Senate The Middle East Discussion Thread

There is also an expectation in a liberal society to allow them to practice their religion peacefully within said society as well, and both the UK and (in particular) France is doing many, many things to make that very difficult.

 

What's the UK doing sorry?

 

I'm sure the English Defense League isn't helping matters....

 

Well, they're a death cult. Soo...not much to get, legally. Just time to get rid of them.

 

In what way are they not allowed to practice their religion peacefully in the UK and France? Care to elaborate?

 

Are you really not aware of he multiple prohibitions in France? There was extensive discussion of them in the Charlie Hebdo thread. One one in a school environment (student, teacher, or other employee) can wear a veil of any sort, and burqas are not allowed in any context at all. These are only some of the more blatant examples, beside of a spate of lesser, punitively realized policies. Their literally banning a form of religious devotion solely and specifically because it is religious.

 

Yes, France is aggressively pushing secularism but in doing so is not dismantling implicit favoured status enjoyed by Christian churches. I agree France is making being French being more important than, and incompatible with, being Muslim (as a primary identifier). But England? There are literally suburbs that are exclusively Muslim, as there are here. Nobody is going in there saying "Right you lot! Stop this prayer nonsense! I've had enough Mohammed this and Allah that to last a life-time!"

 

I was aware of some of basics but not the details. I didn't know they weren't being allowed to worship. But I hadn't heard much about the UK.

 

I don't think Wocky did then, and I don't think he does now, acknowledge the specific cultural context in France. It's problematic, to be sure, but it's less clear than he makes it.

 

Are you certain that's the reason? From a security standpoint it's generally not a good idea to have people running around masked all the time.

( I'm asking. I don't know what they have said about their reasons, if anything. )

 

I don't see what restrictions the British state is placing on those of faith. In fact, our openness to religion in public is much better than most Western European states.

 

I was just watching this documentary about the "city", or planned city, of Masdar, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. The first building in this town, and what's supposed to be the centre of the city as it grows further, is its university, which opened back in 2010. What's noteworthy about it is the goal this campus has set before itself of being entirely self-sufficient in terms of energy consumption. And it largely succeeds. Electricity comes from solar panels on the roof and a panel site off campus. And water heating comes from solar reflector towers. 96% of the materials used to build the campus were recycled materials. It doesn't quite reach its goal of being self-sufficient when it comes to its water consumption, as the desalination process that turns seawater into freshwater by way of boiling and recondensing is powered by a combination of solar heat and natural gas heating. But the electricity generated by the solar panels often surpasses the campus' needs and is then exported to the Abu Dhabi grid. Altogether, the documentary was focused mainly on the university campus as the surrounding city was still under construction and/or in the planning stages, and the fact that one sole building manages to be self-sufficient, or nearly so, is perhaps not very impressive. However, considering that this was built in the middle of the desert where the average summer temperature is 37 C, and the only resource anywhere around is just sand, I'd say it still is impressive. Why am I bringing this up at all in a thread about something completely different? Well, with the news from that region all being death and destruction and all around misery these days, it gets more than a little depressing. Perhaps more so to me. So, I don't know, it was nice to see a reminder that it's not all bad, and I thought it would be nice to share it. There is some nice innovation going on in that region as well that gives hope. Well, not the immediate region, but, you know..

I couldn't find the specific documentary that I watched on TV on YouTube. It was a French production named Masdar - Exploring our Future. But here's another British made one, sponsored by British Gas, no less! Masdar: The City of the Future.

 

Yeah I think it's safe to say any suggestion that the British are repressing Muslims is a grand and towering study in ignorance. Unless of course we experienced a different sight in Finsbury Park.

 

I only know what I hear from my coworkers and others actually living there, both in London and outside. Though, in this case, it might be split more towards anti-Semitism rather than Islamophobia.

I would agree that nothing comes close to what the Le Pen group is trying to do in France.

 

Again, though, walk around London and tell me Jews can't practice their faith?

It's a patently ridiculous assertion.

 

I mean, it's possible. The bulk of my Muslim coworkers I'm friendly with are in South Yorkshire -- where there are virtually no Jews (I know, I looked around for synagogues for High Holidays and basically they meet in a basement of a rec center with a traveling rabbi). Conversely, the bulk of my Jewish coworkers / friends are in London.

So it may be just a split along those lines as well.

I mean, this was three days ago:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...antisemitic-tweets-to-labour-mp-10047746.html

It refers back to what I posted in the Euro Ultranationalists thread that there were double the anti-Semitic incidents in the UK last year and basically the UK shrugged and said "meh" (which is normally my default expression!)...

To be fair, we are also experiencing a significant uptick in the US as well -- and I certainly think it's easier to practice here should I choose to -- than even the UK, where it's plenty easy (at least in London). So it may just be a global increase.

 

Yes, that's what article scarily argues, and rather well. But I'm no scholar of Islam. I have a copy of the Quran back home in Rhode Island, but I never got to read more than a few chapters before coming to the West Coast for a job for a year. I asked a Muslim friend what he thought about the article, though. Waiting for a response.

 

I wonder though dp if the anti-semitism in general (Mr Bonehill seems an exceptionally nasty individual) is related to Israeli policy, since it's very hard to separate the two of late?

 

I think this something of an over-simplification, though. To begin with, allowing for such activity is not the same thing as mandating it. Early Muslims, from Muhammad going forward, did not indiscriminately enslave and kill every non-Muslim they happened to encounter. Nor were they as aggressive about calling practicing Muslims illegitimate (eg, Sunnis and Shia thought one another were wrong, but not that they weren't Muslim).

So what particular rationale is there for calling them "more fundamentalist" because they cling more tightly to one aspect of the religion that happens to condone their inhumane violence, while other groups and sects have better fidelity in other areas?

 

Have you read the article Wocky?

 

That's what they're saying in basically every article (and I believe that's what the UK court ruled with its "meh") but it's disingenuous at best, given that this basically hasn't happened in the past and nothing's materially changed in Israel, even with the attacks last year -- other than Hamas being more organized.

It also doesn't explain the level of the government-sponsored anti-Semitism and Islamophobia being levied by the French government.

 

Actually, it does, because those traditions are inherently more prescriptive than Christianity, which does not typically require such overt demonstrations of faith. So whilst in theory all religions are equally shunned in public life in France, at the pursuit of a national ideology of secularism, it appears (and in practice, ends up being) the case that non-Christian monotheists are discriminated against.

What doesn't help is that, too, under the deal struck to get the secularism laws passed France has to agree to maintain a number of Catholic churches from pre-1900 or so.

It's important to remember that like America, France is very proud of the notion of "Being French". If I were to move to Paris tomorrow, the expectation is that I would already speak French or I would learn it quick-smart. We in the Anglosphere don't care as much and can understand broken forms of English, such as Chinglish (which is Chinese syntax/verb tenses using English words, like I used to hear; "Teacher! I before have go to Taizhong!") but the French? Not so much.

In practice, there's discrimination but I think to be fair to the French there's no actual malice towards the groups. I don't really feel that contextualisation takes place here enough though.

 

Yep, I'm primarily in Sheffield though the folks I work with are there and Leeds (with a Welsh guy in charge). We're all in IT, so it's not miner-folk.