Some reponses to my recent report ‘Debunking the “Islamisation” Myth’:
Matthias Zick Varul of the University of Exeter takes issue with the section of the report looking at health (‘pretty unnecessary speculations’), but nonetheless notes that the report ‘not only underlines the points about the lack of evidence for the claims about a “Muslim population time bomb”, it also quite nicely traces how this myth is perpetuated by dodgy media reports and how it fits into the ideological outlook of cultural pessimism once promoted by the likes of Oswald Spengler’.
Phil Dickens of Truth, Reason & Liberty surprises me with a broadly positive review, especially given he describes himself as ‘a class-struggle anarchist’, while I am a member of the Conservative Party and a moderate libertarian. Dickens states that ‘from my own perspective it’s the lack of class analysis and the vague, civic nationalist undercurrent that is most worrying’, but still believes the report is ‘well worth a read’ and concludes that ‘it’s just a shame that, due to the propaganda model under which the media functions, the vast majority of people will never even hear this argument made’.
Five Chinese Crackers rightly takes me to task for failing to more comprehensively debunk media myths, and I am grateful for this and will write on the points raised in future. Nonetheless, the report is judged to be ‘well worth a look’.
Loon blog Gates of Vienna rants: ‘There is a full-scale invasion … of the UK taking place and up pops another clueless observer on Harry’s Place to tell us this is a myth’, claims I have a ‘stupid, diminutive brain’ and goes on to state ‘no, I won’t be reading his inane report’. So, a report he hasn’t read is ‘inane’. I should note that Gates of Vienna is one of those idiotic blogs that buys into the propagandist lie that the BNP are ‘pro-Israel’.
Max Dunbar, who writes for Shiraz Socialist and Butterflies & Wheels, considers the report ‘a stronger, finer attack on the current bigotry against British Muslims than anything produced by the far left’. Cheers!
Update (28.9.10):
Kellie at Airforce Amazons describes the report as ‘a substantial attempt by Edmund Standing to distinguish between rational concern about radical Islamist movements, and irrational fears of Britain or other European countries being somehow conquered by political Islam, either via immigration or via conversion’. (And, via AA, BobFromBockley has picked up on it too.)
