To ask if it's a good thing that London has a Muslim mayor

[DoesFlossfloss]

Because my London based in-laws are not happy and I've not been following the campaign as I'm not in London so don't really care. However, we're seeing PILs this weekend and it will be up for discussion.

From the broken English I would imagine Greenleaves hasn't been in the UK more than 2 years, despite what she claims, so she probably has no idea about the IRA's terror campaign and the fear it caused. Being born in London in the 70's I have spent my entire life knowing that there are people plotting to kill me. This didn't just start with ISIS.

She has no right to complain about immigrants having only been in the country 5 minutes. Intolerant immigrants are what we don't need.

Agree Bertrand. DH worked in London when the IRA were active and then we moved to Birmingham just in time for the Birmingham bombings. I will never forget the climate of fear it engendered.

"Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong where the laws of the UK are not being observed, where equality is not being observed and where there appears to be an increasing undercurrent of divisivness driven by the Muslim community."

Tell me about these laws that are not being observed?

Equal rights legislation. Rotherham. Directing traffic away from the public highway when there is an event at the mosque without getting in place the requisite road closures.

Tell me about these laws that are not being observed?

The ones about not gang-raping children? We in Labour need to look deep into our souls about why Labour councils deliberately avoided doing anything.

I think you might have to explain a bit more. Rotherham was a massive failure of policing and by social services, nobody denies that, surely? The directing traffic thing sounds like a specific local issue.

What equal rights legislation is being broken?

Police and social services wouldn't have been needed if young women weren't being gang-raped by these men.

But it is interesting that a discussion about the Mayor of London has ended up in Rotherham. I wonder if Boris Johnson was ever asked what he intended to do about child abuse in the Church of England..........

"Police and social services wouldn't have been needed if young women weren't being gang-raped by these men."

Of course not. And it would have been stopped if the police and the social services hadn't monumentally screwed up. What's that got to do with the Mayor of London?

Was Khan in charge in Rotherham?

I also have no idea why Khan is being linked with Rotherham either. How bizzare. Is every Muslim responsible for every crime committed by a Muslim? If so is every white person responsible for every crime committed by a white person? Should Goldsmith be linked to Fred and Rose West, South Yorks police dept during Hillsborough or the collapse of RBS??

Greenleave, I grew up in London in the 70s and 80s so never mind twenty years ago, as much as forty years ago terrorism was a very real fear. We had regular bomb scares even at school. There were bombs going off in lots of public places.

And there is no uncontrolled immigration and never has been under any government. I say again, whatever your thoughts on immigration this is not under the remit of the mayor of London so Sadiq Khan is entirely irrelevant to scaremongering about immigration.

Apparantly.
I can't find my car keys this morning. Bet he's had them too................

So Muslims are the only ones who rape?

Jimmy Savile?

It comes down to failings in safeguarding that have happened in a variety of situations. Victims have not been listened to. This is as criminal as those who carried out the crime.

All this insistence that Khan must be held responsible for the actions of completely unrelated people is reminding me of this.

This thread is quite interesting in that it demonstrates a certain dynamic of racism: the abolition of particularism and individuality to members of an 'othered' group.

The momentum of the thread has moved towards a presentation of (some) people's perceptions - even gripes - of 'Muslims' as some homogenous group.

What, indeed, has Sadik Khan to do with Rotherham? Yet such is the force of the internal propulsion of this particular racist dynamic that difference is abolished.

ironically, another facet of this propulsion towards the homogenisation (and stigmatisation) of othered groups is that it deals with clear, real examples of individuals and instances acting in ways that contradict the (stigmatised) notions of the behaviour/beliefs of the othered group by a discourse of 'exceptionsalism': "Well, SK may not be like that - but the others are," or "Well, SK may not say that - but just wait and see ..."

This results, almost inevitably, in a license to produce a quite slippery racist discourse: "Well, he's not like that - but the others do [insert whatever]" and on to the racism-by-association that we witnessed in Zac Goldsmith's campaign.

Don't forget, Zac Goldsmith was able to say that he had never said anything directly racist about SK himself, or accused him - directly - of being a radical. He didn't have to: the slidey momentum of this particular kind of discourse did a lot of the work for him.

I suppose I hope that one result of having an individual who is Muslim as Mayor is that it will push alternately; towards the possibility of fragmentation, particularity, and the witnessing of the mosaic of modern Muslim identity. I fear that a feature of SK's tenure will be how forceful this propulsion towards the homogonisation of the 'other' is.

why are you even asking? oh yeah, because your IL are racists

shame, shame

and trust me, having him in charge will far better for this diverse city that the poor-hating , disabled-hating and minority-hating tories

My DH think I love SK, its getting a bit embarrassing

Ambroxide That is very funny.

This is a - personal, individual - account of what it is like to be one person on the receiving end of this homogenising kind of racism:

I grew up as a second-generation Irish (cultural) Catholic. I DID "integrate" - or try to. My memories of my childhood are a kind of fractured patchwork - which I would say is possibly related to the fact that I was not able to utilise the generalised narrative of a dominant historical discourse (!).

I remember specifically the experience of being held accountable for the Birmingaham bombings, being asked to explain, condemn, expiate for the politics of the IRA - whilst simultaneously being subtly mistrusted. I remember the experience of being - suddenly - Irish first, 'me' second - and this experience being sprung quite suddenly, out of the blue. I could go for weeks, days, being 'me', supposedly amongst friends - and then, suddenly, that pretence of 'individuality' would be ripped apart - and I would realise that such 'invisibility', that experience of the wholeness of being just 'me' would be pulled away. I learnt that it was not mine to have - it was only -temporarily - loaned to me and was in the gift of others.

The irony of it all was that I never felt 'really' 'Irish' at all - I'd never set foot in Ireland, was from a family of confirmed atheists, and my family had denounced the nationalism of the IRA as non-socialist.

By the time I went to secondary school, I had learnt to not mention 'my' heritage. It's a painful - and damaging - experience.

one rarely saw hordes of Muslims together

"Hordes of Muslims"

And how predictable that Rotherham gets brought into this too.

Rotherham had a lot to do with a combination of power structures and corruption imported from Pakistan and a Labour Party too stimied by political correctness to tackle it creating a perfect storm where the normal structures that should have prevented it collapsed. Not just police and social services, but the entire council including taxi licencing and education services. Similar happened with Lufthur Rahman without the sex offences in Tower Hamlets.

I don't think there's ever been any suggestion that SK has been involved with this type of thing ie using clan structures to get votes.

I am connected to one of the Rotherham victims, and I don't think it's helpful to just to paint people not associated with this sort of thing with the same brush just because they share the same religion. I think it runs the risk of making it appear that when things like this need to be tackled those trying to tackle it are just doing 'because you're a Muslim so you must be at it'.

These things are so serious they shouldn't be suggested lightly because it devalues allegations when they are made seriously and with evidence.

Cat I totally get that - my Dad came over when he was 2 - I was born here - I basically have the most Irish name ever - so growing up in the 70's was not a comfortable experience - I was called names, accused of being in the IRA (at 13!) and yes expected to be accountable for the action of Irish terror groups

I didn't set foot in Ireland until I was 30!

it was only -temporarily - loaned to me and was in the gift of others

This resonates with me (daughter of a Muslim and a Catholic, both atheists since childhood, one an immigrant and the other from a family of previous immigrants).

And it is relevant to the discussion about integration too. It is hard to integrate when people insist on treating you as part of a totally different set of alien people and not part of the community to which we all belong.

I thought this article was good (discussing the appalling letters sent to people of possible Indian descent). One of the people quoted says of Cameron “He talked of ‘your community’. No, David, you and I are members of the same community. It felt like my prime minister was writing to tell me he doesn't consider he and I are part of the same community. Which is not very nice, is it?”

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/30/battle-london-mayor-dirtiest-fight-zac-goldsmith-sadiq-khan

It does seem like we are overrun with hordes of racists.

I was underneath Harrods at KNightsridge tube station when the bomb went off in 1983 (killed 6 people)

My brother attended (police officer) either the Hyde Park or Regents park bombings ( I can;t remember which ) in 1982 (11 people killed).

Terrorism is nothing new to London.