Another one that hurts

There you go again.You have a stab at it first - what is it that you don't think our society should accept?

Thats's one. (Or rather, two, and I'm not even going to question your reasons for confining your 'surgery' to newborns and infants). Next.

You haven't answered my question, you've given one example of a practice that you disaprove of. Also it's a practice that is already illegal - at least in the female versions. You've also defined it in such a way as to exclude it in older children - which is odd.Let's agree that anything that is already illegal under UK law is something that we'd both say is part of our culture that we want those that wish to join us to comply with. That would include FGM, honour crime, slavery, Jihad etc.That much hopefully is obvious.Where we've failed is in not enforcing those laws - we've routinely allowed some of those practices to continue without challenge and tried not to think too hard about others because of mistaken ideas of multiculturalism and PC fears of accusations of racism.So my first requirement is that we enforce our own laws. I assume you don't have a problem with that?

I thought we had agreed that things aren't as WE think they should be? Yesterday I read the Children's Commissioners report - or rather, so as to prevent further pedantry, the summary report - on Protecting children from harm. The subject was child sexual abuse not holy Jihad, but there's a section in it dealing with what they describe as Black and Ethnic Minority groups. They found that children from Asian/Asian British communities are under-represented in the statistics. And that's the core problem - our ethnic minority groups live in ethnic minority communities which allow their cultural practices to continue independantly of the host populations culture and values. The result of that in the case of child abuse is that the "decisions and interventions were based on maintaining 'honour' such as covering up the abuse, relocating the victim and/or family, and forced marriage".Now how to deal with that core problem is a vast and difficult topic, but it starts with those of us that wish the harm to stop, speaking out and not continually making excuses for them, as has been done for a generation or more. All our institutions, from schools and hospitals through the criminal justice system and social services really need to start identifying, reporting and prosecuting 'cultural' crimes and there does at last seem to be a turning tide on this. You never know, we might even get a prosecution for FGM at some point.It also means recognising that some of these harms originate from religious belief systems not simply cultural practices. Somehow we need to promote moderate, reforming Islam and condemn its extreme versions. Part of the problem is that there has been a practice of importing Imams from the home country to preach in UK mosques - these have tended to be uneducated and preach immoderate versions of the faith. This is not the way to reform a religion - it's the way to preserve it.I'm timed out....I'll happily read your solutions.

No you can't force people to give up their beliefs - all you do is create martyrs.But no-one is born with a a belief that a girl's clitoris needs to be cut off, women can't be allowed to drive cars, or that apostates, female adulterers and homosexuals need to be stoned to death - those things are learned.Moderate Muslims have interpreted their holy books in different way to the extremeists and it's that process of re-interpreting and re-assessing their books that the west somehow needs to encourage.Of course, being an 'extreme secularist' (wtf?) I want the education to continue to the point that the whole mountain of religious nonsense is abandoned and we can get down to the real task of building better societies.

I was musing whether mosques and what was being taught in them could be regulated so we know what's going on in them when 3 hours ago the UK government announced plans to do just that with UK madrassas:Plans to regulate madrassas published by government - BBC NewsThat's likely to be controversial.

I propose enforcing the laws that we've already made. There was a reason we made them, somewhere we lost sight of it. That's worked really well so far hasn't it? Bad and dangerous ideas need confronting, i have no respect for them, nor should our society. You can propose anything you like but pretending that the bad guys don't exist is not going to help the situation. We've done that, it didn't work, it allowed the bad guys to develop their ideas and pollute more minds. Business as usual is not going to solve this. Ignoring core problems and just being nice is not going to help. It was only when Christianity stopped reading their books literally and secular values and constraints were imposed on it that it was tamed. If your only answer is to carry on doing what all decent people have been doing anyway then you're not contributing anything of value.

So much is obvious.Meanwhile several hundred people died in Paris. Europe is on the highest terror threat levels. There's the largest manhunt every organised in France and Belgium. The UK government is about to vote on the bombing Syria and will win. The UK opposition party is about to self-destruct over it. The UK Children's Commissioner reported that British Asians are covering up child abuse and blaming the abused for 'dishonouring' the abusers. The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to 'take all necessary measures' to deal with ISIL in Syria. UK citizens are fighting against us, publicly beheading innocent captives in the name of Allah and being 'droned' in response. Russian passenger and fighter aircraft are shot out of the sky causing instability between superpowers. Extremist religious believers are in control of millions of people, making their lives intolerable and causing mass migration across the middle east and Europe.And that was just November.Obviously, all we need to do now is respect their views and values, don't read or report on what's happening, and just be very, very nice to those that would kill us and change our world in their image.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

This is such a crass thing to say, that I would normally suspect trolling. I can only suggest that you look up the purpose of terrorism. When everyone is disagreeing with you, it's prudent to consider that you might be in the wrong.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Well that's a first - never been accused of PCism before. By anyone - generally the opposite. I feel uplifted.Your obsession with false comparisons and body counts is doing you no favours - I refer you again to the objectives of terrorism. Here's a clue, it's sometimes called assymetric warfare.

Sigh.You made the incredibly crass point that only 200 people died in the French massacre, as if body count had anything to do with it or worse, doesn't matter. Then there was the suggestion that we should 'get rid of' the non-Muslim Frenchmen that have killed other Frenchmen. As if these were valid comparators.You then made an even stupider comapison to more dying in Syria and Iraq than in Paris as if all sides are equal in this. You simply will not accept, despite your wriggling, that one side really does have the higher ground and that some ideas and values are better than others and need defending.It's our way of life that is being threatened, not just our lives. That's what terrorism is about. But of course you know this, you'd just prefer to ignore it.Terrorism is an attempt to change our way of life and it's starting to do it.

Good, that's two of us. Sadly this is not about you and me. I have a grasp of risk but the public at large do not. People are cancelling holidays and travel plans. Resorts are deserted. If you want a really cheap holiday, I suggest you go to Sharm El Sheikh - if you can get a flight. Terrorism has changed travel, not just air travel. I was in London last week, I have absolutely no fear of terrorism - the odds of being involved are tiny - but I was interested in how it was on my mind as I was crammed into a carriage between three Asian young men. On the radio this week people were explaining how they were begging their children to leave London and a woman from Swansea had cancelled her annual trip to the Christmas markets in Birmingham. Like it or not, terrorism works. What crap. That's what's actually happening - not what is politically correct. It will continue the more the terrorists manage to blow western people to bits indiscriminately in persuit of their religious and political goals.Some rabbit hole - it's the sodding point of all this. If you make statements like you have, you have only yourself to blame. You did the painting and others noticed.I'm ignoring you distraction tactics regarding other points for the moment, I'm more interested in how deep you can dig your hole.

But there's no problem, why do you care what the answer to this non-problem is? Don't we just do as you suggest - nothing? After all, the Paris massacre only killed a couple of hundred peaople. Apparently there are no further consequences. Why are you so interested in answers to problems you don't accept as problems?I'm currently being very nice to Muslims. And Jews and Christians. In fact mostly I'm being nice to people without actually knowing what their religions and sexual preferences are. Personally I couldn't give a rat's arse. Sadly people still keep getting killed. So that tactic doesn't seem to be working too well. But as there's no actual problem.....

Well, if we now think that there is a problem, I think it's in three linked parts.1. The wars in the Middle East
2. Islam
3. Immigration and integrationThey're rather large subjects.I have very little to say about the first, I wrongly thought that intervening in Iraq would be likely to help matters there though I disliked the Blair/Bush coalition intensely. It seems to me that it has to be sorted out locally with international help.Islam needs reforming. It's origin is in war and it retains its jihad teachings such that it is possible to read their books and justify extremist actions. In practice, this re-interpretation is happening outside Islam's home territories and in some countries within it. That process of reform needs encouraging.We have allowed our immigrant communities to practice a lot of the things we disaprove of and that are bad for our society for fear of being accused of racism. This has allowed a proportion of those communities to hang on to beliefs and practices that are actually against our laws and is allowing a few extremists to develop amonst us undisturbed. Like the bumper sticker slogan they're Muslims in Britain, not British Muslims. This has to change faster that it has been.Now what you want to do with that is up to you, but I'm timed out again. Life goes on.

I do think we need to do more to encourage integration of Muslims.I do say that we should criticise the bad ideas that some Muslims have. I also say that we should enforce the laws that exist that are designed to control some of those bad ideas.You seem to think that these are insignificant things.They're not, it's a radical change from the situation a few years ago where there was a climate of non-interference in cultural practices by our institutions and comments on it by public and media was considered non-PC, even racist.Recent changes in local authority and police practices following the Yorkshire abuse cases, the changes to medical, social services and school's reporting systems plus the CPS and police prioritising monitoring and protection of FGM cases, the actions to intervene in forced marriages, 'honour' crimes and so on mark a real change in both policy and practice.Actively seeking out cultural crimes sends a very strong message to those who live here and those that would like to come, that these are not our values and we won't put up with them.I'm concerned also about how Islam is being taught here in the UK and it was interesting to see that the state is considering the inspecting of Madrassas which seems to me to be a good start.There have been several reports of Imams teaching radicalism inside our prisons and other reports of uneducated Imams being run rings around by radicalised prisoners. Similarly there's a concern that Imams are being imported from the home countries to preach in our mosques which reinforces the links to primitive Islamic interpretations and practices. It's quite difficult to know what to do about this. Prison Imams are licensed but that licensing system seems to be at least partially inadequate. I don't like the idea of government licensed religious teachers in ordinary mosques so perhaps the best we can do is control the immigration of Imams better, monitor their deployment and maybe even fund education and training by moderate Muslims of their own Imams.Pretty much all the above is quite negative and intrusive and without other more positive actions to encourage moderate Muslims it's going to be resented. Some resentment can't be helped because we're dealing with immoderate people with extreme ideas, but we don't want to alienate all Muslims.The UK Prevent Strategy "depends on a successful integration strategy, which establishes a stronger sense of common ground and shared values, which enables participation and the empowerment of all communities and which also provides social mobility". That sort of stuff requires far more work in Muslim communities and our public bodies.These positive steps are less obvious, Muslim communities already receive very large advantages from being here - education, health, economic benefits, democratic freedoms and so on. Our country and culture is freely available to them. As is the freedom not to accept it and live a separate life within the law. This is perfectly correct as the majority are full UK citizens working and paying taxes like everyone else and are welcome additions to the diversity and economic growth of our country.But it can't all be the UK majority continually imposing constraints; to work in the long term change must come from within Muslims themselves and I think a lot of progress has been made here. But it will take generations, all we can do is continually project our values and those of the moderate Muslim majority.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.