Bishop of Rochester has caused a storm, as I write the first draft of this (always like to be careful about things like this) I am listening to the Stephen Nolan programme on Radio Five Live. Hate him as a presenter he does talk a lot of nonsense and never bothers to debate. The bishop stated that there are "NO GO" areas around Britain controlled by Extreme Muslims. This weekend politicians in the UK and both sides have been distancing themselves from his comments and this will no doubt enflame the arguments.
I saw the Bishop’s statement well a bit of it showed by the mass media and to be honest I found it a bit hard to swallow. It is an interesting situation that the bishop himself is Asian and from the sub continent apparently with a history of attacking Muslims. The Muslim organisation represented on the Stephen Nolan show talked of the Incitement to Religious Hatred law and reporting the Bishop to police but to be honest if Nick Griffin and the BNP can stay on the right side of the law I tend to think that the law is an ass in this case.
We shall see though and the debate should be interesting although of course boundaries will be crossed and the actual debate will be lost amongst everyone’s feelings of diversity being forced upon them or being hounded for just not being white.
“You can’t say what you think” that is a quote from the media coverage surrounding this storage, well it all depends on what you think doesn’t it and also how you say it. The minute however you say that to someone with their strong feelings they feel as if they are being censored which is odd because there is no such thing as free speech and they should have realised that by now. Anyway cutting short the rant here something that was mentioned during the above mentioned radio show is perhaps this idea of Muslim Extremist controlled “NO GO” areas is being mixed up with racial tensions in certain areas. That certainly doesn’t make it right but by confusing the two issues all that will be result is the worsening of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.
When I think of the idea of “NO GO” areas I think is this just because areas that have high Muslim and ethnic minority population as a result of bad social policy and the ghetto-ising (probably not a word) of certain areas in towns and cities with large minority populations back in 70s and 80s. Perhaps that unenlightened idea of just keeping all the immigrants separate left them feeling oh I don’t know somewhat disconnected as well as leaving white people who now live near the areas feeling a bit apprehensive of these people who have been here but separate for decades.
If one tries looking it is amazing what can be seen.
Can’t we all just get along?
No comments:
Post a Comment