England, the Flag and I

For the average person carrying a flag today when you wake up tomorrow morning the country is still broken and the establishment have just got you to their dirty work for them.

One of my most vivid memories of school life was at primary school, I must have been between the ages of six and eight. The school had a mezzanine. It was used primarily to house the kids for dinner (or lunch if you were posh).

As I sat there one dinner time, playing with my cheese and onion slop, thinking there is no way that is going anywhere near my mouth, I heard the words: “you are lucky to have that, people in your country eat worms.” It was the 80s, people had no filter. My first thought was some profanity I should not have known at that age. After that day I did not care much for school.

As people gather in London today to ‘Unite the Kingdom’ it is that thought which came to mind. More than four decades after I was given culinary critique on Pakistani cuisine, British society is still attempting to come to terms with its migrant populace and I have never eaten a cheese and onion pie nor worms for that matter.

The demonstration was organised by, among others, Tommy Robinson. It is a culmination of months of protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers and nationwide campaigns to ‘raise the flag’. An attempt to reclaim the United Kingdom from migrants.

A few weeks ago I had a conversation about some Muslims putting up the St George’s flag on their shops and in their areas so they could ‘claim’ the flag back from the right wing. There was a video of a mosque in Liverpool doing the same with the Union Jack. Messages being shared on WhatsApp asked for similar: do not take down any flags and help put them up if possible.

As a Muslim born and raised in the United Kingdom, who has somehow dragged himself through life to have a family and be a part of society, today’s demonstration and the flag raising campaign have made me question my own relationship to the country in which I live and its flag.

More than migration

After last year’s Southport riots and other disturbances up and down the country, what has occurred this year is quite muted. No mosques have been burnt, but attacks on Muslims and other minorities have increased.

Immigration is not just an issue in Britain but across Europe and indeed the Western world, which is battling with the increased number of people moving due to wars, economics and political strife. In the US, ICE has been rounding people up off the streets and sending them ‘back’ to where they came. Some of these people were born in the US and have no affiliation to the countries their parents migrated from. In Australia there have been demonstrations against immigration, and indigenous protest sites have been attacked.

Across the world there is a pattern: those protesting and coming to the streets are generally working class whites, disenfranchised by the status quo of the societies in which they live. Their grievances are mainly socio-economic. They feel migrants and non-whites are treated more favourably by their governments.

The puppet masters pulling the strings are, though not always, right leaning populist politicians who understand how to rabble rouse, with immigration being the perfect emotive news item to do it with. Low hanging fruit to hide the system ignoring the most vulnerable part of society.

They come armed with manipulated statistics and figures showing how mass immigration has hurt their countries and how public services are now overstretched not due to cutbacks but due to a surge in the number of people using them.

We could forever and a day debunk these theories with more statistics and better data. But just as the Zionists in Gaza would have you believe their fight is against terrorism, the flag wavers would have you think their gripe is against illegal migrants.

Both arguments are baseless and are nothing but a veil to hide a much more sinister agenda.

Two decades of radicalisation

To understand what is happening in the United Kingdom today, we need to understand how we got here.

In 1972, sociologist Stanley Cohen introduced the concept of moral panic in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Cohen described how media, authorities and wider society can exaggerate the threat posed by a particular group, casting them as “folk devils” who endanger social order. Through repeated coverage and public commentary, isolated incidents are amplified, suspicion deepens, and the group is stigmatised in the public imagination.

Ever since 9/11, Muslims and Islam have been under scrutiny, with their loyalty to the countries they live in questioned by both mainstream politicians and the media.

There has been a one sided attack on Muslim beliefs, from halal meat to women’s rights, with the Muslim voice rarely part of the debate. The only discussion validated was one that set Western liberal values as the premise, which is where the whole notion of a “British Islam” emerged.

After the 7/7 attacks, the Labour government made it its mission to “moderate” Islam to fit Western tastes. This mission ultimately failed, but it allowed suspicion of Muslims and of other minorities to deepen across the UK.

Multiculturalism, once a bedrock of British domestic policy to counter the kind of racism seen in the 1970s and 1980s, was ultimately consigned to the political dustbin in 2011 when David Cameron, then Prime Minister, declared:

What I am about to say is drawn from the British experience, but I believe there are general lessons for us all. In the UK, some young men find it hard to identify with the traditional Islam practised at home by their parents, whose customs can seem staid when transplanted to modern Western countries. But these young men also find it hard to identify with Britain too, because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity. Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.

David Cameron, February 2011, Munich Security Conference

On the same day David Cameron made these remarks the English Defence League (EDL) were holding a demonstration. The politician whistles and the dog barks.

The likes of Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson play side parts in the establishment’s desire to dehumanise and denigrate the Muslim community. They are opportunists who take advantage of the prevailing mood to agitate their supporters onto the streets. When mainstream politicians like Boris Johnson can label Muslim women as letterboxes and no one bats an eyelid, it is little wonder that the likes of Robinson feel emboldened to label all Muslims as groomers of white girls.

Just like Charlie Kirk, Tommy Robinson will tell you that today’s demonstrations are about free speech. What he really means is the freedom to “call a spade a spade” and label Muslims as grooming terrorists and Islam as a backward ideology. They say the things politicians only hint at, often unpalatable and downright xenophobic. They tell their supporters that the political class don’t want to hear their voice. Meanwhile, the political class funds and turns a blind eye to their vitriol. It’s the perfect symbiotic relationship.

This was proven by far-right Belgian politician Filip Dewinter who said at the march today

“It has to be clear that Islam is our real enemy. You have to get rid of Islam. Islam doesn't belong to Europe. Islam doesn't belong to the UK.”

Broke Britain

Adversity introduces a man to himself

William Shakespeare

Britain is broke, there is no doubt about that. Inflation is on the rampage, everything seems to cost more and more each month. It is enough to drive a man to ill health, only to find the NHS underfunded, with massive waiting times and God forbid you need a referral. Other public services have been cut, and HMRC is on everyones back with their new funding, meaning you can no longer make a few quid on eBay. The job market is dead, and when you can get a job it is probably better being on benefits because at least they pay your rent for.

Everyone is suffering the consequences of the failure of capitalism to distribute wealth amongst the masses. The poorer you are, the worse it gets. There is no longer a middle class, just the ultra rich and the “how am I going to pay this bill.” class. This is the stark reality of Britain in 2025.

No one is debating the severity of the situation, but it raises concerns that a society, or at least a large segment of it, resorts to finger pointing and violence at the first sign of distress. Rather than questioning the politicians who are beating the system and seem to be doing well whilst everyone else is suffering. That includes Nigel Farage with his £800,000 house and Tommy Robinson who now has more holidays abroad than he does a curry.

Britain is broke, and its society is broken to the point that people can be rallied to the streets under the pretence of economic downturn and free speech, when in reality the political motivation, and for many of those attending, is just plain old racism and a hatred of Islam. This is how moral panic works.

Last year the killing of young children by a non-Muslim, English-born man led to the attempted burning of a mosque. This year a single case of sexual assault by a non-Muslim migrant has resulted in 100,000 shouting “whose streets, our streets.”

That chant has nothing to do with economic change or speaking the truth. It is a rallying cry for people to take back their country from the migrants. The migrants are neither on their streets nor taking their jobs; they are holed up in a hotel because of the British government’s foreign policy over the last hundred years.

For flag and country

Despite the racism I experienced at primary school and the dozens of other incidents I have endured, I, as a Muslim, have no hatred for white people. Not because of an adoption of liberal values, as David Cameron so desired, but because I am a Muslim, and Islam forbids me from discriminating on the basis of race.

The contribution of the Muslim community should be to live by its Islamic values despite the hatred, and to offer a fractured society something to hold onto. We have no need to lower ourselves to helping racists put up flags that are symbols of a colonial past, including the crusades in Palestine and the occupation of the Indian subcontinent for hundreds of years. There is no claiming back a symbol that through Sykes–Picot and the Balfour Declaration created the state of Israel, and certainly not when it is being carried by racists such as Tommy Robinson. It is the same flawed principle as continuously apologising every time a terrorist attack happens.

Muslims have no need to prove loyalty to anyone. I have spent my whole life with two non-Muslim neighbours. One was a little racist, to be honest, but we have never really had any serious issues. I would defend them as my neighbours, and recently, when I was in need, it was my non-Muslim neighbours who stepped up to help.

Those looking to unite the kingdom have spent the day fighting with police costing the British tax payer hundreds of thousands of pounds.

For the average person carrying a flag today when they wake up tomorrow morning the country is still broken and the establishment have just got them do to their dirty work.

What Britain needs is a debate not about migration but about capitalism and its socio-economic failure.

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