Why was the ‘spike in asylum claims’ ever a problem? And anyway, wasn’t it asylum being granted rather than applied for that was the ‘problem’?

“Immigration remains in the news, and high on people’s list of concerns.”

The first leads to the second, and this won’t be the case at the next election. Basicaly right wing editors played the race card to undermine labour’s support – now the tories are in office there is less reason for them to do immigration, so it will be covered less and thus become less of a concern.

The real question is how the hell does an opposition address the “concerns” over immigration when these concerns bear little relationship with reality?

If immigration is good why limit it?

If it is only good in limited areas, then surely our current system should sort that out since it places relative values on certain areas?

The current policy of all parties seems to be made with one eye on the Daily Mail. Perhaps someone should stand up to them – it’s hardly as if they make convincing arguments.

I think a great deal of the reason that immigration became such an issue was that politicians of all stripes went with a “don’t scare the horses” method rather than being upfront about things. I would be quite astonished if anyone could point me to a major politician who stood up and argued for the level of immigration that we have received over the past 20 years, (pre rather than post).

If immigration is good why limit it?

We shouldn’t, in my view.

But the elephant in the room that is studiously ignored in any immigration debate is that, in terms of the overall value that they add to the country, all immigrants are not the same. Moreover, all immigrant groups are not the same.

The first of these can be addressed by some kind of points system if we want to go down that route.

The second cannot even be discussed in polite circles as doing so brings immediate allegations of racism or worse.

pagar,

That is because we cannot go around conflating the individual and the group. A pure and simple rule which I’d suggest we’d all follow.

What we can do is work to stop immigrant groups forming seperate communities – stop recognising unelected ‘community leaders’, stop ‘community’ funding and above all (and this is happening more) stop allowing people to join the ‘community’ from their original home on grounds of marriage or (and I particularly love this one) need for religious instructors. Basically, stop forming client ‘communities’ and make everyone work together.

Individuals should be considered as individuals. But attempts to reinforce or construct ‘communities’ should be opposed. Does that solve your problem?

@ 7

The communities thing is difficult to deal with, though. Places like Manchester’s Rusholme come about because people naturally want to live near other people who speak their language, where they are more familiar with the culture and can access the products and services they want (halal food and mosques, for example).

The problem is: short of telling each new immigrant where they are and are not allowed to live, I’m not sure how this can be addressed. I agree that ghettoisation is part of the problem, at least for the first couple of generations, but I don’t see a reasonable route to a solution.

FFS. @6!

“Towards the end, we rectified these mistakes, and ended up with a better policy framework, and a political narrative that was more in touch with people’s concerns”

You’re talking about locking up children and deporting people with force as if it’s just a matter of how you pitch your press releases to the press. This article doesn’t seem to recognise, at all, that Labour’s immigration policies had a real and detrimental impact on migrant workers and their families – sometimes leading to their deaths or imprisonment.

Frankly it’s not Gillian Duffy’s opinions you should care about (and let’s face it you only care about her because she got on telly), it’s the children who’ve been treated like criminals and forced to live in poverty because of the colour of their parents’ passports.

jim jepps – I assume that you advocate fully open borders then?

The problem with arguing against ‘capping’ numbers is that the idea of a ‘cap’ to simplistic enough to grasp compared to a points system. It’s the ‘blunt instrument’ level of economic policy. Moreover, it’s always a race to the bottom: May has already ignored the expert advice in favour of a lower ‘cap’, and lobbying groups like Migrationwatch will want it lower still. The ‘winner’ is whoever achieves a total of zero. Faced with that dumb level of economic policy, it’s always going to be hard work advocating a more complex, but more flexible system.

The photo that goes with this article has people at a protest holding signs saying ”End: destitution, detention, deportation”.
That is quite a radical position to take and I wonder how much support it would have in the country generally. Barack Obama’s USA has continued with massive levels of deportations on special flights to Mexico and Central America.

As President Barack Obama tries to rally support in the U.S. Congress to revive comprehensive immigration reform this year, his government is removing the United States’ unauthorized population at a gathering pace.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE56C3OY20090713

That must make Obama very right wing.

I think blaming the unpopularity of continual large scale immigration on the media, is being disingenuous and somewhat dishonest. While it might make a difference to the percentages of opinions given in surveys, it suggests that people’s lived experience dosn’t have an impact on people’s feelings.

The John Cruddas article linked to in the opening post was interesting and I agree with it to a degree, but it also gives the impression of constant repackaging and spinning of arguments and ignoring those parts of the wider picture that don’t fit the general left/liberal position.
Ignoring for example, that one reason why the BNP vote grew was as a reaction against that constant spinning and resetting the argument. And that after several decades, the reality of what the extreme multi-culturalism of the most diverse inner city areas actually was like was well known, as people had lived and worked and travelled through those neighbourhoods. That poverty had been imported. That factories, warehouses and food processing plants had filled their places of work with this reserve army of labour which had affected the working environment and kept down wages and better working conditions. How inner city neighbourhoods had changed radically to the point where cohesion had been lost …. because they had become transient, first port of call immigration hot spots.

It’s obviously a hugely complex issue and simple slogans don’t work.

@ Watchman

That is because we cannot go around conflating the individual and the group.

I absolutely agree that to do so is pernicious.

Except that reality tells us that many immigrants never shake off the shackles of the culture from which they migrated and the constraints of their indigenous culture will tend to determine their value to the UK (if that is seen as important).

But hey, I’m a libertarian and everyone should be free to live where they want provided they respect the freedoms of those around them and don’t expect others to pay for their group foibles.

“Group foibles”?

There is nothing complicated about immigration. People just don’t like newcomers. That’s any newcomers, coming for their homes, their jobs, their sons and daughers etc. Newcomers from just a county or so away are resented and loathed just as much as newcomers from Poland or India. Throw in racism (and yes, racism *is* involved, however hard the anti immigrant lobby wriggles to deny it) and you get a problem that needs to be confronted on moral as well as social grounds.

Briar

too simplistic IMHO.

Take my two afghani friends. They DO have a problem with some of their immigrant peers.
The ones that hospitalised them. Twice. Why were they attacked?

Because they had given up being Muslims – and mainstream Islam says that Apostates deserve the death penalty.

Go back and read Pagar’s 5 again. Read and inwardly digest.

Until liberals can face the reality that not all cultures are equally a fit to our western, democratic, secular one…. then the immigration debate we’ll have is devoid of reality.

@6 watchman: What we can do is work to stop immigrant groups forming seperate communities – stop recognising unelected ‘community leaders’, stop ‘community’ funding and above all (and this is happening more) stop allowing people to join the ‘community’ from their original home on grounds of marriage or (and I particularly love this one) need for religious instructors.

We should also discourage people from marrying only within their community. If someone migrates to Britain and becomes British, their “community” is now the British people. If, in their heart, they don’t see it that way, they’re not really British. So all immigrants wishing to settle here should be asked to sign a declaration saying they have no problems if their son or daughter marries someone from a different ethnicity/religion/community/sexuality/race, etc. This would help to weed out racists or anti-gay bigots would otherwise might become British citizens.

What I can’t understand is the rationale behind the cap at 21,700? Why that specific number? What was the calculation that arrived at 21,700 but not 21,701? If the number is flexible and merely an aspiration, then why have a cap in the first place.

@ 17 Phil Hunt

“We should also discourage people from marrying only within their community. If someone migrates to Britain and becomes British, their “community” is now the British people. If, in their heart, they don’t see it that way, they’re not really British.”

Sorry, but that’s nonsense. I was born in Britain, my family is about as British as you can get, but I’ll define my “community” any way I see fit. If it means people who think like me, so be it. If it means people who live in the same town as me, so be it. If it means all human beings in the world, so be it.

The last of those is the healthiest one (and healthier than seeing my community as exclusively British into the bargain), but that’s not the point. The point is that you don’t get to dictate to me who I should want to hang around with. And that you don’t get to decide who’s British and who’s not.

“Go back and read Pagar’s 5 again. Read and inwardly digest.”

The problem with Pagar here is that he’s claiming libertarianism, which is a good thing in this context, but seems, in all his posts, to be on the brink of condemning people for the actions of those who happen to look like them. Which isn’t libertarian, and isn’t good. It’s moronic, and for that reason I hope I’ve misinterpreted him. I think he needs to answer for his own posts before we use them as a source of wisdom.

@15 Briar: Newcomers from just a county or so away are resented and loathed just as much as newcomers from Poland or India.

I disagree. The further away, in general the more different people are perceived as being, and the more prejudice there is likely to be against them.

Throw in racism (and yes, racism *is* involved, however hard the anti immigrant lobby wriggles to deny it)

Indeed. Racism is a form of xenophobia, and xenophobia is an element in a lot of anti-immigrant discourse.

@19 Chaise Guevara: The point is that you don’t get to dictate to me who I should want to hang around with.

I don’t want to. It wouldn’t be practical anyway.

And that you don’t get to decide who’s British and who’s not.

Of course not. The state does. We were debating on what grounds the satte should make that decision.

@ 22

“Of course not. The state does. We were debating on what grounds the satte should make that decision.”

Yes, and you seem to be saying that we should pick and choose people based on their politics. Why not just be up-front about it and ask them which party they’d vote for? I don’t want to see immigration used as a political tool in that way, and I’m very uncomfortable with the American system (“are you or have you ever been a member of a communist party?”) of selecting incoming people. It’s turning immigration policy into nation-building.

Also, if you don’t want people to think that you’re dictating Britishness, don’t lay down terms that people need to meet to avoid being labelled as ” they’re not really British”. What that really means, in every event, is “they fail to conform to my personal dream of Albion”.

We shouldn’t be using immgration policy to fill the country with people who think like either you or me.

@ pagar

If immigration is good why limit it? We shouldn’t, in my view.

@ pagar

I’m a libertarian and everyone should be free to live where they want provided they respect the freedoms of those around them

Sorry Chaise, but I don’t think I could have stated my position more clearly.

However, as a libertarian, I also have a serious objection to being compelled to pay for children to be taught a creed that openly espouses misogyny, homophobia and personal enslavement to the edicts of a neanderthal religious text.

Not only are those children being taught to despise liberalism, at the extremes they are being encouraged to attempt to obliterate it. Islam is an authoritarian belief system that opposes individual freedom at many fundamental levels and we delude ourselves in seeking to pretend otherwise.

If a significant proportion of a country’s people are racist and don’t want further immigration, should their wishes be listened too?
I have asked co-workers from eastern Europe a couple of times, now that they are in the EU, how would their country deal with becoming an immigration destination for people from poorer countries. To become more like London for example.
The answers are usually not promising. One guy from Latvia just laughed and said it would be a problem.

Damon :While it might make a difference to the percentages of opinions given in surveys, it suggests that people’s lived experience dosn’t have an impact on people’s feelings.

Not true. Most anti-immigrant attitudes are with people who live in areas with very low percentages of immigrants. Places like London, with higher concentrations, have much more acceptance. The media DOEs have a lot to do with it even if you find it difficult to accept.

Most anti-immigrant attitudes are with people who live in areas with very low percentages of immigrants. Places like London, with higher concentrations, have much more acceptance.

And places like Leeds? Bradford?

@23: Yes, and you seem to be saying that we should pick and choose people based on their politics.

Yes, exactly. There are a lot of people out there with nasty bigotted views and I’d rather they didn’t live in Britain. If you disagree, you’re in effect saying you want more bigots here, which I find inexplicable.

Why not just be up-front about it and ask them which party they’d vote for?

Because it’s not about party as such (although obviously BNP supporters would be suspect).

It’s turning immigration policy into nation-building.

Don’t we want to build Britain into a better nation? Surely everyone should want that.

We shouldn’t be using immgration policy to fill the country with people who think like either you or me.

Would you prefer it if this country was filled with people like Osama bin Laden (bigot who wants to kill non-Muslims), David Bahati (bigot who wants to kill gays), Sarah Palin (bigot who wants to live in the dark ages), Benjamin Netanyahu (bigot who things non-Jews should be discriminated against), etc?

Places like London, with higher concentrations, have much more acceptance.

That is the case to a degree. After so called white and middle class flight has taken place maybe. Or middle class parents have made a huge effort to segregate their children from the local inner city state school. Diving up and down to central London from south London last year, this was most obvious in the Crystal Palace/Dulwich area, with so many posh mostly white parents taking their children in their caps and boater hats to private school in the mornings, while the regular schools seemed to be majority Afro-Caribbean origin pupils.

And the distinction between the middle class homes worth a small fortune, and the tough estates across the road in places like Clapham and Battersea make the inequality pretty blatant. Tower Hamlets is an interesting borough. Is there much common ground between the Bangladeshi community and the working class whites?
I haven’t noticed it in Whitechapel Market where you hardly see white people.
But I agree that you could still calll London a success story. When you get to Luton though I’m not so sure. Oldham has problems of segregation.

East Ham, Southall? I don’t know them as well, but there does seem to be a degree of people sticking to their own kind.
I watched a TV reality show about a family in Hackney tonight. The mum and dad are from Nigeria and run a Nigerian take away. Their four children are Londoners.
The parents went back to Nigeria for a visit tonight and the children threw a party as the parents were away.
Every single person at the party was black. In hugely multi-racial east London.

You can walk around Belfast city centre and everything looks normal and peaceful.
There’s no trouble and everyone seems civil. But we know that there’s more going on than what you see on the surface. People behave themselves because it’s an agreed neutral zone. It’s actually much more civil in that way than London is. But fences and walls are still up all over the city, dividing neighbourhoods.

Bensix: And places like Leeds? Bradford?

Broadly – places with higher concentrations of minorities have more acceptance of diversity. It was an IPPR report – look it up. They did the research I believe.

Damon: But fences and walls are still up all over the city, dividing neighbourhoods.

I agree, and I would like to see these invisible fences brought down. But as you say, they exist on all sides. But you also contradict yourself…. on the one hand saying people don’t like diversity and mixing (not true) but on the other hand seemingly blaming minorities for not mixing enough and accepting there is ‘white flight’.

@ 24 Pagar

“Sorry Chaise, but I don’t think I could have stated my position more clearly.”

I’m afraid you haven’t. What do you mean by “group foibles”? I’ve already asked you that once. As an unqualified statement, it does sound like a justification for discrimination based on profiling. I hope that’s not what you’re saying, but if you won’t explain your meaning it’s hard to know.

@ 28

“Yes, exactly. There are a lot of people out there with nasty bigotted views and I’d rather they didn’t live in Britain. If you disagree, you’re in effect saying you want more bigots here, which I find inexplicable.”

Ha ha ha. Don’t hit me with your false dichotomy: it’s like saying the fact that I support the right to a fair trial means I want criminals walking around free.

“Because it’s not about party as such (although obviously BNP supporters would be suspect).”

It could be, though. And if your policy was brought into effect, it would be: it would reflect the desires of whoever was in power at the time.

“Don’t we want to build Britain into a better nation? Surely everyone should want that.”

Yes, but not by gerrymandering. I also, for example, wouldn’t help someone cheat their way into power by fixing the vote even if I thought they would be good for the country.

“Would you prefer it if this country was filled with people like Osama bin Laden (bigot who wants to kill non-Muslims), David Bahati (bigot who wants to kill gays), Sarah Palin (bigot who wants to live in the dark ages), Benjamin Netanyahu (bigot who things non-Jews should be discriminated against), etc?”

No. I’d like it to be full of people like me, but I’m not going to cheat to acheive that. This is a liberal democracy, not a utopia where the only acceptable viewpoint is Phil Hunts.

@ Chaise

What do you mean by “group foibles”?

OK, examples.

I don’t want to have to pay for the Notting Hill Carnival or to employ diversity workers of any kind.

Or to pay for this kind of divisive stuff http://www.bristolblackcarers.org.uk

As an unqualified statement, it does sound like a justification for discrimination based on profiling.

Not at all.

And yet because immigrants can be grouped according to their place of origin it is quite reasonable to measure, over time, the different economic and social benefits they contribute to the host society. This of course will tend to vary according to the customs values and culture of their community of origin.

So, for example, we might reasonably compare the contribution of the asians deported from Uganda with, say, the ethnic Albanians.

To do so is not to conclude that we should discriminate against individuals coming here based on the results.

But you also contradict yourself…. on the one hand saying people don’t like diversity and mixing (not true) but on the other hand seemingly blaming minorities for not mixing enough and accepting there is ‘white flight’.

I think it’s a very mixed bag. Where there is stability there is more mixing.
At school it is often very positive. My own (white) niece has enjoyed her time at her Lambeth comprehensive and wants to stay on there for sixth form. The middle class suburbs that have become much more mixed seem to work fine.At work in jobs where there is stability and people have the chance to form work based relationships I’m sure things are good. But in the transient centres that become the bedsitland of short stay first port of call for people coming and going, I don’t think things work so well. And areas that have changed very quickly, from what they were to this modern inner city reality are I think alienating to many people who have lived there from the beginning.
Even older immigrant settled communities can be unsettled by a wave of change.
Multi-occupancy housing where people come and go with a regular turnover of people does not make for community cohesion.

Much of it comes down to our miserable exploitative capitalist system. Landlords who charge high rents and people on poor wages bring this about. It leads to the black economy with everyone cutting corners where they can. It can lead to people turning to each other in a way that I saw happens in Dubai, with people from one community looking after their own so to speak.
So you’ll see in Brixton for example, all the butchers shops employ Kurdish and Afghan looking young men. They are halal butchers, and to get a job there I’m guessing that the boss only hires people from a narrow demographic. There is also a Brazilian community there now, but as I’m not a part of it, I don’t really know much about it. To the Kurds and Brazilians hang out together and interact much?
Large employers exploit this situation by casualising their labour force, and hire newer immigrants to do all the crap jobs in factories and warehouses. I’ve worked and visited many of them, and it doesn’t improve the working environment as it segregates the workforce. You can see it in the canteen with people not mixing with the agency workers – and I have no doubt that racism plays a part in this situation. A guy from Eritrea whose job is just to put broken down cardboard boxes into a bailing machine all day is hardly worth getting to know (it seems) as he won’t be there long. No one sticks it out for more than a couple of weeks.

As it can be difficult to really know what actually goes on right in your own neighbourhood, it would be interesting to know from people how much social mixing across race and cultural lines there actually is. I don’t have an interest in talking things up – or down, but when I look at our most diverse neighbourhoods I do wonder what the reality is.
Having been called a ”concern troll” on this site yesterday, I don’t have the greatest faith in getting to the heart of this issue on Liberal Conspiracy.

That link that was in the opening post is interesting though. I’m working my way through it. It is by Prospect magazine though, and it’s editor David Goodhart – who is considered by some as a troublemaker in this subject area.

@ 33

“OK, examples.

I don’t want to have to pay for the Notting Hill Carnival or to employ diversity workers of any kind.

Or to pay for this kind of divisive stuff http://www.bristolblackcarers.org.uk”

Fair enough, assuming that you’d also not want to pay for other unnecessary things like other carnivals, the arts, the Royal Opera House. Got no problem with that.

“Not at all.”

“Foibles” means “flaws”, not “interests” or “overal economic value”. So if you go around talking about “group foibles”, it does sound like you’re about to start blaming, for example, all Muslims for 7/7, or at least saying that they represent a high risk. That’s why I asked for clarification.

“And yet because immigrants can be grouped according to their place of origin it is quite reasonable to measure, over time, the different economic and social benefits they contribute to the host society. This of course will tend to vary according to the customs values and culture of their community of origin.

So, for example, we might reasonably compare the contribution of the asians deported from Uganda with, say, the ethnic Albanians.

To do so is not to conclude that we should discriminate against individuals coming here based on the results.”

Hmmpf. I suspect the comparison might well lead to such discrimination, but I’m not about to say we should outlaw this kind of research.

Inclined to agree to some extent with Damon. Sunny,

But you also contradict yourself…. on the one hand saying people don’t like diversity and mixing (not true) but on the other hand seemingly blaming minorities for not mixing enough and accepting there is ‘white flight’.

I do not think it is a matter of “blame” as such but rather a matter of fact that people sometimes do not mix and particular circumstances have particular consequences – if anything is to blame it is human nature, not a particular group of humans (aside from those who deliberately stoke tensions).

The Oldham review is well worth looking at for a description of the particular circumstances that led to the riots – and the report did not “blame” the ‘English community’, the ‘Pakistani community’, or the Bangladeshi community, but the circumstances in which they all lived – the context.

We have to recognise and deal with the fact that people are not work units, we are not interchangeable drones, we are individuals with our own preferences. I say this because some people (not Sunny) seem to think that we can pluck say 10,000 people from any country and stick them anywhere in the UK and expect everything to be fine.

(I recall one or two Conspirators saying things to that effect – that there shouldn’t be a problem, that people are stupid, because the UK has enough resources etc. Resources are not the issue (in terms of my point), it is about preferences and perceptions.)

From the Oldham review:

In common with most other immigrant groups, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have tended to live within particular neighbourhoods. This has been for very understandable reasons. For one thing, it was easier to converse with people in the mother tongue; for another there were security considerations since Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were subject to various types of racial abuse from their first arrival; shops, cheap housing and other facilities, and in due course places of religious worship, were also available; and there was the comfort of living with people whose customs were familiar in an unfamiliar environment.

In London there are Kurdish areas, Turkish and Greek areas, Afghan areas, Brazilian areas, Jewish areas… the list goes on – it is self-evident that towns and cities are not fully mixed. Where there are tensions or pressures such as poverty, inequality, high unemployment rates, we should expect consequences.

3.8 Whether in school or out of school there are few opportunities for young people across the communal boundaries to mix within Oldham. Except where people have significant contact in the workplace this is the case for adults too, and relationships between the communities at adult level are largely confined to business transactions (shops, restaurants, taxis). Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and whites simply do not meet one another to any significant degree, and this has led to ignorance, misunderstanding and fear.
…
In the main, we have concluded that the main cause for residential segregation has been preferences both within the indigenous and Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities of people “to live with their own kind”.

It is not blaming but recognising what happens in real life and trying to think about how to mitigate risk.

@ Chaise

Fair enough, assuming that you’d also not want to pay for other unnecessary things like other carnivals, the arts, the Royal Opera House. Got no problem with that.

Can I refer you to this excellent article.

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2009/10/17/does-the-arts-council-need-trimming-too/

it does sound like you’re about to start blaming, for example, all Muslims for 7/7

Of course that would be ridiculous.

We are way off topic, however I do think it is reasonable to be critical of Muslims for their attachment to an illiberal belief system that, at its most extreme, results in such events.

@ 37

“Can I refer you to this excellent article.”

Agree with that. I specifically mentioned the Royal Opera House as an example because it seems ludicrous to me that we pour money into it in an attempt to preserve some vague ideal of British culture, when the reason that it needs the money in the first place is that nobody’s interested in it. I can see the point of using public money to make sure art is accessible (i.e. literally that people can afford the ticket price), but not to keep unpopular art alive.

“Of course that would be ridiculous.

We are way off topic, however I do think it is reasonable to be critical of Muslims for their attachment to an illiberal belief system that, at its most extreme, results in such events.”

Depends what you mean. Of course we should feel free to criticise the illiberality and irrationality of such beliefs, but I’m not sure of the extent to which it’s fair to connect moderates to extremists. I remember Richard Dawkins making the point that moderate forms of religion create a breeding ground for extremist versions, but that doesn’t mean the moderates actually bear any resposibility for the link. Similarly, I’m not going to criticise moral vegetarians for holding to a belief system that, at its most extreme, results in terrorist action against animal researchers.

Don’t know about you, but I get pissed off when people demand to know why moderate Muslims haven’t “done something” about Islamofacism, as if they run some sort of special Muslim Police.

Hi Chaise

I’m glad we’re agreed on the Arts Council and we seem to be making progress elsewhere.

Of course we should feel free to criticise the illiberality and irrationality of such beliefs, but I’m not sure of the extent to which it’s fair to connect moderates to extremists

But I don’t see the divide that you do between acceptable moderates and unacceptable extremists. It seems to me Islam is more like a continuum of opinion none of which is acceptable to a liberal.

Where, for example, do you draw the line with the views expressed below?

Immodesty is immoral/I don’t like homosexuals./My daughter will dress according to my wishes./Ban homosexuality./She will only swim if she wears clothes./I’ll pick her husband for her/Homosexuality is punishable by death./My daughter will marry who I tell her to./Kill all homosexuals./My wife must wear a burqa./I’ll beat her if she deserves it./She has brought dishonour and deserves to be killed/Death to all infidels.

Only a misplaced view inspired by cultural relativism would prevent you arguing against them all.

@ 39

“But I don’t see the divide that you do between acceptable moderates and unacceptable extremists. It seems to me Islam is more like a continuum of opinion none of which is acceptable to a liberal.”

You’re right, it’s not a case of being one or the other. I’m sure there are Islamic views, or at least views justified under Islamic principles, that I would agree with. It’s just that those are likely to be non-contraversial and therefore not discussed as much. The same goes for Christianity, of course.

“Where, for example, do you draw the line with the views expressed below?…Only a misplaced view inspired by cultural relativism would prevent you arguing against them all.”

I strongly disagree with them all, but in terms of freedom of speech I would only outlaw the ones that call for direct violence. In other cases, I’m ok with the view being expressed (or rather legally expressable), but think that the associated action/s should be offences if carried out (wife-beating being an obvious example).

I don’t subscribe to cultural relativism, BTW. I think it’s wrongheaded, cowardly and patronising, and probably stems from a misplaced fear of being called racist or similar.

Pager, have a look at this article in today’s Spiked-online magazine.
”Panorama: titillating the New Atheist set”

The revelation that some British Muslim kids are reading Saudi textbooks was like manna from heaven for the anti-faith schools lobby.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9927/

I don’t think it can be denied that ”white flight” has taken place. That might just be people with families wanting to move out to the suburbs and being replaced by a younger and more transient set of people who are bound to gravitate towards cheaper locations and areas that become bedsit central. Particularly as they offer places to work in the black economy.
This was led by buy-to-let landlords who turned family homes into multiple occupancy dwellings. The population density goes up, and the quality of life goes down …. because of a lack of car parking space for example and people dumping rubbish and old furniture and fridges in the street.
There was this BBC London report on the changing face of London.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdE5wUixs9M

Which is fine …… until you get this situation in Birmingham, where it does seem that there have been some issues of integration. Cultural chauvinism and over assertiveness?
You can understand why people feel the desire to make such public displays. It’s pride I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE7Xng1FEz0&feature=related

Critiscise the documentary by all means. I think Darcus Howe goes looking for sensationalist stories to give him something to write and make films about, but that scene in the first few seconds is quite revealing. Is that ”multi-cultural” or mono-cultural?

That was Eid in Birmingham, this is after a Pakistan cricket victory in Luton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWv7Mv04XUw

I don’t have a problem with people supporting the teams of their parent’s origin btw. Norman Tebbit’s cricket test was a nonsense. But when we talk of future immigration, we are talking about increasing the size of these communities everywhere.
So a smallish community in High Wycombe becomes a new Bury Park, Luton maybe.
Cousin marriage, family reunion and everything else. If it all works smoothly there’s no problem. But Britain is racist we are often reminded. Its police and criminal justice system. In the area of employment. Everything really.

I strongly disagree with them all

Great.

I do too and so should any self respecting liberal.

Thieves should NOT have their hands cut off.

Adulterers should NOT be stoned to death.

These are some of the foibles I was referring to above and they are not quaint foreign customs of which we should be tolerant.

I’m glad to hear you will be alongside me in opposing them.

I think nearly everyone in this country would be, Pagar.

Chaise

you are projecting your views onto others.

There are a chunk of the UK population who would NOT be opposed to those issues.

Because the killing of adulterers is mainstream islamic theology.
So, if you asked a Muslim, they’d be unable to quote an islamic source that condemns it.

So whilst they may be uncomfortable admitting it to you in public in the UK – they would not in fact oppose such killings if they happened in the Muslim community around them: or if that community decided to voluntarily follow Sharia law and such killings were a result.

Particularly as heresy/apostasy deserves the death penalty in mainstream islam – so standing up as a Muslim publicly against what Muslims around you are doing, can and does lead to violence against yourself.

@ 44

I’m aware of this. But given the small number of Muslims in this country, and the fact that not all of them will support these policies, I think it’s still safe to say that “nearly everybody” would oppose them.

When people have suggested otherwise I’ve assumed they’re talking about a perceived group of stupid liberals who would support the policies so as not to give offense, who I doubt really exist in any great number (regarding home policy, at least; there’s a depressingly large group who think we shouldn’t pass comment when a foreign dictator murders a woman for showing her ankles because otherwise we’re guilty of cultural imperialism or Western chauvanism or some such shit).

Chaise

> I think it’s still safe to say that “nearly everybody” would oppose them.

Ok, you’re right, given the clarification you gave that Muslims would be excluded from the ‘everybody.

So now we have to say that if immigration meant the country became say some high number = 90% Muslim, that the killing of adulterers would be unopposed in any majority vote on the matter.

The UK would no longer be as liberal as it is today.

More tricky – what about if it were 50% Muslim?
What about lower percentages – too small to get a majority vote for a party that supported legalising death for adulterers, but enough to get a load of MPs that did argue for that….and enough that in some communities such killings though extra-judicial became unopposed and not uncommon.

So if we decideded that say 20% immigrants was a healthy target for the UK on economic or other grounds – we would then have to ask whether allowing the 20% to be all Muslim would change the UK culture as above.

So to protect our ‘liberal land’ – we’d have the tough call – do we limit immigration of individuals based on their religous grouping…knowing that not all of the individual Muslims we would exclude that way would condone,turn a blind eye to or support killing of adulterers… but knowing that as a grouping, across the board that enough would to cause a loss of liberal culture here?

LIberals caught between 2 un-liberal outcomes… which is the least bad?!

@ 46

You’re making two big assumptions there: 1) that most Muslims inclined to immigrate to the UK believe in an extreme form of the faith and 2) that the children, grandchildren and so on would also hold these beliefs despite living their entire lives in a secular and open society. After all, if the number of Muslims in the country were even to approach 50% (or 90%!) through immigration and childbirth alone this would take several generations.