[lit-ideas] Re: Multiculturalism as work in the UK
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 02:09:13 -0500
This article linked from the earlier Telegraph
article:
EXTRACT of
The day is coming when British Muslims form a
state within a state'
By Alasdair Palmer
For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been
canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in
Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring
images of Mohammed that were first published in
Denmark and then reprinted in several other
European countries.
"They think they have won the debate," he says
with a sigh. "They believe that the British
Government has capitulated to them, because it
feared the consequences if it did not.
"The cartoons, you see, have not been published in
this country, and the Government has been very
critical of those countries in which they were
published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's
a clear victory.
"It's confirmation of what they believe to be a
familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims
threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' -
violence to the rest of us - then the British
Government will cave in. I think it is a very
dangerous precedent."
Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a
decade, you will see parts of English cities which
are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow,
not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.
"It is already starting to happen - and unless the
Government changes the way it treats the so-called
leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue."
For someone with such strong and uncompromising
views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly gentle and
easy-going man. He speaks with authority on Islam,
as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a
Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South
America, and attended a madrassa there.
"But Islamic instruction was very different in the
1950s, when I was at school," he says. "There was
no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of violence
of any kind. Islam was very peaceful."
Dr Sookhdeo's family emigrated to England when he
was 10. In his early twenties, when he was at
university, he converted to Christianity. "I had
simply seen it as the white man's religion, the
religion of the colonialists and the oppressors -
in a very similar way, in fact, to the way that
many Muslims see Christianity today.
" Leaving Islam was not easy. According to the
literal interpretation of the Koran, the
punishment for apostasy is death - and it actually
is punished by death in some Middle Eastern
states. "It wasn't quite like that here," he says,
"although it was traumatic in some ways."
Dr Sookhdeo continued to study Islam, doing a PhD
at London University on the religion. He is
currently director of the Institute for the Study
of Islam and Christianity. He also advises the
Army on security issues related to Islam.
Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted that the
next wave of radical Islam in Britain would
involve suicide bombings in this country. His
prediction was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last
year.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AT
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=TJJJSM4UKLTKTQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2006/02/19/nsharia219.xml
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
