Glob-a-log

First, the poll mentioned in the following article was conducted for a Right-wing think tank, the ‘Centre for Social Cohesion.’ That doesn’t make the poll invalid but you might keep in mind that the people ordering the poll have a certain socio-political bias.

Having said all that, the results were not pretty:

A third of Muslim students in Britain believe killing someone in the name of religion is justified, a new YouGov poll claims. The survey found that extreme Islamist ideology has a profound influence on a significant minority of Muslims on campuses across the country. The poll also found that:

- 40 per cent support the introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims
- A third back the notion of a worldwide Islamic caliphate (state) based on sharia law
- 40 per feel it is unacceptable for Muslim men and women to mix freely
- 24 per cent do not think men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah
- A quarter have little or no respect for homosexuals

Look, I’m an agnost and, on the whole, I don’t care much to what God you pray to or if you belong to the Church of Darwin. The only thing I would ask of anyone on a personal level is that he or she doesn’t try to convert or bully me. That goes for religions, but also for political beliefs, personally revered football teams and pop & movie stars.

‘Whatever gets you through the night,’ as John Lennon sang – and as long as people realize that one person’s dream might be another person’s nightmare scenario and behave with according civility, it doesn’t matter much if one citizen prays to Jesus, the other to Allah, and others to the pecs of Ronaldo or the breasts of Dolly Parton.

Also, we have laws.

The nice thing is that, apart from a truly minor percentage of the super rich and people with extreme amounts of influence, pretty much everyone is, more or less, equal under the law. It’s not a perfect system but let’s be brutally honest here: It IS fucking perfect compared to most of the countries where the rest of the world’s Muslims live.

So, having said all of the above, I must admit that I find it particularly galling that quite a large minority of Muslim students in Britain, who have the kind of advantages and privileges some 90% of other Muslims in the world can only dream of, express their contempt of the society they live in with such stupid and small-minded fervour.

Obviously, they, like all other bigots in the West, have the right to think and say what they believe. For the moment, that’s another one of those privileges the vast majority of the world’s Muslims don’t have.

On the other hand, again, for now, I’m still free to suggest that, if these people so dislike the laws of our land, and so despise our mores and sexual morals and freedom and equality, that they just should get the Hell out of our countries and fuck off to the nearest fundamentalist Hell hole of their own choosing – and, quite frankly, I don’t give a damn whether there will be some cushy place at a university or poverty, squalor and the secret police’s truncheons & electrodes waiting for them.

(For a more level-headed and rational approach & solution, read Minette Marrin’s excellent column here.)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 12:21 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.