| Topic: | Re:Koran bashers @the Oaks | |
| Posted by: | Clare Margaret | |
| Date/Time: | 17/11/09 00:57:00 |
Well thank you George. That was a very lucid explanation of your perspective on the matter. I really appreciate reading something that is clear and easy to follow. I don't know which commenters you were referring to earlier when you referred to 'the right wing'. But it really got me thinking about how we bracket people according to certain 'sound bites' of opinion. Honestly, I'm not really sure how I could describe myself any more. My natural inclination politically has always been left, principally because of the social justice issues. Lately though, I have become very disillusioned by the vacuous sloganeering and the weird support that many on the left give to a totalitarian ideology which runs counter to the liberal ideals that the left typically hold dear. Is this a case of ones enemies enemy being ones friend? A couple of months before 9/11 i had an oddly prescient discussion with a friend who is a professional trades unionist, very senior and naturally very left wing. I was in the habit then of listening to talk radio and I had noticed that the phone in host tended to adopt a rather sneering tone when someone phoned in an prefaced their comment ( rather naffly perhaps) with " Well as a Christian I believe..." but when a caller would start by saying " As a muslim I believe..." this particular radio host would become positively sycophantic and toadying. It was embarrassing to hear him tell each muslim caller how much he admired their culture etc, and in the next breath have lots of fun with the christian pointing out the hilarity of believing in such fairy tales and putting such callers in the hot seat over issues they hadn't called in about such as homosexuality etc. It was obvious to me that if he was consistent, he woud have done the same with his muslim callers. But he didn't, he positively drooled all over them. When I discussed this with my trades union friend and asked for his thoughts, I was surprised that he really thought it was ok. His line of thinking was that muslims were guests in this country and that Christianity was the established religion and therefore we had to show more politeness to our guests. So much for integration. I recall at one point saying to him that I wondered if we had let a trojan horse into the country, and we, heedless of the sinister potential, were just standing around admiring the beautiful carvings etc. He laughed at me and I laughed a bit too at my dark conspiracy theorist conjecture. And then a couple of months later, 9/11 and all that followed from there, not least the bombs on the underground. And I am so dismayed that rather than looking squarely at the gravity of what we are facing, and actually having something sensible to say, the 'left' ( broad brush term)seems to prefer to puff and blow about 'Bush the nutcase' and 'Tony Bliar' and wagging fingers at us about not demonising muslims. ( As an aside, growing up Irish and Catholic in the seventies and eighties in the shadow of the troubles I don't remember the government and the media waxing lyrical about our Great Irish Culture and our many nobel prize winners for literature and our music etcetera. I have no recollection of official exhortations that the Irish community must not be demonised. I recall my parents getting cross with the news reader sometimes when reporting seemed skewed, I think even the fact that they called Derry 'londonderry' felt like a provocation. but it didn't occur to us to be officially offended, partly because no one was bothered in the least whether they were offending us, if they had, it might have put the idea in our heads. So, for our part, we just turned down the volume on the record player when the rebel music was playing, huffed at Angela Rippon and Kenneth Kendall, and got on with it. ) So... I've fallen out of love with the left. I'm not sure that makes me right wing though. But I found your thoughts interesting, and I appreciated that you actually had some suggestions of your own. Personally, I would certainly ban the burkha ( at least the face covering) I would concentrate less on legislating against hate speech but would prefer to see laws which protect and affirm the freedom to speak. |