Matthew Parris and Charles Moore both have important columns in their respective papers today about the Lord Chief Justice’s remarks. Matthew eloquently sums up what is most worrying about the argument made by the Archbishop of Canterbury and supported by Lord Phillips:
the second claim that Lord Phillips endorses is more dangerous. Decoded, Dr Williams is saying that in a multicultural society it is fine for people within a culture to agree not to exercise certain rights, even if English law would allow them to.
This is a charter for male dominance. It’s a charter for cultural bullying; for peer-group pressurising; for self-oppression. It’s a charter against women and teenagers who cannot make wholly free choices because they have nowhere else to go; a charter against individuals whose circumstances have made it difficult to think outside the cultural box; a charter for discreet duress. I am sorry to hear the Lord Chief Justice endorsing it.
In The Telegraph, Charles Moore tackles the flawed thinking, which is gaining popularity in establishment circles, that suggests that only the ‘moderate extremists’—generally, the Muslim Brotherhood—can win over the violent extremists and so the moderate extremists should be empowered. As Charles writes:
The Mosques and Imams Advisory Board, which tries to keep mosques free of baddies, includes representation of the Muslim Association of Britain, which is a British arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest Islamist organisations in the world. To help purge violent extremism from universities, a new organisation has emerged called Campusalam. At its launch, it gave a platform to three Muslim Brotherhood men.
The common thread in all this is how genuinely moderate Muslims in this country are constantly having their positions undercut by the government and the establishment. One hopes that these figures soon realise what damage their actions are doing to community cohesion.
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