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Moderate Muslims in Britain have a problem with Islam too



We need to talk about Islam. We also need to talk about Muslims, and since we’re having more and more Muslims in Europe we really need to talk about whether or not they can integrate in mainstream society, and what are we supposed to do with the ones that don’t.

We have actually been having muslim immigrants in Europe for a few decades and for a long while they got along with the rest of the population and integrated.
Or so we were told. In truth we just didn’t know much because the mainstream circles and muslim circles rarely intersected, and as it turns out, what we were told it was peaceful coexisting it kinda wasn’t.

Well, not in its entirety. There are muslim immigrants communities in the West that have been trying to get along just fine with others and succeeded for the most part.  These are the ones who came with the open stated purpose to make a better life for themselves, who adjusted to the Western way of life and found a happy compromise between their Muslim religion and living in the West. You know them. They are the people who have jobs, businesses and are socially successful. They’re the ones who managed to pick and choose and for which “muslim” is not the core of their main identity, it’s just one of the many things they are.  They are the ones whose daughters don’t cover their hair, those who have succeeded socially, those we call moderates.

My friend Ahmed is one of them. Ahmed is a local councillor, a businessman, a college teacher, a marathon runner and a Muslim. He is ethnically Indian but was born in the Indian community in SA and immigrated to the UK with his parents when he was 5.  40 years later he is a pillar of his community, he has friends and associates that are both muslims and non muslims and manages to keep his life carefully on the middle line between his muslim community and the mainstream community.

And his life has recently become a lot harder than it used to be, because things have changed in his community and these changes are forcing moderate integrated people like Ahmed to take stances they don’t want or face social ostracism from their community, which can have dire consequences for himself , his family and his business.

Ahmed really hates the “refugees”. In our private discussions he’d get angry because

 “these stinking goatfuckers are coming over and ruining everything we’ve worked for since the 80’s”.

 

 There are a lot of people who think like him, because they came to integrate and live at peace with their non muslim neighbours but are now feeling that the changes in their community by the new arrivals are ruining their efforts to integrate and live peacefully.

His friend Jamal adds

 “you have people like me, who came over because we want a better life for us and our kids. I want my son to be happy and be free to do what he wants with his life. I have my shop, I watch football and he goes to the best private school in town. If I wanted him to live in a shithole I’d have stayed home”.

I’ve known Jamal for 15 years and he’s never worn Muslim garb. His wife wears western clothes, with her hair uncovered and she works in the shop with him. Well she used to, because now they have three kids and she has to look after them and Jamal is successful enough to hire people in his much larger new shop.

Both Ahmed and Jamal feel that Britain’s over the top generosity to certain immigrants has created a bad environment for them.


 “You have these people, they don’t come to work and do better. They come for the benefits, innit? They come coz they was told you can get a free house and free money, and they get it, so they never need to actually go out and meet people who aren’t like them. They laugh at you because you give them free money, and they spend their days at the mosque talking shit about you stupid kuffar. They take your money and look down on you”.

Ahmed says that Europe is being overly generous with the wrong people.

“When it was hard to come over, when you needed a job and money, you made a commitment. It put everything you had on the line, and you did it because you wanted a better life. My parents wanted to live better and to give me and my brothers a better life so they saved their money and came to the UK with that purpose.
So they were emotionally invested in integrating and succeeding. It’s hard to uproot yourself from your community, so you have to work hard and be successful because otherwise it wasn’t worth it. “

But the newer arrivals, the ones the Blair government imported in, didn’t have the same motivation.

Jamal says

 “Muslims are lazy, innit? You’re told by the Quran that coz you’re a Muslim you’re better than the Kuffar and they owe you. Why you think all our countries are shithole? Why you think Mohammed took his people and set to conquer others’ lands? Because they wanted what they had, especially the Jews. They wanted their big cities and commerce, but didn’t want to work for them. SO you tell a bunch of desert people a story that says “you are better than everyone else and God loves you, so you should go and conquer these other people and take what they have”, of course that’s gonna be an attractive message. More attractive than “work to get what you want”. Innit?”

So you had families coming over from Pakistan or India and Africa who didn’t come to make it, they came for the free money. Coming over was no longer an investment in success, it was just a matter of gaming the system.

Jamal

 “There guys don’t do shit all day. They sit home and bang out kids and go to the mosque and you’re paying for it and they think they fooled you. They know they have it good because they remember how shit back home was, but their kids don’t.
Their kids go to school here innit? And they’ll meet other kids and soon realize that the other kids have nicer stuff and their parents have nicer stuff because them bennies don’t go that far. And they resent it, they want what the other kids have, but they can’t have it coz their parents can’t afford it from the bennies innit? So the kids get resentful of the other kids. They’re kids, so they’re stupid. They don’t understand that the other kids have better stuff coz their parents work, they just know that they want that stuff and if they’re not given it they throw temper tantrums.
And you take them kids to the mosque, innit and they get taught that they’re better than the white kids coz they’re muslims, innit? So if they’re better than the white kids how come the white kids have better toys? So they get angry, innit? They’re stupid and they’re angry and they’re starting to hate the white kids.
They won’t show it tho’ coz they know that won’t go down well, but they grow to live in this constant resentment. Their parents are grateful, but the kids think they’re owed the best stuff coz they’re better than you, and get angrier and angrier coz they don’t get it  ”

 The muslims who are socially successful are unlikely to become radicalized. Radicalization happens when people are unhappy, and in a lot of cases that’s because their parents and community put pressure on them.

Jamal “ It’s the clothes innit? Our clothes are shit innit? If you want to live your life well you want to look like the people around you. So you wear western clothes coz they’re comfier and better than a stupid dress innit? I wear jeans and a t shirt and my son wears jeans and a t shirt and that’s my way of saying we’re part of this country’s community. When you work, you don’t wear your dad’s clothes because they don’t do the job innit? It’s cold here so you want warm clothes and if you’re in a job for someone else you want to fit in and move up.
You look out at 12 o clock at Clock Tower, most of the people about that aren’t white wear their old country  stuff innit? Coz thing is, them people ? They don’t work. If they worked they wouldn’t be at 12 o’clock in town.  So coz they don’t work, them clothes send a message. The message is that they’re muslim first and every one of them walking around in them stupid dresses thinks they’re better than you. You don’t see fokin’ Sadiq Khan wearing a stupid dress do you?”

Ahmed confirms this.  The clothes are a way of showing the dedication to the silent segregation that is practiced by the Muslim communities all over the UK.

The young muslims fresh out of college who want a job learn fast that wearing a suit takes you farther, and once you start getting your own money in you start realising things you didn’t see before. You mix with the white people and want what they have and start to realize they live better than you because they don’t have to listen to a crazy bearded imam telling you to fast and bang your head to the floor with your ass in the air.  So they start to move out of the poor immigrant areas. Successful immigrants don’t linger in the poor areas. They’ll get their nice house in a suburb and they’ll move where they can get a nice house, and whether or not that’s gonna be an area with other successful muslims is a different thing.

But as this happens, the community fights back. The parents want their children with them and many have to make the choice between living their own lives and obeying their parents. It’s not an easy choice. The parents will try to pull the prodigal son back in by forcing them to accept an arranged marriage with a nice muslim girl, and many are forced to obey because their entire lives they’ve been told to respect their parents.

The ones who dare to resist being pulled in have to suffer social ostracism. The entire family, which is always an extended family will look down on them. They’ll get stern words and looks from their elders and from the imam and the social pressure is terrible.

The one who have the fortitude to escape have to accept that the price for their freedom of mind is renouncing their families.

Those who don’t are shamed into getting back into the community, and the social pressure on them is horrid. The parents want their kids to be like them, and the kids are forced into complying which makes them unhappy and angry.

And they go back to the mosque where they’re told openly that the source of their misery and unhappiness are the Kuffar around them. So they get angrier and angrier and these are the kids that get radicalized and go to Syria to fight for ISIS because the pressure their families put on them is awful, because they want to finally do something right in their parents’ eyes and because at least in Syria there’s a lot less temptations than in Europe and finally their dad will be proud of them.

Ahmed

“The kids get radicalized online and at the mosque. There’s a lot of money coming in from abroad to the mosques, and propaganda, books and stuff printed in Saudi  that tell them how awful and degenerate the West is and how they’re superior. How the Kuffar  are inferior. So you have kids who are told that their inferior have better stuff than they do. Of course that’s gonna make them angry, and that’s why they go and do this dumb shit. In their eyes, the fact that the Kuffar live better than they do is an injustice, and by blowing back against it they are just doing what is their duty as good muslims, what is their right as superior people”.

Jamal

 “It’s never the good kids who go, innit? It’s always the losers from the families on the bennies that never had to realize their view of the world is wrong because the bennies and the mosque protect them from that. When you work and get your own money and learn you can live well from your work, you get to thinking about it innit? And you realize that what you’ve bene taught and what your parents believe is stupid backwards bullshit.  But if you never have to go into the world and rub your elbows with people who aren’t like you, you won’t see that.”

Of course that causes problems. Being seen as a bad muslim has dire consequences.

“Your parents and uncles will talk down to you and try to shame you.  They’ll put pressure on you and your mum will cry and put this whole circus on and the imam will come over and they will try to shame you into going back to the mosque.  They’re being earnest here, they still believe apostates should be killed so in their heads they’re trying to save their baby from himself”.

So you ill go back coz if you don’t they will kick you out. Now just that they won’t let you see your baby brothers anymore and nobody in the family will speak to you, but if you like have a business, they won’t buy from you anymore. They’ll go to where the Imam tells everyone that you’re a failed man so buying from you or even talking to you is a sin, and that’s hard. You get chased out by your community”

Ahmed
“ There are a lot of my friends who are, shall we say “socially muslim”. I don’t think they believe anymore, I mean you can’t go to the University and travel and get a good job and still believe in flying horses. But you pretend, because it’s safer. Problem is that if your own wife still believes, you can’t tell her. You have to go on and pretend and try to steer your kids away frm it. It’s very hard, not a nice balancing act”.

Jamal:

“And then you have all that’s been happening, these attacks and so, and there’s a lot of people who look on us as if we are the enablers of these bastards innit? And maybe we are coz you’re too scared to speak against them. Them kids who had that table at Clock Tower protesting ISIS as British Muslims were risking their lives.

We are their enablers coz it’s dangerous to speak against it. At the mosque, most mosques are dangerous. It’s supposed to be this place of community where all come together but it’s how the belief and the hatred spread.

And you can’t talk about it, innit? Christians had their reformation and shit, right? You had people who said “hold on this is stupid and doesn’t work so we need to change it and make it easier for people to be Christian”.  You don’t get that here. You think I’m so stupid to believe Mohammed fled on a flying horse? I’m not but nobody’s willing to admit it’s a stupid fairytale.

So I put on my mask of a good muslim and go to mosque and pray act and pretend to keep the Ramadan coz if I don’t my family will suffer and my shop will suffer.
And I hate it so damned much”.

 

 Names have been changed.


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