christian schools had places for 1.7 million children and, in 2001, 5.1 million children aged 5 to 16 in England were described as Christian.

There were 371,000 school-aged (5 to 16 year old) Muslim children in England in 2001 and four Muslim state-maintained schools in 2004, catering for around 1,100 children. There were 64,000 school-aged Sikh children and two Sikh state-maintained schools, catering for around 600 children.

There were 33,000 Jewish school-aged children in England compared with 13,000 places in state-maintained Jewish schools."

Rage against the machine? I think a little time with a computer would convince anyone of that futility of that .

One problem I do have with some interpretations of multi-culturalism is that there seems to be an expectation for people descended from a particular ethnicity are expected to act according to culture of their parents' country. All this stuff we've had before about having to stay in connection with the land and one's ancestors doesn't sit well with me at all. I mean, do it if you like, but no expectations please.

It comes across in all the 'white on the inside, [black/brown/yellow/red/polka-dots] on the outside' type comments.

It strikes me as the same as me being expected to stand in silence for St. Georges' Day, sing hymns, or play cricket (hello? what is up with this stupid game?). Which appears to be, ironically, what the assimilation crowd want.

I see multiculturalism done right as, I suppose, we stick all our ideas and ways of life in a pool. We each pick out the parts to build a way of life that we want to live, and the values that we think are best. I see no reason why a cultural hodge-podge has to be bland and grey.

What I said was "By funding culture-specific community centres *and* religious schools"

Google throws up 11600 hits for "Muslim Community Centre" on UK pages
999 for "Sikh Community Centre"
1470 for "Christian Community Centre"

I agree with Bouncy.

IMO, culture is something that just happens and is embodied in individuals and groups. It is not something for Government to start sticking its nose into and trying to legislate for.

There is a lot of money spent in Scotland trying to perpetuate the Gaelic culture. Why? If it has any value or relevance it will continue to be practiced by the people concerned.

>>"What I said was "By funding culture-specific community centres *and* religious schools"

Well, you're seemingly ignorant about the numbers of state-funded Muslim Schools, or you wouldn't have mentioned them alongside the community centres unless you hoped to mislead.

>>"Google throws up 11600 hits for "Muslim Community Centre" on UK pages
999 for "Sikh Community Centre"
1470 for "Christian Community Centre""

and 1,200,000 for "community centre"

How many centres do you think there are if there are only 11600 hits in total?
How many are state funded?

Just to put things straight FB,

My hurried post from the office didn't mean to imply a homologous grey mix. Even in England, without the Scots Welsh or Irish , we have a pretty diverse lot, encompassed in being British.

All I advocate is that all the other groups in our country should participate in the same way,while retaining what makes them 'different',
as in the difference between Geordies and an Welsh hill farmer.

Novo

Why do we need *any* religion-specific community centres?

A "Community Centre" is inclusive.
A "Jedi Community Centre" is exclusive and divisive.