Well Now That Is Interesting!!

[RATTER15]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342217/Pakistan-internet-users-Google-searches-gay-sex-despite-worlds-homophobic-countries.html

Who would have thought that!!

[jno]

em, they got on with the Jews (at a time when England was expelling them and there were other pogroms in Europe), they built the Alhambra; and generally through the early Middle Ages it was Arab scholarship that preserved classical learning while Europeans were still warring tribes.

I think they were conserably more civilised than their mainland European contemporaries.

[anotheoldgit]

mikey4444

/// I can't understand why the Editor doesn't do something about it. ///

I wouldn't have thought you would be in favour of censorship, judging by some of the comments you make at times.

But perhaps it is only those comments that you disagree with personally, that you wish censored?

[emmie]

what have Jews got to do with this, isn't this about conquering, subjugating peoples. Putting your ideology, will on to people, why is that a good thing.
wiki

In 711 CE, the now Islamic Moors conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania. Their general, Tariq ibn-Ziyad, brought most of Iberia under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They moved northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains, but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.

The Moorish state fell into civil conflict in the 750s. The Moors ruled in North Africa and in most of the Iberian peninsula for several decades. They were resisted in areas in the northwest (such as Asturias, where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga) and the largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. Though the number of Moor colonists was small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam. According to Ronald Segal, by 1000, some 5 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants, nearly all native inhabitants, were Muslim.[18

[emmie]

as far as my history goes there were Jews expelled in Britain in the 12th Century, we alongside many nations have had problems with Jews, i can't answer you why, except to say that like the Holocaust they were being exterminated in many corners of the globe not just in Britain. It's despicable and vile, but don't just cherry pick the information.
The Arabs were eventually driven out of the Iberian Peninsula and now that many are making their way back, and cutting right across Europe and beyond. Do I fear the spread of Islam, the answer is yes i do.

[jno]

because they didn't put their ideology on to the Jews the way Christians were doing.

I think in some cases they had to convert, which you might reasonably consider a bad thing; but they weren't expelled or murdered as they were in Christian Europe

[emmie]

why should anyone be made to convert to any religion, and you can't conquer a country, peoples without bloodshed.

[jno]

we didn't "have problems with the Jews" exactly. They were moneylenders (because Christians weren't allowed to be) and rulers who owed them too much often thought expelling them was easier than paying them.

They were expelled from England in 1290

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion

Cromwell let them back 360 years later - because he needed the money too.

As for killing them, here's one blood libel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#Middle_Ages

[emmie]

despicable as i said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion

[Zeuhl]

/almost anyone can settle any place they choose/

em I take your point about increased mobility but the free movement you suggest is demonstrably not the case. movement within the EU is free but for anyone outside of that there are significant barriers

People have moved here from the old colonies (eg Pakistan) and refugees from places like Somalia have created 'blips' but as the stats make clear, despite all this only 5% of our population is Muslim.

You no doubt have a different perspective but then you choose to live in 'Gotham City'. We chose to move out a few years ago to swap the 'excitement' of the Metrolops for some seaside tranquillity.

Accepting your point that it is easier for muslim communities to set up in Britain than it was in the past, one has to ask what effect the concurrent differences in communication, education will have on them and what otherwise would be a monolithic view of the world

There have always been fanatics and killers (homegrown and imported). We survived a war with Irish terrorists despite having a very large Irish community in this country and good sense all round eventually prevailed.

[Zeuhl]

em

the notion that the Moors 'conquered' Iberia is now considered over simplistic

In all the major battles, the opposing armies consisted of alliances between Moors and Christians. It was a wrestle for political control in which Moors were for a time dominant but it certainly wasn't an 'us versus them' situation

[anotheoldgit]

For those who say we have nothing to fear from the spread of Islam should consider that anyone who left this country say only 30 years ago, would now find the changes Islam has made to some parts of this country unbelievable.

[emmie]

zeuhl, as been pointed out any number of times, time is on their side, Christianity for what it's worth is in decline in Britain, the people that actually participate in Christian worship has been falling, whereas the Islamic faith is growing at an alarming rate. Those people who put Christian on their census forms perhaps did so because they consider themselves so, but are no active in the church. We have two local churches, attendance at one for sundays is small, half a dozen sometimes a few more, this from a friend who attends, the other is more community based and does get a few more, but not many.

[LazyGun]

@ AoG - Well an argument from personal incredulity, as in your hypothetical example of a returning native after 30 years, is never a particularly strong or convincing argument.

What changes do you believe have occurred within the UK say over the last 30 years that demonstrated an increasing islamification of our society? Bullet points would be helpful, rather than just a generalised feeling....

[Zeuhl]

/anyone who left this country say only 30 years ago, would now find the changes Islam has made to some parts of this country unbelievable. /

So....

anyone who left this country in 1952 and returned in 1982 would not find 'unbelievable change'?

nor anyone who left in 1922 and returned in 1952?

hmmmm

[Zeuhl]

/Christianity for what it's worth is in decline in Britain/

em

you seem to assume that the main (only?) bastion against Islam is active christians

I don't see why that would be so

If anything, the followers of one set of fairy stories seem too keen to embrace followers of other fairy stories in these 'multi faith projects' of theirs
and show a little bit too much respect for their restrictions

e.g. "well you can wear a burqa if i can wear my crucifix ....yada yada"

On the contrary, the growing number of good, no nonsense Rationalists and Atheists will tell the Islamic fundamentalists where to get off if they try imposing silly rules on us

[emmie]

i see London as a totally difference city than the one i knew less than twenty years ago, and the people who have been settling here in recent days are from every port, include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, many have come with little or no money, maybe they have jobs, but i would bet my bottom pound they are low paid and that many of the women do not work. They are the ones procreating, so their children will be the new Britons, that is if they stay. By and large the older whites are moving away, dying off. Some boroughs now have minority whites, which is strange to me, as all this mixing and integration we are told about would indicate that we should have a lot more mixed race than anything.
Some parts of London look more like an Arab, Asian country, so why would i consider that a problem, i just do. Someone on another thread said and i quote, we should be integrating with them, really, i always consider it should be the other way around wherever people settle, be it British abroad or Somalis here.

[jno]

al-Qaeda and their like don't seem to be acting against Christianity as such but against western civilisation in general. Western non-Christians are duly responding. I don't think church roll-calls make much difference.

[emmie]

interesting reading - bullet points for changes, well i could cite the mosques, temples being built, the large scale changes of Church and state, the fact that many areas across Britain it's mono culture, if you want integration of all peoples, why hasn't that happened by now, some have been here long enough. I know that life is about change, however this has come at a cost to some who don't like this change, at least not so rapidly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/overview_1945_present_01.shtml

[Zeuhl]

em

i genuinely sympathise

but London has never been representative of Britain overall

when I first moved there in '78 Southall and Brick Lane were very colourful and exciting for a young chap from Liverpool

Don't think I'd like to live there now but that is more to do with my circumstances than changes in those areas

[emmie]

zeuhl, do you not see that the Islamic fundamentalists have been here for a long time, they only have to present the face of moderates, then bide their time. The majority of British people believe in live and let live, we have had a long hard struggle to get a degree of quality for women, yet now it's emerging again, that some men in these societies don't think women should be equal, they are inferior. that its ok to marry your child off to an old man, send her away to Pakistan or perform the hideous Genital mutilation on little girls, not just limited to Islam either, this has come to our shores. Make no mistake we have shored up problems for ourselves by being so accommodating. How does it sit with left wing politicians and indeed left wingers who support the Muslim fraternity, all the while some of those practices are being committed, it doesn't sit well with me. Nor to see endless streams of young girls and women decked out in burqua, veil, whether forced into it or not. It's not something i will ever understand. Britain is an ancient place, that has become modern in it's thinking by dint of laws, equality for all, a democracy.
why would anyone move here and behave and dress in exactly the same way, no different from some British abroad, never understood that either.
when in Rome still stands, for me and them.