Clearly you mean that, and all of these groups ( and evangelicals in the US) are fair game for attacks by Guardian reading liberals, despite being someone else’s culture. So much for multiculturalism, and left wing tolerance. It is clearly wank. The “liberal” has merely learned fashionable cultures he cannot attack, so he moves onto attack other different cultures, including one which has a longer provenance of de jure discrimination in the united Kingdom than any other ( Catholicism) – to this day, in fact – and has certainly been more discriminated against than Islam in this country,

So wank. Not that you shouldn’t criticise Catholicism but that you should stop trying to pretend that there are historically bigoted reasons why people might criticise “non-whites” ( rather than have real problems with the existing culture of Islam, hinduism etc. regardless of race) when your criticism of a long maligned minority religion could be met with the same charges, and with bells on. Right back at ya ( and, of course, Irish catholics weren’t actually considered white in the 19th century, nor Polish Catholics by the Nazis).

In any case criticism of Catholicism is not circumspect in the US either, where it is the majority religion of non-white immigration. Even greater wank there.

And yes Catholicism should be criticisied. Every day. And islam. more so. since you are happy with the former be happy with the latter.

I agree. By observation, I came to the view that multiculturalism was most popular with people who lived in secure, predominantly white, districts who encountered people of other races when they went to see their doctor or dentist. They worked strenuously to put their children beyond the more obvious reaches of the multicultural classroom, confining their experience of other cultures to the television or holidays in beach resorts.

In its appeal multiculturalism was on the level of ‘one world’ Coca Cola advertising, or Disneyland. A fantasy place where everything and everybody could be as ‘one’ and all questions were known and there were no problems apart from the sun going in now and then and a shortage of ice cream.

Unfortunately (or not) childhood ends and we have to realise that life in a complex society requires a certain toughness, give and take but not abandonment, not renunciation by force, of argument or otherwise, of our cherished ideals. Life is about cases – what we feel we want for ourselves, for our society and what we do not.

It is sometimes advanced (by the BBC and Channel Four most completely) that there is no such thing as ‘Britishness’. This is quite wrong. Indeed, the history of Britain is contestable, particularly the personality dominated stream; but modern Britain is an identifiable culture and that arose not because of Henry this or Good Queen that, but through the nineteenth and twentieth century struggles for and by working people and the creation in recent times of a modernist, pluralistic, society, a remarkable construction and a resilient one. It is this modernist Britain which has been challenged by multiculturalism through a warping relativist ‘narrative’ in recent years and that is why I opposed it.

“st as a matter of interest, could someone (like Mettaculture) tell me/us how a Muslim who has sinned can redeem him/herself. I mean a Catholic can make a confession, a Protestant can repent, a Jew can perform certain rituals, so what does an erring Muslim do”

By repenting to God -unless the sin involved violating the rights of others in which case a he/she must redress the wrong done

http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=844&CATE=3

They can also do the usual ritual and observant practice stuff of religions; upping of decent and pure behaviours ,worshipping regularly, ablution etc as well as abstaining from the forbidden and the disaproved of and engaing in the good and approved of.

This is all a bit secondary to the divine creed (aqeedah) or core beliefs and the five duties or pillars of islam.

The six beliefs in Sunni and Shia Islam are:
-Belief in God (Allah), the one and only one worthy of all worship (tawhid).

-Belief in the Prophets (nabi) and messengers (rusul) sent by God ( messengers have received a revelation and a direct message to transmit in book form)
-Belief in angels (mala’ika).

-Belief in the holy books (kutub) sent by God

-Belief in a judgment day (qiyama) and an afterlife

-Belief in Fate, God’s will (qadar).

——
In Sunni islam the five duties or pillars are;

-Shahadah (declaration of belief ),
-Salah (prayer),
-Zakah ( giving of alms often as a tax),
- Sawm (fasting through Ramadan),
- Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).

Jihad ( religiou struggle in the name of islam) was historically considered the sixth pillar by karijiite heretics and is found as a core principle in Shia and Ismaili doctrines.

Jihad in a non allegorical form, is a core pillar in today’s Islamist theology of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization and Al-Qaeda famously articulated by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Shia doctrines also place as central doctrines of the final judgement, avoidance of evil and practice of good works as well as the principles of reason and love as informing of doctrine.

Sufi and popular traditions also include prayers for intercession at the tombs of saints which alleviates the rigour of strict doctrine for many perhaps most Muslims.

These traditions are targetted as heretical and blasphemous by the most orthodox and the most ectremist.

As in all religions strict adherence to doctrine is seen as a pathway to live right and avoid wrong by some more than others.

You must remember that (particulrly orthodox) Sunni Islam is a religion (much like mediaeval Christianity) of orthodopraxy rather than orthodoxy.

It is the function of religious law (Sharia in its legal form) to police behaviour eradicate sin and punish blasphemy.

The Koran and the Sunnah are the basis of divine law Sharia but the legal reasoning (fiqh) of the Muslim jurist (ulema or faqawah does not always interperate the Shariah in the same way (there are 4 schools of muslim jurisprudence in Sunni Islam).

The religious ruling of the jurist is a decision in accordance with divine law but is not itself sacred 9some important wiggle room).

Bear in mind that an individual need not personally repent a sin as in divine law all sins are also crimes.

Crimes against God (sins) can be punished directly by the deity but the day to day business of enforcing his holy writ is left to the virtuous jurists and their delegated authority.

legal equality.

did that include dress codes for Jews?

or the special tax (jizya) paid by non-believers?

if so, then equality is not the word to use

I’m sure you’re account of Toledo as a model society ( relatively speaking ) is right….but surely the history of the rest of Spain, in this period ,shows that it was the anomaly…..what is the lesson?

Richard
perhaps my memory is failing me but I think I remember something about forced conversions?

That was the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries- a very bad time to be Jewish or Muslim in Toledo or anywhere else in Spain for that matter.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Toledo were known for their (relative- this was a time when life was short and brutal, remember) tolerance, with long periods of peace and legal equality.

“from an Islamo-centric view of western culture we are being ethnocentric and hegemonic in making and enforcing this distinction”

We are, and that is entirely acceptable, indeed unavoidable, whatever decision taken and enforced regarding the degree to which groups can be autonomous. Equality under the law is an absolute. It may be that this is increasingly contested by Islamism, but I am not convinced this is anything other than the normal process of accommodation between immigrant and indigenous communities, exacerbated by post-colonial middle eastern politics. Such an accommodation can and will be found.

Islam is not alone in its perception of religious doctrine as a non-negotiable set of truths laying out how a devotee should conduct themselves. Buddhism, Mormonism, Catholicism and for that matter Anglicanism all consist of codes and practices developed to direct the believer through life. (My grandmother wouldn’t leave the house without a headscarf because of a verse in Paul, for example)

In the case of Islam, one problem is that (as your quotes around the word ‘law’ suggest) an Islamist simply does not mean the same thing by sharia as is meant in English by law- it is partly a case of mistranslation. In fact, in common with other immigrant communities around the world (defined by religion or otherwise) Islam has long been able to adapt to local contexts.

“So we remain with the problem of how to deal socially with interpersonal behaviours that often conflict and are felt to be binding upon culture members but fall below the threshold of secular legal systems in pluralist societies.”

Do we really? When we can speak a common language (and sometimes even if we can’t), we usually just work things out, often by talking to each other. Someone doesn’t want to shake my hand- that’s odd, but ok. I have a similar problem here in Switzerland (where I now live) with greeting people by kissing them three times on the cheeks. After a recent move from Denmark where the handshake is ubiquitous, kissing still makes me jump. However, we can talk about it, stumble through it and if necessary find another way to carry out the same social function…

Trevor Philips is correct in stressing the importance of communities mixing and communicating, though I am unclear as to what his “social ‘highway code’” would actually consist of in practice, how it would be enforced, or whether it is really needed.

It is natural for immigrant communities to try to preserve cultural practices from our ‘home’ countries, even as we are changed by the experience of immigration and our children grow up as foreigners. Negotiating what can be kept and what must go is a delicate and ongoing process, one which changes both immigrants and the host country.

Donald Bane: Yes, it’s true. If the CBC can find enough evidence in an investigative report in India, why can’t the world-renowed RCMP?

Brian From Toronto: Do you actually know anything about the facts of the case or the “cock-ups” of the RCMP? Or are you just talking krap???