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Originally Posted by me283
And intelligent people use the term "Muslim" to describe a follower of Islam. One would hope (possibly in vain) that a Government Minister is an intelligent person!
Andy, you would appear to be as guilty as those that you describe, if you think that all people fall into the category you describe. And therein lies a problem: one cannot address an issue relating to "Muslims" without being ASSUMED to be referring to people of Asian descent.
I lived for many years in an area with a high Asian population, and saw many instances of people using the term "Racism" all too freely. The general reaction to this seemed to be "reverse racism", where the attention was focussed on people who were deemed unable to cry "racism". That in itself appears to be worse discrimination.
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Possibly not explained myself very well. Muslim is used as a casual, catch all derogatory term by racists. They know that because of Islamophobia they won't necessarily get picked up on it whereas calling people 'Pakis' (which many, many still do) is more likely to provoke a negative reaction (although its shameful that many don't challenge it). And there is an undeniable link between race and British muslims which is why racists seize upon the current Islamophobic vogue.
Bit off topic but vaguely pertinent. I had a row with a friend the other week. She had complained, quite rightly, to her white daughter's school about racist comments made by a couple of Asian lads (don't know if they were muslim or not). The school has even handedly applied its anti-racism policy and disciplined those children. So far so good.
But when I challenged her on why I had heard the same daughter going on in her front room about how "pakis should go back to where they came from" (mainly Bury as it happens!) and that it was learnt behaviour from her parents, she replied without irony - and this is no word of a lie - "but some of my best friends are Pakis"! Leaving aside this is simply not true, she couldn't see the offence the word 'Paki' could cause. And, of course, it is difficult to complain about racism by people of Asian descent (or whatever) when you are practising it ahgainstr them in daily life. Finally I don't agree with racism from wherever it comes but there can be little doubt that there is more race hate directed towards Asian than there is against whites, even taking into account the disturbing rise in anti-Semitic attacks.
Increasing stop and search powers against people because they look like a muslim is not going to aid race relations and the feeling that I'm sure many muslims feel that they are being discriminated against in so many walks of life. I also don't think it will have any effect on reducing terrorist threat.
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Originally Posted by Pierre
Can you provide the transcript where she says this, all you have given is what the paper says she says - which is not accurate
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You slated lazy BBC journalists. All the papers seem to have reported the comments in the same way, suggesting they all interpreted them in the same way. Of course they could all be wrong.