They're not refugees, we're being invaded

[goonthenflameme]

I admit, the Syrians have got it bad. There is a war and those boys who haven't been shot by ISIL are being conscripted by the President.

But if life is that bad, why do they only want to go to Germany and if they can't go then then they'll go back to Syria.

Why are we now seeing people from Kazakstan joining the throngs?

I agree that people from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria need help. But the thougsands and thousands of people coming through can't all be refugees in dire need of help if they are so picky as to where they will live.

They're invading Europe. And we are letting them. What's going to happen in 20 years? Will Christianity and western ways be swept under the carpet?

beaucoupdemojo Of course you don't have to be muslim to use religion as a cover. Abusers are very good at finding ways to cover what they are doing.

Oh absolutely not. Again, it would be interesting to see some proper research into the issue, again using proper statistics from case law.

But if you study Sharia law, which I have done, it is shocking (its also shocking in its lack of separation of powers and difficulty in promulgating new legislation) in that many branches quite clearly state that women are worth less than men.

Replace that with race ie one race is worth less than another, and it is very offensive. Compare it to apartheid in South Africa, where sanctions were imposed to discourage the differential treatment of blacks and whites. But instead we encourage misoygnism.

I hope one day in the future we will look back on this period in time when the legalised apartheid of men and women was tolerated with disbelief.

Sweden quite clearly has very serious problems with recent immigration that impinge on the quality of life of women there severely, and is hardly a good model to follow. Its near neighbour Denmark doesn't experience these problems to such an extent. Neither does Norway. You would think Sweden would be funding research into why Swedish women are now so much more at risk of rape than previously, rather than inventing legislation discussing the semantics of whether race actually exists.

There was nothing about fear of being thought racist

But that's not what the report told us, is it? It certainly wasn't the only issue, but to suggest there was no evidence that it contributed to the problems is simply not true

I believe Scremersford has made some very valid points about the lack of research around race/culture and sexual abuse; there's plenty on the race of the general prison population, etc, but little on this. Bearing in mind the lessons learned over Rotherham (or perhaps, in too many cases, not learned) perhaps we might wonder why that i?

beaucoup the idea that women are less than men is written into the holy books that are used by all the abrahamic religions, Islam is not really exceptional in this regard, although it's probably fair to say that the majority of European Christians no longer take their holy book as seriously as Muslims take theirs. (The opposite would be true in parts of America though).

People who come to live in Europe need to obey European laws. Absolutely no disagreement there. But at the same time, Europeans need to enforce European laws - something they signally failed to do in rotherham and elsewhere, because misogyny is pretty entrenched in our social services and our police forces and our legal system too. And those services are by and large run by white people not Muslims.

Religion ... has been used as a tool to suppress our freedom and even autonomy over our own bodies.

Absolutely.

The point, mistigri is that those antiquated and dangerous beliefs have been made illegal under our equality legislation.

There are many newcomers to Europe who have no buy-in to the idea of women's rights or equality, and the poster who claimed (I paraphrase) that under Sharia Law, practised correctly, women's rights are protected is woefully misinformed.

I have lived in several countries under this law, applied in draconian and more liberal ways. In not one of them was I perceived as equal to men, either in the eyes of religion or government.

Questioning the existence of people who offer empirical evidence that implies our hard-won rights may be threatened by other cultures, or crying 'right-wing conspiracy' makes this difficult, nuanced and uncomfortable debate even harder.

As I have said on several threads, I was educated, have lived and worked in the areas that many of the migrants come from. What is your own background? Have you lived under sharia law yourself?

On the subject of muslims imprisoned for rape, there's a useful gov.uk link here, provided under FOI: www.gov.uk/government/.../number-males-rape-muslim.doc

It states that As at 31 March 2014, the latest point in time for which data is available for public use, the male prison population in England and Wales for all offenders serving immediate custodial sentence for rape was 5,682. Of this, there were 676 offenders who self-declared their religion as Muslim (12% of the total)

I believe we've been told that muslims make up 4% of our population, with men making up roughly half, or 2%. I'm no criminologist, and I realise that statistics can be a blunt tool, but that 12% quoted seems to suggest that they're over-represented by a factor of 6

those antiquated and dangerous beliefs have been made illegal under our legislation

Yes, this absolutely is the point! Does anybody think British law would turn a blind eye to imams cutting people's hands off for theft? Or burying women and throwing rocks at their heads? Crucifixion?

The only reason to fear the same of misogyny and rape is that you fear OUR legal system doesn't robustly defend women's autonomy. To me, this is the issue to focus on.

that 12% quoted seems to suggest that they're over-represented by a factor of 6

Factor of 3, since all rapists are male.

Have you looked at other distinguishing factors? Like how many are Christians, below average height or under 30?

Have you looked into whether Asians tend to be more frequently prosecuted and/or found guilty than white men?

A statistic without context is meaningless.

Further explanation of "statistic without context is meaningless":-

100% of people in prison for rape are biologically male. The population at large is 49% male. This shows that men are twice as likely to be rapists as the average person.

^^ meaningless, huh?

mistigri beaucoup the idea that women are less than men is written into the holy books that are used by all the abrahamic religions, Islam is not really exceptional in this regard, although it's probably fair to say that the majority of European Christians no longer take their holy book as seriously as Muslims take theirs. (The opposite would be true in parts of America though).

You misunderstand. I am talking about Sharia law. The versions obviously differ, but are very consistent in some regards e.g. treating the testimony of a woman in a divorce hearing as worth less than that of a man.

People who come to live in Europe need to obey European laws. Absolutely no disagreement there. But at the same time, Europeans need to enforce European laws - something they signally failed to do in rotherham and elsewhere, because misogyny is pretty entrenched in our social services and our police forces and our legal system too. And those services are by and large run by white people not Muslims.

Sorry to split hairs, but there is no such thing as "European laws". There is a body of law known as "European law" but all member states have their own legal systems in which specific European law rule are either directly effective or more usually promulgated into national law. There is nothing to stop a member state from imposing its own laws, different from European law, as long as they are not in conflict with European law (in this respect, anti-discrimination principles of European law).

My argument is that current law is inadequate in dealing with a relatively new situation - mass migration from Sharia law countries. There is an over-emphasis on enforcement of racism-based laws at the expense of gender-based laws. ie the former are favoured. There needs to be proper research done on why this is happening so that legal changes can be brought about if necessary, but there isn't any. So in practice, we seem to be sleep-walking into a situation where certain abuses on the grounds of gender are tolerated because those laws are not adequately enforced where they run into conflict with racism-based laws (which because of the concept for example of racially aggravated crimes have in recent years been beefed up anyway).

Whatever your views though the UK is not taking many immigrants in of those currently in the rest of Europe so our bigger problem is African stowaways from Calais and those overstaying on student visas.

We had 600,000 new legal immigrants to the UK last year and 300,000 UK people left. 200,000 of that 600,000 were from the EU under free movement laws.

But if you import people who believe that women are less and who believe that religious belief supercedes law of the land (and who come from countries where the law is created to support this belief) then you are helping create a problem which the legal system then has to deal with.

All very well to say the law needs to be enforced, and I agree with you, it does without race or religion being given special consideration. But that doesn't prevent women from being called whore in the street (or worse) in the first place!

I am hazy on the details but last week some fucking ignorant judge said that abuse was worse for an asian girl than a white one and set a sentence accordingly. We cannot rely on our system to apply the law without prejudice and importing more men who disregard the law isn't going to improve matters.

Garrick Yes, this absolutely is the point! Does anybody think British law would turn a blind eye to imams cutting people's hands off for theft? Or burying women and throwing rocks at their heads? Crucifixion?

We do however tolerate abuse of women on grounds of their sex when the abuse of people on grounds of their race is not tolerated. We tolerate very poor conviction rates for rape and other sexual offences and demand extremely high standards of evidence to convict. I would like to see some research into the standard of evidence required and indeed permitted for comparison of different crimes.

But who on earth is going to carry out research into whether Sharia law cultured individuals are more likely to carry out crimes against women? Or the statistics of Muslims committing certain crimes? How would anyone get funding for it? Its a poisoned chalice in our currently politically ideologically dominated culture. Can you imagine the risks a lecturer in a university would run if he dared to ask questions about Swedish rape laws and compared to them to the new laws designed to protect ethnic minorities? Although its a valid question, its not worth the risk of discussing. Far easier to stick to safer topics. Again, its the sort of area which should be funded for Phd research (its new, novel, hasn't been done to death already) but who on earth would risk being associated with it when there are far less controversial subjects out there? And then most likely even if a person self funded, the research would be buried if it pointed to uncompromising results, or written off with the casual (and meaningless) "right-wing" or "facist" tag.

An old folks home near us closed down recently and the old people 'relocated' elsewhere. They have now filled the home with migrants seeking refuge here.... the police are regular visitors there because of A.S.B. which includes throwing furniture out of windows! breaking into neighbouring cars and using the F word when challenged by the neighbours as to why they are acting in such a way. Speaking to an ambulance driver (who himself was mixed race) when he told me he had served 3 tours of Syria & Afghanistan working in bomb disposal I asked him, 'when Joe public expresses concerns that terrorists will come here masquerading as refugees, are they being paranoid or do you see it as a very real threat? he informed me that it is a very real threat. I just wonder that if they are fleeing a war torn country and in very real danger why is it in Calais you see mostly all young men? where are their wives, mothers and other more vulnerable family members? why leave them to perish? As a carer I see first hand the effect that is faced by the NHS,Local services,schools funding for U.K. citizens who are vulnerable, social housing lists of 4 years or more etc..etc.. how can we possibly continue to open the floodgates and let more in? we have no long term strategy to help our own citizens let alone thousands more. What happens in 5 years time when YOUR child cannot get placed in a local school because they are already oversubscribed? the situation is bad enough already! Let's get our own house in order first.

Once people have been given leave to remain in Germany or other European nations, don't they then have the right to move freely across Europe, the same as any other European citizen? If that is the case, they could end up here regardless of what Cameron says about taking genuine refugees only.

beaucoupdemojo But if you import people who believe that women are less and who believe that religious belief supercedes law of the land (and who come from countries where the law is created to support this belief) then you are helping create a problem which the legal system then has to deal with.

Well of course you do. But that doesn't fit in with the ideology of those who support multi-culturalism in a certain way (I support it too but think we need to assist more with integration). So they will attack any comments which suggest the contrary by labelling them as "racist" or "right wing" or "facist". Without, it has to be said, any proper evidence for such attacks or even any proper explanation for what this actually means or why it should be relevant. (when I say proper evidence, I mean proper use of accredited sources, not blogs, not a rambling personal explanation of why the poster thinks its not really fair).

totally agree with what you said earlier Beauchamp and this prevails in other areas such as the Tower Hamlets elections and the other candidate was accused of being racist for challenging the mayor and how is right to stop your constituents voting the way they want to.

It seems this stops the law being applied fairly.

I want to see an end to these no go areas as well and the police turning a blind eye when called to assist which does happen

beaucoupdemojo Once people have been given leave to remain in Germany or other European nations, don't they then have the right to move freely across Europe, the same as any other European citizen? If that is the case, they could end up here regardless of what Cameron says about taking genuine refugees only.

EU citizens have a right to remain for 3 months in another EU member state without registering officially. Thereafter it is a subject for that member state but generally it requires 5 years residence for an EU citizen to acquire the right to apply for citizenship in another EU member state and 10 years for all others. It is not always granted. Human rights are usually interpreted so that the applicant is granted a right of family life and their family are allowed to stay also.

beau, you are right actually so the Channel will then not protect us.

Also it is not rape women so much fear from backward sexist cultures. It is so very many girls growing up in homes where they obey men, marry young and don't work. It sets up back to the Victorian era, all those battles we fought so hard to get to where women now are. Even if the law says men and women are equal these homes where chilren are in a sense conditioned so girls are inferior, girls serve boys, girls cook, men sit around even brothers of sisters sit around whilst women serve, that is what then grows as a norm in the UK. On holiday last yera in France skiing even we were next to a group where the men sat back in lazy satisfaction and the Muslim women were up and down like yoyos during every meal getting the men their teas, coffees, puddings as if the men had no legs and the women were silent servants.

Garrick, that is an outright lie. The Jay Report specifically indicated fear of being labelled racist was a large motivating factor in the cover up. As evidenced by the following link:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28939089

Someone close to me was a victim and I resent people like you lying and trying to minimise what happened because it doesn't fit in with your politically correct head wobbling narrative.

Yes it was hushed up. In fact, Nick Griffin was actually prosecuted for inciting racial hatred for saying it was happening. He is a loathsome man with loathsome views, but this seems to have allowed us as a society to ignore the fact that somebody was prosecuted for telling the truth because that truth was inconvenient to the government. Our local internet forum regularly had posters who said what was happening, particularly in the case of local taxi drivers, and their posts were always removed and they were branded racist liars. I have had a few unpleasant experiences with taxi drivers around here as have several other women I know, but we couldn't speak about it openly because we would be branded racist. Literally everybody who lives locally knew about it for years, it was an open secret. Cabs waiting outside to pick up truants were a regular fixture and we all knew why, but it was never challenged. And none of it got challenged while we had a Labour government, none of it. If Labour had won the election in 2010 it would still be going on and still be ignored.

Ditto Jimmy Savile, there was a thread on Digital Spy for years before he died detailing the rumours, but no media outlet touched it.

Garrick, that's exactly why I said that statistics can be a movable feast, so to speak, while still acknowledging that raw data can be interesting

But while we all appreciate that muslims are not the only offenders, the fact remains that most of the migrants the thread was about appear to come from this culture ... which is surely why this discussion (unlike previous ones about the Catholic church, Savile et al) focuses on this particular community?

I do agree about the need for our legal system to robustly defend women's autonomy" ... but then how would you approach the issue of incomers insisting that the only law they'll recognise is sharia? And please don't suggest that the very suggestion is some right wing conspiracy - I've worked for years among such views and seen what can result

And I'd genuinely like to believe that muslims are no more or less likely to be prosecuted/convicted than anyone else - but as others have said, it's hard to have confidence given some of the precedents

Scremer, believing we should 'help more with integration' by definition means that you do not support multiculturalism. I find that an awful lot of people say that they support multiculturalism because they don't actually understand what it means, and when they realise what it means they don't support it. Multiculturalism is the opposite of integration. It means that incomers do not take on the culture of their adopted home, but continue with the culture of their own country while living in the UK. And yes, that does mean that they continue having pretty abominable attitudes towards women and view them as little more than chattel.

Does anyone of her have these migrants as neighbours? A near by old peoples home was closed down and the old people relocated elsewhere.
The new occupants are migrants in every room (40 rooms) instead of being grateful for being housed safely in a nice area (not the run down council estate after a SEVEN YEAR wait such as my disabled daughter was offered) the whole home was refurbished by our 'cash strapped borough) and they have broken into cars, thrown furniture from windows and turned a once lovely old peoples home into an eyesore I feel really sorry for the local residents who have to deal with this A.S.B. while good,decent people who have lived in the borough all their lives are held on a waiting list shacked up with family and friends for years.

Booyaka Scremer, believing we should 'help more with integration' by definition means that you do not support multiculturalism.

Can you post a link to some evidence for that definition? Is it to be found in legislation or is it something that someone has simply made up to support a particular political ideology?

I think you see things too black and white. Integration does not have to wipe out other cultures, but can be used to assist those moving to a new culture to understand it and to respect its values.

It's what it means. Just google it. The definition google brings up is:

Multiculturalism describes the existence, acceptance, or promotion of multiple cultural traditions within a single jurisdiction, usually considered in terms of the culture associated with an ethnic group.

www.oed.com/view/Entry/234921?redirectedFrom=multiculturalism

That's the OED which says The characteristics of a multicultural society; (also) the policy or process whereby the distinctive identities of the cultural groups within such a society are maintained or supported.

Multiculturalism doesn't differentiate between what are good and bad parts of other cultures, it just says that these cultures should be accepted as they are, including misogny, sexism etc, etc.

I agree with your last paragraph. But that is not what multiculturalism is. Multiculturalism is the opposite of that. Multiculturalism accepts the wholesale rejection of your adopted countries values in favour of those of the place you came from.

So, for example, our society is structured in such a way that if a white British man decided he didn't want his wife to work and he didn't want his daughters to have anything more than the legal minimuum education we would make life very uncomfortable him. You only have to look at the threads here and in relationships to see that is the case. Yet if you are a Pakistani Muslim man who chooses to do this then it must be accepted without criticism because we live in a multicultural society and he is practicing his own culture.

Go and have a google &Scremer, it's a common misconception that multiculturalism means everybody living together and getting on famously but it actually means the opposite with cultures remaining separate and unintegrated. This was very, very much the policy of the last Labour government which was in complete denial that sometimes some of these multiple cultures had very unpleasant aspects.