Despite recent temperatures pushing 30 C Labour controlled Tower Hamlets Council has ordered all councillors not to drink in meetings during Ramadan (starts in about 2 DAYS), so as not to offend Muslim councillors. It has even gone so far as to order non Muslim councillors not to eat the finger food prepared for council meetings until Muslims break their fast at sunset - despite the food being served in a separate room.
Now I'm all for encouraging individuals to act with cultural sensitivity. That's why during the years that I lived in Pakistan and Afghanistan I didn't drink alcohol (although there were places in Pakistan where it was available), I didn't eat pork or bacon (although my colleague Larry found a shop in Peshawar that sold it under the counter!) and I didn't make a show of eating during Ramadan - although I did discretely drink water and no local Muslims ever objected to that. The latter however, is apparently now against the rules for non Muslims on Tower Hamlets Council...
The problem comes down to Labour's approach to so many things - instead of encouraging people to be act responsibly they enforce it with government rules; and instead of encouraging cultural sensitivity in all directions (Muslims councillors shouldn't actually need to be told to be tolerant of non Muslims taking a sip of water on a hot day!) Labour's political correctness creates 'in groups' whose 'rights' are enforced on everyone else. This Labour approach to multiculturalism is in fact the exact opposite of tolerance and actually creates victims among people who are not in Labour's politically correct in groups'. These include:
1. Muslims who don't strictly keep Ramadan. Despite what some politically correct councils seem to think, many Muslims do NOT fast during Ramadan. When I lived in Pakistan many of my Pakistani friends quietly told me that probably no more than 30% of local people actually fasted during Ramadan. However, in any Muslim community, whether in the UK or in Islamic countries, there is a huge degree of social pressure to at least be seen not to be breaking the fast. There is a very real issue of intimidation in many Muslim communities that policies like those adopted by Tower Hamlets Council are actually facilitating.
2. Non Muslim minorities in the UK such as Christians and Hindus with family origins in predominately Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Such people are cruelly disappointed to find that politically correct local councils enforce the same sort of rules on them and their children that oppressed them in their countries of origin. In fact, one of the greatest failures of 'multiculturalism' has been that it has transported into Britain social power structures from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh that oppressed non Muslim minorities in those countries. This was indelibly impressed on me some years ago when I was invited to speak at the Asian Christian Fellowship in Southall, which numbered well over a hundred people. After the meeting a family of Pakistani origin invited me back to their home for a meal (hospitality is one of the very positive cultural values that Asians contribute to this country...!). There it quickly became apparent that I was one of the first white Urdu speakers (of a sort!) they had ever met. With tears streaming down her face, the lady of the house in a mixture of broken English and Urdu, poured out her heart about how distressed she was that the local council and schools kept treating them as if they were Muslims - because they were of Pakistani origin. It wasn't a question of ignorance - at the time the mayor of neighbouring Hounslow was an Asian Christian, one of 50,000 in the UK. The problem was the political correctness of their local council that listened to self proclaimed Muslim community leaders, instead of relating to people as individual citizens.
3. And of course the other victims of enforced 'multicultralism' exemplified by Tower Hamlets council, are all the other non Muslims in the area who don't want to be subjected to Islamic rules! Let's be clear - in the UK there are plenty of Islamist groups who engage in a 'political jihad' of seeking to slowly step by step align British public policy with that of Islamic government. Their strategy to achieve this is firstly, to push for special recognition of religious distinctives by local and central government, which then gives them greater leverage to 'enforce' these by social pressure and intimidation within predominately Muslim areas of the UK, then finally requiring non Muslims to observe these 'rules' in the name of 'tolerance' of Islam. It looks like Labour controlled Tower Hamlets Council have fallen into this Islamist trap hook, line and sinker...
