Tell Mama continues its attempt to demolish Lord Pearson for the primal sin of discussing Muslim and non-Muslim fertility rates:
Racist conspiracies about birth rates were behind the terroristic murders of 51 Muslims in Christchurch, which went on to inspire other forms of racist terror in Germany, the United States, Norway, and a sleepy English suburb.
What is Tell Mama trying to make us believe? It is this: because the lone Christchurch shooter, Benton Tarrant, was motivated by murderous anxiety over what he called “the Great Replacement,” that is, the replacement of whites by non-whites (and not just of non-Muslims by Muslims), that it somehow follows that no one, and certainly not the “racist” Lord Pearson, should even discuss the much higher fertility rates for Muslims than for non-Muslims in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe? There is a mendacious attempt by Tell Mama to suggest that there is some kind of a direct link between the measured and thoughtful remarks of Lord Pearson about birth rates, and the mad manifesto of the mass murderer in Christchurch. Are we now, because of that mosque attack, never to speak again about what the colossal rise in the Muslim populations will mean for the indigenous non-Muslims of Europe? Will such talk turn us all into Benton-Tarrants, capable of mass murder?
Lord Pearson, in this House of Lord’s speech, also invoked the racialised and Islamophobic conspiracy of Taqiyya, an enduring obsession in many far-right networks and online spaces.
Baroness Williams of Trafford rebuked his remarks on Sharia law, adding it has no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales, as Lord Ahmed also challenged some of the unfounded claims from Lord Pearson.
Taqiyya is not something dreamt up by crazed, “racialized and islamophobic” conspirators. It is simply the doctrine of religiously sanctioned dissimulation about both the faith of Islam, and about its practice by individual Believers. It began in Shi’a Islam, as a way to protect Believers from Sunni persecutors, but its practice centuries ago spread to all Muslims. When Muslims lie about what is in the Qur’an, they are practicing Taqiyya to defend the faith itself. When an individual Muslim claims that he would never “beat” his wife if she were disobedient, or never wage war against Infidels, even though he has done both, he is practicing Taqiyya to protect not the faith, but himself.
When Baroness Williams claims that Sharia has “no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales,” it sounds as if she is unaware that sharia courts have been operating all over England and Wales for some time, that many Muslims make use of them, especially in cases of family law, and that a British judge has even recognized, in a 2018 decision, the relevance of sharia law as it pertains to marriage and divorce. Lord Pearson is worried that Muslims will seek, in cases involving only fellow Muslims, to use sharia courts which apply Islamic law, thereby creating a parallel system of justice. It’s not an imaginary worry.
During his appearance on All Out Politics, Lord Pearson admitted, “I’m not a great expert on Islam, although I’ve been studying it for seven years”, but advocated that Muslims in Britain practice a ‘mild’ form of their faith, and referred to the Prophet Muhammad as a ‘violent warlord’.
Tell MAMA identified in its recent annual report how such language causes deep upset and harm to Muslims, given that many seek to emulate his teachings in daily life. The report adds: “To understand why such language is so hurtful to Muslims, in particular, is to understand that Muslims believe that Muhammad was God’s final messenger who gradually revealed the religion of Islam, who, in his lifetime, was an administrator, commander-in-chief, a teacher, and prayer leader for the burgeoning Muslim community. Therefore, ordinary Muslims view him as a model of God’s grace and salvation, and the greatest and highest of role models as many strive to emulate his teachings in their daily lives”.
For Muslims, Muhammad is both the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) and the Model of Conduct (uswa hasana), who is to be emulated in all things. Muhammad was a warlord – Tell Mama prefers that non-Muslims not focus on that — who conducted dozens of military campaigns. He took an active part in the killing of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza. He was both violent, and the cause of violence in others. He asked aloud for others to “rid” him of three people who had mocked him, and all three – Asma bint Marwan, Abu ‘Afak, and Ka’b bin al-Ashraf, were then murdered, in separate incidents, by his loyal followers. He greeted the news of their deaths with satisfaction. He ordered the torture, and then the murder, of Kinana of Khaybar. Of course, Tell Mamma does not mention any of this, and only deplores the supposed hurt felt by Muslims when Lord Pearson described him – accurately – as a “violent warlord.” But Muslims know perfectly well about Muhammad’s violence, and do not recoil but, rather, revel in it. And Muhammad himself would not have rejected Lord Pearson’s characterization. He boasted – in a well-known hadith – that “I have been made victorious through terror.”
For all of Lord Pearson’s obsessive interest in Muslims and Islam in the UK, he avoids discussing how structural racism and discrimination harm Muslims in education and employment – from being denied job interviews to the ‘Muslim penalty’ which hinders access to the salariat, to teachers holding stereotypical or low expectations of their Muslim students, with non-Muslim teachers reluctant to engage them according to the Social Mobility commission, incidents of racism and Islamophobia further damaged the confidence and self-esteem of young Muslims, resulting in some Muslims leaving university early, or not gaining ‘good grades’.
If there is a reluctance to hire Muslims, it is not because of “structural racism” – for the ten thousandth time, Islam is not a “race” — but because of unhappy experience with too many Muslims who lack appropriate skills and training, and do not have the work ethic. Many Muslims have found life on the dole, in a generous welfare state, preferable to having to go to work. Unemployment among Muslims is for some a matter of choice. The cleric Anjem Choudary described the cornucopia of government benefits that Muslims take full advantage of as the “Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.” Other Muslims have described their welfare benefits as a kind of proleptic Jizyah, a reference to the tax paid by non-Muslims in Islamic lands in order to be protected from attacks by Muslims. Compare the attitude of other immigrant groups – Chinese, Hindus, Vietnamese Buddhists – who have far lower levels of unemployment than the Muslims, even though many of them arrive with little or no knowledge of English (unlike many of the Muslims from Pakistan), who do display a willingness to work.
Muslims in the U.K. do not have self-esteem problems, as Tell Mama claims. Rather, the problem is that they have too much self-esteem, for they know, from the Qur’an, that they are the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims “the most vile of created beings.” Their sub-par school performance, as with “poor grades,” they blame not on themselves, but on the “islamophobia” that supposedly surrounds them. Why is it that all other, non-Muslim immigrants, who face the same problems of having to adapt to a new culture and, for many, having to learn a new language,, do so well compared to Muslims?
Could it be that Islam itself contributes to the stunting of mental growth? In Islam, skeptical and critical thought is discouraged, lest it lead to a questioning of Islam itself, which must not happen. Islam instead encourages the habit of mental submission. This surely helps to explain the poorer performance of Muslim students. They are used to rote learning – memorizing Qur’anic verses – but not to critical thought. Does the inculcated contempt for non-Muslims also have its effects on Muslims in school? Doesn’t it make it more likely that Muslim students will not willingly receive instruction from non-Muslim teachers? And what about the belief, of many pious Muslims, that all of knowledge is already contained in the Qur’an, and only needs to be teased out for the Believers by Qur’anic scholars?
Almost half of Muslims in Britain (46 per cent) live in the 10% of the most deprived local authority districts.
This fact, by itself, tells us nothing. If Muslims are “deprived” – i.e., poor – that reflects the absence of marketable skills among many Muslims, especially migrants. It can also reflect their lack of a work ethic. The high level of unemployment among Muslims can, for many of them, be a deliberate choice. Furthermore, Muslim women are expected to stay home and raise large families, not to go to work as non-Muslim women do, and this naturally results in lower family income among Muslims.
Muslims, particularly women, face double (gender and ethnicity) or triple (low socio-economic backgrounds) penalties in the labor market, which has real long-term consequences. Which, in turn, are reflected in low pay and the disproportionate impact on Muslim households (50 per cent) compared to 18 per cent of the overall population.
The main reasons for Muslim women not faring well in the labor market is that they are discouraged by their male relatives from working outside the home, and also from acquiring what the men regard as unnecessary schooling for women. It is the misogyny of Islam, and the belief, that women suffer from a “deficiency of intelligence” compared to men, which surely damages their self-esteem, that contribute to the high unemployment rates for of Muslim women.
These barriers pose real, significant questions about social mobility.
The challenge of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic prejudice, violence, and discrimination warrants more media attention, not the rambling, inchoate conspiracies of an individual who, late last year, invited Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) to dine at parliament, and referred to him,bizarrely, as a ‘Quranic expert’.
“Anti-Muslim and Islamophobic prejudice, violence, and discrimination warrants more media attention”? Thanks to a growing army of Muslim advocacy groups such as Tell Mama, “Islamophobic prejudice” could hardly get more media attention than it already gets in the U.K.
As for Lord Pearson, who is described as offering “rambling, inchoate [sic] conspiracies,” fortunately you can judge for yourself. You can view online Lord Pearson’s speeches in the House of Lords, where he is one of the most articulate members in that body, and see, too, his television interviews, where he refuses to lower himself to the level of his unsympathetic interviewers. He nowhere offers “rambling, inchoate [sic] conspiracies.”’ He is, rather, sober, measured, and undeniably alarmed about the inroads Islam is making in the United Kingdom. And that is what infuriates that stout Defender of the Faith, Tell Mama, that hopes you won’t see him, and fears that you might.