“Dire results of theory of multiculturalism,” a letter from a Richard A. McLellan that appeared in The Herald (thanks to Uajeg):
THE THEORY of multiculturalism and its malevolent companion, political correctness, arrived on these shores from North America and was quickly taken up by the liberal, urban political elite. These theories were foisted on the British people without any consultation and the terrible consequences are only appearing now.
Jack McConnell is a typical exponent, mouthing “One Scotland, many cultures”. No, it should read: “One Scotland, one culture with little bits added on.” We often forget that the last Scottish Census in 2001 only gave a minority ethnic population of 2.01%. The Census gave an Indian population of 15,037 (0.3%), a Pakistani population of 31,793 (0.63%) and a Bangladeshi population of 1981 (0.04%).Yet we have the nonsense of Christian symbols and Christmas carols being banned in schools and local authority premises in case they offend this minuscule percentage of the population. A Muslim festival like Eid is given as much importance as Christmas or Easter. There is something very wrong here.
Minority groups, especially those from the Indian sub-continent, were encouraged not to integrate or mix, but to keep their own customs as though the UK did not exist. The results can be seen in London, in the northern English cities and, to a much lesser extent, in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Whole areas of these cities were given over to the religion, customs and social practice of rural Pakistan and were encouraged to flourish without any reference to the surrounding white population. If one was brave enough to question this social experiment one was branded a racist. To this day, many of the third generation of these Asian immigrants take their religious leaders, marriage partners and social customs from Pakistan and other parts of the Indian sub-continent. It is apartheid under another name.
So in many of our cities we have a society within the wider society with a religion, Islam, which often seems to the outsider to be more of a political movement than a way to being at peace with God and one’s neighbour. This society within a society has been encouraged to revel in its alleged victimhood, and, due to its lack of maturity, has never looked at its own faults but blames outsiders for all its ills. Until these people can think of themselves as Scots or English who are Muslim by religion rather than Muslims who live in Scotland or England we will have no peace.
Muslims seem to be in a constant state of anger. This foments religious fundamentalism or the predictable ranting of the tiresome Aamer Anwar. The day that Muslims can accept rational criticism without the predictable cries of “Islamophobia” will be the day when they are finally accepted into British society like the descendants of other immigrant groups over the centuries.
Fear of western secular society and its achievements is perhaps due to the nature of Islam itself. It is a religion of revelation that was born in strife. I have just read the Koran in translation and it is evident that it is rooted in seventh-century Arabia. There is much for a Christian to admire in the Koran, not least its sense of morality, but there is also much that a Christian would find strange….Unlike Christianity it has not been influenced by Greek philosophy, it has no equivalent of Biblical scholarship and criticism, but, most importantly, it has had no Reformation, no Martin Luther, and no Gandhi.
I had hope that a humane, “European” form of Islam might take root in the west but that is very unlikely….