Re: Racist & Religious?
In my humble opinion there are a great many things that contirbute to racism, ignorance, fear, intolerance to name but three. A big one is misunderstanding, or perhaps I should say a persons particular view of something. In the Koran it states that persons of the Muslim faith must fight for their right to observe their religion no matter where they find themselves, now this doesn't mean fight in the literal sense, as we all know there are many ways to fight for something and women no doubt will be well aware of this, mums, how many times have you had your young child come to you, "mum please can I have some sweets?", now for what ever reason, you refuse, the child continues, it's driving you mad, eventually you relent, hand the child a packet of Polo mints and away it goes, it 'fought' for it's right to eat sweets and it won, yet nobody was hit, shot or stabbed, see what I mean?
Now sadly today this fight is taken literally,violence is increasingly being seen as an acceptable way of acheiving something, when clearly it is not.
Again racism, is it wrong to hate a person, or a group of people because they have become successful? of course it is, Hitler hated the Jews, in reality it would probably be more accurate to say he feared them, because they were an aquisitive group, they worked hard to make money and having got in they spent it wisely, nothing wrong in that.
Look at South Africa, the white man built up the country by hard work, the blacks didn't want to know, yet there was nothing stopping them doing it, they simply didn't want to put in the effort, yet as we saw, when it was all done and money being made, they turned on the white farmers, brutally killing them and raping the white women. Having got what they wanted they sat back and let it all fall apart once more.
Just before Christmas my job took me all over the country and I met all kinds of people, many of them Eastern Europeans, I decided to try and work out why they all came here, often to the annoyance of our own people, what I found not only amazed me, but gave me a much better understanding of why they do what they do.
They know to a greater extent that they are being exploited, but they still earn more in a week over here than a lot could earn in a month back home, they want to better themselves and ultimately, a lot of them want to return home, the money they earn here will greatly enhance their lives back home, you can't really blame them, it's only what we did in the 80's when loads of construction workers went to Germany.
One evening I was sitting outside my hotel having a smoke and I got chatting to a nice young girl from one of these countries. She told me how she had been sent here by her parents when she was 14, some 10 years ago when her country's government were trying to stop people leaving. She'd stayed with a relative but on turning 16 had been told to make her own way in life. She'd waited on in cafe's, collected glasses in bars and cleaned floors to support herself, one day she hoped to return home, but the average wage in her own country was around £50 a month.
We chatted for a while and I asked her if she had anything she wanted to ask me, she asked what I did for a living, so I told her, she than asked if I would tell her how much I earned, at that point I was earning £1000 a week. On hearing this she was stunned, "you're a very very rich man" she exclaimed, I didn't think I was, she then went on to tell me that in her country the only people earning that kind of money were government officials!
There is, as my grandma used to say, good and bad in all walks of life, be it men, or women, blacks, whites or other races, christians, jews, muslims, or any other creed or religion, there will always be good and bad. we need to be tolerant of course we do, but tolerance should not be seen as weakness, and tolerance, like many other things in life has to be a two way street, if you want me to have respect for you, then you must have respect for me, likewise if you want me to be tolerant to you, then you must be tolerant with me, we all make mistakes and we need to recognise them and learn from them, not put our heads down and charge blindly on.
Yes, no doubt we do do things that agrieve certain members of the Muslim community, but perhaps if they made more of an effort to fit in then we'd be more accepting of them, demanding a mosque on every street corner is not the way to go, neither as we saw recently during the lockdown when some of them chose to ignore the rules to celebrate the end of Ramadan, is putting themselves above everyone else likely to endear them to us, in fact one of the best things they could do would be to hand over those of their religion who engage in sexual activity with children, this would have to give them more credibility in their claim to want to 'fit in' over here.
Black people to could do the same, rather than moaning that they are being unfairly treated when they are stopped and searched, let them who know who amongst them are the ones dealing drugs or shooting and stabbing people, inform on them, show that not all black people condone violence.
How far must this all go, if we bow to the demands to remove all our statues, and other things that go back to our days of the slave trade, then must we not also get rid of the majority of black people? Britain is an island, the black people by and large,are mostly descended from those slaves who came here hundreds of years ago, blacks are not indiginous to Britain, so if we are to bow to their demands must we not also remove the majority of these individuals, because let us not forget, they too, by their very being here are also a reminder of our slave trading past. How far do you go with it all, yes we need tolerance, yes we need a greater acceptance of all things different, but as I said earlier, it has to be on an open playing field. as someone once said, 'Lord grant me the strength to change the things I can change, and the wisdom to know and accept the things I cannot change'