Interfaith Nonsense
Over the recent months, we have seen continuing terrorist related incidents linked with Islamic extremism.
What we see however is an attempt to distance such acts from Islam itself, which serves no other purpose than to sweep what is happening under the rug, to isolate such incidents from each other and so we fail to recognise any pattern.
Whether we like it or not, there is something in the culture, the ideology, the teaching, whatever it is, that is encouraging people to commit atrocities in the name of God.
Now is the time when the communities need to come together, learn from and support each other, in the same way we wish to wipe out Britain First, EDL, BNP and the like.
We need to work together to find out what our fears and our prejudices are, and we need to be open about them.
However here is where I diverge back on topic.
We aren't going to achieve that by pandering to one group of society.
Virtually every take away in our "multi cultural" part of England, is halal only. We have no choice. We are told that our choice is whether we eat there or not. It's not that we want to stop others from having halal (OK, some do, because they disagree with the way the animal is killed), but we want to exercise our choice, whether it's through our own morals or religious beliefs.
Interfaith and Loving Your Neighbour, practically every story you see coming out of the Church of England, revolves around Muslims.
Why is this?
We hold interfaith meetings where we have Samosas, Curry, Bhajis etc. I pointed out the one day that if we were truly interfaith, then why don't we share something of ourselves? And how prejudice anyhow to think that Samosas will be the way to attract Muslims, when one lad was overheard at our recent interfaith group as saying "everyone loves pizza".
Churches like to pander to one particular group, whether it's Muslim, Family, Children, Elderly. They miss the basic premise which is - Love Your Neighbour.
That's it. It's that simple. It doesn't matter whether your neighbour is white, black, asian or whatever, it doesn't matter what language they speak, what hair colour they have, how tall or short, what religion. We Love Our Neighbour. Full stop. We shouldn't have to be going out of our way to target a particular demographic because that's the cool thing at the moment.
Often times, I think those who try the hardest are sometimes the least liberal of all. Although they seek to build and strengthen community, they seem to do it in a way that highlights our differences. We give different people different things. We "positively" discriminate, instead of simply treating everybody the same.
If you treat one group of people as being different, you will disenfranchise people. This is what leads to terrorist and extremist organisations in the first place. You cannot combat discrimination by heaping on more discrimination. You have to systematically tear down discrimination on all sides and make sure people feel that they are being fairly treated.
What we see however is an attempt to distance such acts from Islam itself, which serves no other purpose than to sweep what is happening under the rug, to isolate such incidents from each other and so we fail to recognise any pattern.
Whether we like it or not, there is something in the culture, the ideology, the teaching, whatever it is, that is encouraging people to commit atrocities in the name of God.
Now is the time when the communities need to come together, learn from and support each other, in the same way we wish to wipe out Britain First, EDL, BNP and the like.
We need to work together to find out what our fears and our prejudices are, and we need to be open about them.
However here is where I diverge back on topic.
We aren't going to achieve that by pandering to one group of society.
Virtually every take away in our "multi cultural" part of England, is halal only. We have no choice. We are told that our choice is whether we eat there or not. It's not that we want to stop others from having halal (OK, some do, because they disagree with the way the animal is killed), but we want to exercise our choice, whether it's through our own morals or religious beliefs.
Interfaith and Loving Your Neighbour, practically every story you see coming out of the Church of England, revolves around Muslims.
Why is this?
We hold interfaith meetings where we have Samosas, Curry, Bhajis etc. I pointed out the one day that if we were truly interfaith, then why don't we share something of ourselves? And how prejudice anyhow to think that Samosas will be the way to attract Muslims, when one lad was overheard at our recent interfaith group as saying "everyone loves pizza".
Churches like to pander to one particular group, whether it's Muslim, Family, Children, Elderly. They miss the basic premise which is - Love Your Neighbour.
That's it. It's that simple. It doesn't matter whether your neighbour is white, black, asian or whatever, it doesn't matter what language they speak, what hair colour they have, how tall or short, what religion. We Love Our Neighbour. Full stop. We shouldn't have to be going out of our way to target a particular demographic because that's the cool thing at the moment.
Often times, I think those who try the hardest are sometimes the least liberal of all. Although they seek to build and strengthen community, they seem to do it in a way that highlights our differences. We give different people different things. We "positively" discriminate, instead of simply treating everybody the same.
If you treat one group of people as being different, you will disenfranchise people. This is what leads to terrorist and extremist organisations in the first place. You cannot combat discrimination by heaping on more discrimination. You have to systematically tear down discrimination on all sides and make sure people feel that they are being fairly treated.
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