Edward Stourton (of BBC Radio 4) in the Catholic Herald, on myths about “political correctness” commonly parroted in the British media, such as the “Winterval” event which supposedly replaced Christmas in Birmingham (the full story on which is here), and similar claims that Christmas is played down to avoid offending Muslims. You can buy the book from the link on the right (recommended if you’re in the UK or Europe; it might be cheaper in the USA to buy from amazon.com). (Hat tip: Engage.)
Possibly Related Posts:
Ed Sturton gets a halal mince pie for his legitimate use of the word “antidisestablishmentarianists”. Woot!
Whilst the creation of Winterval was not exclusively driven by the dogma of political correctness, the hack-authored articles and general public interest in the saga are symptoms of a deeper malaise.
There is no shortage of news evidencing the ongoing fear of being seen to promote traditional British values by those in authority. Only last Christmas, Lord Goldsmith, tasked with re-examining Britishness (a false concept and a straw man) by a premier who recites Gramscian mantras before he goes to bed, claimed that the national anthem was not ‘inclusive’ enough.
Whether it be booties for police sniffer dogs, turning hospital beds at prayer time, or even the prohibition of piggy banks, PC is an important weapon in the fight to secure a role for Islam in the public space. That Islamists and Socialists are now working in tandem a la Aransky (h/t Barack Hussein) to eradicate Christianity from Britain should come as no surprise.
Edward Stourton is completely unrepresentative of just about anybody in just about any British epoch: born in Nigeria to an aristocratic family and living in Balham (or Balham al-jaahilah as he likes to call it), he encapsulates everything that is wrong with the BBC. With a natural predisposition towards far-left liberalism as long as it doesn’t impinge on his NIMBY existence in multicultural Balham, Stourton parrots two popular myths in his article in the Herald: that most Muslims are keen to see Christmas secure a place in the public sphere and that being Muslim must equate to strict relgious observance…needless to say he probably doesn’t travel east very often.
I think MP Mark Pritchard clarified the issue of Christianophobia quite nicely this time last year:
http://www.publications.parlia.....0550000001
Why do you persist in lying, “Imam”? Winterval was a promotional event for a renovated shopping centre in Birmingham. Nothing else. It ran for two years in the 1990s, and has not done since, and did not exclude Christmas. Read the article I linked by Oliver Burkeman. The full story is there.
As for the prohibition of piggy banks, it’s a tabloid scare story. The only incident they refer to is one in which piggy banks were removed at the end of a promotion. I’ve never heard it suggested that Muslims actually complained about the piggy banks, and if they were, they should have been told that piggy banks are common in British households and aren’t impure - after all, they’re made of metal or plastic.
Actually, piggy banks- traditional piggy banks- are made of china. There is nowhere to take money out and they are broken and the money recovered when they are so full that it is impossible to put more coins in. As Christmas replaced other older- and so even more traditional- solstice feasts, why shouldn’t it be replaced by another if people feel like it?
“Why do you persist in lying, “Imam”? Winterval was a promotional event for a renovated shopping centre in Birmingham.”
I fail to see where I have lied. I have nowhere suggested, as you no doubt assume with your accusation of lying, that Winterval was created principally at the behest of Muslims. I have merely suggested that one of the guiding principles, and perhaps the most influential, was the dogma of PC. Is this lying? Perhaps you propose a definition of ‘lying’ in line with other familiar anticoncepts such as ‘racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’?
I did not say that Christmas was excluded.
I’ve read the article thanks.
“As for the prohibition of piggy banks, it’s a tabloid scare story.”
Yes. The stories about the dumping of piggy banks are scare stories cynically manipulated by the gutter press for their own ends, but they have been dispensed with by the high street banks…of this there can be no doubt. Whether their prohibition was orchestrated by a careful campaign lead by Islamists is uncertain; what is more likely, as has happened in the majority of cases where civil servants mysteriously metamorphose into invertebrates, is that a tradition was seen as an acceptable casualty in the war to celebrate diversity and proclaim (from the rooftops) the blatantly disingenuous soundbite that Britain is ethnically diverse.
As far as whether a pig is offensive to Muslims or not, I can say based on anecdotal evidence that even Muslims who are nominally Muslims avoid eating pork, but I can’t speak about their putative dislike for objects that represent pigs…
“As Christmas replaced other older- and so even more traditional- solstice feasts, why shouldn’t it be replaced by another if people feel like it?”
Indeed. Why not? As long as a few people feel strongly enough about something, why not change it? Something tells me you don’t believe in democracy…’replaced by another if people feel like it’ appears to be the watchword of governments for the preceding 30 years and has often been applied to traditional cultural mores obtaining to the country’s indigenous ethic majority.
Great stuff!
“the blatantly disingenuous soundbite that Britain is ethnically diverse.” Britain is ethnically diverse, Imam, whether or not you like it. Apart from any other, there is the long-standing difference and division between suppposed Celts and supposed Anglo-Saxons. Any decision to give away or not to give away piggy banks would be based on economic motives. If banks thought it profitable to give them away, they did; if they didn’t, they didn’t. You obviously don’t know much about how christianity was introduced and how people were stopped from celebrating traditional festivities like Yule, Saturnalia and Mithras’s birthday, too and persuaed to take up christianity or adapt older customs to it. Democratic isn’t the adjective. It involved such traditional christian customs as torture, persecution and killing. You still haven’t said why the term Christmas shouldn’t be replaced by another if people feel like it. What is undemocratic about that? If people want to say “Christmas” they are perfectly entitled to; if they don’t they are perfectly entitled not to. Incidentally, what are the traditional cultural mores obtaining to the country’s indigenous ethic majority? As I pointed out, earlier cultursl mores were replaced- often forcibly- by christian ones. For that matter, what makes you think there is an indigenous ethic majority? The human species is indigenous to East Africa, not Britain.
“Britain is ethnically diverse, Imam, whether or not you like it. Apart from any other, there is the long-standing difference and division between suppposed Celts and supposed Anglo-Saxons.”
Okay. We differ on our respective definitions of ‘ethnically diverse’. Before the sizeable immigration flows of the last 30 years, you could go anywhere in the UK without bumping into anyone with a perceivably different ethnicity. This is still possible if you ignore the major cities.
In reality, British cities, most notably London, are ghettoised. Saying somewhere like India is ethnically diverse is arguably more valid as it has experienced thousands of years worth of population migration, internal and external, with significant ‘inter-breeding’. With the exception of those from the Caribbean, only a handful of mixed race/ethnicity couples have produced offspring (I belong to one such couple). IMHO, until there is significant syncretism and intermarriage between the host community and those of foreign origin, Britain cannot rationally be considered ‘ethnically diverse’. Some 500,000 ex-pats live in Cairo, representing many different nationalities. Like London, they tend to confine themselves to specific areas and there is comparatively little intermarriage with the Egyptian populace. If you asked an Egyptian if he considered Cairo to be ‘ethnically diverse’, not only would he not understand what you were on about, but if he were to understand he’d retort that Cairo and Egypt as a whole is almost exclusively monocultural. This despite ex-pats composing upwards of 5% of the Cairene population.
There are no noticeable differences between Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Picts etc. because they’ve all long since interbred. It happened well over a millenium ago.
“Any decision to give away or not to give away piggy banks would be based on economic motives. If banks thought it profitable to give them away, they did; if they didn’t, they didn’t.”
That’s a fair point. I’ll grant you that the banks, which are never ones to shirk cutting costs in the pursuit of profits, may have done away with the piggy banks for purely profit motives. IMHO I still think PC held the whip hand. You could well be right though.
“You obviously don’t know much about how christianity was introduced…”
Oh, I doubt that and I’m even more sceptical of the possibilty that my knowledge is relatively imprecise or imperfect as compared to yours. This is borne out by your next statement:
“…and how people were stopped from celebrating traditional festivities like Yule, Saturnalia and Mithras’s birthday, too and persuaed to take up christianity or adapt older customs to it.”
The sources, as far as they can be relied upon, tell a different story: the celebration of Christ’s birth on 25th December has been documented as far back as 205AD/CE.
The extended feast of Saturnalia could conceivably have overlapped with the putative birth of Christ, but the earlier record of the celebration of Christ’s birth on 25th suggests that there was no syncretism here.
The celebration of Yule only became a public ceremony in England in 1577. There was no syncretic merging of pagan rituals there in terms of the celebration of 25th December.
The subject of Mithraism is altogether more complicated, but scholarly opinion suggests owing to many of the legends surrounding Mithras (which one?) being borrowed from Christian sources and the unlikely exact coincidence of Christ’s birth and Natalis Invicti, that the exact setting of the feast day bore no relation with the celebration of any pagan cult. It is an inconclusive argument though as noone really knows when Christ was born exactly - there are no records.
I wonder why you halted with just these 3 polemics? There are many more. My theory is that these are the three most often quoted memes from Islamic polemical tracts. I wouldn’t rely on them for your research though as they are usually poorly documented, improperly researched pseudo-scholarship.
“Democratic isn’t the adjective. It involved such traditional christian customs as torture, persecution and killing.”
There is no reliable documentary evidence of this and certainly not for the purposes of somehow forcing Britons to adopt Christianity. Ahmed Deedat or Zakir Naik don’t count as scholars, Islamic or otherwise.
“It involved such traditional christian customs as torture, persecution and killing.”
There is no justification for any of these acts in Christian scripture. Christ never took part in these acts. If he did, that would mean the Qur’an is erring on its description of Christ and would mean the Qur’an is factually incorrect. Is that what you believe?
If those professing to be Christian have committed such acts, they did so without the justification of Christ or scripture. Christ, unlike Muhammad who took part in these inhumanities and more according to Islamic sources, would never condone violence. If you think he did, then you must disagree with the Qur’an and your own Islamic sources.
“You still haven’t said why the term Christmas shouldn’t be replaced by another if people feel like it. What is undemocratic about that? If people want to say “Christmas” they are perfectly entitled to; if they don’t they are perfectly entitled not to.”
There’s no reason why this shouldn’t happen in a democracy; precisely my point. However, a majority of people should be in agreement with this argument to abolish Christmas and not just a sizeable extremely vocal minority who live in a few urban areas of the country. As those who profess Christian faith are the vast majority in Birmingham, if Winterval was really instituted to downplay Christmas as maybe, then this would not be demcratic.
“Incidentally, what are the traditional cultural mores obtaining to the country’s indigenous ethic majority?”
Christian mores.
“As I pointed out, earlier cultursl mores were replaced- often forcibly- by christian ones. For that matter, what makes you think there is an indigenous ethic majority? The human species is indigenous to East Africa, not Britain.”
According to you, and only you, because there is no evidence of this, Christianity was forcibly imposed on indigenous Britons by the Romans. I repeat, there is no evidence to back this up.
What makes me think there is an indigenous ethnic majority? Oh, just every genealogical and genetic survey and about 55 million people.
Single origin anthropogenesis is not the only theory of human evolution and subsequent speciation. Even if it were, would the Homo Sapiens species’ origin in Africa preclude the development of further evolution and gene specialisation across the world? I’m not an expert so I couldn’t say. There seems to be an historical understanding, especially where geographically isolated territories are concerned (e.g. islands), that populations contained on them were never in a constant state of flux before the modern era because of such limitations as transportation and food.
For me there can be no moral justification for the demographic replacement of one ex origo people by others. As the British philosopher and MP John Stuart Mill said:
“Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion necessary to the working of representative government cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state.”
Peace!
Before the sizeable immigration flows of the last 30 years, you could go anywhere in the UK without bumping into anyone with a perceivably different ethnicity. This is still possible if you ignore the major cities. In reality, British cities, most notably London, are ghettoised.
I live in London, and it is one of the least ghettoised cities of those in the UK with large immigrant-origin communities. Northern and Midland cities are notoriously ghettoised in terms of the communities living in different parts of town. In London, most parts of town are either nearly all white or mostly white but mixed (this includes nearly all the so-called ghettoes including Brixton). In most places, the communities get on with a good degree of civility, and there have been no riots recently in London (compare with Birmingham a few years ago and the various northern cities in 2001). The sole exceptions are the inner East End (i.e. northern Tower Hamlets borough) and the Hassidic areas around the A10 (and even they are a minority in that area, just a very visible one).
Again, you are caught out lying. Why do you speak with such a pretension of authority when you can be so easily rebutted?
Intermarriage does go on. The Caribbeans intermarry the most, and probably other Christian immigrants (like Goans) do so as well. It goes on less between religious boundaries, as might be expected. (It bothers me that some immigrant Muslims are reluctant to marry their daughters to converts, but in my experience, most convert Muslims do marry non-converts.)
If you asked an Egyptian if he considered Cairo to be ‘ethnically diverse’, not only would he not understand what you were on about, but if he were to understand he’d retort that Cairo and Egypt as a whole is almost exclusively monocultural. This despite ex-pats composing upwards of 5% of the Cairene population.
They are ex-pats, not immigrants, and most of them do not intend to settle in Cairo for life. People do not generally consider such people among the “diversity” of a population. London is diverse because it has received immigrant settlers from many parts of the world, mostly from former British colonies and from the EU.
“Okay. We differ on our respective definitions of ‘ethnically diverse’.” Well, yes, your definition excludes ethnic diversity.
“In reality, British cities, most notably London, are ghettoised.” Really? there are walls keeping the inhabitants of the ghettos in? They are required to wear distintive costumes? Unless that is the case they aren’t ghettoised. In fact, there are very few places where any one “race” or culture except the “white” race is a majority of the population, let alone an overwhelming majority, as the word “ghetto” would require in common misuse- or do you think that most of Britain is a “white” ghetto?
” until there is significant syncretism and intermarriage between the host community and those of foreign origin, Britain cannot rationally be considered ‘ethnically diverse’.” Surely the other way round- when there has been significant syncretism and intermarriage between those of earlier foreign origin and those of more recent foreign origin then Britain will not be ethnically diverse as there will be no distinguishable ethnic groupings.
“There are no noticeable differences between Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Picts etc. because they’ve all long since interbred.” Precisely. They are no longer ethnically diverse. In fact, recognition of this is only a very recent phnomenon. It isn’t long since people talked of “the Irish race” or “the English race”. The antiquary John Aubrey spoke dispasragingly of the “aborigines” of Dorset.
“It happened well over a millenium ago.” No it didn’t. Nearly every Roman Catholic in England, for example, is descended from recent- within the last couple of hundred years- Irish or European immigrants, most of whom were regarded as greeted with hostility as ethnically distinct and inferior foreigners.
“The sources, as far as they can be relied upon, tell a different story: the celebration of Christ’s birth on 25th December has been documented as far back as 205AD/CE.” And the celebration of Mithra’s birth on 25th December has been documented as far back as the first century A.D.
“The extended feast of Saturnalia could conceivably have overlapped with the putative birth of Christ, but the earlier record of the celebration of Christ’s birth on 25th suggests that there was no syncretism here.” Except that Saturnalia existed and was celebrated before the birth of Christ and that many of its customs were transferred to christianity.
“The celebration of Yule only became a public ceremony in England in 1577. There was no syncretic merging of pagan rituals there in terms of the celebration of 25th December.” The Venomous Bede recorded Yule as being celebrated several hundred years earlier; again, aspects of the previous tradition were incorporated into chriatian elebrations.
“There is no reliable documentary evidence of this [such traditional christian customs as torture, persecution and killing] and certainly not for the purposes of somehow forcing Britons to adopt Christianity. Ahmed Deedat or Zakir Naik don’t count as scholars, Islamic or otherwise.” Who are Ahmed Deedat or Zakir Naik? Edward Gibbon and J.H.Bury undoubedly count as scholars by any stanards.
“There is no justification for any of these acts in Christian scripture [torture, persecution and killing]. Christ never took part in these acts. If he did, that would mean the Qur’an is erring on its description of Christ and would mean the Qur’an is factually incorrect. Is that what you believe?” Of course. In fact, there has been long practice and justification from scripture of torture, persecution and killing by both christians and muslims. Early christian records of the conversion of pagans throughout the world mentions these techniques approvingly.
“There’s no reason why this [the term Christmas shouldn’t be replaced by another if people feel like it] shouldn’t happen in a democracy; precisely my point. However, a majority of people should be in agreement with this argument to abolish Christmas and not just a sizeable extremely vocal minority who live in a few urban areas of the country. As those who profess Christian faith are the vast majority in Birmingham, if Winterval was really instituted to downplay Christmas as maybe, then this would not be demcratic.” The majority of the population profess no faith at all in fact and are completely uninterested in religion. Nor has anyone abolished or suggesting the abolition of- Christmas; if people choose to celebrate Christmas they are perfectly entitled to. Even if the period is called Christmas most people completely disregard the religious aspects, therefore it would be more honest not to pretend the two have any connexion and the use of a name that recognises this is a reasonable solution.
“According to you, and only you, because there is no evidence of this, Christianity was forcibly imposed on indigenous Britons by the Romans. I repeat, there is no evidence to back this up.” I did not say anything of the sort. You must stop telling lies.
“What makes me think there is an indigenous ethnic majority? Oh, just every genealogical and genetic survey and about 55 million people.” …all of whom are descendants of people who immigrated from elsewhere and so are not indigenous.
“There seems to be an historical understanding, especially where geographically isolated territories are concerned (e.g. islands), that populations contained on them were never in a constant state of flux before the modern era because of such limitations as transportation and food.” With most animals, there is such a biological- not historical- understanding. That is why island species are so distinct and so distinctive. However, with humans their irruption from East Africa [can you find a single contemporary scholar who believes in multiple origin anthropogenesis?] has been so recent and their interconnexions has been so common that there are no major distinctions between and among the various “races”. In the particular case of the British Isles there is the fact that they were the edge of the knwon world for most of history and the continual forced immigrations from the Eurasian heartlands and their ratchet effects meant that there were continual immigrations with no possibility of anyone going further. “Great hatred, little room” and far more lethal arguments over limited resources.
“For me there can be no moral justification for the demographic replacement of one ex origo people by others.” …except there are no ex origo people. There are immigrants and there are more recent immigrants.
Joe,
“I live in London, and it is one of the least ghettoised cities of those in the UK with large immigrant-origin communities.”
I disagree with your illustration of London. I’m from Havering, have a home base there and family living in the east of London and on the fringes of Essex. Whilst Havering as a whole is predeominately white, the most significant urban conurbation, ‘greater’ Romford, has experienced significant immigration flows within the last ten years. Like Ilford, it is taking on a ghetto appearance. Further in, and the East End has almost completely been purged of its formerly white population.
“In London, most parts of town are either nearly all white or mostly white but mixed (this includes nearly all the so-called ghettoes including Brixton).”
This doesn’t represent accurately the reality in the east. People are segregated and neither socialise nor worship together. The plethora of organisations formed to cater fro the different ethnic groups only exacerbates the problem.
I can’t speak about North (NE yes), West and South London as I don’t venture there very often.
“The sole exceptions are the inner East End (i.e. northern Tower Hamlets borough) and the Hassidic areas around the A10 (and even they are a minority in that area, just a very visible one).”
Just ‘northern TH’ hey…Poplar looked and smelt like Maulvi Bazaar last time I was there. Much of TH is off limits though now for me as I’d most likely be chased by lunatic Sylhetis brandishing kuttas objecting to my choice of spouse…it wouldn’t be the first time that has happened.
But it’s not just TH is it? Take Dalston for example, which now resembles either Trenchtown, Kandahar or Fez depending on where you are. If there’s integration, then it’s only on the surface. I’ll term it ‘an enforced passive syncretism’.
“Again, you are caught out lying. Why do you speak with such a pretension of authority when you can be so easily rebutted?”
Again Joe, I don’t see where the lying comes in. Whilst I may have a different experience and impression of London from you, that doesn’t mean I’m lying. I have a particular antipathy towards militant Bengalis but that’s for personal reasons and due to my own circumstances, but that doesn’t leave me free to excoriate whole communities either. That would be racist I guess.
“Intermarriage does go on.”
Al-hamdullillah that it does.
“The Caribbeans intermarry the most, and probably other Christian immigrants (like Goans) do so as well.”
Right. I can’t speak about Goans particularly, but I know several British/Nigerian couples and even a British/Sudani couple. This is a good thing. Al-hamdullillah!
“It goes on less between religious boundaries, as might be expected. (It bothers me that some immigrant Muslims are reluctant to marry their daughters to converts, but in my experience, most convert Muslims do marry non-converts.)”
Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. When I got married some 6 years ago, the end result of my marriage was that my family were forced to flee the country. Our lives, and more particularly mine, will never be completely free of fear again. This is England I’m talking about; not Pakistan; not Bangladesh. England. That your experience of intercultural and even interreligious marriage differs so little from mine is telling: sure, I know some male reverts who married girls whose origins are from the sub-continent but not many. I also know of only one other mixed Christian/Muslim couple where the male is the Christian. I know of no Christian/Hindu marriages or Christian/Sikh. A good friend of mine from uni has been on the run twice, pursued around the country by two sets of violent and moronic families. He is a revert but neither of the families of his two spouses accepted the marriage on purely racial grounds. A Kashmiri family and a Gujerati family. I think Ahmedis tend to be the most open as far as accepting revert husbands for their daughters. As far as Bengalis are concerned you can forget it. I know one other guy, a revert, who’s married to a girl whose family are from Dhaka but no Sylhetis.
This is the 21st century though. There should be no religious or racial barriers to marriage in the UK - it’s obscene. Why should people who come from some of the least developed, most backward, most intolerant ares of the world come to enjoy the freedoms of the UK only to snub their noses allowing their daughters (or sons for that matter) to marry with the local population? Why should an establishment with a frankly perverse set of priorities encourage a state of de facto apartheid and then exhort its qualities? Why is intolerance allowed to fester to the extent that police will not prosecute families who abduct, injure and kill their progeny for wanting to marry ‘outside’? Why are these all too common practices and attitudes not subject to the same scrutiny as are charges of homophobia and anti-Semitism?
You say it bothers you, well it bothers me too. Let’s do something about it. Cousin marriage, re-education ‘back home’ and ghettoisation are all signs of a community that looks in on itself. I may differ from you on intermarriage between say Christians and Muslims (or non-practising Muslims), but this can’t go on. Just because someone says somewhere in some book it says X can’t marry Y doesn’t make it right!!!!
“They are ex-pats, not immigrants, and most of them do not intend to settle in Cairo for life.”
Okay. Fair point. But many of these ex-pats would actually like to become Egyptian citizens. I know quite a few British/Egyptian married couples…but here again we see racism. I asked an Egyptian friend of mine (an educated man) why, if he was allowed to marry his Serbian Christian wife, I wouldn’t similarly be allowed to marry an Egyptian woman or it would be extremely difficult. He replied that it was just culture and because of religion. I then asked him if it was morally, rationally correct to accept Egyptian men married to British or foreign women but not Egyptian women married to foreign men. He said no, but because of conservative forces and relgion this was the status quo. The status quo. It also seems to be the status quo in the UK for all its ‘diversity’…
Peace!
For a start, stop calling me Joe. I never spell my name like that. It’s Matthew or Yusuf.
I have never been to Romford other than passing through on the train or the Eastern Avenue, but I have been to Ilford and I do know that there is a substantial Muslim population there (and perhaps other Asians), but it still seems like a mostly white area, and more to the point, I’ve not heard of significant tensions between the two populations other than what the BNP might be trying to stir up. The fact that a lot of immigrants might settle in Romford doesn’t make it a ghetto; for it to be a ghetto, they have to be the vast majority.
As for Poplar, so what if it “smells like Maulvi Bazaar”? So parts of the West End probably smell like Singapore or Shanghai, but nobody complains. They even have Chinese street signage. Why should Asians in the East End not have the same privilege?
As for intermarriage between religious groups, it is best done when the religions are similar and where people are less religious or less concerned about “their version” of the religion being passed on. In other cases, you won’t have a harmonious family environment if you have spouses who have very differing beliefs, and you can’t have harmony in society in general unless you have it in the family to start with. Practising religious people want to marry others of the same type; to do otherwise will just store up trouble for later on.
I am aware of the race problem with Asian families, although I also know of cases where male converts have married daughters from Bengali families (and they lived together in a flat in Cable Street, until they died in an accident in Jordan), but I have also had two flat-out rejections from Bengali Muslim women who said they were not willing to “make fitna” with their families by even raising the subject of marrying a non-Bengali. (Black converts have it even harder than whites.) I find this attitude somewhat offensive, and the excuses given never wash, e.g. “they only want what’s best” (as if a Bengali husband is necessarily what’s best), or “they do it to avoid cultural differences”, when every cultural difference is petty compared to religious belief and practice, and when one party is a native and the infraction is not something that offends religious sensibilities, it should really come down to “this is England and that’s how we do things, sorry if you don’t like it”. I think it has a lot to do with what friends and neighbours will say, or being unwilling to allow changes to habits.
Is it really not permitted in Egypt for foreigners to marry Egyptian women, even if their families will allow it? I have had a fair few approaches through various matrimonial websites from Egyptian women, although I have not pursued any of them (I did not enjoy Egypt much when I went there in 1999, and would not want to move back there). As I understand it, the law in Egypt bans marriages between Christians and Muslims, not between Egyptians and foreigners or Egyptian women and foreign men. What might well be true is that, when an Egyptian woman marries a foreigner, her children do not inherit her citizenship (this is definitely true in some other Arab countries). Perhaps the families might not consider that desirable, particularly if the spouse is not from a “prestigious” western country like the USA or an EU country. The problem in many places is that nationality is confused with tribalism, i.e. that the child belongs to the father’s tribe rather than the mothers, so if the mother is Egyptian and the father a Serb, the child is considered a Serb, when in fact Egypt is just a place, not a tribe. The legal aspect could be dealt with by a agreement that any child born in a given country, if at least one of his or her parents is there legally, is entitled to citizenship, although this would not change people’s attitudes overnight.
I can’t really comment on your situation without knowing your background and your wife’s, but there is no justification for families harassing or endangering daughters who go against their wishes, let alone those they marry, particularly as this is a free country and they knew that when they came here.
On being a Londoner
By Russell White
As a Londoner, born and bred (and I’m talking of real London, not Middlesex, Kent, or Surrey, which have each suffered partial or complete annexation by the sprawling conurbation) I can only look on in embarrassment at my place of birth. Why? Because, in every respect it no longer resembles the place in which I grew up, and which is laughably called our capital city.
To those from outside London, the culture shock must be surreal, for much of it is devoid of its original indigenous white English population. The shock sensation of visiting a city where one is visibly a minority must be as severe as that which I encountered on holiday in Torquay a few years ago… though in that instance the roles were reversed, and I (unusually) was part of the majority and amongst my own kind. May I use a cliche? Many’s the time when I am the only white person on the bus, particularly during the “out of hours” periods when most Africans work (nights and earlier mornings) which coincide with my shift pattern.
The odd thing about “multiculturalism” is that there is no “back up” system for white people in non-white neighbourhoods. Where are the “English in Brent” projects, the “white history months”, the “White Voice” newspapers to equal the “black” equivalents? If you’re Irish these exist, if you’re English you are out on a limb. Most people are not aware of the sizeable chunks of London which are heavily non-English. They may read about barely perceptible districts like Brent, Newham, and Southwark, but they mean as little to non-Londoners as Moss Side, St. Pauls, and Toxteth mean to me. If you were visiting Liverpool would you bother with Toxteth, unless you knew someone there? It is the same with outlying London districts. And those are where most Londoners live, including me. Another side effect of the change in population is the loss of community life, which was never as strong in London as in smaller close-knit towns and villages. I don’t expect to know who lives in the next street to me, but it seems that even if I did there would be no common ground, as the remaining English are far removed from those I grew up with. There are few normal, average types in London anymore, it would seem. There are plenty of “alternative” individuals, who have nose studs, Rastafarian hair, and wear Nelson Mandela T-shirts. There are umpteen politically correct upwardly mobile Guardian readers, wearing John Lennon style glasses. There are loud-mouthed thugs with pit bull dogs and cropped hair, but genuine law abiding hard working Cockneys have moved out to Essex and Kent. On top of that there are the walking wounded, many of whom would have once been institutionalised but who have been left to fend for themselves, often at risk to themselves and others.
That is the mouldy excuse of a patchwork quilt known as “London”. That is the “diversity” we are meant to crave and enjoy. London is not a city for the elderly, and increasingly not for traditional families either. If you are young, there are many outlets for a good nightlife, and various bars, clubs, and restaurants. For those with a good income, little has changed over the years. Chelsea and Hampstead types will still meet and marry other Chelsea and Hampstead types, and enjoy the good life and the “finer things”. Wealth and security do not a freedom fighter make! Catford and Edmonton types however, simply get pushed out of their capital city as newcomers move in.
Despite all this Londoners pay through the nose for accommodation of all kinds. The capital is so expensive, that those born and bred there often cannot afford to stay as rents and mortgages outstrip the annual salary of the average worker (which is still more than most people across the country). It feels like a third world country, but without the reduction in prices. In short one gets the worse of both worlds. All my life (I’m 37) London has been multiracial, yet only in the last few years has it seemed multicultural. I cannot recall “anti-racist festivals” being held in the 1970s, and when the National Front marched through Lewisham all those years ago many thought they were making an unnecessary fuss. How little we knew. Today even the immigrants of the past (and their children) are looking to stem the flow of immigration which has made London unrecognisable.