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Sunday, March 13, 2011

Prejudice and Fear

We live in urban England.  My daughter has friends from many communities within British Society.  Her high school is majority Muslim and I do not pretend that being a minority (White and Anglo-Saxon) automatically encourages disadvantage.

After her first week in high school I waded in with indignant fury at the head teachers’ platitudes about zero tolerance for racism and a level playing field for all when one of her little friends was called a nigger by older Muslim boys. On other occasions I tried to explain that the need to be ‘protected’ by ‘good Muslims’ was intrinsically wrong.  Equality is not the absence of prejudice. To make a virtue of fear is to accept discrimination as a fact of life. To teach that nothing can be done teaches children an obscene lesson that authority is meaningless.  We can celebrate the fortitude of the children that subsequently grow up without prejudice but just as likely, is the outcome that there will be an equal number for whom hate will be their constant companion.

In order to now explain my fears I must take you on a diversion.

Why is the conflict between Israel and the Arab world so intractable? The answer can be found in the following analysis.

History, psychology and the dynamics of power are central to all abusive relationships. 

Missionary faith by the nature of its theological construction is abusive.  There are two missionary faiths in this world, Christianity and Islam.

As a missionary faith Islam has three bedrock narratives.
  1. Everything that came before Islam is redundant. This is called Supersessionism or Replacement Theology.
  2. Within every missionary community a minority will only ever be tolerated but never, will they be equal.
  3. Degradation and humiliation demonstrably reinforces the ‘superior’ communities self worth, irrespective of the class they belong to.  This last point is particularly appreciated by tyrannies and fascist democracies.  In Islam it is central to the theology of global conquest and that status theologically ascribed to the infidel (called ‘Dhimma’).  For a more detailed explanation I recommend the following by Bat Ye’or:

http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/by_lecture_10oct2002.htm

As a faith, Islam has had 1,400 years of almost wholly unimpeded Global colonial expansion.  Successful conquest is the only determinant of what constitutes appropriate behavior in a setting where asymmetrical power is not balanced in favour of the missionary faith.  Islam is a faith of global conquest.

There are three reasons that the conflict is currently intractable:
  1. After 1,400 years of successful conquest the conqueror can never understand that a persecuted minority has the right to reverse that trend of harassment and ethnic cleansing that by its previous success self-justifies and therefore, is self-perpetuating of discrimination.
  2. Even if the Arab and greater Muslim world can accept physical defeat by a Dhimmi nation it can never theologically accept spiritual and cultural defeat. And this will always inform its relationship with the Non-Muslim world. The cultural construct that demands acquiescence to inferior status with all its concomitant legal and material consequences cannot psychically digest a contrary position. This imbalance constantly feeds the destructive tensions that exist within the relationship.  For Israel it means that there can rarely, if ever, be a relationship with the Muslim world that is based on trust.
  3. The theological need to strike out at an inferior human being is not only a religious but also a cultural paradigm of Islamic faith. And the significance of this last statement is that the difference between the bigotry of a secular and a religious Muslim is far too often only in the narrative.  In the Arab world it is key to understanding the prejudice and discrimination that infects Arab thought and that infests Arab society.

An aside.  I am a Jew, I am an Israeli, and I am a Zionist. I am immensely proud to be known as and called all three of these things in no particular order.  I am British also.  To the person who questions my loyalty to Britain I ask why I have never read an article questioning the loyalty of my British Muslim compatriots, or of any other faith group?  Is this bizarre omission something we need to contextualize in terms of a conspiracy against Jews only?

I am sensitive to the feelings of others but it appears to me that in this world of abusive power there are two missionary faiths that have controlled my destiny for far too long and they have not ever truly accepted my right either to self determination or the right to have a homeland that is free of threat.  Having practiced a military strategy of ‘Divide and Rule’ as a vehicle for domination and conquest a third party interferes with this spurious 'conflict-free' philosophy of appeasement.

Here lies the essence of the conflict between Israel and the Rest.

It is why the fascist left has found it so easy to slip into bed with Islam and it is why the fascist left accepts without questioning the Arab/Islamic narrative. It is why the fascist left embraces every lie.

I accuse the fascist left of including the British Guardian Newspaper Group and the BBC (recently named as one of the three most powerful media groups in the world and, the most influential).  I include in this fascist conspiracy the British Liberal Democratic Party which relishes their enfants terribles for their forthright manner and their political and personal bigotry while allowing the party to distance itself from what they privately cheer.

British Television recently completed the showing of a four part anti-Jewish diatribe called ‘The Promise’ (see my posting dated 8th February 2011). This vile propaganda was the contribution of the BBC’s co-conspirator ITV4.  I only managed to sit through a single episode but that was enough to convince me that once more British Television was celebrating its sycophantically Antisemitic tradition by adding yet another showpiece Arabist anti-Zionist narrative to the colourful British literary canvas.  A friend once told me that the British cultural landscape was replete with Jewish luvvies and cultural icons. Therefore, he continued, the Islamist and left wing fascist narrative (and thus its agenda) was unsustainable. I disagreed with his optimistic prognosis then and am more than convinced today that his foresight was mistaken.

And so I return to my little girl. She has completed her education relatively unscathed by the prejudice that has damaged so many others.  When my daughter questions my identity I understand that she has the right to construct her own. It is not all her choice because she did grow up in my home and I hope she has absorbed some of my positive values. 

When she brings a boy into my home and his name is Mohammed I am overwhelmed however by philosophical angst.

I do not want to hurt her. I am not a racist. I am overwhelmed by history and I live in current times where history is repeating itself. The scapegoat is never a happy sacrifice.  Today I live in racist, left wing McCarthyist Anti Jewish Britain. This country, complicit in the Shoah, denigrates me for my ingratitude when I fail to listen to my moral and intellectual ‘betters’, when I refuse to turn the other cheek. When I don’t do as I am told.

Britain is today at the forefront of the campaign to denigrate my history and annihilate my future.

And now I despair. My daughter is too young to internalize my fears and too naive to appreciate the threat her relationships pose to me and to her.

There is nothing I can do if I do not want to drive her away.  I have never been nervous with any of the people my children have brought into my house and my home has been their home. I have always, without exception, given them free rein, irrespective of their race, their religion or their color.

Do tell me then why I should not be nervous about secular Mohammed?

1 comment:

  1. This is my experience as a wedding photographer. People are who they are. Go to 50 Greek weddings and the people are basically the same. Go to 50 Italian weddings and the people are basically the same but absolutely different to the Greeks. Ethnic groups have characteristics and if that sounds like racism then I'm in the company of the vast majority of the population who vote with their feet preferring to live with & educate their children with their own ethnic group. There are also a few groups like the rich and the gays who act like ethnic groups, they prefer their own. And preferring their own is what most people do. I think it's a given and I think that most of those preaching diversity won't have a bar of it for themselves. So, this thing, this wonderful thing, diversity, universally acclaimed but personally avoided, is it good? Again, I think the answer is incredibly obvious. I think everyone knows it but no one will say it. Diversity, when it works is great. Hard working people who embrace their new culture as well as their own bring in fresh talent, variety, rejuvenation and great restaurants. But, when diversity doesn't work, ahh yes, crime, violence lots and lots of fear and great restaurants. And the possible demise of your country. OK, the restaurants may be great but is it worth it? I think that maybe it's a good idea to be selective about where one applies diversity. And maybe it's good idea to be in a country like Australia where they've been a little more selective with this potential blight, diversity for it's own sake. Come home Bilateralist and bring your daughter with you.

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