BNP to admit non-white members

[Zeitblom]

Can I pick up a couple of points from Chilperich's post:

Originally Posted by Chilperich

1) A resurgent, highly conservative, scripturally literal Islam is deeply worrying to non-Muslims of all races (and, in all likelihood, to liberal Muslims themselves, although they are likelier to pay a higher price (and sooner) for openly breaking ranks with the more devout/zealous among their communities);

....

It does not surprise me in the least, for example, that Afro-Caribbeans who are Christian or Rastafarian will at least entertain the possibility of making common cause with the BNP insofar as they oppose the present apparent coddling of (conservative, assertive, anti-modern) Islam, and the consequent downgrading of the indigenous, Christian culture.

This is a point that I think needs a little bit of unpacking. The thing that strikes me about militant Islam is how much common ground it has with evangelical Christianity - for example, on creationism, on women's reproductive rights, and on the role of secular and religious law. The fact that our legal and political system has emerged from a predominantly Judaeo-Christian cultural background (and in which we in Britain still have an established church) means that the conflict with militant Islam can be that much more obvious, but IMO militant Christianity is just as much a threat to a secular civic democracy as militant Islam, and both in their most extreme forms appear prepared to resort to terrorism (like shooting doctors who perform abortions while they are in church, for example).

2) It now emerges (if some of us did not already have very strong suspicions) that the open-door immigration policies of recent years in the UK were not the result of carelessness, but (according to Andrew Neather, erstwhile adviser and speechwriter to leading Labour Party figures) of a deliberate policy to create a "multicultural" society in place of a long-settled, relatively racially and culturally homogeneous society with substantial, comparatively recently-arrived minority communities;

I'd be very interested to see the sources and evidence for this - could you please post a link?

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Zeitblom

IMO militant Christianity is just as much a threat to a secular civic democracy as militant Islam

hehe: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by Zeitblom

I'd be very interested to see the sources and evidence for this - could you please post a link?

Here's a link to an article from the Daily Mail (a conservative, national newspaper):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ltural-UK.html

Here's another, from the conservative broadsheet, the Daily Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...r-adviser.html

Here's an article from the London Evening Standard, where Andrew Neather seeks to limit the damage of his revelations, and even to put a positive spin on them:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...-immigrants.do

and finally (at the grave danger of annoying our host, Phil) is a thread from Melanie Phillips's blog in the conservative Spectator magazine (with comments from her readers):

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melanieph...al-class.thtml

I'd also like to point out that Christianity has always been more doctrinally separable from secular government than Islam, even when (as has often happened in the past) it has in fact wielded such power. Christ spoke of "render[ing] unto Caesar" and God respectively, thus explicitly differentiating between the sacred and secular spheres of government. No such distinction exists in scriptural-literalist Islam, which, as I have mentioned before, embodies not merely a religious belief system, but a comprehensive system of law and morality, a theory of society and a programme of (ultimately universal) governance, all as part of an indivisible whole.

One of the best discussions of the politico-legal dimension of Islam is Roger Scruton's The West and the Rest. Scruton is what would be regarded, in American terms, as a palaeoconservative, but he is exceptionally culturally literate, deeply versed in comparative religion and (pertinent to the explicit legalism of Islam) a trained barrister.

[Chilperich]

(Incidentally, if you're wondering why I cited three conservative sources for the story, this was because I could not find a liberal-left source that carried the story without seeking to conceal or deny its true nature and implications.)

[Chilperich]

Here's a version of the Melanie Phillips Daily Mail article, complete with readers' comments:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar....html#comments

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

(Incidentally, if you're wondering why I cited three conservative sources for the story, this was because I could not find a liberal-left source that carried the story without seeking to conceal or deny its true nature and implications.)

Not that you are in any way biased. Oh, no...

[Balthazar]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

(Incidentally, if you're wondering why I cited three conservative sources for the story, this was because I could not find a liberal-left source that carried the story without seeking to conceal or deny its true nature and implications.)

Translation:

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

at the grave danger of annoying our host, Phil

Everything's cool my dear. As long as Muslims or homosexuals aren't abused, post what you want.

[Zeitblom]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

(Incidentally, if you're wondering why I cited three conservative sources for the story, this was because I could not find a liberal-left source that carried the story without seeking to conceal or deny its true nature and implications.)

Actually, I'm afraid I don't find the stories remotely convincing. What Neather seems to be saying is that a draft document was produced that said certain things, and during the drafting process those things were removed. But that happens all the time; documents are drafted, reviewed, rewritten. Text is removed because the authors decide that it's superfluous, or unsupportable. The text is the medium for debate; its development reflects the development of policy.

Besides which, Neather now appears to have changed his tune:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oc...andrew-neather

And the Telegraph piece would have been more credible if it didn't resort to quoting Andrew Green's Migrationwatch "three million immigrants" number, which has been repeatedly shown to be nonsense.

It's interesting that Neather's Standard piece does say that immigration has made London a more attractive place - as well as repeating the economic arguments in favour of freedom of movement across borders.

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by Zeitblom

Actually, I'm afraid I don't find the stories remotely convincing. What Neather seems to be saying is that a draft document was produced that said certain things, and during the drafting process those things were removed. But that happens all the time; documents are drafted, reviewed, rewritten. Text is removed because the authors decide that it's superfluous, or unsupportable. The text is the medium for debate; its development reflects the development of policy.

Besides which, Neather now appears to have changed his tune:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oc...andrew-neather

And the Telegraph piece would have been more credible if it didn't resort to quoting Andrew Green's Migrationwatch "three million immigrants" number, which has been repeatedly shown to be nonsense.

It's interesting that Neather's Standard piece does say that immigration has made London a more attractive place - as well as repeating the economic arguments in favour of freedom of movement across borders.

Why are Andrew Green's arguments "nonsense"? His organisation, MigrationWatch, obtain their figures from the ONS (an official government body). If you want to accuse anybody of peddling "nonsense" (by which I take you to mean misleading figures), that is your first port of call.

If you cannot see that the removal of pertinent but sensitive facts from a draft document in order not to alienate public opinion (and thereby lose their electoral support) is an act of supreme cynicism, then I fear I cannot help you. (We are not simply talking about cutting out insignificant parts of the document, or omitting a stray comma here and there.)