winterbadger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterbadger) wrote2006-09-20 01:40 pm
winterbadger) wrote2006-09-20 01:40 pm
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and while I'm grummishing...
from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5362052.stm)
Sorry, but this strikes me as totally ostrich-headed. It's unrealistic to ask parents to keep an eye on their kids, to try to keep them from getting recruited by terrorists? Why would that be?
And, yes, people in, say, the Welsh Methodist community are not being asked the same thing because the Home Sec is not speaking in Welsh Methodist communities because Welsh Methodists ahve not been setting off bombs and trying to kill people!
Obviously terrorism and the underlying tensions in the British Muslim community and between that community and the rest of society that lead to young people being recruited by terrorists are are something that all Britons are concerned about and that all Britons need to try to address. Ethnic and religious animosity and related economic and social problems are things that need to be solved by everyone coming together. But there's no point asking me to keep an eye on my kids--I haven't got any! In the same way, there's hardly much point in asking the parents of nonMuslim youth to look out for and try to intercept Muslim terrorist recruiters from suborning their kids--those kids are not the ones being recruited by Islamic extremists for bombing campaigns! Multiculturalism doesn't mean throwing common sense out the window.
Reid Speech Disruped by Hecklers
...
During his time in Leytonstone, east London, which also involved a visit to a mosque, Mr Reid said community and religious leaders could play a key role in the fight against terrorism.
The home secretary said "our fight is not with Muslims generally". Instead, he said, there was a "struggle against extremism".
And, warning that terrorist fanatics sought to influence youngsters, he said: "There is no nice way of saying this. These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings, grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others."
He stressed that by protecting families the community would protect itself.
The speech came after some Muslim leaders expressed concerns about the UK's foreign policy and called for it to be changed.
Mr Reid did not tell Muslim parents to report their concerns to the police but wants them to confront their children's behaviour and talk to them.
...
Massoud Shadjareh, who chairs the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said Mr Reid's demands were "unrealistic and not demanded from any other community".
Sorry, but this strikes me as totally ostrich-headed. It's unrealistic to ask parents to keep an eye on their kids, to try to keep them from getting recruited by terrorists? Why would that be?
And, yes, people in, say, the Welsh Methodist community are not being asked the same thing because the Home Sec is not speaking in Welsh Methodist communities because Welsh Methodists ahve not been setting off bombs and trying to kill people!
Obviously terrorism and the underlying tensions in the British Muslim community and between that community and the rest of society that lead to young people being recruited by terrorists are are something that all Britons are concerned about and that all Britons need to try to address. Ethnic and religious animosity and related economic and social problems are things that need to be solved by everyone coming together. But there's no point asking me to keep an eye on my kids--I haven't got any! In the same way, there's hardly much point in asking the parents of nonMuslim youth to look out for and try to intercept Muslim terrorist recruiters from suborning their kids--those kids are not the ones being recruited by Islamic extremists for bombing campaigns! Multiculturalism doesn't mean throwing common sense out the window.
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He's trying to engage the Muslim community and asking it to look after its own, since its failure to do so so far appears to be one (though clearly not the only) problem leading to the situation that exists now.
I'm very suspicious; it seems to me as if some of the more radical spokespeople in the British Muslim community want to discourage any dialogue between the government and the community *and* want to prevent the community from taking any steps to police itself. I hear a lot of complaints about how the police have handled relations with the community (understandably a sore point, because police in any country always tend to be more heavy-handed than people would like them to be) and a lot of criticisms (many of them valid) about the government's international policy, but I hear precious little about the culpability of the community for the behaviour of its members.
Progress is not going to be made with people like this speaking for the Muslim community, IMO. Cooler and wiser heads need to prevail, and (IMO) they need to prevail soon or there's going to be a nasty backlash, much worse than the (certainly already disturbing) tension between Muslims and nonMuslims.
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As a person who's worked with teenagers for 24 years (25 if you include student teaching :), I have to agree with this Guardian commenter regarding Reid's statement.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/angela_phillips/2006/09/blair_talks_to_muslim_parents.html
It's the same way I think it's stupid how the government imprisons the single mothers (it's been single mothers mostly so far) whose children too frequently truant school. One woman, whose daughters professed they were so sorry their mother was jailed, was jailed again later when those same girls truanted far too often again.
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I agree that it was a horrifically bad idea to invade Iraq, that even the bad idea was atrociously mismanaged, and that the UK would have been much better off staying out of the whole thing.
But does the Iraq War really have that much to do with young Muslims' anger towards mainstream British society? I ask that as a serious question, not a challenge. Most of my impressions of British culture are formed by popular media (films, television, fiction) and much-digested news, and you actually live in the UK and have been there for some time.
I just have the impression, possibly mistaken, that Iraq (and Palestine) are being used as an excuse, a justification, that anger, disenchantment, hostility, racism, and violence are much more deeply seated and more a product of the last 50 years of race relations (for lack of a better term) in the UK between immigrant minorities and the larger population.
These are just my impressions: That there's a huge generation gap between the parents and grandparents who came to the UK for "a better life" and the younger generation who don't feel they have gotten it. That there's understandable resentment from (virulent, if not widespread) outright racism and from (more widespread, if not as openly nasty) discrimination. That there's frustration at generally being at the short end of the economic stick (whether true or simply perceived). That there's a feeling that those who tried to assimilate haven't really been accepted by the rest of UK society and culture, and that those who didn't try to assimilate are ghettoised and powerless. That they're threatened with being forever stuck between being whatever their family's religious and ethnic identification is and "British" without being really either one. And looking, as unhappy young people (people of any age, really, but especially young people) for someone or something to identify with that's going to make them feel better about themselves and their situation.
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This country doesn't do multiculturalism very well. Of course, the US really doesn't either. :( Personally, I understand many of the resentments regarding religion; try being Jewish outside of London or Manchester or Edinburgh! :(
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Indeed, Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary. And then Development Secretary Claire Short a couple of months after.
I'm really astonished he has held onto control of the party for this long. He's been digging Labour's grave by doing it, IMO, unless his successors can work some miracles.
This country doesn't do multiculturalism very well. Of course, the US really doesn't either.
What!? Are you joking? The land of the free and the home of the brave? The great melting pot? The land where Robin Williams can come from Russia, make friends with a Black family, fall in love with a Cuban girl, and watch Chinese people wave sparklers on the 4th of July? (I like Moscow on the Hudson, but it's irredeemably sappy.) We're the home of multiculturalism! We love to have people of different religions and different ethnicities come and live in our country (as long as they work for minimum wage and don't, actually, y'know, live in our neighborhoods, or use our store's parking lot to wait for work in...) America is the most happiluy integrated country in the WORLD!
(There really needs to be a recognised typeface for heavy sarcasm...)
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But it's my impression (from the dimly remembered days when I was a teenager and knew many others :-) that even the best-brought-up and well adjusted kids are going to be dissatisfied or restless and need constructive and imaginative engagement from adults. Even ones that aren't potential recruiting targets for terrorists.
And while it's far better to establish opportunities for constructive forms of growth and expression for kids before they become older and disengaged from the rest of society, someone needs to do something to try and help those who are. We can't just write 'em off. (Not that I think you're suggesting we do so, but "Yes, what Reid is suggesting is not the best complete solution, but it's better than doing nothing.")
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A British (don't think he was Muslim) commentator on the 10 o'clock news discussed how British Muslims basically feel more isolated than Muslims anywhere else in the Western world. What Reid did really serves to further that isolation, especially amongst the targeted kids. Our multiculturalism isn't working very well here, and it's pretty obvious to notice it if you're not a member of a majority religion in this country, let alone a member of another race. :(
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That's certainly true; according to what I read up to try and educate myself, there's a very considerable increase in Muslims-by-conversion in the UK (as there is in the US and Australia as well, just judging from the news--one of the most stirring and impressive speakers in the US Mulism community that I've heard is a convert).
British Muslims basically feel more isolated than Muslims anywhere else in the Western world.
I can understand how they might feel that way, but it's my impression that, bad as their situation may be, they are actually better tolerated/more accepted in the UK than in the US. :-( Not that that's saying much, I understand.
Our multiculturalism isn't working very well here, and it's pretty obvious to notice it if you're not a member of a majority religion in this country
Does it make it in some ways worse that most people in the UK are not actively religious at all? In that it makes people who practice any religion openly stand out more, and people who practice a "foreign" religion (because, as we all know, the Christmas Story took place in the Cotswolds ;-) doubly so?
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http://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/pdf/Integration%20and%20Isolation%20%20A%20Comparative%20Study%20of%20Immigrant%20Muslims%20in%20the%20US%20and%20UK.pdf#search=%22international%20study%20muslims%20isolation%20uk%22
Does it make it in some ways worse that most people in the UK are not actively religious at all?
But the majority of people still come from a Christian background and will tick off 'Christian' on surveys even if they've not been to church in years. Christmas may seem to be a secular holiday to some, but most non-Christians don't see it that way. Christianity is pervasive everywhere here.
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That's very scary. :-(
Christianity is pervasive everywhere here.
Please tell me you mean that in "cultural relgion" terms! If I thought that active Christianity were as prevalent in the UK as it is in the US, I would seriously consider my position about moving (plus doubt my sanity--it's never seemed that way; when I lived there in 1985 and was a practicing Christian, the only other people I saw when I went to church every week were very few in number and 95% of them over the age of 60).
BTW, I really have to thank you for all your comments in this thread. It's invlauable to me to have a friend with your perspective who's interested in keeping up this discussion!
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Remember that I spent 21 years in Boulder just prior to moving here, where religion wasn't part of the schools. I was isolated in Fantasy Island -- I wasn't really in the US. No Christmas decorations, no Christmas songs, etc. We had Winter Break and Spring Break -- no Easter Break. And it's sheer coincidence if Spring Break is anywhere near Easter. Teachers can take up to three religious holidays off a year -- for any religion. (Parents can write notes for kids to miss school for them also.) I still remember the Friday before Winter Break one year when the kids in my 9th grade class were wishing each other happy holidays: Christmas the next week for the Christmas; the first night of Chanukah that night for the Jews; Ramadan was already on for the Muslims; Yule was that weekend for the Pagans. (We had a lot of out Pagans there.)
But there was one boy in the class left out: a Buddhist. (Boulder has a fairly decent sized Buddhist community, what with the huge Shambala Center downtown, Shambala in the foothills and Naropa University literally down the street from where I taugh, etc.) The other kids were sorry he was left out, and they asked him if there weren't any upcoming Buddhist holidays.
"When you're a Buddhist," he said with a smile, "every day is a holiday." :)
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And I love the story about the holidaysl I have to tell that to my mum--she would love it!
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There's a Buddhist monk who, for years, would beat his drum every Friday late afternoon/early evening. He had a certain route in the downtown, and I first saw/heard him in '79. In '93, I bought a condo downtown and it was on his route. I'm not sure if it was the same man, but it was reassuring on Fridays to hear and see him.
Boulder is different. Sometimes I truly miss it. We're going there this summer, and I'm planning on two weeks since I'm off and we have plenty of crash space there. :)
Once, when the Dalai Llama came to speak at Naropa, Boulder High kids were able to attend. (Naropa literally is right down the street from Boulder High -- maybe seven blocks away. And the University of Colorado is just a couple of blocks the other way up a hill. Those kids are surrounded by all sorts of interesting cultures. :) Anyway, the kids from the Peace Group met him. Pretty cool. To be honest, those kids had a decent school, and a lot of interesting guest speakers. The school hosts some speakers for the University of Colorado World Affairs Conference each spring, with some talks coming to the Boulder High auditorium, which actually is a pretty good venue. (E-town has been taped there when the Boulder Theatre isn't available.) The kids have priority seats at those talks. When I was there, Roger Ebert, Molly Ivins, Margot Adler, etc. were regular speakers at the high school. Not bad.
Now you know why I went through culture shock when I left Boulder. Not every city of its size has an abortion clinic attached to a women's health center with sliding scale fees and free GYN/family planning services to poor women? Really? (I used to moonlight there.) Not every city of its size has a regional Peace Center? (Rocky Mountain Peace Center is there). Not every city of its size has a working chautauqua from the 19th century? Really? Doesn't every high school have a gay/straight alliance? Didn't every city vote in gay rights back in the '80s and transgendered rights in the '90s? I'm serious. I took a lot of things for granted there.
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