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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

British National Party’

Has Boris Johnson inadvertently done Us a Favour?

Boris Johnson has been roundly pilloried by the left-leaning press and by socialists and liberals on social media for his comments about burqa-wearing Muslim women looking “ridiculous” because burqas make their wearers look like “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”. But the criticisms have come not just from the left. Theresa May and Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis are among top Tories who have called for Johnson to apologise. The party has received so many complaints, an investigation into whether Johnson’s already- infamous article in the Daily Telegraph has brought the party into disrepute is proposed. Separately some MPs – such as Labour’s Jon Trickett – have called for Johnson to be disciplined for breaking the Ministerial Code (BBC News, 2018d). In the wake of Johnson’s Telegraph article, there has been a spike in attacks on Muslim women wearing burqas and niqabs – reported by The Independent’s Lizzie Dearden, among others. This tweet by Amanda Fleiss and posted to Facebook by Huddersfield TUC captures the indignity and distress of one such attack. As reported by The Independent’s Joe Watts (2018b) amongst others, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has demanded that Johnson is subjected to a full disciplinary investigation and that there is… Read More

2009

A Year of Starts and Stops… 1988-1996    1997   1998     1999     2000     2001    2002      2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008     2009     2010     2011     2012     2013     2014      2015     2016     2017     2018      2019     2020    2021-2023 21st Century Group     HemsMESH     Humber MeshWORKS     Humberside MESH Network Gallery: Rossett Year 13 Psychology students in publicity poses taken during an actual lesson, January – all photos by Lynda Lee/Rossett School – click on photo to enlarge February: For the first time, provided general tuition support to 2 university students doing degrees in Psychology. Commentary: One was ‘Julie’, the young lady who had previously been an A-Level tutee and then come back to  me the previous August. The other was an Open University student. Both found my explanations easier to understand than their respective university tutors! March: The results from the January Psychology exams showed another good smattering of As, Bs and Cs. In the Health & Social Care results, most of the students had got their target grades while 2 had exceeded them. Commentary: Considering how fraught things had been with this very mixed ability class at times, overall these were very pleasing results. March: Asked by Spiral Dynamics… Read More

Islamification: Europe’s Challenge

Relaunched: 28 November 2015 This feature was originally published as ‘Islamification: Britain’s Challenge’ in 9 June 2013. It is now updated, expanded and relaunched under its revised title to reflect the dramatic changes that have taken place since the original publication and to add more of a European dimension. Islamification is a highly-emotive word. For me personally, it instantly conjures up images of English Defence League (EDL) demonstrators with their ‘No more mosques!’ placards But Islamification should be a word that stirs the emotions, one way or the other. By definition (WordSense.eu), it is the process of converting a region or a society to Islam. If being in a society that is taken over by Islamists (political supporters of fundamentalist Islam) and introduces Sharia law is something you would welcome, then impending Islamification should give you comfort and possibly even joy. If, like me, you enjoy many of the freedoms (and indulgences) of living in what is increasingly a post-Christian, secular society, then Islamification may fill you with apprehension. In an Islamified Europe, non-Muslims would be ‘dhimmi’: second class citizens. So…is Islamification happening? If it is, how does Europe and, particularly for me, Britain deal with it? (Or does it deal with us?!?) Islam is… Read More

Muslims, take back Your Religion from the Psychopaths of UnIslamic State!

It’s time the world turned on ‘UnIslamic State’ (ISIS) and destroyed it. It’s time every Muslim who upholds the 5 Pillars of Islam not only said  “not in our name” and “not for our faith” but took action, directly or indirectly, to stop these psychopathic arseholes. Thursday on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, there was a debate about which was the more serious challenge: the Russian-backed insurgency in Eastern Ukraine and the effect that is having on relations between Russia and the West or UnIslamic State. (Much of the media still insist on referring to them as ‘Islamic State’ in spite of multiple requests from leading Islamic thinkers to use alternative terms such as ‘UnIslamic State’ which do not confer on them a sheen of validity.) Personally, for all that Eastern Ukraine looks like an era-defining crisis in West-Russia relations, I have no doubt that UnIslamic State is by far the greater threat. It’s not just the gut-wrenching video of a young man being burned alive…it’s not even the trail of beheadings, crucifixions, mass executions and other atrocities which came before it (and undoubtedly are still being carried out as I write)…it’s the potential for catastrophe that UnIslamic State seem determined to pursue. The self-styled ‘caliph’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi doesn’t do… Read More

Email from a Muslim Student

It always delights me when ex-students and ex-tutees keep in touch after they have moved on to university (or wherever). One of those I’m most delighted by ongoing contact with is Yasmeen. She is bright, stunningly attractive and has a truly wicked sense of humour. She is also a Muslim of Pakistani heritage. Despite the fact we touched upon terrorism in our discussions for the World Sociology and Crime & Deviance topics, Yasmeen never let on to having any particularly strong political or religious views. Her father did, though. In an ‘Asian’ accent so strong I struggled to understand it at times, he described the Taliban as “very bad men”. He hated what they were doing to his country of birth. So I was intrigued by an email from Yasmeen the other day in which she wrote:- “Islam has a lot to offer in terms of spreading knowledge, living peacefully among others and just encouraging individuals to be good people and do the right thing. “I know things are really fragile now with Muslims, I’m sure you’re well aware of all that’s been happening in the news about Charlie Hebdo, the Sydney Siege, Peshawar Massacre (among other things) – it’s really… Read More

No More Mosques!

On a walk this morning I was surprised to see a National Front (NF) sticker on a post box proclaiming ‘No more mosques!’ (The design was identical to the flag above .) Firstly I didn’t even know the National Front were still going – I thought they were long ago eclipsed by the British National Party (BNP). Apparently the NF are still in some kind of business – though they seem to be riven by the most egomaniacal RED-driven in-fighting! Check out http://www.national-front.org.uk/ to view their sorry state. Secondly I was surprised to see the sticker in the Greengates part of Bradford, close to where I live. While there was some trouble in the area at the time of the 2001 ‘race riots’, Greengates appears to have little or no racial tension.  It is a largely mixed area of lower middle class and upper working class. The population appears to be mostly white – though there are a number of Asians living in and around the area – as evidenced by the wide array of clothing and skin colours to be seen in the Greengates Sainsbury’s.  Everything from shorts and vests to shalwar kameez and even full burkas can be found in the supermarket… Read More

David Cameron’s right about Multiculturalism BUT…

This past weekend David Cameron pushed forward considerably ideas his predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had been moving progressively towards …. In essence, this is to say pretty explicitly that, if you want to be British, you need to buy into the British identity and British values. (Ironically, freed from the collective responsibility of Cabinet, Blair on these issues is almost certainly well to the right of Cameron these days – see: ‘Radical Islam’ and the Return of Tony Blair). Cameron criticised ‘state multiculturalism’ and argued the UK needs a stronger national identity to stop people turning to extremism. With MI6 warning last week that Britain faces an “‘unstoppable wave of home-grown suicide bombers”, Cameron could hardly have ignored the threat from radicalised young Muslims; and it seems logical to ascribe their lack of identification with ‘British values’ as one cause of their radicalisation. In his speech on Saturday (5 February) Cameron accused multiculturalism of leading to a Britain of ‘divided tribes’. The prime minister posited that the multiculturalist dogma, which increasingly dominated political and social thinking from the early 1970s on, had meant the majority had to accord each minority ethnic group respect and the freedom to pursue its… Read More

‘Liberal Conservatives’: new politics?

The first day of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition we had Nick & Dave: the Love-In in the Rose Garden which more than a few commentators likened to a wedding, such was the bonhomie and adoring gazes between the principals. Yesterday we had Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ voice of sensible moderation, and William Hague, the conservative of the Conservatives, sharing the walk along Downing Street to David Cameron’s first cabinet meeting. Not to mention the bizarre spectacle of Lib Dem anti-nuclear spokesperson Chris Huhne taking charge of implementing the Tories’ plans to build more nuclear power stations! Today, of course, Cameron’s at war with a number of his own backbenchers over the intention to fix the level at which Parliament can be dissolved prematurely at a vote of 55% of the House of Commons (up from a simple majority of 51% and making it that much more difficult to get rid of them). At least the Lib Dems are only being berated for this ‘stitch up’ by members of another party (Labour)! Undoubtedly the week since the general election results were declared has been one of the most interesting in modern British politics! The 55% no-confidence level stitch-up is, in fact, a key plank… Read More

Is restricting Immigration discriminatory?

At last, it’s starting to become OK to talk about immigration. Of course, it’s been a hot topic for the British National Party (BNP), their British National Front predecessors and the far right for years – in fact, decades really, stretching right back to Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech back in April 1968. The GREEN vMEME’s staunch opposition to anything that could possibly be associated with prejudice and discrimination has inhibited rational discussion of these issues. Now, thanks to the emergence of the cross-party Balanced Migration Group (BMG) , led by Frank Field (Labour) and Nicholas Soames (Conservative), the barriers to acknowledging the problems that immigration is creating for the United Kingdom are at least beginning to crack. Over the past year, from interacting with Jon Freeman and Rachel Castagne at June’s A Regent’s Summit on the Future of the UK to dialogue with staunch BNP supporter Man of the Woods in the comments on Should the BNP appear on the Beeb?, I’ve come to have much more of an appreciation of how a number of people feel really passionately about this kingdom…as Man of the Woods calls it, ‘my ancestral land’. The real eye-opener for me, though, with… Read More

What will Islam do for Homosexuals?

A conversation about homosexuality this week with a class of A-Level Psychology students led me to write Just how many Homosexuals are there really? for this Blog. However, as my thoughts developed, it seemed to me there is an issue our kingdom is going to face in the not-too-distant future which CHE-UK really will have to address so that we have something to offer when the issue starts to become pressing. Put simply: Muslims are the fastest growing ethnic group in our population. Islam condemns homosexuality as sinful – eg: Sura 7:80-81, 26:165. As Muslims become more and more a sizeable percentage of our population and political parties are obliged to compete for their vote, how will that fare with liberal policies on social moral issues such as homosexuality? Now, when I talk about Muslims, I don’t mean the relatively small number of fanatical fundamentalist jihadists who aim to bring terror to our kingdom as a precursor to an Islamic caliphate. I mean the ordinary men and women who want little more than decent jobs (usually for the men), a good education for their kids, effective health care, some reasonable leisure opportunities…and the freedom to pursue their religion. They’re not particularly out… Read More