Hanif Kureishi on Islamic Fundamentalists - Excellent!

[non sociopath skin]

Kureishi’s stuff is some of the best I’ve seen about the Islamic Fundamentalists’ mindset. Another excellent article.

The Skin

The carnival of culture
Multiculturalism has to be a robust exchange of ideas, rather than of festivals and food
Hanif Kureishi
Thursday August 4, 2005
Guardian
“The mosques I visited, in Whitechapel and Shepherd's Bush, were nothing like any church I'd attended. The scenes, to me, were extraordinary, and I was eager to capture them in my novel. There would be passionate orators haranguing a group of people sitting on the floor. One demagogue would replace another, of course, but the "preaching" went on continuously, as listeners of all races came and went.
<snip>
Sometimes I would be invited to the homes of these young "fundamentalists". One of them had a similar background to my own: his mother was English, his father a Muslim, and he'd been brought up in a quiet suburb. Now he was married to a woman from Yemen who spoke no English. Bringing us tea, she came into the room backwards, and bent over too, out of respect for the men. The men would talk to me of "going to train" in various places, but they seemed so weedy and polite, I couldn't believe they'd want to kill anyone.
What did disturb me was this. These men believed they had access to the Truth, as stated in the Qur'an. There could be no doubt - or even much dispute about moral, social and political problems - because God had the answers. Therefore, for them, to argue with the Truth was like trying to disagree with the facts of geometry. For them the source of all virtue and vice was the pleasure and displeasure of Allah.
<snip>
I found these sessions so intellectually stultifying and claustrophobic that at the end I'd rush into the nearest pub and drink rapidly, wanting to reassure myself I was still in England. It is not only in the mosques but also in so-called "faith" schools that such ideas are propagated. The Blair government, while attempting to rid us of radical clerics, has pledged to set up more of these schools, as though a "moderate" closed system is completely different to an "extreme" one. This might suit Blair and Bush. A benighted, ignorant enemy, incapable of independent thought, and terrified of criticism, is easily patronised.

Rest at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1542189,00.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I certainly agree with him about faith schools

I think they are excuses for not understanding other points of view, whether secular or other faiths. They should be discouraged (I don't think we could get rid of the current ones at once, but we should be looking for ways of phasing them out).

[fedsron2us]

2. Faith schools are the bed rock of sectarianism

You only have to examine the history of the troubles in Northen Ireland to see their malign impact. Separate educational systems mean that people tend to identify with their own and to fear the other. This provides the perfect environment for extremism to flourish. New Labour's asdvocacy for these institutions has got to rank as one of the dumbest political policies of modern times. The French have dawn a lot of flak for their policy of banning religious symbols from their schools but their poilcy makes perfect sense for a country which consciously chose a secular political and social system following the French revolution. Unfortunately, in Britain this issue was not resolved following the English Civil war. Instead, the country opted for a system where Anglicanism (or Presbyterianism in Scotland) was adopted as the official creed but other faiths were tolerated so long as they did not challenge the status quo. As a consequence the UK is country with a state religion embodied in the person of the monarch, a concept not a million miles from Osama Bin Laden's idea of an Islamic Caliphate. Unwittingly young Muslim militants are in danger of reviving uncomfortable questions about faith, country and allegiance most Britons hoped were dead and buried. They may find the creature they have released from its cage is more powerful, uncontrollable and dangerous than they realise.