Simon Schama, actually

I watched the Munk debate, which is featured in Douglas Murray’s piece in the Spectator  entitled 

“No, Simon Schama, people worried about gang rape and FGM aren’t ‘obsessed with sex’”

It was an interesting debate with some fine highlights, what with Nigel Farage and Mark Steyn on the one side and Simon Schama and Louise Arbour (whom I was not familiar with) on the other.

It’s the immigration thing, and they stuck to the topic. Oddly enough, Rod Liddle crops up again in this piece from last year by Douglas Murray in which he clearly expresses his views on Simon Schama.

Rod Liddle must be like a bus. Nothing for ages, then several come along all at once.  Maybe I should do a poetic riff about that and submit it to the BBC. 

On QT, Simon Schama had called Rod 'a hack' in a most dismissive fashion (though he steered clear of the food particles) and now Douglas was hoping he’d have ‘his arse handed to him on a plate’ by Mark Steyn in this debate. 

In fact I didn’t think the two sides were all that far apart. They seemed to be talking about two separate things. A) Naturally occurring immigration in general, which is beneficial to the ‘host culture’, and B) Mass, unmonitored immigration which is detrimental to it. 

If they’d clarified that there is a distinction between gradual, culturally enriching immigration and a sudden, overwhelming invasion of culturally alien refugees and economic migrants  in the first place, it might have been a shorter debate.

The most remarkable moment (for me) came when Simon Schama asked, rhetorically, if there was anything within Islam that causes the problems we’re seeing in Cologne and Sweden etc.

  

His mannerisms were bad enough, and his habit of saying the word “actually” every few seconds was weirdly reminiscent of our friend Abdel Bari Atwan.

“It’s an appalling slander to the Muslim religion to imply, actually, that if you’ve got a Muslim immigrant that he’s bound to commit a  sexual crime sooner or later. That seems to me to be a monstrous and grotesque falsehood about Muslim communities that have been settled for a long time...”

That’s the kind of twisting of reality that we’re accustomed to. But when he went on to say:

“What is it about Islam that you’re saying that actually is about actually Islam that is designed to make men brutal animals?”

That could have opened up a very interesting strand of the discussion, but not on this occasion. 

That brings me to the first of two programmes on radio 4 about Deobandi Muslims in the UK. They’re being ‘investigated’ by Owen Bennett-Jones. 

This episode concentrated on the isolationist principle of this movement, and it looks as though Owen B-J is heading towards re-evaluating the current concept that the Deobandis are ‘moderate’.

The Deobandis certainly seem to have some extreme ideas and a genuine fear of letting their young people be corrupted by our debauchery and beastliness. 

Owen Bennett-Jones

Many years ago, before the carcinogenic properties of cigarette smoking were officially recognised, other negative implications of the habit included an implied permissiveness and possible sexual promiscuity on the part of the smoker.  Long cigarette holders; naughty, sophisticated and seductive. 

Never mind the cough. Parents would impose an outright ban on their children taking up fags on pain of disinheritance or the threat of a good whipping. More progressive parents might invite their offspring to have a puff, in the hope that it would make them cough, hopefully vomit, and thus put them off the habit for life.

Risky. It took a long time for the smoking fashion to subside, and cost many lives in the meantime. But it seems to have more or less come right in the end..

There was a similarly risky theory I once read in a 60s or 70s Dr. Spock manual on child rearing. A child knows what’s good for it, said the good doc, therefore fussy and faddy eaters would be perfectly fine if left entirely to their own devices. The infant’s body would tell it what it needs. All well and good if you're a native of some godforsaken jungle or if you live amongst the Kalahari Bushmen miles away from civilisation, but if you’re surrounded by junk food and sweet stuff, what hope is there of a good outcome? Next to nil, I think; so not worth the risk.

where did we go wrong

Something similar seems to be behind the isolationist practices of the Deobandis. Keep them on the straight and narrow, away from the Kafir’s debauchery and everything will be ok. If they let their children taste a speck of our over-indulgent, ungodly lifestyle, they’ll be hooked. Hooked and lost. You can almost understand it. But why, one must wonder, do they even want to live amongst such temptation?

Which brings me back to Simon Schama’s question. Yes, there really is something within Islam that makes some men into brutal animals. It’s a tinder-box combination of sexual repression and the concept of the superior/inferior relationship between the Muslim and the nonMuslim.

Isn’t it odd how gay men can have such a blinkered view of a cult that openly despises them?