Saturday - September 20, 2008

‘Muslims have ‘victim mentality’ (so says a muslim member of parliament)

Well, here’s one lonely voice in the crowd.  I hope he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder now.
Thing is however, no matter how unfair it may be or seem to be, muslims don’t often help themselves.  If there’s a stereotype it’s because they painted themselves that way. They have lived that way.

Bottom line ... and no, it doesn’t help promote love and understanding.  Bottom line is I have little faith in them and frankly do not trust them as a group.

British Muslims have ‘victim mentality’, says Labour MP
Assistant whip Sadiq Khan names string of issues which British Muslims need to confront to better integrate with the rest of society

British Muslims have a “victim mentality” and need to take greater responsibility for their lives, a Muslim MP said today.

Assistant whip Sadiq Khan said Muslims were wrongly concerned more with foreign policy than with bread-and-butter political issues.

The Tooting MP, in a report for the Fabian Society, named a string of issues which British Muslims needed to confront to better integrate with the rest of society.

He said:

• All mosques should consider allowing women in and should tackle sexism

• Muslims who don’t speak English should learn

• The Muslim community should condemn forced marriages and honour killings.

“We need to take responsibility for our own lives. We need to take more responsibility for our own families, ignore those who propagate conspiracy theories, and above all we need to leave behind our victim mentality,” he said.

“We must all agree that honour killings are murder and forced marriages are kidnapping. These traditions have no place here or anywhere.”

He added: “Muslims need to recognise childcare is as important as Kashmir.”

In his report, Fairness, not Favours, Labour MP Khan criticises “liberal anxiety” about encouraging Muslims to learn English, which he says is a “passport to participation”.

“The requirement to learn English is not colonial. English is a passport to participation in mainstream society - jobs, education and even being able to use health services.”

“Having poor English creates multiple barriers to work; it decreases your confidence, makes it harder to gain other skills and qualifications, and increases the likelihood of unemployment and of your withdrawal from the labour market.”

He also urged ministers to help Muslims integrate. Government needed to tackle faith discrimination, to pay for English classes for Muslims and to improve education standards among Muslim boys.

(Hang on there. pay for what?  Who asked them here to begin with? if they don’t speak the lingo, why’d they come? Nobody PAID my grandparents to learn English. They damn well knew they HAD to speak the native tongue or sink. And so they did and quite well too.)

Khan said the government needed to “reconnect” with British Muslims and accused Labour of having a “fleeting but never committed” relationship with Muslim groups.

And he claimed London 2012 organisers were guilty of projecting an “idealised” version of an inclusive Britain.

Urging Muslims to “step up to the plate”, Khan, whose parents were Pakistani immigrants, also criticised the barriers Muslims face in society.

As a group they are disproportionately affected by poverty, inequality and discrimination, he said.

He said businesses should have a “positive duty” to crack down on religious discrimination. And he said schools should be as mixed as possible to “break the cycle of accidental segregation”.

Only a quarter of the 1.6 million British Muslims are “economically active”.

Khan said discrimination, language skills, lack of childcare and cultural attitudes to work were to blame.

(Sure but ... discrimination comes when one culture is FORCED upon another. Many Brits no longer feel as this country even belongs to them.)

He said there should be better training for teachers and changes to the curriculum to improve education standards for Muslim boys and he attacked extremist ideology.

“A failure to deal with the inequalities of British Muslim women flies in the face of any attempts to build a socially just and fair society.

“But it also has serious consequences for preventing extremism, given that the majority of the extremist and radical ideologies that lead young men to turn themselves into human bombs are also deeply misogynist.”

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, said the government and Khan were out of touch with grassroots Muslims.

“He should be pushing the government to deal with real issues like poverty, crime, racism and Islamophobia,” Shafiq said.

“We do not have a victim mentality but are victims of this government’s failure to deal with real issues, issues around poverty, tackling the underlying causes of why there is terrorism in this country, issues around exclusion of certain communities.”

Shafiq said his organisation had long campaigned against forced marriages and so-called “honour” killings, but added that the government needed to engage with Muslims and not be taken in by stereotypes.

There was no conflict between a concern for foreign policy and awareness of domestic issues, he said.

“To suggest we are obsessed with foreign policy, when Muslims are being killed around the world, when over a million people have been killed in Iraq - human life is sacred, that’s an obsession I’m proud of and I think any Muslim would be proud of it too,” he said.

“It’s time for the government and ministers like Mr Khan to really address the real failure of 10 years of missed opportunity.”

http://tinyurl.com/4a2hnp

Posted by Drew458     on 09/20/2008 at 12:41 PM   
Filed Under: • RoPMA • UK •  
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