muslim people

[zippadee]

i am alarmed at the amount of anti muslim rhetoric that is being bandied around. particularly by the government. what is going on?
i am a white , non muslim , what does everyone think about this?

YR, yes, I know it still happens and I still think it is a stupid thing to do, regat=rless of who is doing it.

My dh's uncle and aunt are expats in Spain, but live in a spanish hillside village and are now fluent in Spanish. They have no desire to live in a UK enclave.

Caroline3 is right that it's probably PC motivated to change the menaing of BC, but of course very few people think Christ was born in Zero AD.
Though it must be said I first heard "common era" a very long time ago.

Thing is of course that this sort of thing was going to happen anyway.
Active Christianity in countries with highly literate populations is very much in long term decline, and it's slightly absurd to label things after the wrong dates for events that may not even have happened.
I say "Christmas" because other people know what I mean. Some are offended by the term, and personally I don't care about that.

Quite martian - for very Brit. who has no desire to live in an English enclave abroad there are foreigners in this country who do not wish to live in their own ghettos !

Caroline 3 - you are very right. Muslim or non-Mulsim. We have an elderly Greek neighbour who has lived in London since 1940 (she remembers the blitz) and barely speaks intelligable English and has zero English friends and my mother knew a Spanish lady who had lived here for 30 years and didn't speak much English.

One can find all sorts of minorties and people to pick on. For some people it seems to be a hobby.

Caligula - in fact the Brits. who live in Spain and cannot communicate in Spanish ARE a social and economic burden, according to the Spanish health service for example.

I read in the papers recently that Spanish hospitals and doctors are getting seriously pissed off with the no. of resident Brits who are going in for treatment, but who do not speak a word of Spanish. They are now requesting that they have to bring in a transaltor with them as they are such a drain on their time trying to find out what their ailment is !

A relative of mine has been living on the Costa Del Sol for nearly 20 years. Her dh can't speak Spanish and is PROUD of the fact!!!

I've also heard that the Spanish health care system is under strain down there. Partly due to the language problem but also due to the advanced age of the many ex-pats (not just Brits) who retire there.

Most of the immigrants to Britain seem quite young and fit at the moment. We just export loads of our oldies to warmer climes. Sounds like a fair exchange to me!!!

I'm just sick to death of hearing about "problems" with muslims. I know its a bit ott but sometimes it reminds of Germans talking about the "jewish problem" in the 1930s. The press and the government are just stirring up a hornets nest with all this I think.

About 3 weeks ago, Newsnight did a feature on how Polish and other Eastern European migrant workers had fared in Britain and was asking what the Albanians as well as Bulgarians could expect. The feature looked at migrants in North of England. The Poles spoke of the racism they encountered and do you know from which community they had experienced a lot of problems? It was the Muslim community! Did anybody else see this? It was quite illuminating and sad.

Didn't see the programme but does not surprise me.

There are stupid bigotted people in all communities. I'm sure that muslims are no exception to this.

No-one has started ranting about Poles being Roman Catholic and not agreeing with homosexuality however. I would be pretty annoyed if Jack Straw made some comments about this with a view to starting a "healthy debate" on the issue

Speedymama, I caught the end of this programme and it was really sad. They guy at the end saying he just wanted a normal life - .

Caroline3, Trevor Phillips in today's Daily Mail saying that a lot of white immigrants from former Soviet Bloc countries are racist here

interesting article about HPV vaccine on that link Kathy

Interesting article.

Don't know what evidence TP has to base this allegation on. However the E.Es were obviously brought up in all while countries and I had heard that Russia is extremely racist so I am prepared to accept this one. I came across this sort of attitude several times when I was in Ireland in the 90s which seemed very old fashioned and ignorant. No doubt things have changed a lot in Ireland now since their economy took off and they started taking in immigrants. Lets face it it has taken the UK decades to get this far and things are far from perfect.

Hopefully most E.Es will learn to accept different races eventually. Otherwise they can always return home!!! Probably most of them are planning on doing that anyway after a year or so in the UK living in squalid conditions. Things must be pretty desperate back home for them to have to come over here anyway.

Speedymama - have you ever looked at the contributions made to to the world of science, art and literature by the Arabs and Muslim Persians ? It is also exeedingly illuminating, but for some reason it is not in the interest of the current UK/US Govts. to highlight these historical facts, I wonder why ?

So, the only people who are unhappy about the 1000's of E Europeans pouring into the UK are the Muslims ? What rubbish. It is the local Jews where I live who are livid about it. Many UK Jews ran away from E Europe to avoid E European racists and here they are now in North London with E Europeans moving in next door. I am not saying that all E Europeans hate Jews, but some genuinely do. I have spoken to them, I know what I am talking about.

Some journalists need to get their facts right and read a few decent history books before they start trotting out such crap, speedymama.

Er Yellowrose, get off your high horse. I was just relating the Newsnight feature and it showed that discrimination against the Eastern Europeans does not only originate from the indigenous population.

FWIW, I do know a lot about the contributions of the Islamic world to the arts and science. The period between 7th and 13th centuaries is viewed as when Islam had its Golden Age. It led the world in art, medicine, astronomy, maths, chemistry, botany, physics etc. This knowledge was shared with the West who built on the knowledge they received from the Muslims. After the 13th centuary, it went down hill due to a combination of the Crusades and divisions amongst muslim society.

You can't easily point to great Arab/Moslem accomplishments without also letting slip that they've done almost norhing of merit in the last 500 years.
Their modern culture is thrown into stark relief by great accomplishments in the past.

A while back an Iranian turned up on my door to gather support for those trying to take Iran back off the people running it.
He sadly was under the common delusion that Islam was part of the solution, not the problem.
I asked him what in his opinion was the most successful Moslem country.
Albania.
Apparently.
He had a valid, point.
Although pathetically corrupt, undemocratic, and with a living standard about the lowest in Europe, it isn't at war, hardly anyone is murdered by state thugs, and a woman can usually walk the streets in a skirt without being beaten to death by religious crazies.
That's as good as Moslem countries get.

Also it pokes a big hole in the idea that a contempt for Islam is some sort of anti arab racism, since Albanians are mostly ethic Europeans, just not very smart ones, is all.

Bet that was the last door he knocked!

Hey DC, no-one could ever accuse you of sitting on the fence!

Dominic - I think what you say whether second hand or of your own making is hugely offensive. It also shows a rather basic understanding of the region. The Iranian you spoke to was quite obviously deluded and had zero understanding of his own country, let alone other Muslim countries.

Speedymama - you seem to come up with a lot of anti-Muslim rhetoric on this thread and others, which frankly even as a non-Mulsim/Non-Arab I find quite one-sided.

sometimes I think I have zero understanding of my own country - I wonder who would be the best person to ask about it?

Try Bush. He seems to be the UK's de facto Prime and Foreign Ministers !

dominic -'that's as good as a moslem country gets'??!! your words or his?! i shall assume you've never been to a muslim or arab country then.

Well, Yellowrose, I can assure that the conversations that I have with my Muslim friends (both male and female) are informed and probing. They know where I stand and vice versa. People can have differences in opinions and still get along. You should try it. I'm opinionated and speak my mind. If others don't like it, that is their problem, not mine.

I have a Sikh friend (male), known him since university and his comments about Muslims make the BNP look like the Samaritans!

Speedymama I find the same thing among my sikh friends - a little to do with the lands that were lost in the Punjab when Pakistan was partitioned, their families were forced to live as refugees, lot of people died

There's a lot of bitterness there unsurprisingly.

Agree Hooley. The Kashmiri situation invokes a lot of strong emotion.

"I have a Sikh friend (male), known him since university and his comments about Muslims make the BNP look like the Samaritans! "

And what on earth is that supposed to prove? There is much friction between the differnt religious groups of the Indian sub-continent, partly tangled up (as these things always are) with power, economics, colonialism etc. Just because members of various groups decry each other doesn't mean that it's ok to adopt a blanket condemnation of them. Jamaican and Nigerian minicab drivers are notorious for making the most outrageous statements about each others counries / cultures - but that doesn't give me carte blanche to go round citing it as a reason why one or the other is inherently flawed or at fault.

I agreed with the Iranian on much, and he was no more deluded than most people who can't shake off religion.
He did want democracy but failed to grasp that if you give Iranians the vote, they will elect other Iranians, and the major factions both in government and out of it are tragically bad people.
Islam is not uniquely bad, the evidence is hugely that any religion, if allowed to run a country will become oppressive and inefficient. Christianity used to be one of the largest single causes of death in Europe until we achieved separation of church and state.
Even Israel, who you think would know better has allowed it's religious loonies to do appalling things.
The American problems in the region seem overwhelmingly down to the fact the Bush and Blair share a faith that clouds their judgement.