You want to close all faith schools but then you defend Islamic teaching.

Show me where I have "defended Islamic teaching"? I oppose ALL religious teaching that preaches hate.

You also refuse to accept the link between Muslims and mass rape of Europeans.

I refuse to accept a link between ALL Muslims and anything because it is simply not credible.

You think that hiding the truth was in the public interest.

Whilst hiding the truth can be in the public interest it is not a concern here. What is an issue is that the "truth" is not being told. It is being distorted and twisted by Islamophobes.

Despite the scale of these crimes, you are happy to see thousands upon thousands more Muslims enter this country, rapidly turning this country Muslim because you think that our culture will eventually 'educate' them.

Untrue. I have never said whether I am happy or unhappy. All I have commented on is the impracticality of your own suggestions and that we need to accept we are where we are and then find ways to make things better. Ways that stand a chance of working.

You are happy to see this nation's citizens and their culture replaced and even deny any of it is happening because it fits with your world view.

Of course if that were true I would not be happy. It isn't though remotely true. It is just right wing rhetoric and fear mongering propaganda.

This all sounds like the insane wittering of a delusional old liberal.

Enjoying the military two step?

I say to hell with your world view. It's time to wake up and reject your kind of sentiment and act now so that our children's children can live in a Britain that remotely resembles the one that people worked, fought and died for.
Not a crime ridden, overcrowded, under resourced, unsafe Englistan.

Thereby lies the view of the confirmed Islamophobe. Evolution will ensure that in a few thousand years your successors, although small in number and living in backwaters, will evolve to have eyes in the back of their heads to ensure they are always gazing backwards. Meanwhile society will have moved on and mainly consist of a religious free homogeneous human race. The fittest always survive.

We are largely on the same page.

I have no sympathies for Islam either, despite the frequent attempt by the Islamophobes to suggest the opposite. I regard all religious belief as past it's time and an encumbrance to a peaceful world. Those who try to justify criminal activity because of a belief need to be stopped and we must insist that teaching that supports it ceases too. I would close all faith based schools and teach British values to all children. No compromises. No home schooling for religious reasons.

Demanding that all religious leaders acknowledge the need to adhere to British values and join us in trying to eradicate evil seems sensible to me. There must be ways to apply pressure to achieve this.

Putting Islam "on trial" by demanding that it's teachers comply with our expectations (alongside those of every other religion) is fine with me.

My primary focus in these long exchanges is whether continuing to describe the criminal grooming gangs as "Muslim", "Asian" or "Islamic" is actually beneficial to making things better. It certainly helps the Islamophobes feel better but does it help the victims of the crimes or the Police who are trying to find the criminals and bring them to justice? Just because something might be true doesn't mean it is wise to keep on bringing it up.

My view is unless a positive impact can be proved then we ought not do it, even if not to do so has a marginal effect.

Apologies for not responding till now I was otherwise occupied.

So again, I understand your point and to an extent the angle from which you are coming. I can be sceptical that those professing a more 'lefty' approach to things as doing so under a misguided mission of self promotion and fulfilment coupled with an indoctrination to leftist propoganda but will spare you that nomenclature so as not to obscure my own point but also because frankly I do not know you beyond the exchanging of a couple of posts.

I would argue that we are not that far apart in our thinking but I am perhaps more sceptical but certainly disagree with the first highlighted point in that I do not think we will reach an understanding with this faith at any point in time. It has existed over a millennia and unlikely to change now.

The second highlighted section I would argue very strongly that yes, it does help to assign a factual label to something to help understand it. In no way in any context can you solve a problem through denying it. Perhaps a more granular narrative is needed around it for explanatory reason but far more damage is being done to isolate the crime from the identity and ideology of the perpetrators than actually saying 'this is where we are, this is what is happening, this is where the problem lies'.

Finally, you mention Islamophobes which I think is relevant. Unfortunately, just as you will get leftist devotees who will try to whitewash anything as you will also get this from the right. Both these kind of people can be categorised IMO the same as any religious extremists as I do not care much for the opinion of anyone who is representing an ideology and not speaking rationally from their own experience.

My biggest fear of this whole thing is, that the left gets far more media coverage and support and that anyone who dare speak against this ideology can be labelled as an 'islamaphobe'. Occasionally you will get someone from the far right, who is often not too clever, and the left uses this as propoganda do discredit anything you say.

Most people do not recognise this, but we are living in what is close to an authoritarian state at the moment. Freedom of speech has been massively suppressed to the extent that even with a rational argument you can be vilified or even prosecuted by our 21st century thought police. It is almost impossible to air any concerns whatsoever. I would therefore be very careful not to use the word 'Islamaphobe' as this is a quasi-fascist moniker to tar anyone with a brush who speaks out against ironically labelled 'liberal' ideas.

So when you said...

By describing the gangs as "Muslim" or "Islamic" is to play straight into the hands of those who wish to portray the Islamic community as under attack and to radicalise it even more than it is now.

...you didn’t mean radicalise in any real sense.

Edited by Wisbech Eagle (06 Mar 2020 10.21am)