Came back from holiday to find I'd been sent a letter and pamphlet from a Tony Bamber in Preston soliciting my support for a campaign calling on Muslims to apologise and make amends for the heroin trade for which 'they' are "almost exclusively responsible".
A quick websearch confirmed my suspicion that Bamber is a British National Party activist. It was probably a complete waste of time but I couldn't resist sending the following reply :
"Dear Mr Bamber,
I read your pamphlet on 'The Heroin Trade' with interest. As you acknowledge, it could be seen as 'racist and inflammatory'. I don't see it as inevitably racist, since Islam is a global religion encompassing many races. I suppose it isn't inevitably Islamophobic, though you do rather give your BNP credentials away when you describe Muslims in Britain as a "colony," "destroying our children on an industrial scale".
Certainly, the heroin trade is an evil. So is the trade in cocaine, which is carried out by 'Christians', with the tacit support of the most "Christian" country on earth (the USA). The big UK banks serve this industry well : HSBC currently faces a £640m fine for laundering £1·3bn of corrupt proceeds from Mexican drug cartels. A further £38 trillion is unaccounted for. Perhaps a better first step in your campaign would be to focus on stopping the money laundering activities of our big high street banks. Certainly it seems a little disingenuous to single out 'Muslims' as the sole cause of drug misery in this country.
In fact, I think you have carefully looked for a cause that you could use to 'get right on your side' in what is the real issue for you, namely, campaigning against Islam as a religion in general and Muslims in particular as 'invaders' (your word) 'destroying our children' (your words). For all your professed pity for addicts and their families I don't honestly think you have much concern for them at all. In fact you are probably using their misery for your own political ends.
I hold no brief to defend Islam as a religion, though here in Oxford I believe we succeed in working harmoniously with the various Muslim communities. However, I respond very negatively indeed to people who try to blame all the world's evils on particular groups. That is what the Nazis did in the 1930s and the horrors that resulted (and which continue to reverberate) were such that never again can we allow that sort of politicking to go unchallenged. By all means speak up against evil and by all means challenge those responsible for it. But Jesus is reported to have advised people to consider the 'plank' in their own eye before crticising the 'speck' in someone else's. I'm not saying that the heroin trade is a 'speck' but I am saying that in the big scale of things your brand of politicking is far, far more dangerous for all of us.
If you really have a concern for the succeeding generations I suggest you focus your attention on the holocaust that our great grandchildren will face caused by human-induced climate change. All other horrors will pale into insignificance if that is allowed to happen.
Yours sincerely &c"
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2 comments:
Well said. Although hopefully he won't invoke Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
I had a reply from which I learned that Tony Bamber has a heroin-addicted son. So my insinuation that he was using the issue as an excuse without any real concern for addicts was wide of the mark.
It did cause me to reflect, however, that it 'Muslims' are responsible for the evil trade, then 'Muslims' are in the best position to address the issue, and rather than bashing 'Muslims' as an outsider, a more productive strategy would be to seek collaboration with them.
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