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So, you've already passed the stage of "willfully offending others for own amusement" - where next on the path of cynicism?

Better and more open education can lead to greater intergraton in the next generations of muslims. I really, really object to "faith" schools. People need to be exposed to the prevailing culture in order to be able to participate and enhance it as an adult.

It would help to break up blocks of racial, social and religious groupings and distribute them around the country, both to expose them to the "majority" UK culture, and to expose UK culture to them. Immigration and settling should have been more carefully controlled right from the start - people should be spread around as much as possible, rather than congregating in certain areas. I know this is hard to do without seeming draconian - people like to live near people who share the same values etc as them. The problem comes when 2-3 generations down the line you have communities which are essentially cut off from the country in which they exist.

So, I say, stop faith schools, try to mix classrooms so there are children from different backgrounds, try to encourage people to move around into new areas and generally take the long view. People don't change overnight after all.

I dont know where the future leads Dread.. im thinking maybe alcoholism and bitter resentment?

I went to a Catholic school.

In a class of 25 we had 5 actual (super serial) Christians, 2 Muslims and a Sihk. The rest of us didn't give a flying feth one way or the other. Apart from a single 40 min religeous session and Chapel once a week, religeon never really played a part in this "faith" school.

Faith schools here can only have people of "their" faith as priority applicants, non-faith students can still apply but will be lower down the list for admission, though since Christians are generally only Christian in name, most Catholic/CoE schools etc are just full of every day students, rather than "religious" people.

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/faithschools/

We only have 11 public secotor Muslim faith schools in the UK, out of about 7,000 (of 20,000 total schools) - not a massive figure and certainly not as large as I was expecting.

However, of the 2,400 private schools, there are 118 Muslim faith schools, which is quite a lot (the largest segment by quite a way in the "not Christian" faith school section).

This doesn't count the make up of regular public and private schools around the country with some areas of the country having about a 90% muslim school intake - not reflective of the make up of the nation as a whole.

Guess there weren't a lot of kids to go around then, or the school was really lax on religeous discriminating... stuff. As to your point, the schools with 90% Muslim, are you talking public and private non-faith schools?

Yes I am. Because there are some areas (like Shelton in Stoke-on-Trent being an example I can think of off the top of my head) where the make up of the population is very heavily skewed towards muslims, the local public NON-faith schools have a very large muslim intake. Just like some areas of Birmingham or London.

The same can be said for areas with large numbers of black residents, where the schools will have almost no whites, or areas where there are almost exclusively white "christians", where there will be almost no racial or religious minorities in classrooms.

It comes down to my point earlier that immigration should have been more closely controlled, so as to spread immigrants out a bit so they could mix more easily into society (and indeed society could mix more easily into them).

So, divide and conquer then?

Air conditioning, they need it. If we shipped over window units to the Middle East instead of soldiers it would all blow over (pun?) in a week.

Wow, talk about losing the moral high ground Matty.

Emperors Faithful wrote:So, divide and conquer then?

Yep.

If you were to force living areas based on colour/ethnicity or country of origin, meaning that Somali's can't live in close proximity or whatever, isn't that discriminatory?

Emperors Faithful wrote:If you were to force living areas based on colour/ethnicity or country of origin, meaning that Somali's can't live in close proximity or whatever, isn't that discriminatory?

Not really, I don't think.

Person x and their family come through immigration and are granted the right to settle in the UK (which means they have skills you want and have a job waiting for them with a UK company), you then just help them find a home around the location of their job which nicely mixes them into society, rather than letting them blob up as we have at the moment.

So at once we have a tighter system of immigration, and are seen to be helping people with finding a home etc.

Anyone attempting to live in the UK with more general skills and without a job waiting for them can be found a job anywhere in the country (or a selection of them) and an application can be made on their behalf (obviously with their permission). Once they then have a job, they can then be found a home in the same way as above.

I think it is a pretty fair system as it:
a) Ensures that everyone will be able to support themselves and/or family when they arrive
b) Have a home when they arrive
c) Are mixed into society early on - thus breaking down the barriers that form when you have 2 very different communities living within and in proximity to one another.

Why have i lost the moral high ground mate? I just think some of the drawings were funny as feth.. if muslims didnt have such a sense of humour faliure i wouldnt have contributed in the first place!

I bite my thumb at thee.

SilverMK2 wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:If you were to force living areas based on colour/ethnicity or country of origin, meaning that Somali's can't live in close proximity or whatever, isn't that discriminatory?

Not really, I don't think.

Person x and their family come through immigration and are granted the right to settle in the UK (which means they have skills you want and have a job waiting for them with a UK company), you then just help them find a home around the location of their job which nicely mixes them into society, rather than letting them blob up as we have at the moment.

No, the problem is, that is discriminating, demanding that people aren't allowed to mix with others who share a similar culture. In a sense you are *forcing* integration or westernisation upon them. This is a prcoess that should occur naturally with 2 and 3rd generation descendants of immigrants, rather than forced on those who initially arrive.

Before reading the other 3 pages, I want to give you my opinion.

If I'm not mistaken, this whole Draw-Mohammed-issue started with the last South Park episode, where Comedy Central censored THE WORD Mohammend out of after Matt and Trey once again made a brilliant commentary on cencorship in general.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Religion. At all. It took me a while to form my final opinion on the subject but this is where I am now.

I realizie that not every Muslim is an angry terrorist, but there is no reasons why the rule "don't make a picture of our Prophet" should apply to anyone who isn't a Muslim.
Now, taking part in such activites as the "everybody draw Mohammed Day", (which I forgot to take part in, but I would've if I rememeber it) may be intollerant to the religion in general. But not much more introllerant then muslims expecting non-muslims to follow their law. Not every christian is offended by me not going to church or (at least in theory) "worship" any other gods like, I dunno, Thor. And in the same way I can expect Muslims to not be offended if I drew a picture and called it Muhammed.
So don't see the EDM-Day as an offensive act towards Muslims. See it as taking a stand against the kind of people who would threaten the creators of a popular satirical TV-show with murder for doing what they do best.

I love how agnostics become religious when Islam comes in.

Could you draw a picture of a guy called Mohammed, if he wasn't the prophet?
I mean, it is a fairly common name.

Emperors Faithful wrote:No, the problem is, that is discriminating, demanding that people aren't allowed to mix with others who share a similar culture. In a sense you are *forcing* integration or westernisation upon them. This is a prcoess that should occur naturally with 2 and 3rd generation descendants of immigrants, rather than forced on those who initially arrive.

You see, I don't see it as discriminating, since it is not aimed at any particular group of people, but everyone who wishes to live in the UK. People who wish to enter the UK must abide by our laws. Is that discriminating, since we don't allow them to drive on the right hand side of the road as they would most likely do in their own country? Is it discriminating because we enforce our speed limits on them, and our fixed penalty notices if they break those speed limits, even if in their home country there are no speed limits?

And damn right we are forcing integration on people - that is not discrimination - it is common sense. The best way to create a harmonious existence is to get people to know and accept one another. As I have said several times, we are not just acclimatising the immigrant to the UK, we are acclimatising the UK to the immigrant. And the problem comes that in 2-3 generations time, we have children growing up who are not being exposed to the UK as a whole because they are in an almost completely self contained community which does not draw on UK mainstream society, due to the fact that there is such a large grouping of immigrants and immigrants families that they form their own cut off community within the UK.

If you are Somali, you are not allowed to live in a nieghborhood with other Somali's. How is that not discriminating? I'm not arguing whether or not the process would work, it's likely it would in the long term, but denying that such a policy is discriminatory is silly.

I had a post all written out here in reply to your post, however, I have deleted it as I don't think that we are going to convince one another.

As an Australian, I am sure you are aware that Australia has some of the strictist immigration laws in the world. Is it a bad thing that you are so committed to controlling who comes to live in your country? Is it right that you get to "discriminate" against so many people by turning away people who would be welcomed into many other countries?

I'm not going to get into anything more than that, as I am now straying to the territory that my initial reply was based on.

I don't think I can convey to you my exact thoughts on the matter, as my posts up until this point have been more or less off the top of my head, and the reasoning behind what I have been suggestion has not been thought out in depth. These are more kind of hypothetical thought experiments rather than serious suggestions. As I am sure you can tell, they are not indepth proposals

Emperors Faithful wrote:I went to a Catholic school.

In a class of 25 we had 5 actual (super serial) Christians, 2 Muslims and a Sihk. The rest of us didn't give a flying feth one way or the other. Apart from a single 40 min religeous session and Chapel once a week, religeon never really played a part in this "faith" school.

Catholic schools in Australia, owing to the strong Jesuit tradition of that Church, are places of learning first and foremost. This isn't the case for all religious schools. I think allowing minorities to teach what they want in their own private schools could raise some problems for integration in future years, and I'm not really sure what the solution is.

Anung Un Rama wrote:I realizie that not every Muslim is an angry terrorist, but there is no reasons why the rule "don't make a picture of our Prophet" should apply to anyone who isn't a Muslim.
Now, taking part in such activites as the "everybody draw Mohammed Day", (which I forgot to take part in, but I would've if I rememeber it) may be intollerant to the religion in general. But not much more introllerant then muslims expecting non-muslims to follow their law. Not every christian is offended by me not going to church or (at least in theory) "worship" any other gods like, I dunno, Thor. And in the same way I can expect Muslims to not be offended if I drew a picture and called it Muhammed.
So don't see the EDM-Day as an offensive act towards Muslims. See it as taking a stand against the kind of people who would threaten the creators of a popular satirical TV-show with murder for doing what they do best.

It needs to be pointed out that not every Muslim is offended by depictions of Mohammed. It’s a diverse religion and the prohibition on drawing Mohammed isn’t among all sects. There’s actually a significant number of historic works depicting Mohammed.

And no, they don’t have a right to tell us to not draw Mohammed. But people who don’t want to be jerks have an obligation to avoid offending people where there’s no reason to offend.

I usually try to be a very tollerant person, but something about Religion in general just ticks me off.

So don't see the EDM-Day as an offensive act towards Muslims.

You should. It's the entire point of it. It was the impetus for it's creation and its the exact reason it got popular.

But not much more introllerant then muslims expecting non-muslims to follow their law.

Oddly enough I can still use facebook.

Anung Un Rama wrote:I usually try to be a very tollerant person, but something about Religion in general just ticks me off.

So you try and fail on one of the most commonly held topics of discussion possible relating to a viewpoint of a large majority of the planet concerning whatever magic sky people they believe in. You should probably work on actually being a tolerant person rather than pointing out your failures and then trying to justify them.

Thats Shuma mate, he likes to argue.

I agree with you, but unlike Shuma i dont try to occupy the moral high ground. I admit i am intolerant of Islam due to 4 tours of the middle east. I also think that most people in life have some sort of bias towards something, and its easy for people to get all "holier than thou" on the internet.

Im aware i would be a nicer person if i wasnt slightly bigoted towards Muslims, but im not mentally strong enough to "turn the other cheek" like the supposed Jesus did. I tend to meet hatred with hatred and though I do my best to be polite to them when i encounter them, i do have a predisposed feeling that i tend to expect the worst from them.

Still, i try to be nice to almost everyone else!

No you fething don't! You're not even particularly nice to me, and I'm one of your bezzie oppos!

ShumaGorath wrote:

Anung Un Rama wrote:I usually try to be a very tollerant person, but something about Religion in general just ticks me off.

So you try and fail on one of the most commonly held topics of discussion possible relating to a viewpoint of a large majority of the planet concerning whatever magic sky people they believe in. You should probably work on actually being a tolerant person rather than pointing out your failures and then trying to justify them.

You're probably right about that. It's just that events like this really makes me question what humanity has gained from Religion. I do realize that this is a very broad and sensitive topic and I'm only sratching the surface here but that is the point I am at the moment.

I agree with you, but unlike Shuma i dont try to occupy the moral high ground. I admit i am intolerant of Islam due to 4 tours of the middle east. I also think that most people in life have some sort of bias towards something, and its easy for people to get all "holier than thou" on the internet.

You all look like ants from the top of this ivory tower.

Anung Un Rama wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Anung Un Rama wrote:I usually try to be a very tollerant person, but something about Religion in general just ticks me off.

So you try and fail on one of the most commonly held topics of discussion possible relating to a viewpoint of a large majority of the planet concerning whatever magic sky people they believe in. You should probably work on actually being a tolerant person rather than pointing out your failures and then trying to justify them.

You're probably right about that. It's just that events like this really makes me question what humanity has gained from Religion. I do realize that this is a very broad and sensitive topic and I'm only sratching the surface here but that is the point I am at the moment.

Then I would suggest that you step back a bit from the topic at hand and review the fact that you are claiming that religion ticks you off. A societal factor that has existed for six thousand years in various forms angers you. You are blaming the magic sky castles when you should be looking for why those magic sky castles are being blamed, and for what reason their name is being invoked for causes you do not approve of. A religion is nothing without people and it's rare indeed for a country to do something for a religious purpose alone. In this case the west was en masse making fun of Islam, and in reaction to something it didn't entirely understand (pakistanis elder statesmen know the internet likely less than your grandfather) they reacted overly harshly. Lets not kid ourselves into believing that everyone draw muhammed day was anything but a mass organized insult against a major religion, instead it's important to look into the societal and economic factors that lend themselves to the overtly harsh and seemingly illogical response that insult caused.

Its important to consider religion to be a monolithic and implacable institution that reacts to daily life rather than guides it. Religious organizations are composed of people, not books, as are governments. Islam is no different than the free market or communism in the respect that it is a concept most often invoked incorrectly and with purpose.

mattyrm wrote: Im aware i would be a nicer person if i wasnt slightly bigoted towards Muslims, but im not mentally strong enough to "turn the other cheek" like the supposed Jesus did. I tend to meet hatred with hatred and though I do my best to be polite to them when i encounter them, i do have a predisposed feeling that i tend to expect the worst from them.

They weren't doing anything to you before you joined and contributed to that Facebook group. There was no cheek turning to be done. It was just you being an ass.