Twenty minutes into what seemed a routine softball literary interview for Bloomberg TV in London last month, the conversation took a prickly turn. My interviewer had tripped across some remark in one of my podcast appearances that set her off. So much for talking about my new novel. For the following 20 minutes, leaning over the table and poking at the air between us, she proceeded to hector me about why I seemed to discuss Muslims in general terms rather than as individuals. I objected that she was being disingenuous. Journalists regularly address issues involving groups of people in general terms. (For an opinion piece, I’m to interview all two billion Muslims individually and cite each in turn?) She challenged me to explain my problems with Islamic immigration, then immediately cut me off; the list was too long.
This was a classic instance of being forced into a defensive position, always no-win. Typically, too, a bit spoiled by a slew of on-side podcast hosts, I was unaccustomed to being attacked on camera and only grasped the optimal tactic after the interview ended: exert control. Observe that my new novel has no Muslims in it, so why were we talking about Islam? Note that as far as I could recall none of my books includes Muslim characters (though maybe I could be criticised for that too). Point out that perhaps a single column of mine has addressed Muslim immigration (we’re about to make that two). The interview was off-topic, and I should have brought the divergence firmly to a close.
Yet now that we’ve the leisure with no cameras rolling, let’s do discuss the Muslim immigrants whom the UK has clasped to its bosom in such profusion since 1997. After all, I’ve a long history of being drawn to the very subjects one is advised to avoid, and the only issue more incendiary than immigration broadly is Muslim immigration.
Doctrinally, Islam has no interest in a separation between church and state. It champions the sort of theocracy imposed by our dearly departed Ayatollah. Unlike Christianity, with its give-unto-Caesar-what-is-Caesar’s scriptural edicts, Islam aspires to earthly power. It’s a territorial religion that has historically expelled or converted infidels from most of the countries it dominates. While many religions lay claim to superior enlightenment, the likes of Judaism and Christianity don’t cultivate animosity towards unbelievers. By contrast, Islam disdains the infidel. Britain may pride itself on tolerance, but in Islamic theology that tolerance is not reciprocated.
Immigrants pack their cultures alongside their toiletries. If the British and continental European experience is any guide, to invite large numbers of newcomers from the likes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia and North Africa risks also inviting: misogyny. Honour killing. Acid attacks. Female genital mutilation. Forced marriage. Homophobia. Tribalism. Ballot harvesting and ‘family voting’. Cultural contempt and also, ironically, cultural resentment. Hostility to the West, including hostility to the very country that gives them refuge. Rape and sexual abuse, especially of white women and girls, who are seen as ‘slags’, paired with a fearful looking the other way and observation of no-go areas by domestic police forces.
Blasphemy laws, de facto or statutory. Oppressive dress codes for women. The parallel legal system of sharia courts. The genetic decay of multigenerational first-cousin marriage. Dogma-heavy religious schooling. Clannish colonisation of whole urban areas. Poisonous anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish hate crime. Massive, repeated demonstrations against Israel, which paralyse inner cities and purposefully intimidate the native Jewish community – such as the Al Quds march that was scheduled for this weekend. Increased welfare dependency. Oh, and I almost forgot: terrorism, along with a corresponding timidity, favouritism and appeasement from your own authorities, since if we upset these people something dreadful might happen. Otherwise, what’s not to like?
Obviously, many individual Muslims are thoughtful, productive and politically mainstream, adopting the mores of the western nations they’ve embraced – which should go without saying and doesn’t. Nevertheless, in a recent podcast recorded in Paris, Peter Boghossian asked his French interviewee to name one good thing about Muslim immigration to Europe, and the poor fellow was stymied. Peter was obliged to come to the man’s aid. When practising jiu-jitsu, Peter said, he finds that Muslims make excellent sparring partners. So. There’s that.
The UK has welcomed a burgeoning population antithetical to its much-vaunted ‘British values’
The point here is not to write stereotypes in stone. But in general the importation of large populations from predominantly Muslim nations into the West has amounted to self-inflicted vandalism. If we’re to continue to let folks in from elsewhere, we should be self-interested and selective. Let’s privilege highly skilled educated foreigners from culturally copacetic countries who are statistically likely to be net tax contributors and eschew biting the very hands that feed them.
In contrast to the tribal concentrations in Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester and Tower Hamlets, most American Muslims are prosperous, well integrated, often not very observant and disinclined to extremist views. But that moderation is surely the result of modest numbers. When immigrants arrive in short order and in quantity, they tend to consolidate geographically, where their grocers, bankers, teachers, religious leaders, etc all share the same language and foreign culture and there’s no need to assimilate. The UK has welcomed a burgeoning population antithetical to those much-vaunted ‘British values’. Apropos of the Gorton and Denton by-election, native Britons needn’t wait to become a minority to abdicate control of their country to a sectarian swing-vote constituency that casts ballots as a bloc. Granted, mass ‘remigration’ is fiscally, logistically and politically delusional, but we might at least keep the number of culturally antagonistic residents from continuing to soar. Or I suppose we could all take up jiu-jitsu.
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