UK: Tell Mama Doesn’t Like Lord Pearson
by Hugh Fitzgerald
Lord Pearson
Tell Mama, the Muslim group devoted to sounding the alarm about the unspeakable conditions in which Muslims must live in the U.K. – though for some reason they keep making great efforts to enter and settle in, that terrible country – is once again angry with Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who is one of the few sane voices in the House of Lords. For Lord Pearson dares to worry aloud about the ideology of Islam, and the effect of ever-increasing numbers of Muslims in the U.K. on its indigenous non-Muslim population.
Tell Mama’s rant can be found here.
The enduring racist myth that Muslim birth rates are soon to replace ‘native’ populations reappeared on television yesterday, after Lord Pearson, formerly of UKIP, spread the falsehood that the Muslim birthrate ‘in this country is going up ten times faster than ours’.
Lord Pearson obviously misspoke when he said that the “Muslim birthrate…is going up ten times faster than ours [the English].” What he was referring to was data from the government’s ONS (Office of National Statistics), not about birthrates, but about population increases. He had mentioned the correct version — which he surely meant to say on SkyNews — in a 2017 speech: “The latest figures I have from the ONS show that the Muslim population in England rose 10 times faster between 2001 and 2016 than did the rest of the population, by 107% compared to 11%.” That is perfectly true, and Tell Mama certainly knew what he must have meant – it even refers to that 2017 speech — but chose not to explain Lord Pearson’s obvious error in substituting “birthrate” for “population.”
But what about birthrates? For that is basis for Lord Pearson’s evident anxiety. They are going down for the non-Muslim English, to their lowest point in 80 years. As of 2019, English birth rates are, at 1.7 per woman, far below the replacement level of 2.1. That means the non-Muslim population is now dramatically decreasing. At the same time, the Muslim birthrate, at 2.9, is far above the replacement level. By 2050, at current rates of fertility, the Muslim population will have tripled, to 14.1 million, while the non-Muslim population will have steadily gone down, to what numbers are still unclear, but Christianity, all the studies conclude, will be a minority religion in 2050.
Adam Boulton, the presenter of All Out Politics on Sky News, was correct to identify this as ‘us and them’ politics.
It’s also a form of politics unbecoming and undeserving of such a large media platform.
Lord Pearson’s central claim first appeared during a debate in the House of Lords on December 7, 2017, which referenced [sic] a “Muslim takeover of our society, at least in our major Muslim conurbations” and includes the misuse of census data.
Why is it either “unbecoming” or “undeserving” of “such a large media platform” as SkyNews to allow discussion of a matter as serious as the demographic future of the United Kingdom? No doubt Tell Mama wants censorship of the subject to be enforced; it doesn’t want to scare people with too much reality. If Tell Mama had its druthers, the subject of Muslim birthrates, and consequent population increases, would never come up, not anywhere. But if it must be mentioned, Tell Mama wants to keep that information from reaching a large audience, as it did, thanks to Lord Pearson, on SkyNews. Mustn’t let people learn too much about Muslim demographics; it might set them thinking, and then worrying, and that would never do.
And is Lord Pearson wrong? Hasn’t there been a “Muslim takeover,” just as Lord Pearson claimed, “in [the] major Muslim conurbations,” that is, in many neighborhoods in Bradford, Blackburn Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester, and — in such places as Bethnal Green and Bow, East Ham, West Ham, Polar and Limehouse — in London itself? By takeover, he meant that in certain neighborhoods with large Muslim populations, some even having Muslim majorities, have become No-Go Areas, where non-Muslims fear to visit, and where even firemen require a police escort, while the police themselves now enter, for their own safety, only in groups.
While it is true that the Muslim population has more than doubled in a decade, the census question on religion and non-belief is of self-identification, Lord Pearson, for example, ignores the continued growth of atheism and non-belief, declining Christian belief, and how just over half of those (55 per cent) surveyed by the National Centre for Social Research believe in a God figure more broadly.
What does the growth of atheism and non-belief have to do with Lord Pearson’s point that Muslim fertility rates (2.9) far exceed those of non-Muslims (1.7)? Nothing. It’s a diversionary tactic, intended to confuse.
The demographics argument shifts to Muslim children outnumbering non-Muslims, which is true in some areas, like Washwood Heath in Birmingham (86 per cent) but untrue in [places] like Bristol, for example,[where] there were three times as many Christian children (aged 0-17) as Muslim, per the 2011 census data.
Yes, we all know that in some places in the U.K. Muslim children outnumber non-Muslim children, and in other places it is the reverse. Who would ever have thought otherwise? But again, this obvious fact has nothing to do with national data about comparative (non-Muslim and Muslim) fertility rates, which is what Tell Mama continuously attempts to direct our attention away from.
Such an argument echoes that of the Daily Mail in 2017, which ran the alarmist headline: “The changing face of Britain: A child in Birmingham is now more likely to be a Muslim than Christian.”
Buried further in the article, however, was the admission that: “The figures show that Christianity is still the dominant religion in every local authority area in England and Wales, even in the most culturally diverse towns and cities.”
The Daily Mail’s 2017 headline was not “alarmist,” but factual: Muslim women are producing children at a much higher rate than non-Muslim women – an average of 2.9 as against 1.7 for non-Muslims. In some places – the Daily Mail offered the example of Birmingham — more Muslim than Christian children are being born. The fact that Christianity is “still the dominant religion” does nothing to undermine the essential point: there are ever fewer Christians, and ever more Muslims, in the U.K., because of the wide gap in fertility rates, and eventually, should current trends remain the same, Islam will – of course – become the dominant religion. Because many British people born into Christianity are now leaving it for atheism, that means that Christian numbers are dwindling even faster than previously predicted. Islam may become the dominant religion in the U.K. by 2050. Is Lord Pearson not entitled to raise the matter?
Again, there is a fundamental and crucial difference between birth rates and self-identifying with a religious belief like Islam. Conflation is a dangerous gambit.
I am not sure what is meant here. Does Tell Mama mean something like this: fewer Christians self-identify as Christians, so their numbers are undercounted, while almost all Muslims still identify as Muslims, even if they have secretly become disaffected from the faith, which makes their numbers seem larger than they really are? I don’t see why we should lose sight of Lord Pearson’s main point, the one Tell Mama keeps trying to confuse us about, and that we have to keep repeating after every attempt by Tell Mama to confuse the issue. To wit, for the third or fourth time: (and I will unapologetically repeat it again later on) birth rates for Muslim women in the U.K are much higher than replacement level, while birth rates for non-Muslims have fallen below replacement level; this inexorably means ever greater numbers of Muslims and ever fewer numbers of non-Muslims. That is all Lord Pearson meant.
A sane society would pay attention to Lord Pearson’s data and discuss what it will inexorably lead to, and not allow itself to be bullied into silence by the likes of Tell Mama. But on the subject of Islam, Great Britain is no longer a sane society. It even keeps out those whose unforgivable sin is to analyze, and warn about, the ideology of Islam, including the centrality of Jihad. Robert Spencer can’t set foot in the country, while Muslim clerics who are deemed too “extreme” even by some Muslim countries, are ushered right in. For example, the cleric Syed Muzaffar Shah Qadri, though banned in his native Pakistan, has been allowed to preach in mosques all over the U.K.
Tell Mama continues its attempt to demolish Lord Pearson for the primal sin of discussing Muslim and non-Muslim fertility rates:
Racist conspiracies about birth rates were behind the terroristic murders of 51 Muslims in Christchurch, which went on to inspire other forms of racist terror in Germany, the United States, Norway, and a sleepy English suburb.
What is Tell Mama trying to make us believe? It is this: because the lone Christchurch shooter, Benton Tarrant, was motivated by murderous anxiety over what he called “the Great Replacement,” that is, the replacement of whites by non-whites (and not just of non-Muslims by Muslims), that it somehow follows that no one, and certainly not the “racist” Lord Pearson, should even discuss the much higher fertility rates for Muslims than for non-Muslims in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe? There is a mendacious attempt by Tell Mama to suggest that there is some kind of a direct link between the measured and thoughtful remarks of Lord Pearson about birth rates, and the mad manifesto of the mass murderer in Christchurch. Are we now, because of that mosque attack, never to speak again about what the colossal rise in the Muslim populations will mean for the indigenous non-Muslims of Europe? Will such talk turn us all into Benton-Tarrants, capable of mass murder?
Lord Pearson, in this House of Lord’s speech, also invoked the racialised and Islamophobic conspiracy of Taqiyya, an enduring obsession in many far-right networks and online spaces.
Baroness Williams of Trafford rebuked his remarks on Sharia law, adding it has no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales, as Lord Ahmed also challenged some of the unfounded claims from Lord Pearson.
Taqiyya is not something dreamt up by crazed, “racialized and islamophobic” conspirators. It is simply the doctrine of religiously sanctioned dissimulation about both the faith of Islam, and about its practice by individual Believers. It began in Shi’a Islam, as a way to protect Believers from Sunni persecutors, but its practice centuries ago spread to all Muslims. When Muslims lie about what is in the Qur’an, they are practicing Taqiyya to defend the faith itself. When an individual Muslim claims that he would never “beat” his wife if she were disobedient, or never wage war against Infidels, even though he has done both, he is practicing Taqiyya to protect not the faith, but himself.
When Baroness Williams claims that Sharia has “no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales,” it sounds as if she is unaware that sharia courts have been operating all over England and Wales for some time, that many Muslims make use of them, especially in cases of family law, and that a British judge has even recognized, in a 2018 decision, the relevance of sharia law as it pertains to marriage and divorce. Lord Pearson is worried that Muslims will seek, in cases involving only fellow Muslims, to use sharia courts which apply Islamic law, thereby creating a parallel system of justice. It’s not an imaginary worry.
During his appearance on All Out Politics, Lord Pearson admitted, “I’m not a great expert on Islam, although I’ve been studying it for seven years”, but advocated that Muslims in Britain practice a ‘mild’ form of their faith, and referred to the Prophet Muhammad as a ‘violent warlord’.
Tell MAMA identified in its recent annual report how such language causes deep upset and harm to Muslims, given that many seek to emulate his teachings in daily life. The report adds: “To understand why such language is so hurtful to Muslims, in particular, is to understand that Muslims believe that Muhammad was God’s final messenger who gradually revealed the religion of Islam, who, in his lifetime, was an administrator, commander-in-chief, a teacher, and prayer leader for the burgeoning Muslim community. Therefore, ordinary Muslims view him as a model of God’s grace and salvation, and the greatest and highest of role models as many strive to emulate his teachings in their daily lives”.
For Muslims, Muhammad is both the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) and the Model of Conduct (uswa hasana), who is to be emulated in all things. Muhammad was a warlord – Tell Mama prefers that non-Muslims not focus on that — who conducted dozens of military campaigns. He took an active part in the killing of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza. He was both violent, and the cause of violence in others. He asked aloud for others to “rid” him of three people who had mocked him, and all three – Asma bint Marwan, Abu ‘Afak, and Ka’b bin al-Ashraf, were then murdered, in separate incidents, by his loyal followers. He greeted the news of their deaths with satisfaction. He ordered the torture, and then the murder, of Kinana of Khaybar. Of course, Tell Mamma does not mention any of this, and only deplores the supposed hurt felt by Muslims when Lord Pearson described him – accurately – as a “violent warlord.” But Muslims know perfectly well about Muhammad’s violence, and do not recoil but, rather, revel in it. And Muhammad himself would not have rejected Lord Pearson’s characterization. He boasted – in a well-known hadith – that “I have been made victorious through terror.”
For all of Lord Pearson’s obsessive interest in Muslims and Islam in the UK, he avoids discussing how structural racism and discrimination harm Muslims in education and employment – from being denied job interviews to the ‘Muslim penalty’ which hinders access to the salariat, to teachers holding stereotypical or low expectations of their Muslim students, with non-Muslim teachers reluctant to engage them according to the Social Mobility commission, incidents of racism and Islamophobia further damaged the confidence and self-esteem of young Muslims, resulting in some Muslims leaving university early, or not gaining ‘good grades’.
If there is a reluctance to hire Muslims, it is not because of “structural racism” – for the ten thousandth time, Islam is not a “race” — but because of unhappy experience with too many Muslims who lack appropriate skills and training, and do not have the work ethic. Many Muslims have found life on the dole, in a generous welfare state, preferable to having to go to work. Unemployment among Muslims is for some a matter of choice. The cleric Anjem Choudary described the cornucopia of government benefits that Muslims take full advantage of as the “Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.” Other Muslims have described their welfare benefits as a kind of proleptic Jizyah, a reference to the tax paid by non-Muslims in Islamic lands in order to be protected from attacks by Muslims. Compare the attitude of other immigrant groups – Chinese, Hindus, Vietnamese Buddhists – who have far lower levels of unemployment than the Muslims, even though many of them arrive with little or no knowledge of English (unlike many of the Muslims from Pakistan), who do display a willingness to work.
Muslims in the U.K. do not have self-esteem problems, as Tell Mama claims. Rather, the problem is that they have too much self-esteem, for they know, from the Qur’an, that they are the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims “the most vile of created beings.” Their sub-par school performance, as with “poor grades,” they blame not on themselves, but on the “islamophobia” that supposedly surrounds them. Why is it that all other, non-Muslim immigrants, who face the same problems of having to adapt to a new culture and, for many, having to learn a new language,, do so well compared to Muslims?
Could it be that Islam itself contributes to the stunting of mental growth? In Islam, skeptical and critical thought is discouraged, lest it lead to a questioning of Islam itself, which must not happen. Islam instead encourages the habit of mental submission. This surely helps to explain the poorer performance of Muslim students. They are used to rote learning – memorizing Qur’anic verses – but not to critical thought. Does the inculcated contempt for non-Muslims also have its effects on Muslims in school? Doesn’t it make it more likely that Muslim students will not willingly receive instruction from non-Muslim teachers? And what about the belief, of many pious Muslims, that all of knowledge is already contained in the Qur’an, and only needs to be teased out for the Believers by Qur’anic scholars?
Almost half of Muslims in Britain (46 per cent) live in the 10% of the most deprived local authority districts.
This fact, by itself, tells us nothing. If Muslims are “deprived” – i.e., poor – that reflects the absence of marketable skills among many Muslims, especially migrants. It can also reflect their lack of a work ethic. The high level of unemployment among Muslims can, for many of them, be a deliberate choice. Furthermore, Muslim women are expected to stay home and raise large families, not to go to work as non-Muslim women do, and this naturally results in lower family income among Muslims.
Muslims, particularly women, face double (gender and ethnicity) or triple (low socio-economic backgrounds) penalties in the labor market, which has real long-term consequences. Which, in turn, are reflected in low pay and the disproportionate impact on Muslim households (50 per cent) compared to 18 per cent of the overall population.
The main reasons for Muslim women not faring well in the labor market is that they are discouraged by their male relatives from working outside the home, and also from acquiring what the men regard as unnecessary schooling for women. It is the misogyny of Islam, and the belief, that women suffer from a “deficiency of intelligence” compared to men, which surely damages their self-esteem, that contribute to the high unemployment rates for of Muslim women.
These barriers pose real, significant questions about social mobility.
The challenge of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic prejudice, violence, and discrimination warrants more media attention, not the rambling, inchoate conspiracies of an individual who, late last year, invited Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) to dine at parliament, and referred to him,bizarrely, as a ‘Quranic expert’.
“Anti-Muslim and Islamophobic prejudice, violence, and discrimination warrants more media attention”? Thanks to a growing army of Muslim advocacy groups such as Tell Mama, “Islamophobic prejudice” could hardly get more media attention than it already gets in the U.K.
As for Lord Pearson, who is described as offering “rambling, inchoate [sic] conspiracies,” fortunately you can judge for yourself. You can view online Lord Pearson’s speeches in the House of Lords, where he is one of the most articulate members in that body, and see, too, his television interviews, where he refuses to lower himself to the level of his unsympathetic interviewers. He nowhere offers “rambling, inchoate [sic] conspiracies.”’ He is, rather, sober, measured, and undeniably alarmed about the inroads Islam is making in the United Kingdom. And that is what infuriates that stout Defender of the Faith, Tell Mama, that hopes you won’t see him, and fears that you might.