This is a long post so you may want to hear the podcast instead.
I watched a fascinating TV programme last night and it was a sort of turning point for me. But more on that later.
I have a very, very select group of very, very good friends. These people are like me in that they do not like the British cultural values of one-night stands, self-destructive drinking and the whole Ibiza scene. This whole section of the population has recently been the target of political attention with Labour’s extended pub opening hours which I agree will have a good effect in the long-term. Also, David Cameron has tried to attack it with his widely misunderstood hug-a-hoodie message.
Also, part of British culture is a belief that academic achievement is not something to be proud of. Words like “boffin”, “geek” and others highlight this failure to appreciate those who are most able to improve the country’s lot in the future. In only one sphere is academic achievement considered to be cool (I remember thinking of it the other day, if it comes back to me I’ll add it here!), but in all others it is far better not to succeed at all. In other cultures academic achievement is so desired that children happily attend tutors after school and at weekends in order to compete with the other children in their year and so to have hope of a better life.
There are elements of British culture that I do appreciate. Britons’ attitudes to homosexuals – 75% believe it is acceptable for homosexuals to teach in schools – are commendable and that 25% is a shrinking part of the population. Pornography is available increasingly freely which, in this context, I consider to be a freedom allowed to women and men. And, most importantly, freedom of speech. Freedom of speech has taken a battering since Political Correctness started rearing its (sometimes) ugly head, but its underlying basis is sound. British people believe that in general people should be allowed to say what they like.
There are restrictions on freedom of speech… You cannot, anymore, say what you think about this or that ethnic minority unless it is in context of a conversation; you cannot, anymore, speak about disabled people in a disparaging manner; and, again, homosexuality is protected. I largely agree that these groups should not be attacked – political correctness isn’t wrong in and of itself – but I do worry that freedom of speech should not have restrictions in law, just in common sense.
Finally, in this summary of the good and bad of British culture, there is discipline, respect and crime punishment. For some reason quite beyond me, Britain’s failed experiment with rehabilitation instead of deterrent/punishment continues without any serious attempts to look at why it continues to fail. Reoffending has not reduced since rehabilitation became de rigueur and violent crime has continued to rise while non-violent crimes are no longer reported by an increasingly pragmatic public.
I wouldn’t be surprised if John Reid, in his now very long honeymoon period, started a “national debate” on crime punishment soon. The result, though, is clear for anyone to see right now. Labour, the LibDems and, sadly, the Conservatives have entirely failed to take on this fundamental issue. When Tony Blair said “causes of crime” people took him at his word and were genuinely looking forward to some real government action on crime. Since then, disappointingly, Blair has had poor Home Secretaries who have not had the time, let alone the motivation, needed to sort out this major issue. There were two choices available to the government since 1997: punish crimes more punitively or liberalise drug and prostitution laws. Either of these would have shown a recognition of the problem even if observers disagreed with one or both of the solutions. Instead inaction has been the order of the day.
Discipline and respect is also lacking in British culture. Respect is not taught, encouraged or understood by many parents and the inevitable result of that is children who will flick a knife at a concerned elderly person; and children who will tell the person asking them not to spit at people on the bus to “fuck off”. Again, in other countries and other cultures, this would not and does not happen.
So I have spoken about British culture in the context of the get-drunk-every-weekend tradition, academic poor performance, modern liberal attitudes, freedom of speech and discipline in its two main forms… But I haven’t said what that programme was. I recorded Dispatches: What Muslims Want a few days ago and only managed to watch it last night. This programme, far from scaring me as I think it might have done, was a revelation moment to me. These young Muslims who are separating themselves from British culture are not being brainwashed in a Christian cult sort of way, and they’re not buying into Osama’s perverted message. No, mostly, these Muslims were recognising the problems with British culture that I have listed above.
In the paragraphs above I criticised British culture except about the liberal attitudes to homosexuality and to freedom of speech. And this is the point where the young Muslims are wrong. But aside from that they are separating themselves, by converting to Islam, from British culture in the same way as thousands of British young people are as well. British culture is vacuous to them, as it is to me, and they are choosing to live their lives in a more moralistic way.
The opportunity that the title of this blog entry talks about is the opportunity to embrace this separatist group of people. For bizarre reasons George Galloway, Ken Livingstone and other extreme left-wing politicians have identified with the darker sides of Islamofascism, but there is a mainstream of young Muslims who believe in the fundamental Conservative principles of law and order, discipline and respect. These people see British culture as an amoral mass of people steadily destroying themselves. And they’re right.
The Conservative Party has an opportunity, now, to stop these people from falling into a dangerous part of Islam which can defend the July 7th London bombings. The Conservatives can see the Muslims who want to live a ‘good’ life as allies in the fight against chav culture and dole-as-a-way-of-life mentality. To give these young Muslims a sense of belonging to something other than their religion will help them to consider themselves, not only British (which they don’t at the moment), but also able to change something. British culture can be changed from the top by politicians, but at the moment those young people who were born here but are, unlike the general population, increasingly religious, are not engaged with the one political party that believes in that.
Jon Snow’s programme did talk about the major sticking points, at least for me, of freedom of speech (they’d overwhelmingly support a law that banned insults of Islam like those Danish cartoons) and of bare-faced hatred of homosexuality and sex outside of marriage, but I think those parts of Muslim attitudes are more to do with a lack of understanding and exposure than they are to an inability to join in the national debates. Jon Snow said that 10% of Britons are gay – well, if that’s the case then the proportion in Brighton is much higher. And the reason I mention this is because there are people I know who moved from other parts of the country whose homophobia turned to a genuine open-minded liberalism once they had a gay friend! Exposure alleviates fear.
Of course I may be wrong – there may be no hope of communicating these major issues to Muslims in the same way as many uber-Christians are unable to abide their fellow human beings (I’ve never understood racist and homophobic Christians so if you’re reading this, please do explain yourselves!)
I said in an earlier post that few of my like-minded friends intended to stay in Britain for the rest of their lives. Emigration is the solution, to my mind, to the cultural problems Britain has. But if the largest growing part of the British population can be convinced that there is a democratic path for their anger at British social failings and that that democratic path does not have to be along ethnic or religious lines, then I have some more hope for the future.
After all that I would like to leave you with one of the most chilling statistics in the Dispatches programme: 25% of Muslims in Britain want Britain to become an Islamic state with Sharia law. Sharia law need not be the preferred solution if only Britain can learn to lock away criminals rather than sending Jamie Bulger’s torturers on taxpayer-paid holidays.
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