Another load of round globular objects from our Ed

According to today’s Sunday Express, the Children’s Secretary, Ed Balls, has announced that thousands of “the worst families in Britain” are to be put into ‘sin bins’ in a bid to change their bad behaviour.

The government is to spend £400 million to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV surveillance in their own homes. They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time, and eat proper meals. Private security guards will be sent round to carry out home checks.

Around 2,000 families have already been subjected to these ‘Family Intervention Projects’, it seems. But ministers want to target 20,000 more over the next two years, with each costing between £5,000 and £20,000. Pupils and their families will have to sign behaviour contracts (‘Home School Agreements’) every year setting out parents’ duties to ensure their children behave and do their homework.

Balls wants every local authority in the country to fund them. He describes it as “pretty tough and non-negotiable support” for problem families. Other descriptions spring to mind. And – wait for it! – the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling calls the scheme “much too little much too late”.

So there you have it. Both this proto-totalitarian government and its likely successors think it’s absolutely OK in 21^st century Britain to place citizens who haven’t been convicted of any crime under round-the-clock CCTV observation in their own homes. Presumably this will include the bathroom – a likely place for a wank and some furtive drug use – the children’s bedrooms, their computers, the attic, the cellar, the garage, the garden and everywhere else. As always, I wonder who will do this snooping, how will they be selected and trained, and who will supervise them?

Personal privacy and dignity no longer exist in this country. If it is permissible for the authorities to inflict this outrageous system upon ‘problem families’ (as defined by whom?), it won’t be long before they do it to everyone deemed socially unacceptable, out of the mainstream, or politically incorrect. It will swiftly escalate first to unpopular minority groups such as gypsies, gays, prostitutes, animal rights and anti-nuclear campaigners, and then to religious groups and minority political parties. Ultimately it will happen to every citizen, and Orwell’s Big Brother will have well and truly arrived.

On the television this morning Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, was glibly declaring that in this country everyone is innocent until they have been proved guilty. She can tell that to the marines. I have no love for problem families on sink estates who plague the community with drug turf wars, knife crime, and general yobbishness. But to place them or anyone else under constant CCTV monitoring in their own homes at the say-so of some government or local authority jobsworth is a negation of every principle of justice and it is to be hoped that the courts will in due course rule that such practices are illegal.

What is really frightening is that they should ever have been contemplated, let alone deemed tolerable by any responsible agency. Civil liberties apart, brute compulsion and humiliation without any attempt to convince children and their parents of the benefits of learning will only breed sullen resentment and runs counter to all sound educational theory and practice.

Ignorance is bliss - official

According to the Catholic Bishop of Lancaster, Patrick O'Donoghue, university-educated Catholics have sown scepticism, dissent and confusion within Holy Mother Church and are responsible for the decline in attendance at Mass. Instead of following the Church's teaching, they are 'hedonistic', 'selfish' and 'egocentric' said the Bishop, who added that higher education has its dark side 'due to original sin'. You can read his full rant here.

Prominent Catholics in public life include Tony Blair and Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, both of whom are Oxford graduates.

Bishop O'Donoghue was presumably 'educated' at some bog-standard Catholic seminary.

The former Professor of Divinity at Cambridge commented "What constructive purpose could possibly be served by such irresponsible and wholesale scapegoating of the educated, I have simply no idea".

Quite.

Education or indoctrination?

Over on Stephen Law’s blog, the debate with Ibrahim Lawson, the headmaster of an Islamic school, continues. I have previously referred to this three-month-long marathon in my 17 February post Islam in the West. It all started with a critical post by Stephen on 27 November [“Is religion dangerous?”], following Ibrahim’s assertion in a BBC broadcast that, in his view, it is OK to teach his pupils that the truth of Islam is a ‘given’ and must not be questioned. The discussion has since ranged far and wide over philosophical, religious, and mystical territory, and we are indebted to Ibrahim for his patience and stamina in returning time and again to rebut others’ criticisms and state his own position.

In his latest contribution he explains the rationale behind his decision to become a Muslim, and defends of his teaching methods. As regards his conversion to Islam, it turns out that there is no rationale – as Ibrahim says, “there is no why. ..my decision was rather an ‘acte gratuite’; but not in the negative sense of an irresponsible action.” It was “a pure act of will, undetermined by any external conditions”, and not based on any kind of evidence or argument. He quotes a Muslim scholar as saying “the man of Allah does not say ‘how?’ or ‘why?; he says ‘yes’.

As I pointed out to Ibrahim, there is a world of difference between a mature, highly educated man such as himself making this act of will, and instructing his young immature pupils with all the authority of an adult teacher that they must accept Islam as “the truth”. I asked him if he felt comfortable telling them this?

He made a long response, saying inter alia that “there is of course a huge difference between someone who chooses to be a Muslim following a long period of search and someone who is born to Muslim parents. We can’t do anything about that.” To which I retorted: “Oh, yes we can! We can ensure that they grow up with the awareness that although their parents are Muslim, there is nothing inevitable about them being Muslim, and they have a choice. It should be the business of educators – as distinct from indoctrinators – to provide them with the breadth of knowledge necessary for making an informed choice when they reach maturity.”

Ibrahim then said: “I grew up in a more or less permanent state of alienation from the society around me, as did many of my 60’s generation; born Muslims today will have their own version of this alienation. I was then, and remain, utterly convinced that ‘western’ society has serious problems, which are not solvable by tinkering but only by re-writing the whole paradigm” – presumably in the image of Islam.

Ibrahim continued: “So having decided that Islam is the answer, what are the implications for a school teacher?..…My view of the education of children is that it must, first and foremost, contribute to their individual ‘quest for the fullness of selfhood’ and that this is a subversive activity….In order to achieve this we must have questions that are worth asking, questions that demand a response.

“Teaching in the state system for 10 years, I observed that western liberal secular culture fails to provide children with such questions; the overwhelming sense is one of ennui. Muslim children, on the other hand, have in front of them all the time the enormous question: what does it mean to me to be a Muslim? This is why, for example, visitors to Muslim schools are frequently impressed by the degree of engagement demonstrated by many pupils in fundamental questions of self and society.

“So voila, my justification for ‘imposing’ my beliefs on my pupils: it is really more a challenge to them to face up to their own situation as ‘born’ Muslims as authentically as possible. Faith as a heuristic, if you like….

“I don’t know what you imagine goes on in our schools under the name of ‘indoctrination’. It could be made to sound very oppressive and tyrannical; we imagine Vietnamese communists brainwashing American POWs or scenes from Orwell’s 1984 [How many fingers am I holding up?] It’s rather that the specific question ‘Is Islam true?’ just doesn’t come up. It is taken for granted as the position from which we start….

“I can see that, yes, children are defenceless, they do not and cannot question what adults tell them at first; this only starts around adolescence. At this point we begin to introduce the skills of critical questioning about religion [quite different from critical questioning in other areas of the curriculum] and this continues into adulthood…..

“My point is that adults have to tell children something” [my italics], “and for Muslims that has to be Islam. I am comfortable with that, especially having seen the alternatives.”

Having considered this, I asked Ibrahim what the actual difference is between what he had just described and brainwashing? I await his answer with interest.

And a further pertinent question I intend to put to him: Does such an education properly equip those subjected to it to play a constructive role in our wider, largely non-Islamic, British society?

Islam in the West

For a couple of months now over on Stephen Law’s Philosophy Blog, we’ve been having an extended debate with Ibrahim Lawson, the headmaster of an Islamic school. The whole thing began because Ibrahim had said, on Radio Four:

IL: The essential purpose of the Islamia school as with all Islamic schools is to inculcate profound religious belief in the children.

INTERVIEWER: You use the word "inculcate": does that mean you are in the business of indoctrination?

IL: I would say so, yes; I mean we are quite unashamed about that really…

INTERVIEWER: Does that mean that Islam is a given and is never challenged?

IL: That’s right…

Not surprisingly, Stephen commented that this was a dangerous theory of ‘education’. Ibrahim replied, defending his position on the ground of his absolute certainty of the ‘truth’ of his own faith, and the discussion has rumbled merrily on all around the houses ever since. Ibrahim is a former Anglican convert to Islam and, like many converts, ‘more Catholic than the Pope’. He sees Islam through a rose-coloured lens of personal mysticism as a pathway to union with Allah, and appears unconcerned about the collective social, cultural, political, and legal aspects of Islam which worry non-Muslims far more than its devotional attraction for individuals like himself. Indeed, he determinedly ignores repeated requests to confront these issues – which are surely relevant to what he teaches his pupils – and on the rare occasions when he deigns to address them, brushes them aside as trivialities, pooh-poohing the notion that to teach his religion is ’unquestionable’ might be in any way socially divisive.

If Islam were indeed no more than a mystic ‘inner path’ for the Faithful, there would be no cause for alarm. But of course, Islam is far more than that. It is a fiercely self-justifying and aggressively proselytizing faith which comes with an inextricable array of theocratic baggage aspiring to control all aspects of individual and social life and, most menacingly, replete with numerous injunctions to the Faithful to dominate the ‘infidels’ and subjugate them to the world ummah [community of believers]. Ibrahim himself has said that he would welcome the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate [political rule] in Britain. When challenged about this, he replies consolingly that from his perspective, Islam is compatible with our democratic society “given the circumstances” [that Muslims are currently in a minority in British society] - although he doesn’t think the latter is the best option, because “Islam is actually a far better, more humane, just and civilised system of governance than secular pluralism”! He also sees little if any prospect of sharia law and other Islamic practices being imposed as legal jurisdiction in Britain “at the moment”. [This was before the Archbishop of Canterbury kindly informed us the other day that he views it as “unavoidable”.]

I find little comfort in such hollow, because meaningless, assurances. It is becoming glaringly obvious that devout Muslims are incapable of renouncing – even if they wished to - the Koranic injunctions to establish an Islamic society wherever they happen to be, because if they did they would be apostates and liable to the death penalty in the eyes of their fellow–Muslims.

If I am wrong about this, theologically or practically, no doubt Ibrahim or some other authoritative Muslim voice will correct me. If I am not wrong, the question is, as Lenin said, ‘What is to be done?’

Furthermore, the nub of the problem posed by Islam in the West is that its strident claims are always presented with a subtext of implicit and, on an increasing number of occasions, actual violence. Consequently, it is next to impossible to discuss the merits of Islam as a faith, or the social aspirations of Muslims in Europe, in a calm, detached manner. As I said to Ibrahim in one of my responses to his posts, “you cannot convincingly claim that Islam is not responsible for the evil done in its name, but should be credited with the virtuous things Muslims do. Religious belief is either a genuine motivation or an excuse: it cannot be both.”

“I am not [Ibrahim countered] prepared to be drawn on the kind of contentious issues which might force me to be more explicit than is advisable in a world where many people look at each other with daggers in their eyes.”

To which I responded: “Well! You have indeed let a very large cat out of the bag [or described the proverbial elephant in the room]. The reason why candid discussion of religious and many other issues is increasingly inhibited in contemporary Britain is, quite simply, FEAR of the consequences of saying what one really thinks – especially as the daggers don’t remain in peoples’ eyes but increasingly take the form of violent aggressive action by bigots against those who dare to differ from them. I trust you will agree that such unbridled visceral hatred and intolerance, whether religious or secular in origin, is the root cause of many current social ills.”

The above was written before we read this week of angry Muslims rioting in the streets of Copenhagen shouting “Freedom of speech is like a plague!” [What does Ibrahim teach his pupils about freedom of speech, I wonder?]

In an interesting recent post on his blog 'Political, Human, Environmental Respect', Jose asks whether Western hostility to Muslims is prompted by racism, bigotry, or a sense of self-defence? He concludes that it is primarily the last, because of increasingly vociferous demands from immigrants - mostly Muslims - for special treatment. "In my opinion [Jose says] the main cause of the resentment of our populations regarding aliens is not something that can be called racism or bigotry. It is a feeling of self-defence which our authorities have not been brave enough to ease up by applying the Law with all its consequences. Those of any religion or race who live in our countries must respect the Law as we do and must get the punishment the Law metes out in all cases it contemplates."

I agree with Jose, and commented: "I think one of the main reasons why many 'post-Christian' Europeans find Muslims indigestible as immigrants is that Islam is 700 years younger than Christianity, and most Europeans are ignorant of their own religious history. Six or seven hundred years ago, most Christians believed fervently, and often literally, in their version of faith, just as Muslims do today. There were bloody religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, and persecutions of heretics which we now consider to have been barbaric.

"To do Muslims justice, they are - whether ‘extremists’ or ‘moderates’ - much more serious about their faith than most Christians are today. In an interesting article about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent speech on sharia law, the sociologist Frank Furedi says, quite rightly, that 'Islam appears to motivate and inspire people in ways that most ordinary Anglicans find difficult to comprehend.'

"The problem is literalism, and until Islam evolves to the point where its doctrines are viewed by its adherents in a more metaphorical light, there is bound to be friction between opposing concepts of life which are obviously incompatible.

"So I agree with Jose that the nub of the hostility towards Muslim immigrants is more one of self-defence against an ideology that challenges our more evolved European way of life than of racism or bigotry. The peaceful resolution of these frictions is one of the most urgent tasks of the 21st century."