Professor Steve Jones of University College London
PROF. STEVE JONES, the eminent and popularist geneticist has put the cat among the pigeons at the Hay Festival by focusing our attention on the problems of incestuous relationships within the Pakistani community in this country. He speaks as a scientist, without political baggage, in giving warning of a situation which most politicians would rather wish away than having to confront head on.
Channel IV recently put out a programme on the same subject, but used an ethnic British Pakistani journalist to oversee and report upon the problem in places like Birmingham and Bradford. I believe that had Channel IV been approached by the likes of Prof. Jones to make a similar programme, he would not have been considered unless he had been a Pakistani Muslim, or even - just a Muslim.
As Prof. Jones is none of these, he now faces the wrath of several of the numerous and dubious Islamic groups who profess to speak on behalf of the Islamic community.
Of course incest has gone on for centuries among the host culture, but, outside of Royalty, has either been frowned upon or been made illegal, depending upon the familial proximity to each other of the participants and the nature of the relationship.
According to Prof. Jones, “It is common in the Islamic world to marry your brother’s daughter, which is actually closer than marrying your cousin…” Such an observation would be considered naive and self-destructive for a politician to have made. But such a well regarded scientist speaking as a geneticist - the study of which he has given his life too – cannot be so easily challenged as a politician speaking on the same subject would have been.
As the professor says, “We should be concerned about that as there can be a lot of hidden genetic damage. Children are much more likely to get two copies of a damaged gene.” This is the rub. Incest is not only a moral and legal issue, but also a health issue of great significance for the children of such consummations – as was shown in the Channel IV programme.
According to Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, “Research in Bradford has found that babies born to Pakistani women are twice as likely to die in their first year as babies born to white mothers, with genetic problems linked to inbreeding identified as a “significant” cause.
Studies have found that within the city, more than 70 per cent of marriages are between relations, with more than half involving first cousins”.
PROF. JONES, I predict, will not cause the kind of tsunami effect that would have followed such pronouncements if made by a politician. Indeed, I believe there is even much embarrassment among middle-class Pakistanis regarding such incestuous attachments – but such a liberal approach does not appear to extend to marriages made between different cultures. Which means integration is as far away as ever and made ever more distant by the ideology of Multiculturalism that actively encourages cultural apartheid.
Arranged marriages are common within many Asian communities, and is not confined to Pakistan. But this once more leads to health problems – notably death by murder if a refusal to go along with the practice is forthcoming. Yet once again Multiculturalism, by its very nature, allows such criminality to continue, if not unpunished, then as an unintended consequence of the ideology.
Our liberals still remain silent when it comes to talking about incest among Pakistani Muslims. They fear, as always, having to live with their conscience if they overstep the politically correct mark and voice any disapproval of the practices highlighted at the Hay Festival by Prof. Jones.
As with the subject of arranged marriages; if such behaviour is to be highlighted then it is better done by a liberal member of the Pakistani community, as seemed to be the case with the Channel IV documentary mentioned earlier.
The Coalition, like their predecessors going back over 40 years have actively encouraged a Multicultural society to replace the much regarded and parochial England that I have treasured since my childhood in the 1950s.
If we had to have a mixed ethnic culture then such an experiment would have proved more fruitful if all ethnic groups invited to live among us had been told to live their lives in accordance with the culture they chose to come and live amongst. But instead such aspirants were told that their culture had equal merit with the indigenous one: and as such had equal merit. Such was and still is the message of Multiculturalism.
THE QUESTION OF incest within the Pakistani Islamic community, and the way it has been ignored by governments of all colours, only goes to show how Multiculturalism retains its influence on the national culture, while eating away at its legitimacy.
Prof. Jones speaks as a concerned scientist who sees much human suffering with the present arrangement. But we have known for many years about the dangers of births through incest: yet some of the Islamic community’s ‘representatives’ still ask for proof regarding the various claims made against such inbreeding.
I believe that such practices described by Prof. Jones at the Hay Festival should be outlawed. Until now such laws would have been regarded as being unnecessary and illiberal; but we now have living among us some two million people who find the practice vital to their culture irrespective of Prof. Jones’ warnings - and our politicians who have created and allowed this dangerous procedure to continue in the hope that the general public remain unenlightened of its presence, should be held to account.
With regards to the practice of incest within our Pakistani community: that community must be told that it must be stopped for the sake of many disabled children that such practices would bring about - there should be no other criteria than this.
If the Islamic community find such an obligation to the citizenship of this country too much to accept; then they must return to whatever country their culture directs them.
Since the foundations of Multiculturalism were laid down by Roy Jenkins over forty- years ago, our politicians have either willingly complied with the full remit demanded of the ideology, or have remained silent for fear of transgressing the new liberalism by finding themselves tainted with racism.
But as I have said in other blogs and will no doubt continue to say in the future, whenever I write on this subject: Roy Jenkins, one of the founding fathers of Multiculturalism, began to have doubts about the ideology toward the end. Yet those politicians who today still lay claim to the success of this wretched creed, do so, not for any principled reason, but purely for the hope of political advancement – the most spurious consideration of all.
No comments:
Post a Comment