Friday, July 31, 2009

The Anguished Contortions of Appeasement

Racial profiling is an unfortunate by-product of a fragile civil society seeking to protect itself by visually identifying (visible minorities) who have proven through their intentions and their deeds to wreak havoc for the purpose of: a) avenging itself on a society that marginalizes people of colour leaving them victimized and bitter, as lesser beings in a society of superior beings - as has occurred traditionally in black populations whose poverty has produced social disarray and the backlash of criminal distemper.

And, of course, b) a much later addition to the profiling-for-protection methodology which identifies people of Middle Eastern heritage, or those fitting the profile of disaffected Muslims whether nurtured within the bosom of an accepting Western culture, or having immigrated to the West carrying the baggage of tribalism, religious intolerance and cultural improprieties with them. To stigmatize an entire collective for the vile work of a minority is unfortunate.

On the other hand, when it comes to a world-wide phenomenon such as fanatical Islamism with its determination to mount violent jihad against infidels, Muslim quislings and Jews, the threat is so alarming and so wide-spread that it is inevitable that innocents will be swept into the net of apprehension and fear. The authorities of the West fear attack, so they must remain vigilant with the intent of apprehending potential jihadists.

Yet there are certain sensibilities and sensitivities toward the plight of those swept into the net, the vast numbers of innocent and law-abiding Muslims, themselves prime victims of the vicious Islamists. Countries as sensitive to being labelled racist and discriminatory as Britain, for example, have succumbed to the kind of 'correctness' that leads them to infer, absurdly, that a perceived 'balance' will protect them from these labels.

And from the righteous wrath of the jihadist enablers.

Great Britain's Home Office has released a list of individuals who are persona-non-grata in that country. For their anti-social and dangerously right-wing activism. Not that the country wishes to stifle freedom of association and freedom of speech, but it would far prefer to be proactively engaged to keep foreign elements whose political preoccupations present a danger to the stabilization of society, from entering the country.

It is most certainly embarrassing if that list is comprised of mostly 'militant' Muslims, so to that list add anti-gays and far-right racists and neo-Nazis - deservedly. Throw in a Jew or two also, just to give added balance, if it can be construed that his right-wing talk show presents an unbalanced view that attracts the attention of nutters on the right. The nutters on the left are quite all right and can be dealt with. In a society surfeit with them.

The disclosure by Britain's Daily Mail newspaper that political calculation at the very highest level of British government administration - the executive level - has sought to balance the make-up of the exclusionist list reveals the mindset of a governing body that will not allow itself to publicly acknowledge the very real threat it faces from Islamist jihadists. Lest it offend.

The delicacy behind the choreography of fairness and justness in not holding Islam to account for its fundamentalist wayward minority reveals a Chamberlain-like attitude of not upsetting the applecart when the apples have long since rolled away from the cart that was kicked off kilter, one that a Churchillian attitude would have righted and called the offenders to account.

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posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 31, 2009

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