ForewordHaving prepared a couple of fun pieces – a blogfocus with
Matt Sinclair,
Meeyauw,
Harry Haddock and
Matt Wardman, along with a “wartime” quiz and having had good stats all week, I'm now going to commit blogging suicide by putting them on hold until tomorrow morning and instead running a piece which landed in my lap and which would possibly not lead to peace and harmony in the world.
IntroductionThere's a lady from Britain who's been observing the blogosphere debate on racism, including that on my blog, and she's finally broken silence and spoken up via e-mail.
As she's living on the “front line”, so to speak, she had to send this anonymously, for fear of reprisals, should the wrong people read it.
I know her identity from her e-mails and her political views are a bit left wing for mine - she does not accept my references to PC madness, for example, my take on the EU or why I'm against relativistic multiculturalism.
I can further reveal that she detests the BNP and the blind prejudice and race-hatred of their leadership, she does not consider herself particularly Christian, I know she's not Jewish and she is from a group I am not enamoured of – leftist teachers.
That's why this letter from her is all the more astounding – one really wouldn't expect it from this source. I need to warn you I've invented a town, Beckford, to protect her. I also need a suburb of that town which I'll call Lochley and I'm changing her name to – oh – Jane Smith, all right?
The LetterAt the risk of sounding “Some of my best friends are Jewish”-ish, let me say at the outset that I have fought racism all my life. I had , and still have, Muslim friends; I have employed Muslim women to clean my house and would vouch for their honesty – you could leave any amount of money or jewellery around and they wouldn’t touch it; and I have taught many hard-working Muslims and other asylum seekers / refugees who have told me their tragic stories and for whom I would do anything I could. One of these was a stunning looking woman from Eritrea whose husband had been murdered for the crime of being a Christian. This lady came to every English lesson she could and did everything to try to integrate. But within three years, she was being “got at” by some of the Muslim women for wearing western dress, having western friends and for entering a building with a cross on it. Another was an educated Algerian woman who had lived through terrifying threats to her life and that of her family; her one-year-old child did nothing but scream for the first 6 months they were in Britain. And what did they find in Britain? Kindness and help in many ways, certainly, but also people throwing stones at their windows at night and shouting:“Out! Dirty, lying asylum seekers.” How terrible to reach what you think is safety and to find that waiting for you. I think the perpetrators of those disturbances should be re-educated and dealt with severely for they betray all that our country stands for – or used to.However, the term “political asylum”, which was what these two and others were seeking, has become a joke for what the majority are seeking is “economic asylum”. Again, I know they are trying to flee hopeless lives of dreadful poverty and I sound harsh but they are not political asylum seekers.And this, I believe is where “racism “ or “prejudice” sets in. Most of the people I knew in Lochley, Beckford, a district with a very large Muslim population, could not have cared less about the colour of the incomers’ skin. What they did care about, though, was what was happening to their community, which they saw dying before their eyes: The local butcher’s closes and a halal butcher’s replaces it. No Lochley person will go in there, not so much because of the way the animals are slaughtered, which few of them know much about, but because they are made to feel uncomfortable in the shop – in their own city in their own country. Personally I don’t think we should have halal butchers in Britain but we can’t do anything about it as it’s a similar method, isn’t it, to that used by kosher butchers which we have always accepted? The difference is that the Jews respect the laws of the country and that I will come to.Then the pubs close because the Muslims don’t use them. OK, that’s their choice but if you are an old fellow who has lived in Lochley all his life and enjoyed an amble down for a pint of an evening, you are likely to resent this. Then “coffee shops”, which are obviously men-only, spring up all over the place. What are we doing accepting this in a country where we are not supposed to have “no go” areas for women? The schools havebecome 75% Muslim: I used to think a mixture was a good thing and still do if the base culture of the host country is the accepted one in the school – with pupils, of course , learning about other cultures in a healthy way – but now your children can no longer have nativity plays, send Xmas cards in school or sing carols. So if you are a parent with any money at all, you are going to use it to get your child into a private school or you are going to move, however tolerant you think you are. British people are still, I believe, basically tolerant – look how they have embraced foreign food of all kinds – and it takes a lot to make them “turn” en masse but that is what I believe is happening now.Then people see the incomers seeming to receive all sorts of benefits and immediate access to good housing, when the indigenous population feel that they can get no help. In Lochley, whole rows of larger council flats were built to house the large families of the immigrants and some of the community leaders would demand that extra washing facilities – which they had not had access to in their own countries - be fitted as they had to wash so many times a day for prayer. All this the indigenous population stand by and watch, whilst feeling that they themselves will never be able to save a deposit on a house. The health service becomes overwhelmed. One of the things I used to try to impress upon the women via my lessons was that in Britain a doctor’s appointment is for one person – not you AND your 7 children all in one go! Can you imagine the resentment that watching this causes among, perhaps, old folk in Britain who have no understanding of what these people may have been through? What they DO understand is that they have paid into the system all their lives and now that they need it they are way down everybody’s list.I get the bus from Lochley to the school where I'm teaching and later the colleges every day. Now, about 5 years before 9/11, one morning I looked around the bus and suddenly thought, “I don’t know – there seem to be a lot more women wearing the hijab.” [ It’s of course up to them if they want to wear the hijab and I actually like bright, sparkly, Punjabi dress. But it didn’t stop at the hijab. A lot more fully veiled women started appearing, especially after 9/11 and I know because some of them told me that they had been instructed to veil by their religious leaders and husbands because they felt their culture to be under threat. In the college I saw women who had been beautifully dressed and made-up suddenly change to full Muslim dress, without a scrap of make-up. [This happened in 2003.] Again, you may say, “That’s up to them” but it’s not up to them when a teacher can’t hear their answers, because of the face veil, or when they won’t remove the face veil for passport or college security photos. Now. I would be willing to bet a lot of money that SOMETHING AKIN TO THE RELIGIOUS POLICE operating in many Muslim countries is already operating in Britain, stopping and inspecting the women, looking for a trace of make-up or nail varnish as they do in Saudi / Iran. I can’t prove this but I’ve seen too many frightened women for it not to be so. [You may be able to find out more because you obviously have access to sources that I do not, Mr. Higham.] Certainly the non-hijab-wearing women were “got at” by the others until they succumbed – I saw and heard this many times. So an Afghan woman who had come to Britain because she didn’t want that oppression for her daughters ends up veiling herself all over again.Things changed on the teaching front, too: I am a great believer in using rhymes and song in language lessons – I don’t need to tell you why or the sort of thing – and suddenly you could use neither any more because the women – or their husbands – think that to sing, recite or read anything other than the Koran is sinful. [I read the Koran when I was about 25 and I didn’t find anything about that in it – but then, I didn’t find a lot of things in it that it is purported to say these days.] When preparing for the “old” exams – you know, the one where you had to take an object in to talk about – all that two intelligent, educated women with engineering degrees from their own country would talk about was the Koran. During the preparation, they told me there is to be a great war between our two civilisations, theirs would win and I and everybody else who wouldn’t convert would die. Nice thing to say to the person who's been trying to help you, huh? They said all this without batting an eyelid, as if they were discussing their shopping lists. Another student, preparing for a high level Cambridge exam, would write about nothing but Islam whatever the topic set. I just could not get it into her head that the first marking criterion is always relevance. I went to my boss about it and she was very worried for she had seen this sort of thing before: a trap set for us so that the woman could bring a case saying we were stopping her writing about Islam. So we just had to let her carry on and fail. What kind of pedagogic integrity is that?We caved in about punctuality too. I taught a 3-hour class that was supposed to start at 9.30 but the women would come when they liked, even 11.30! OK, I know many of them had difficult lives, with husbands who would not allow them to leave the house until they gave permission, and I also know that some came from countries where they walked miles to get to school and no one cared what time they got there. I also accept, to an extent, that it was better to get them in to learn SOME English than to insist on punctuality with the result that they wouldn’t come at all. But some of these women hoped to get jobs eventually. What favours were we doing them by not teaching them that in Britain time-keeping is important?Then there was the creche issue: The building had a free creche for the children of women attending the classes but it only opened from 10.30-12.30. That was all that Beckford County’s funding would run to. OK, it was inconvenient but it wasn’t the end of the world: most of these women had extended families living with them; it wouldn’t have hurt granny or even grandad to help out for an hour, would it? Instead, they would complain bitterly all the time or expect me to put up with crying babies or hyperactive toddlers in the classroom. I would just say “No” because I was not a childminder and there was a safety issue – it was a mirrored room, for god’s sake – but the women just couldn’t see this. I never said a word outside the institution but things like that get around and of course Lochley people resented the complaining, especially as most of the students were not fee-paying. There was also the “prayer break / prayer room” issue: I used to have to stop for 20 minutes in one 2-hour class for the students to pray. OK, they have set times when they are supposed to do so, but why, then, sign up for a class that partly takes place during that time? How do they expect to learn anything, given that they don’t even turn up on time in the first place? At Ramadan, the Muslim students in both colleges would demand “prayer rooms”. Now, you know how tight classroom accommodation is in most educational institutions, but this had to be found, for the whole day, every day – otherwise the college would be hauled in under the Race Relations or some similar Act [an Act which I supported, by the way, because I am old enough to remember “No coloureds” notices in adverts for rented flats, etc.] If I was a practising Christian I would probably decide that I could pray anywhere, but if I felt I had to formalise it I would go to a church. Beckford is not a city without mosques.We tried so hard to provide good, accessible English classes for these women. Once, when the building was to be closed for maintenance for 2 weeks, we moved the class to a centre one bus stop away: “Oh, no, teacher – too far!” was the cry. These women had got on a plane with false documents and travelled, illegally, thousands of miles – and they wouldn’t take a two-minute bus ride to help themselves?! I used to get so mad, Mr. Higham – and it was often a superhuman effort to keep my mouth shut and thus keep my job!Some of the women used to attend an “Arabic” class on a Saturday morning: as far as I could tell, they learnt no Arabic; they learnt to chant the Koran and that the west was evil. And Beckford Council were funding this!Finally, we are letting all sorts of dodgy types into the country: I taught an Iranian man who claimed to be working for an organisation which did not exist. He also claimed to have been taught at one of the colleges the year before he entered the other. No one in the first college had heard of him. I became suspicious of this man because everything he told me about himself turned out to be a lie. I did some looking up and concluded that he was either avoiding the Iranian draft [his age fitted and as long as you are a student you can avoid it] or he was gathering intelligence on Britain – or both.Without asylum status entitling him to free classes, how could he afford to stay in Britain and pay for his studies? Who was funding him and why would they? That is just my theory.So my conclusions are these:In a country in which women have, within living memory, fought for equal pay and rights, a group of [mostly but not wholly] newly arrived women are, under instructions from the men of their community, trying to turn back the clock. Their behaviour also encourages some men to think in the old: “If she’s not dressed modestly, she’s asking for it” way. This leads to anger among British women. And how long before they try to impose these ideas on dress on indigenous women?I am using indigenous / British loosely here, as of course some of the Muslim women I am talking about were born in Britain or have Brit nationality – but you will know what I mean, Mr. Higham.“Political asylum” is very rarely that. Most “racism” or “prejudice” in Britain is born of economic factors plus some ignorance. We are making so many concessions that we are losing our own cultural values.We do not know who is in our country.Mr. Higham, if you haven’t read Ed Husain, “The Islamist”, do try to get hold of it. It mostly deals with the recruitment of young men born in Britain into extremist organisations but I would say it’s a “must” for anyone trying to understand what is going on. This quote from one of the immigrants is chilling:“We considered democracy as idolatrous because it does not allow for the One God to control mankind”.Thank you for your time,Jane SmithMy reactionI can honestly say that I see none of that over here in the former SU. I live in a Muslim republic and perhaps that's why – it's already a given and they don't feel on “the front line” in defending or pushing the religion.
Ten minutes from now, two Muslim girls will arrive to do my flat and they wear no burquas. I don't recall ever seeing a burqua being worn, now I come to think of it. The girl I'm sweet on is Muslim. 80% of my clientele are Muslim. If it was an issue, I'd tell you.
So what is happening in Britain [leaving all the other nations out of it for now – the Sudan, Algeria and so on]? Also, if this account is to be believed and I've never known this lady exaggerate before, then these “incomers” have an unmitigated gall demanding such things.
But worse are the timid councils who are running scared and caving into such insufferable demands. I can say right now that if I was currently over there and a situation like this arose, I'd stonewall the miscreant.
Regulars know enough of my character to know that would be so. I'll go further – indigenous people in any land are not to be dictated to by immigrants from any generation.
