IMMIGRATION
IMMIGRATION
England, and to a lesser extent, Scotland and Wales, is a nation of immigrants. Over a period of three thousand years successive waves of Celts, Romans, Anglo Saxons, Normans, Vikings, Jews, Dutch and Huguenots have arrived, some by conquest, some as peaceful settlers, others as refugees from persecution. All were assimilated in time and coalesced into a racially homogeneous, Caucasian Judeo Christian nation. In more recent times Eastern Europeans and Ukrainians have arrived, and while not all will stay, those who do will in time change their names into something pronounceable and will be indistinguishable from the rest of us. It was in the Twentieth Century that the pattern of immigration changed, with the arrival of large numbers from the newly independent or about to be independent countries of the British Empire. These immigrants were not Caucasian but were either Christian or if not, like the Asians expelled from Africa, were nevertheless able to integrate into British society and contribute to it. Many West Indians arrived in the 1960s in response to a labour shortage. They too were from a Christian background and they and their descendants, with the exception of a small minority who have developed a criminal gang culture, more to do with deprivation than race, have settled in and share our values. Since 2004 retired Gurkha soldiers have been permitted residence in the UK and they too have integrated well into British society.
There is, however, one body of immigrants or descendants of immigrants not all of whom have adapted to being British. Muslims now make up 6 ½ percent of the population of England and Wales. Muslim is of course a generic term and while the majority are of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi inheritance, there are also sizeable Arab, Turkish and Somali contingents, and more recently illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. One cannot regard them all as identical – after all Britons and Russians are Christians. These Muslims originate from very different cultural backgrounds, but a unifying factor, and in some cases the only belief they have in common, is Islam. Most are Sunni Muslims but there is a minority of the Shia variety. In the decade from the year 2000 the Muslim population of UK increased ten times faster than the rest of the population.
It is not for this article to question a belief in a supernatural being who has created everything, who takes a personal interest in the activities of every individual and who promises a life after death, in paradise for those who obey the rules and hell for those who do not. Here Christianity and Islam are ad idem. There may be no evidence for any of this, but a very large number of people do believe it, which would matter not a jot provided those not subscribing to it, or who held alternate views of the supernatural being, were not regarded as evil and legitimate targets for assassination. You can believe whatever you like as long as you do not try to force it on others – persuasion yes, coercion no. Provided one takes into account the context and the time in which it was written the Koran, like the Old Testament, contains little that is objectionable to the modern reader. True we no longer stone adulterers to death and we do now permit a witch to live, but both tomes provide a workable code to allow a society to function. It is where an extremist interpretation of religion becomes widespread that danger lies, and it is unfortunate that a very large number of British Muslims hold that women must be kept under control, that non-believers are worthy of death, that apostasy should carry the death penalty and that this nation should ideally be part of a ‘caliphate’ governed by Sharia law. It is not Islam that is responsible for the bombings, stabbings other acts of terrorism that have blighted the West in the past few years, but a perversion of it. Islam is 1,400 years old, and when Christianity was 1,400 years old we were still burning heretics, but this cannot be a justification for acts of murder in England today.
One is not, of course, suggesting that all of the 6 ½ percent of our population who are Muslim are potential terrorists. There are many Muslim doctors, professionals, businessmen and small shopkeepers who are fully integrated into British society and who contribute to it. In general Muslim members of the middle classes are unlikely to engage in or support terrorism (although one recalls that the driver of a bomb laden jeep driven at the terminal of Glasgow Airport in June 2007 was a Muslim doctor, born in Britain but of Iraqi descent, accompanied by an Indian born Muslim engineer, and that a number of other Muslim medical professionals were suspected of being involved). Terrorists who do not want to be caught or killed (EOKA, the IRA and the like) are reasonably straightforward to guard against, but those who do not care about survival and who are happy to die to achieve their aim pose a far greater threat. The fact is that the nearly all acts of terrorism in the UK since the defeat of the IRA have been by Muslims, often as suicide bombers and acting with the cry of Allah Akbar, God is great.
One is driven to the inescapable conclusion that the Muslim population of the UK contains a potential fifth column, small no doubt but ready to act if given the leadership and organisational ability to do so. Isolated bombings and murders will never succeed in overthrowing the established order, but they will cause secondary inconvenience to the rest of the population, in increased security and expense. Currently a Muslim pupil in a school in London is suing the school because of a perfectly reasonable rule that forbids overt prayer by any faith on school premises during school hours. Her legal action is funded by legal aid, taxpayers’ money that is estimated to reach into the hundreds of thousands of pounds!
Anyone caught up, as I was, in one of the pro Palestine marches through London could be in no doubt that the marchers, many thousands of them, despite being British citizens, hold no loyalty to this nation nor do they subscribe to values of tolerance and respect for others. Overwhelmingly working class, poorly dressed and inflamed to an anti-government and anti-Israel fervour by the rhetoric of itinerant rabble rousers, they were overwhelmingly male but those females present were mainly veiled and with their hair covered. It may be that their situation of unemployment, or poorly paid employment, and living in run down intercity tower blocks where the only thing they have to cling to is their religion is the driving force to give them a feeling of importance, if only for a few hours.
These people are here now, they cannot be removed, but the net legal immigration figure to the UK in 2022 was just short of three quarters of a million, the majority of the Muslim faith. The infrastructure to support this increase in the population – the roads, the housing, the schools, the hospitals – does not exist and their presence, added to the arrival of those crossing the channel, fuels anti-immigrant feeling among the existing population. Other than reducing the numbers of immigrants permitted annually, perhaps by abolishing our longstanding policy of welcoming those fleeing persecution, there seems to be no easy answer to dealing with this fifth column. In France various items of Muslim clothing are forbidden, and citizenship is only granted after intensive language training. It is doubtful whether any British government would introduce such measures The numbers of Muslims in Britain will increase as the birth rate amongst our Muslims is higher than that of the non-Muslims. In time they will become a significant electoral factor, as is already the case locally in some areas (Tower Hamlets and Bradford). It may be that none of this matters, but the sadness of it all is that it traduces the memory of those tens of thousands of Muslims who served us loyally and well and fought and died for us in the army of undivided India in two world wars. If they knew what some of their descendants are up to they would be horrified!