Sean Gabb
The Future of Islam and the West
Sean Gabb
A Speech Given in London
on Friday the 27th February 2015
to “Dialogue with Islam”
Speakers (in order):
Dr Sean Gabb (Director, the Libertarian Alliance)
Jamal Harwood (New Civilisation, Islamic Political Magazine)
Dr Mustaqim Bleher (Author and translator of the Koran)
Tim Vince (Chair of Christian Heritage)
Note: This is the introductory speech that I gave on the 27th February 2015. Since no one tried to chop my head off for saying what I thought, I became bolder in my answers to the questions from the audience and in my disagreements with other members of the panel. I spoke far more bluntly about the supposed limits to freedom of speech. I even pointed out, by way of a lecture on Byzantine history and the Crusades, that, unless seriously weakened by some other force, or divided against itself, Christendom had always won its wars with Islam; and that anyone who spoke glibly back at me “about irreconcilable differences of paradigm” should be careful that he was not moving towards a conflict that had so far hardly begun and that his side would assuredly lose.
I say that no one tried to cut my head off. This is rather a silly remark. I found myself arguing with an audience of people who disagreed with just about everything I said, but who behaved with admirable restraint and good will, and who sat down with me afterwards to a most enjoyable dinner. Indeed, I found much common ground with Jamal Harwood. We agreed on the moral illegitimacy of corporate personhood in business organisations and of limited liability laws. We both denounced fractional reserve banking and praised a fully-convertible gold and silver standard. Our main difference was over the basis – in a free market – of time preference and risk in the determination of interest rates.
Turning to the other speakers, I doubt if Dr Bleher will be offended when I say that I found him more fundamentally German than Islamic in his manner of argument. And, while there are differences between the Libertarian Alliance and Christian Heritage, I thought Tim Vince an interesting speaker.
Before I left, someone with a big beard came and shook me by the hand, and thanked me for treating him like an adult human being when I said what I really thought.
I suspect, and even hope, that tonight was only the first round in a series of debates in which I and my colleagues can take the libertarian message to an audience that has not so far had the opportunity to give it serious consideration.
The Speech
The topic of this evening’s symposium is The Future of Islam and the West. The time I have is not enough to do justice to so large a topic. Instead, I will focus on the future of Islam in the United Kingdom.
The summary of what I have to say is that, for a group of communities so enterprising and so generally intelligent as my Islamic fellow-citizens have shown themselves to be, I am not impressed by the nature of your dealings with the British State.
You were allowed to settle in this country for various reasons. One of them is that the British ruling class does not wish to be held accountable before a united and homogenous nation. In such a nation, while there may be differences of income and faith and opinion, the people will understand one another, and will trust one another. Below a possibly turbulent surface, they will be joined by bonds of shared blood and a common history. A trespass on the rights of one will tend to be seen as a trespass on the rights of all. Show me ten reasonably homogenous nations, and I will show you seven or eight, or even nine, liberal democracies, with equality before the law and a high degree of political accountability. Show me a multi-ethnic “community of communities,” and I will probably show you an empire – an empire without working accountability, because its constituent nationalities are too suspicious of one another to present a united front to the authorities.
The British ruling class does not want to govern a nation. It wants to rule an empire. I repeat, this is not the sole reason why mass-immigration from the Third World was encouraged. But it is one of the most important reasons. You differ from the natives of this country in appearance, in blood, in faith, and in many of your most basic assumptions about the world. I will not dwell on certain unfortunate acts in Woolwich, in Rotherham, in Paris, and in the territories controlled by the Islamic State. I certainly do not wish to accuse anyone here of sympathy with the perpetrators of these acts. At the same time, those perpetrators can be seen – whether justly or unjustly I do not care to discuss – as part of a continuum that embraces many people here in this room.
This makes you ideal tools of the British ruling class. You are in the nation, but not of the nation. No doubt, some acts committed by Moslems are truly offensive to the ruling class. But even these serve the overriding purpose of divide and rule.
I will confess that I regret the mass-immigration of the past three generations. But we are where we are. The present choice for all of us is whether we descend into inter-ethnic civil war, or whether we can find some basis for mutual toleration of our differences and some basis for identifying and advancing our common interests.
Here, I return to my opening point. You were allowed to settle here because you are different from us. It is hard to say on the whole that you are privileged settlers. Your religious gatherings are spied on by the authorities. Your private associations are viewed with great suspicion. There are plans to interfere with how you bring up your children. Your movements are watched. Your opinions are censored. You risk imprisonment if you step out of line.
And your collective response? Why, you complain bitterly about the restrictions placed on you. But I have never seen any of you base your complaints on the universal principles of freedom of speech and freedom of association. Indeed, when you were presented with laws limiting the freedom of speech and association traditionally enjoyed by the natives of this country, you accepted them. Many of you would like even stronger laws – to punish all mockery of your faith, and to shut down political parties that are hostile to your presence in this country.
I tell you in conclusion that, if you want a future for Islam in this country, you must argue for your entirely proper wish to be separate, and to be left alone in your daily lives, on a firmer basis than your own convenience. You must learn to demand freedom of speech, and freedom of association, as parts of the right to be left alone.
You must learn to demand this right for yourself. And you must learn to demand it for everyone else.
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A good speech. I wonder how far the libertarian message will go among the Mahometans, but it’s worth a try.
Most of them, to be fair, have only ever seen the BBC and stuff. It’s worth a try.
Yes, David. Because there is quite a good and serious libertarian argument to have about the level of surveillance of mosques. It’s odd how they’re treated like gods when it comes to promoting multi-culturalism, but the anti-terrorist wing of the state are operating with totally different rules. E.g. the Muslims can interfere with little girls in Rotherham – no problem! However, some of these preachers are getting hassled for mere speech. Clearly the state fears terrorism more than it fears child abuse!
And yes, there is a clear problem here. I remember the day De Menezes was killed. On the train home, nearly everyone approved of the extra-judicial killing — although at that stage it was not known that he was Brazilian, and the information we all had was that the person killed looked “ethnic” – on the grounds that if he looked ethnic it wasn’t worth taking the chance and so he ought to have been killed just in case. The fact the man was Brazilian watered the state’s case down a lot, but nearly everyone would have been quite happy to see a Pakistani or a Somali executed on the Tube in that fashion. But we are making a big mistake if we make an “exception” and allow the state to behave in this way to ethnic minorities. This sort of thing mustn’t happen to anyone in the UK.
I have been a Muslim and a Libertarian long before I saw this speech, thank you very much.
Or, to put it another way:
“I tell you in conclusion that, if you want a future for wolves in this country, you must argue for your entirely proper wish to be separate, and to be left alone in your daily lives, on a firmer basis than your own convenience. You must learn to eat only vegetables, and refrain from taking human and animal life, as parts of the right to be left alone. You must learn to demand this diet for yourself. And you must learn to demand it for everyone else.”
I would expect similar success with that appeal.
BTW, Dr Gabb and other members of the Libertarian Community, how does this manifestation of Muslim political activism strike you?
How was it that famous American Muslim Rahman Emanuel put it?
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not before.” — Rahman Emanuel
I’m puzzled that no-one in the Libertarian Community is up in arms about Dr Muhammad Kadzwil’s proposals:
If you want, I’ll explain what those proposals mean. If you read between the lines, there are hints that Dr. Kadzwil is not a fan of Liberty or Freedom of Speech. Given the contacts and influence he has, this is a bit worrying from the libertarian point of view. But what do I know? I’m not a libertarian.
Muhammad Kadzwil
Your religious gatherings are spied on by the authorities. Your private associations are viewed with great suspicion. There are plans to interfere with how you bring up your children. Your movements are watched. Your opinions are censored. You risk imprisonment if you step out of line.
You’re being unfair on the British state. For decades, Islamophobes and racists in Rotherham, Oxford, Blackburn, etc have tried to set the police on Muslims over so-called “crimes” like gang rape and child prostitution. The police have refused to be exploited. In fact, in some cases they arrested the Islamophobes and racists instead. Surely something for libertarians to applaud?
However, as a racist and Islamophobe, I tend to think non-interference is not the best policy. If Muslims are “left alone”, they re-create the cultures of their homelands, which are highly corrupt and criminal. If they’re “left alone”, they act like a giant religious mafia. They also marry close relatives at startlingly high rates, which means lots of handicapped children and a general lowering in IQ. They don’t belong in the UK or any other western nation and the only possibilities now are:
1) An ever-harshening police state.
2) Expulsion of Muslims.
3) Civil war.
4) Some combination of the above.
Still, as long as no-one points out who’s really responsible for their presence and for the laws their presence has justified, we should be ok.
A good little speech.
These are positions that I have been advancing towards myself, so it is welcome to see similar thoughts articulated so precisely.
“The British ruling class does not want to govern a nation. It wants to rule an empire.
Exactly right.
I very much like to idea that we on the right (maybe I speak only for myself here) can have real discussions with our Moslem fellow citizens, rather than feeling hemmed in by the condescension and apologetics of (for want of a better shorthand) the Left.
The state would like to use Moslems to facilitate their tactic of divide and rule. I very much like the idea that we could instead join together in demanding our rights to freedom or speech and of association.
Thanks. We are where we are, and we need to take account of this when we try to spread the libertarian message.
Some of you may find Secular Koranism of interest. http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/secular-koranism.html
We are where we are.
Yes. We are absolutely terrified of even hinting at the identity of the biggest enemies of “Liberty” in the Western world and we are absolutely determined to stay that way until they achieve their aims. And remember, Dr Gabb: you’re also being spied on by Unit 8200 and its franchises at the NSA and GCHQ, so I hope you’ve not been naming them in private.
Good speech.
These are the personalities that should be challenging the ruling elite.
Ruling class are following a policy of divide and rule with the whole British public to smoke screen the real problems in the UK such as the divide between rich and poor.
I though the Mayor of Chicago was a Jew (at least a nominal one) rather than a Muslim. Oddly enough all the other candidates for Mayor of Chicago are even more big government than he is – although that says more about the terrible state of Chicago city politics than it says about him
Anyway, on the topic of Sean’s speech.
I suspect that relations between Islam and the West in the future will be much the same as they have been for the last 14 centuries (awful – if one tracks down the real history, rather than the nonsense that the BBC and the education system put forth), but with one important difference – seldom before has the West been so STRUCTRUALLY weak
The Byzantine Empire of the mid 7th century was still in a mess from Civil Wars and war with the Persians – and the Emperor was old and ill and had been badly advised in adopting a policy of religious intolerance. Also their was the structural weakness of the de facto serfdom of the late Roman Empire.
In Islam “everybody fights” (basically rule number one – as it had been for free citizens of the Roman Republic or the Greek City States) – under the Roman Empire only a small caste of professional soldiers (and mercenaries from outside the Empire) fight. That gave society a bit of a “glass jaw” – defeat the professional army and the population will just submit to you (because they have been submitting for centuries). Indeed had Constantinople not been such a “tough nut” to crack (thus giving the Byzantines time to fundamentally change their society – at least to in certain key respects) it is probable that all of the Byzantine Empire would have fallen – not just the Middle East and North Africa (including the jewel in the crown – Egypt).
The same was true in Visigothic Spain – where the “Bright” Goths just carried on the system of the late Roman Empire (most people just basically serfs), it was not true of Frankish France (a state “organised for war” – the purpose of the feudal system).
Sadly modern Europe (although not yet the United States – inspite of Comrade Barack Obama’s efforts at “gun control”) is like the late Roman Empire – a population used to submission, unarmed and unused to arms (easy prey). And the armed forces of Europe are largely token forces.
Everyone relies on the American armed forces – and they are in decline (and have been in decline for a long time now).
Everywhere the Welfare State grows – and eats up all resources, leading both to the decline of the Western armed forces and to the fundamental structural weakness of Western society.
Think about it – it as if the rulers of the Roman Empire has said the following……
“We will not just provide cheap food and services for the tiny minority of people who live in Rome and a few other cities – we will provide every basic need of life for MOST people in the Empire”.
How would that have worked out?
True our technology is much more advanced – but it can not do the impossible, most people can not be provided for the state.
Also our currency is a total mess – it is not even debased, it is entirely fictional.
No words can fully convey the true mess that is the Western “financial system”.
But it is more than all this – it is a matter of basic beliefs.
Tolkien said that people often fail of their promise (they do not do as well as they could have), but rarely of their seed (at least they have children – who can try again to actually achieve things).
The modern West has failed not just of its promise – but also of its “seed”. The fertility rate is below 2 in most Western countries – and society is collapsing generally anyway. Soon in the United States most children (those who actually born at all – who are not aborted) will not grow up in two parent households.
American society is no longer “functional” to use the word of Talcott Parsons (who actually supported the 1960s policies that have made American society dysfunctional).
America is no longer “the exception” (all other major Western nations going down the drain) it is basic structural decline, as a society, itself.
Even religious belief (long collapsed in Europe) is in decline in the United States.
How can the “Christian West” stand against Islam – if the Christian West is collapsing internally anyway?
Indeed even without the pressure of Islam, all evidence indicates that the West will be collapse into economic and social (cultural) chaos anyway.
Certainly there may be certain areas where the fertility rate is positive, where families are strong, and Church attendance is good (Mormon Utah springs to mind) – but overall the United States is NOT an exception to the decline of the West.
When the economy collapses – when the Welfare States can not longer be paid for and the credit bubble “financial system” finally goes, things will get very bad indeed – even without the pressure from Islam.
Traditional Islamic attacks from outside (which have been going on for 14 centuries) and the pressure of increasing numbers of followers of Mohammed INSIDE Western countries.
I agree with Dr Sean Gabb that the followers of Mohammed should, logically, defend the freedom of others if they ask for their own freedom to be respected.
However, this position is against Islamic law – all the Schools of Sunni jurisprudence and the Shia schools also, agree (for example) that there is no right to mock Islam.
Indeed that the “rights” of non Muslims (should it be decided to let non Muslims live) are based upon the submission of non Muslims to Islamic rule, to be marked by the various regulations of the Pact of Omar (and the Shia were just as strict to non Muslims as the Sunni were).
For example, unless commanded to be part of a military force that is commanded by a Muslim, non Muslims may not have weapons. Nor may non Muslim places of worship be larger or in a better state of repair than Muslim places of worship. Non Muslims are to “feel themselves subdued” and to reflect this in their conduct (which must be humble and submissive).
Islamic law has developed a considerable body of jurisprudence on these matters – and (sadly) is not going to be swayed by arguments that non Muslims should have the same rights as Muslims.
None of this means that Muslims are “bad people” or are “cruel” or so on – it is just the way things are. And have always been.
Perhaps things will change.
For
Thank you for pointing out the theological problem standing in the way of realizing Dr. Gabb’s proposed common front on individual rights.
I got cut off – I meant to point out that there are some Mosques in Britain that teach a modernist version of Islam that rejects Islamic law (so they might be open to freedom of speech arguments and so on).
However, I believe there are only two such Mosques in Britain – out of more than a thousand Mosques.
Also Mohammed himself did not like people who declared themselves Muslims (i.e. part of the “submission to God” – for some reason the BBC and the Western education systems often mistranslate the Arabic word for “submission” as “peace”), but were not really Muslims, he called them “hypocrites”.
Things did not go well with the “hypocrites”.
Mohammed was a military commander and politician of genius – trying to trick him by pretending to submit (whilst not really submitting) was not going to turn out well.
It was easy for Mohammed to find out if someone was truly on his side or not – for example would they execute their own infidel family?
Still, I repeat, the true threat to the West does NOT come from Islam.
We are destroying ourselves. And this is NOT the fault of Muslims.
The West is allowing itself to be destroyed by the matriarchy which established itself when Westerners failed to respect the institution of marriage.
Marriage is eugenic, bastardy dysgenic.
Discovering that you live in a matriarchy is like discovering your society has cancer.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2285670/Most-children-of-British-mothers-born-out-of-wedlock.html
There is an American organisation arguing that anarcho-capitalism is mandated by Islam, for any of you well-acquainted with theology. The Minaret of Freedom Institute identifies as libertarian too. No such discussions among British Muslims, unfortunately.
It is actually quite easy to see that only a theocracy would return us to rationally small government.
Good news Vabadus – as far as it goes.
I missed the bit about the British “Ruling Class” wanting to rule an empire rather than a nation.
How this fits people such as Clement Atlee and Mr Bevin (part of the “Ruling Class”?) I am not quite sure. Harold Wilson? Even Edward Heath was the son of Kentish builder. Winston Churchill really was from the “Ruling Class” (if there is such a thing), but he was never very keen on mass immigration (to be honest he was never wildly keen on non white people – but that was a normal view at the time).
Certainly there was some encouragement of immigration – for example the department of health (when ironically Mr Powell was health minister) advertised for workers for the NHS.
But there was no great encouragement of emigration- there was a new Welfare State and people going to join it. Britain had traditionally had an open door to immigration – but now it had a new attraction. And politicians did move to change the policy of centuries (end the open door policy), but too slowly. There was indeed a feeling that the “Commonwealth” was a real thing (not a hollow farce) and that myth took time to die.
Even the Act of 1965 was fashion – everyone would be happy together OR ELSE (utilitarian view of law – combined with the view that Parliament can do anything it likes).
If one starts with the thinkers that were (and are) fashionable at the universities (Hobbes, Hume, the Mills and so on) then modern Britain is the logical place one ends up.
If there is a “ruling class” that is it, people who have studied Oxford PPE (or whatever) and follow the fashionable thinkers.
Government can pass whatever “law” it likes, and the goal of “law” is to make people happy little kittens.
Result – modern Britain.
Things like rights AGAINST the government, and the view of people are moral agents capable of knowing moral right from wrong, and choosing to do moral right against their desire to do evil…….
That all comes from a very different tradition of thinkers – people who the “Old Whigs” read – but are certainly not taught in modern universities.
Could someone like Gladstone (let alone Edmund Burke) pass a modern university political philosophy (or general philosophy for that matter) course?
Of course not – such a person would walk out in disgust.
It’s pretty clear that the current British Establishment is the biggest and most evil threat to individual liberty and self determination that we face. Anyone who’s a fellow travellor against this, for whatever reason, is a plus as far as I’m concerned.
That was quite a forthright speech, and pretty refreshing in that some difficult admissions were made.
That the audience seemed hostile to this is perhaps in part because they have never really seen nor considered themselves in that way.
Quite the contrary, they have been told for decades that we all invited them here, that our nation would have collapsed without their presence, that they have been some kind of powerhouse that “built this country” – and that they are as British as any native Englishman, Scotsman or Welshman. Furthermore, they are told that they have benefited this country by bringing their faith and their values – David Cameron for example is quoted as saying this and more.
None of the above is true.
The British people did not invite them, they just weren’t given any control over it and were lied to when the governments said they would place controls on their arrival.
Our nation could have managed without them if it had tried to do so. They were never given the opportunity or circumstances. It was much quicker and cheaper to import others as part of a wider agenda that would have lasting implications.
The cost to this country in financial terms is immense, with something like a £120 Billion bill for non-EU immigration over the last decade alone – never mind the accumulation of 60 to 70 years worth of arrivals prior to that. The mind boggles at the true cost – and that is ignoring social costs and “cohesion” programs.
We had our own “values” rooted in faith. There was nothing much, in my opinion, which Islam needed to teach us that we did not already have with our mix of Paganism and Christianity. However, the governments have hollowed out Christianity in this country and the ‘liberal establishment’ have re-written what is left of it to it’s own leanings.
The only thing we could possibly learn from Islam and Muslims regarding the role of faith is that we should not have put up with any of the establishments nonsense and that we should have been much more ready to kick off at any moment when it was being broken down!…
Being confronted with the idea that they are not tied by blood and soil to our nationhood and that they are mere pawns in a much wider game must have been quite a stumbling block for them to consider facing – and the recognition that what has transpired is ‘regrettable’ in the eyes of a sensible Englishman who does not fit the bill of the “far right” must have been a bit disquieting and unexpected given the usual platitudes and genuflecting that so often drip from people’s mouths in these kinds of affairs.
Whilst it is interesting to see a thesis put forward that Islam/Muslims should embrace libertarianism rather than group-rights – I just cannot really see it being viable given the nature of the beasts we are dealing with.
For one, they are always fiercely thinking as a group-identity (not only here, but internationally and across races).
They are pretty much instructed to build communities on this basis and not to be individuals. Instructing them to be individuals but to be a definitive and separate group at the same time, suggests to me that we will just see a continuation of things as they are – pockets of Islamic society that are ever expanding outwards and ever more vociferous.
This is not really a recipe that will end well. Islam is an expansionist faith. It divides the world into the land of war and the land of peace. There can be only peace when the land of war, non-muslim lands, are turned into the land of peace…
Of course, how this is done is perhaps the key for Muslims themselves.
For example, being good citizens, helping the needy in their communities, contributing to a new Islamic school, building a better mosque for the needs of the community, raising large families to enjoy the company of, upholding traditional values on certain things which protect the integrity of their beliefs on how to arrange society and the world.
It is not all about “conquering” by force, or by bursts of violence or extremism.
Yet for those of us who do not want to see Britain an Islamic state in the future, what are we supposed to do?
We are trapped with insane liberals on one side and a domineering threat of Islam ruling this landmass for centuries to come.
It is not even that we necessarily have anything “against” Muslims or Islam. I do not think it is our place to go elsewhere in the world and dictate what their values should be or how their nations should be run – but that does not mean that we ought to be fine with this nation being transformed both racially and culturally, particularly with a faith that has rules for everybody else, not just Muslims themselves.
Regarding the future of Islam in Britain, I therefore hope there isn’t going to be one, with a separation being settled as amicably as possible.
The fate of other nations throughout time should be clear enough as to what can take place – and I think it would be short sighted for the wider populace to think it would go any differently as things progress from 5% to 10%, 10% to 15%, 15 to 20%, and so on.
This does not ever seem to happen though. Muslims are never going to leave – it is their religious duty to transform this land into one of believers. A stump of the British will never accept the future of Britain being Islamic, whilst even the most smirking of liberals will one day be ruing the day they were so naive to think that they could break Islam down like they did with Christianity.
The only way I can see trouble being avoided is if the British give up even more, acquiesce, slip quietly into the great good night without a fight. This they may well do. If they don’t, then things will certainly get interesting.
I feel rather sorry for the masses of ordinary, decent Muslims who may be the brunt of this rejection – but there is no real way to reconcile matters and that is why this scenario always tends to end up badly for one side or another.
I don’t relish such a day. I fear it. I do not welcome it at all. I just wish that we had never been given this poisoned chalice, that the levers of preventing horror had been made available to us both today and in the past, instead of being ritually denied the most sensible of measures.
We are still importing tens of thousands of Muslims every year and we don’t even know what to do, if anything, with the situation we already have brewing. It is truly insane.
They are being set up as a scapegoat for all sorts of state actions on controlling this country and all of us. But at the same time, that does not mean there are not designs and aspirations of their own. If they were brought in as a tool of disarray, the orchestrates of this malaise did not really seem to consider that aspect too closely.
[…] Sean Gabb is the leader of the British Libertarians. He runs a lonely campaign, part Farage, part anti-establishment, part agit-prop. This is what he said, in part, in a speech to the Muslim community. I recommend you read it all. […]