Anyone who wants to fight for emancipation should not be afraid to examine religion and culture.
.... So how are we to deal with all this in our societies? In the debate about Leitkultur (the dominant culture) from a decade ago, conservatives insisted that every state was based on a predominant cultural space, which the members of other cultures who live in the same space should respect.
Instead of bemoaning the emergence of a new European racism heralded by such statements, we should turn a critical eye upon ourselves, asking to what extent our own abstract multiculturalism has contributed to this sad state of affairs. If all sides do not share or respect the same civility, then multiculturalism turns into a form of legally regulated mutual ignorance or hatred.
[TOP RATED COMMENT 551 votes] This was about criminals getting away with what they could get away with. They got away with it for a number of reasons, one of which was the problematic attitudes that some people in civil institutions had towards a kind of communalist identity politics multiculturalism.
That results in cultural and moral relativism, as well as fear of dealing with difficult questions regarding attitudes towards women and non Muslims in a criminal section of specifically British men of Pakistani Muslim origin.
This is a moment for parts of the Left to introspect deeply. Ann Cryer has stated that she was shunned for raising these issues. This catastrophic failure allowed the far-right to exploit the issue. It is imperative that the Left takes ownership of this, defends Muslims in general from generalisation, whilst simultaneously opposing certain cultural and religious attitudes that lead to abuse occuring.
There is a wider problem of the Left not opposing extremist forms of religion strongly enough. Salafis and Wahaabis that perpetuate hateful and supremacist ideas in our society must be opposed. Chauvinist ideas dressed up in the clothes of 'multiculturalism' and 'diversity' and 'moderation' must be opposed by the Left. Silence is no longer an option.
[SECOND 533v] What a curate's egg... Starts very well:
Gets a bit confused:
And finally ends in utter farce:
"Our axiom should be that the struggle against western neocolonialism as well as the struggle against fundamentalism, the struggle of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden as well as the struggle of Pussy Riot, the struggle against antisemitism as well as the struggle against aggressive Zionism, are parts of one and the same universal struggle." Conflating every liberal-leftie bogeyman into the same 'great noble cause'
[THIRD 492v] You guessed it it's very important to keep up the "white man" narrative.
The blame for this scandal lies not with the Pakistani community not with the victims not with middle-aged white men but squarely on the perpetrators and their get out of jail free card for 20 years the liberal left as represented by this paper. [Guardian Cif] Read more
