Tolerance and Respect.
Two interesting words: Tolerance indicates
fairness towards those people with whom we do not agree while respect indicates
deference. As individuals we can agree to practice the former without having
any enthusiasm for the latter, but Society is built around the latter and only
afterwards reluctantly offers us the former.
In a perfect world, Society would practice both
in equal measure. When do conflicts
occur? When the laws of society to which
we all defer are disconnected from, and the object of alienation for groups, to
whom our laws are an unwanted and unwarranted imposition on their beliefs. A
multicultural society must be predicated on an assumption of adherence to basic
laws; everything else is open to negotiation.
For instance, female circumcision, forced and child marriage – are against the core beliefs of our
society.
It is not easy living in the twenty-first
century. I can be tolerant of Muslims
but not of their Israel-centric revanchism.
I am uncomfortable with Islam’s institutionalized inequality, its militant
imperialism and its insistence that my way of life is inferior. But then, my
relationship with patriarchal and hegemonic ultra-orthodox Judaism is also
problematic at best. And progressive,
pro-Palestinian Christians? They disgust me with their theological and
historical revisionism, their antisemitism masked as anti-Zionism.
Our society encourages bigotry. In an interview
with al-Jazeerah, the popular Arab television network, the celebrated atheist
Professor Richard Dawkins damned the Jewish “god” but when asked by the
interviewer about the Islamic “god” refused to be drawn into making a
statement. Selective tolerance that demonizes one group while declining to
comment on another creates a dynamic between the two groups, in effect,
legitimizing violence against followers of the “Jewish God” (which he described
as hideous, a monster and ‘the most unpleasant character in fiction’). Professor Dawkins is world renowned; his crime
against humanity is therefore all the greater for his cowardice and selective
bigotry. His unique incitement against
the “Jewish god” makes his crime also, one of antisemitism. But then, selectivity in narrow-mindedness is
usually, financially, very profitable, but also prudent in a world that murders
Islam’s critics.
Sadly, there is nothing unique about Professor
Dawkins lack of moral courage. Those that question the historical basis for the
existence of the State of Israel never question the legality of any other state
created in the twentieth century. Communists and Socialists fail to acknowledge
Israel’s
right to exercise a Law of Return even though they are silent on the other
twenty six countries that practice the same law. They are silent about the racism inherent within
the greater Arab colonial project and shy away from referring to the ethnic
cleansing that has always been committed in the name of the Islam.
Israel, it seems, is truly isolated, even
without a boycott. With calls to open up
the Western world’s borders to Syrian refugees the one issue of which I am
truly concerned, is Arab-Muslim intolerance and disrespect. We have enough of
it here already and it existed before the Arab-Muslim migration to the West.
Am I being unfair to Syria’s refugees? Britain has been remarkably
tolerant of racism and religious bigotry when it was the Jews that were
targeted. I cannot trust that my
government will look after me. Radical Muslim
cleric Abu Qatada was first arrested in the UK over alleged terror connections
in 2001 and he successfully fought deportation from 2005 until 2013. During
that time how many minds did this vile creature pollute?
Britain happily excludes those people who
might offend Muslims and in recent times has excluded a Dutch member of
parliament and two prominent American critics. But Islam’s hatred of “the
other” i.e. anyone not blessed with the same beliefs they share, is theological
and therefore not subject to change through reasoned debate or palliative legislation.
Europe has no problem recognizing the
threat from the right but has been overwhelmingly silent on the horrors
committed by the Left and by the terrors perpetrated in the name of Allah. The
Left will often react with violence to any attempt at discussing the crimes
committed outside of Western Europe, unless, that is, they are the alleged
crimes of Israel or the USA. A sinister
aspect of this conspiracy is that in order to demonise it, Israel is considered to be a
‘white’ nation. This makes it much less
complicated for the hypocrite to damn.
Compassion without fidelity to the law of the
land, and passion without respect leads to nihilism. Are we that far off from the experience of France – a
country which has not even seriously attempted to crush the malevolent pride of
those who celebrate the evil child murderer Mohamed Merah?
Expediency is our enemy. Our borders should be
closed for the simple reason that the nation and the continent do not need to
import more hate.
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