Just when one thinks collectivist social justice warriors couldn’t act any crazier, when, perhaps, just maybe, the bats have finally taken a nap inside the belfry, this comes along.
According to Selwyn Duke, of The New American:
You’ve heard the claim that boys can transition into girls. Now some British lawmakers and activists want to transition Islam into a race.
Yes, consumers. Step right up for the special offer! It’s called nonsense, and, since it’s connected to the political world, if you’re a British citizen or resident therein, you won’t have a choice if this passes.
Duke refers to an original piece by Soeren Kern, for The Gatestone Institute, in which Kern explains:
The long-running dispute revolves — most recently — around an effort by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, a cross-party formation of around two-dozen MPs in the British Parliament, to institutionalize the definition of Islamophobia in racial rather than religious terms.
So, once more, in the nation-state where “1984” author George Orwell warned people about NewSpeak’s reductio ad absurdum, the ever-tighter spiral of speech control by the state, in which the process of statutorily defining words drills down and down until it pierces each and every skull, we see precisely his warning coming to life.
The APPG, in a November 2018 report titled, "Islamophobia Defined," proposed the following one-sentence definition of Islamophobia: ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.’
What the heck is “Mulimness”?
The definition, the result of six months of consultations, was endorsed by hundreds of Muslim organizations, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, as well as several political parties, including Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Conservatives.
Whew. Thank goodness for people in positions of state power, many of them deriving their salaries on the backs of taxpayers and future taxpayers (thanks to deficit spending) who have no choice but to pay or go to jail. If it weren’t for the “authorities” and their “consultations” we’d never know the meanings of words.
Forget the not-so-stellar track record of certain Islamic states where homosexuality can lead to state-instituted death, and where the doffing of a head-scarf by a woman can lead to years in prison. And pay no attention to the numerous horrific reports of rape gangs in England – gangs composed of, mostly, Muslim men. Should one criticize these kinds of behaviors, and try to publicly investigate whether there might be a root connection, one will not only be accused of being a religious bigot, and possibly prosecuted for that, one could, if the legislation this group desires ever becomes law, be accused of “racism.”
So, despite the fact that Islam is a religion that spreads through voluntary action across continents and national borders, and is a belief system that is freely adopted by people, we see this from Omar Kahn, Director of the anti-racism Runnymede Trust:
‘Defining Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism properly locates the issue as one in which groups of people are ascribed negative cultural and racial attributes which can lead to a wide range of experiences, either as an unconscious bias, prejudice, direct or indirect discrimination, structural inequality or hate incidents.’
And, again, we see the term “hate” included in the lexicon, along with a lot of amorphous trigger-terms like “structural inequality” and “indirect discrimination” – all of which are postmodernist tools to control debate, grease the gears for redistribution of wealth and buttering-up welfare constituencies, and, especially, to color how the state views criminal acts that might have precisely the same outcome, but might have different types of violent motivation.
So, for example, in the Twilight Zone world of “hate crime”, if a man stabs another man to steal his wallet, it’s not as bad as if a man stabs another man because he’s of a different race. If a man punches a man because he doesn’t like the same football club, it’s not as bad as if a man punches another man because the other man has a different skin color.
The act is the same. The punishment, if defined as “hate” – which will be defined however the state wants to define it – is different.
If you think differently, you are, clearly, “obsolete.”
Kern adds:
During a parliamentary debate at the House of Commons on May 16, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire rejected the APPG's definition — described as a "backdoor blasphemy law" — on the grounds that it is too vague and has "potential consequences for freedom of speech." He said that the definition is not in conformity with the Equality Act 2010, which defines "race" as comprising color, nationality and national or ethnic origins — not religious practice.
Which seems to be a no-brainer. Religious practice is not genetically based. It’s a choice.
Of course, one should note that, even if differences between people are genetically based, having the state punish people for “discrimination” is absurd. All living beings discriminate in order to survive. The word simply means to distinguish between two or more things. This leads to living creatures making decisions about those things, and, often, collecting data about their decisions. If humans are to freely associate, they must be allowed the freedom to not associate, and to benefit or suffer the consequences of their choices.
As I have mentioned previously, this applies to businesses as well as individuals. Simply because one opens a business, this does not mean the business becomes a “public” place supported by tax cash (which is the definition of “public” versus “private”). It is private property, and, just like a woman entering the dating field should not have to say “yes” to every man who wants to date her, business people should be free to accept or deny business from anyone, and to rise or fall based on how other free-thinking people react.
If one lives in a town where every resident but one is racially and religiously open-minded, and that one person runs one of two supermarkets, does his minority status force everyone else to have to shop at his store?
The slow-boil of political-correctness and its use to control the state is reaching deadly temperatures. It is to the point in the U.K. where not only have the British authorities defined private shops as “public”, just like the Public Accommodations Section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did in the US, now politicians want to call something “racist” when it is not.
This is reminiscent of the exchange from Lewis Carroll’s “Through The Looking Glass” my father oft mentioned, an exchange wherein Carroll skewers the piggish, egomaniacal, and all-powerful attitude of the head of state as embodied in the character of Humpty Dumpty:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.'
The question really is which will be master, the state, or people, free to speak and think as they desire?