Radical Muslims must integrate, says Blair

The nearer he gets to stepping down, the more Blair feels free to exhibit his rabid right wing tendencies. And nowhere is he more right wing than on the subject of immigration and integration and how he sees this as a link between radical Islam and terrorism.

Tony Blair yesterday told radical Muslims that they had a "duty to integrate" into British society and warned them they could not be allowed to override what he described as the country's core values of democracy, tolerance and respect for the law. "Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. Conform to it; or don't come here. We don't want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed," Mr Blair said.

The notion of people deciding whether or not to "come here" based on whether you agree or disagree with our foreign policy - which I presume is the source of the hate-mongering he is referring to - ignores that fact that many of the people who disagree with our foreign policy are already here. They are not immigrants, they are British born citizens and many of them are not even from the Pakistani communities that Blair was hinting at. There are many white citizens who also profoundly disapprove of Blair's foreign policy. Are we also to be considered hate-mongers?

The problem for Blair whenever he hits this subject is that he has chosen to see the War on Terror as a battle of values. He imagines that if only he can force these Muslims to "integrate" and accept our values then the problem of terrorism will be solved. He refuses to see any link between our actions - and our support for other government's actions - abroad as in any way fuelling the fire.

It is an absurd place from which to start any logical discussion on terrorism. I can think of no terrorist group anywhere in the world who do not have a political goal. Indeed, in order for an act to be labelled "terrorist" the dictionary almost requires there to be a political dimension to the violent act.

Terrorist:

adj : characteristic of someone who employs terrorism (especially as a political weapon); "terrorist activity"; "terrorist state" n : a radical who employs terror as a political weapon; usually organizes with other terrorists in small cells; often uses religion as a cover for terrorist activities

Blair seeks to remove the cause from the equation and instead to see this as a clash of cultures. It's very similar to Bush's comments after 9-11 that:

They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

Of course, the greatest convenience about this argument is that we don't have to concern ourselves with the West's propping up of illegitimate repressive Arab regimes, nor do we have to think about the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians; we can simply write the whole thing off as an elaborate form of jealousy and move on.

What's most galling about watching Blair employ these arguments is that he has been amongst the most vocal of European leaders in recognising the need to address the Israeli-Palestine issue as a means of tackling terrorism; even if he, rather disingenuously, referred to it as: "a propaganda that may be, indeed is, totally false; but is, nonetheless, attractive to much of the Arab street."

On the contrary, we should start with Israel/Palestine. That is the core.

Blair walks an astonishingly muddled line when it comes to this stuff. He agrees that we need to tackle the Israel-Palestine issue as a matter of urgency whilst simultaneously writing off any genuine grievance that disgruntled persons may feel concerning our policies there as "propaganda".

It is an astonishing attempt to correct a grievance whilst refusing to acknowledge the grievance as genuine. He suggests that we intervene in this sixty year old conflict - not because a dreadful wrong has been done to the people of Palestine - but because it will stop this issue being used by extremists to fuel hatred against us.

And if this is done I suppose, in Blair's mind, we can then get on with the important task of forcing these damn Muslims to integrate.

Blair ended this diatribe by congratulating David Cameron on his stance on immigration:

"I think it is great that in British politics today no mainstream party plays the race card."

I wonder if Blair is even aware of how very close he is to playing that card himself when he employs these duplicitous arguments.

UPDATE:

One of the other ironies I didn't touch upon here was Blair's insistence that this is a society of law abiding citizens and that we insist all immigrants obey the law. I wholeheartedly agree. However, laws also apply to governments, and one of the things that is outraging many of Blair's citizens is the fact that his government ignored international law when it invaded Iraq. So Blair should look to put his own house in order before he lectures others on lawbreaking.

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tag: Blair, Iraq war, Muslim, veils, Israel, Palestine, War On Terror, integration,