118 Initiatives.

Question Time debated Cameron’s connect between 20% of English/Muslim women speaking English and terrorism. Argh the usual tennis. I hate it when people only think as far as how best to justify their own position. I begin to wonder how many of the English Raj learnt Punjabi or lost one iota of their own English culture. Not many. The elephant in the studio was the depth of our cultural roots; how we will, even after several generations, justify our position in those terms. There remains a deep cultural fault line that if stressed will fracture. The error is to deny it. There is an English culture and there is Muslim culture, we cannot pretend otherwise, each with its own way of being. Cameron’s connect both expresses an English fear but also exacerbated tensions by laying the blame elsewhere. Neither side finds itself capable of saying, ‘we’re human and these are our fears’, so the rally continued. On this mornings news Muslim Councillors were being criticised for bringing their Islamic culture into our English system by, of all people, Muslim women not wanting to be treated as second-class citizens. From there I happened on a Danish psychotherapist’s comparison between his Muslim and European clients. Muslims ‘Inshallah’, if God decrees it to happen, puts the locus of control externally where our Christian roots place it internally in self-responsibility. In essence Islam leans towards a co-dependent relationship with God. It fosters victim-hood as in easily offended, persecutor as in aggression, and rescuer as in ‘holder of the faith.’ He finds that integration in the minds of Muslim immigrants is the initiative of the host community where as the host community sees integration, because of our internal locus of control, as to also be our initiative. Hence in Denmark’s  "Diversity, and Safety in the City" conference in 2008 out of 118 initiatives hardly any were about what immigrants could do for themselves, and probably why only 20% of Muslim women have learnt to speak English, and why when asked they point to lack of Government funding for language tuition. By contrast if I moved to Greece I would consider it totally my own responsibility to learn Greek and see it as a necessity in order to partake in the Greek way of life. The external locus of control is completely alien to me but somehow in that blind spot there is vulnerability. Maybe as the host community we need to make it clear that we expect an internal locus of control where ‘Inshallah’ just isn’t good enough.