Have you been to that canteen place in KL, up the hill just past the Ptronas towers. Open all night....they do an outstanding roti for less than a quid.
I shall be back there in June.
Of course you won't hear an anti-semitic joke - it isn't that kind of anti-semitism. The left also has a long history of associating Jews with capitalism. Turn up a stone on twitter and you'll find a Corbynista spouting Rothschild conspiracy sh1t. This isn't a new phenomenon. Orwell was pointing it out in the 30s. However, the need to pander to large Islamic communities in certain constituencies has undoubtedly made Labour more tolerant of it of late and given cover to the latent anti-semitism of longer-standing leftists.
That's b*ollocks. If I said I didn't want the UK to take in a single unvetted Muslim "refugee" in case one of them is a Jihadi, that isn't prejudice against Muslims in the slightest. It's entirely legitimate and reasonable pragmatism that has absolutely nothing to do with hating individuals because of their religion. Every Muslim who holds beliefs compatible with western values prevented from entering under my preferred policy would have my absolute sympathy.
I'm assuming this same pragmatism was behind Burney's comment.
I didn't say 'love', I said that if it were possible to press a button that meant that the decades of muslim immigration to this country had never taken place, I would press it, since the consequences of it have on balance been largely negative (indeed, the only significant positive I can find is in food). I absolutely believe that those negatives are a consequence of the belief systems and cultures engendered by the Islamic faith rather than being a racial trait. If you consider that racist, then you'd have to say that any prejudice against Christian fundamentalists is also racism. :shrug:
Again, it's about beliefs, not about race.
The point is, your original comparison was flawed. If someone could put up a convincing argument for why allowing Jews to come to the UK has been largely negative, then we might have reason to believe they weren't motivated by racism and inherent dislike of Jews as individuals.
Making the same convincing argument for Muslims is a piece of píss.
Indeed. On the one hand we have: Self-ghettoised communities leading to massive social divides; an undermining of the education and legal systems; systemic discrimination against women and gays; a massive rise in anti-semitism; cousin marriage; honour killings; mass sexual exploitation of white, working class girls; FGM, radicalisation; electoral fraud; restriction of free speech through threat and home-grown terrorism.
On the other hand we have curry and a variety of kebabs.
Tricky one.
Not really. The point is whether you think it is fine to discriminate against someone on religious grounds but not on the grounds of race. It doesn't really matter whether you think you can justify this prejudice in your own mind or show evidence.
They carry similar penalties before the law and both are illegal. You can go on until you are blue in the face about the negative impact of Muslims but it doesn't change the fact that you are discriminating against somebody on the basis of their beliefs. Your reasons for doing so are your own but the act itself remains illegal.
One could argue that the number of shootings and stabbing in parts of London are largely down to black people. Would this make disliking black people ok?
Nowhere does this translate into the hatred of individuals. One can dislike the jewish community (control of the media etc) but still maintain that your jewish bloke on the street is ok. Or are we suggesting that the Labour Party activelydislike all individual jewish people?
Is it fine to discriminate against someone based on what they say, believe and openly espouse as being indisputably true?
Yes. Yes, it is. In fact, it's how we judge people all the time.
Does that have anything to do with race? No. There are plenty of white muslims. Their beliefs are fvcking idiotic as well.
There's nothing special about religious beliefs. They're just a set of ideas like any other and their bearers can be held accountable for them. They are not deserving of special protection.
If I walked into a job interview with you and told you I believed the earth was flat and run by lizard people, you wouldn't give me the job. Why would me claiming this was as a result of my religious beliefs make any difference to you?
Hang on - your original assertion was that Burney declaring he’d rather no Muslim had ever come to the UK is evidence of his inherent prejudice against muslims (by his own standards). You said nothing of this being illegal and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don’t think expressing such a belief should be illegal.
So why are you bringing legality into the conversation?
We were merely talking about what is and isn’t racist. Burnley’s comment about Muslims is very, very easy to justify as not being driven by inherent prejudice. To do the same for an equivalent claim about Jews is almost impossible.
Everything both of you say about them is sufficient evidence of your prejudice against muslims. I am quite frankly stunned that you are even denying it having boasted of it so proudly in previous conversations.
My original point was that I found it puzzling that B could clearly be anti-muslim yet so 'appalled' by the notion of anti-semitism in the labour party. The defence that it is purely their religion that you are opposed is nonsense, but when it came up I asked why you felt it was ok to discriminate against one person because of their religion but not another because of their race. It was then I pointed out that in eyes of the law both carry an equal penalty.
THe defence of 'having nothing against the individuals themselves' is as old as the hills and has been used by pretty much every exponent of particular prejudice in the modern era. 'I have nothing against you personally, mate, just your religion'.....
You may well believe that but the law doesnt. Of course, you could say you had no problem whatsoever with jewish people but you ****ing hate the religion and are disgusted by the fact that it has its own state which you are also fanatically opposed to. Were I to do that, do you think the majority of people would think I was anti-semitic? Why???? I just dont like the religion, thats all. Nothing against jewish people at all (apart from the fact that they are jewish).
I would give you a job if you were a flat earther. Nothing wrong with that at all....
You don't see a logistical issue with vetting someone's beliefs? Or an ethical one with assuming that a specific religion needs vetting while another does not? As an example, if you made believing in equal rights for homosexuals part of the vetting process you would ban fundamentalist Christians but probably not Anglicans. You'd be happy with that, would you?
The law is bullsh1t and you know it. It doesn't stand up to a moment's intelligent scrutiny - as with all the absurd, repressive, authoritarian hate legislation brought in by Blair et al. Someone is entitled to believe what they want. However, I am equally entitled to judge them on those beliefs.
And your other argument is disingenuous. Nobody hates Judaism, they hate Jews. Anti-semitism is about hating Jews because of what they are, not what they believe. That renders your analogy meaningless.
No-one is suggesting vetting on the basis of belief. The point is that personal beliefs ought to be just that - personal. Believe what you want, but don't expect the world around you to bend to you. However, if you choose to put your beliefs on display, it isn't unreasonable for me to judge you on them.
I still cannot see the moral basis for justifying one hatred and castigating the other.
If I talk to an anti-semite they will say they have nothing against individual jews. THey will say they****ing despise zionism, that it has imprisoned the jewish faith and the jewish people in political dogma, that it is the brainchild of bankers and globalists that want to control foreign oil and plant US military might in the middle east. They will tell me they don't have the slightest problem with individual jewish people.
If you can sit there, in all honesty, and tell me that you are 100% comfortable that your prejudice is justified by being solely about a belief system whereas anti-semitism, in all it forms, must and shall be the hatred of all jewish people on the grounds of race then I will let this go right now.
Your argument is wilfully obtuse in that you refuse to distinguish between judging someone on the basis of what they choose to believe and the ethnicity with which they happen to be born.
One is a rational judgement predicated on an understanding of another's openly-expressed ideas and motivations, while the other is a blind prejudice based on an absurd, arbitrary and scientifically-meaningless distinction. Until such time as you acknowledge the obvious fact that these two things are utterly dissimilar, there really is no point in arguing with you. You seem simply to want to explain any objection to Islam away as racism and are prepared to ignore logic in order to do so. :shrug:
I am 100% comfortable that my contempt for Islam is justified by an understanding of the belief system that underpins it.
I am equally comfortable that anti-semitism has nothing to do with the belief system of Judaism and everything to do with a long-standing and deep-rooted European (and latterly Islamic) hatred of the Jews as a race.
There are very good reasons why a comment such as stating it would have been better had no Muslim ever come to the UK is highly stigmatised and comes with a huge social penalty.
They are much the same reasons why discussing scientifically proven IQ differences across races (blacks lower than whites, Southeast Asians higher than whites, etc) is so radioactive. Both ideas have a historical legacy that none of us should want to revisit - but there remain people who wish to use such ideas to do just that.
The problem, however, is that both ideas have a strong case for being objectively true (when it comes to IQ across races, this is not even open to debate as the science is clear).
Furthermore, both ideas are also highly relevant to hugely important conversations that need to be had either now or in the future about the kind of societies we want to foster.
Which is why it is not always helpful when someone like you comes along and bandies crude words like racism and prejudice around.
You know full well why Burney and I don’t take the same position against any other religious group. If we woke up tomorrow morning and found that it was all a dream and it was in fact fundamentalist Buddhists or Jains whose disgusting belief systems and cultures had pervaded British society, our ire would turn in a split second to them.
And this fact (which I assume you accept) MUST be enough to acquit us of any meaningful charge of inherent discrimination. It is proof that what we object to are ideas - whoever holds them.
Regarding your final point about outdated justifications for bigotry, it has always been a mystery to me why “some of my best friends are xxx” has never been a sufficient counter argument to charges of prejudice. To me there could be no better proof that your prejudice is against ideas not people. But you continue to insist that we are lying or concealing our true feelings And it is this kind of bad faith that means conversations like this are always a dead end .
No, since because he's an entirely secular (indeed atheist) Jew, he has no religion on the basis of which to discriminate.
On the other hand, if M were a frummer and expected to be able to come to work in a silly hat and not work after dusk on a Friday, I would fully support your right not to employ him.
Of course, we might also acknowledge that even if he were a cowboy hat / ringlet sporting dude, such beliefs would be unlikely to prompt him to take out his co-workers with a bread knife.
Since all religions aren't the same, I don't see why we should treat them all the same.
Of course, but as an employer, you should have the right to decide whether having such an outlandishly-attired fellow representing your company is what's best for your business. Equally, he must accept that his rightful choice to go around looking ridiculous for religious reasons may come with penalties.
There you are then, you've only yourselves to blame. Insisting on "authentic" ethnic cuisine was always going to be the thin end of the wedge.
People will have supported most, probably even all, of that stuff at some point. Arguing that it is now a real problem simply because it's Islams doing it too is always going to be tricky.
That isnt really true though, is it. Someone is born muslim because their parents are muslim. Similarly one is born jewish because their parents are. What one does with that birthright is up to the individual.
It becomes even more muddled with the jews because they are both a race and a religion.
I am sorry, I just dont see the grand distinction.