Yuku free message boards

Quote:

---

And how long do you think it will be before British political correctness starts to give in to these students in the name of respect for their religious beliefs?

---

Do you conduct all your arguments by stereotyping people?

One of the best things about Britain is that our "heritage" is multi-stranded and various, and not confined specifically to the Christian lineage, but interwoven with threads from many cultures. Christianity occupies one recent phase of British history, but by no means the most recent. I'm proud of our humanistic and Enlightenment heritage, and that eclipses any small affection I might otherwise have for earlier ideologies.

Besides, what on earth are you on about? A lack of tolerance for overbearing religious attitudes does not lead to Islamic Doctors refusing to treat women. Rather, more recent developments in ethics, including feminism, have swept away many of the vestiges of earlier sexist attitudes that might even have paved the way for allowing acceptance of such intolerance. Attitudes that were not exclusively religious by any means, but certainly reinforced by our "Christian heritage," insofar as it exists.

Quote:

---

Seems that the rise in feminism that you mentioned, the demand that women be treated as something on the order of humans, has more to do with current medical practice, and the fall of certain uptight sexist policies, than any religious outlook. You'd have to remove that before any Islamic influence rises to power.

---

This seems to be what I was saying... only perhaps put rather better.

Oh I see, you thought I was implying that feminism paved the way for repressive Islam. No, my bad (sorry, real tired). The sentence was meant to imply that sexist attitudes used to prevail, and if things had remained that way supported by our "Christian heritage" then it would actually have been easier for another sexist religion to gain a foothold. But instead much of what once was has been overturned.

I was reacting to NannyG's claim that hatred of our heritage is what leads to these alleged sexist attitudes among Islamic doctors. On the contrary, I was saying, it is precisely our rejection of such a heritage that has given protection against such views.

Did that make better sense?

In that case, I agree back at you.

Quote:

---

If all we had was PC and Islamic activism, i'd be worried.

---

I'm not even sure I know what PC activism looks like. It's a bit of a myth, if you ask me, although the growing realisation that there were many disparate points of view to be respected did have some teething pains, and might occasionally have a few still.

The sad fact is, the term "Political Correctness" is frequently used as a stick to beat any humanitarian effort in the public sphere, be it rights for prisoners or ramps for wheelchairs.

It's as if, when faced with the necessity of showing respect to alien-seeming segments of society, some get the heeby jeebies and bend over backwards in ridiculous contortions to make the attempt, while others perceive the requirement as an affront and refuse to consider, but most people just get on with the necessary business of being thoughtful about others.

I hardly think feminism deserves the label PC not in a derisive sense. In its moderate forms, it's a completely sensible and appropriate statement about the status of half the human race. There's nothing very outstanding about it. If the term PC really has come to mean, "People being excessive and silly in there fumbled attempts at respect" as opposed to, "treating people properly" then we should just drop the label completely.

The idea that the gap left by Christianity's decline will be filled by Islam (if that was Nanny's point) is a novel one, and not one I can see a lot of evidence for. The two are far too similar for one to become the counterweight to the other both are two far along one side of the scale.

Although the rise in interest in neo-paganism, wicca, all things "new-age" etc. could be seen as some kind of filler. I'm not sure though, rock-music, football matches and illicit woodland raves might be a better contender for that role.

Quote:

---

These immigrants have not rejected their own culture....far from it!
They love their culture and find a culture vacuum in your lands where so many have put down their own history and culture.
What did I read just the other day?

---

Nanny, I haven't rejected my culture, far from it, but I think I know what it is and you do not. Here's a history lesson:

The Romans first visited England before the advent of Christianity. With them they brought great technologies, philosophy, and a pantheon of Gods. What they found here were huge numbers of different tribes who appeared to follow a naturalistic religion rather different from the Romans own nature-/planet- based paradigm. They also brought Latin with them, which was superimposed onto the large number of languages and dialects already in existence, which today are collectively known as Celtic.

The Roman presence in Britain declined due to pressure from Germanic tribes, some of whom then settled England themselves, mostly in the southern regions. These were the Angles, from which we now derive the country's name, and also the Saxons. They spoke very different languages to the Celts, who were forced further back into the peripheries of the land, to Cornwall, to Wales, to Scotland (I've left Ireland out of this general picture for this description). The Anglo-Saxons also integrated large numbers of the previous inhabitants into the newly forming culture.

While the Romans had a little success with their campaigns in the very North of Britain, against the Picts of Scotland, the surviving peoples there were never really shifted. The Angles and the Saxons made no attempt at this either, as a far more pressing matter was at hand. Nordic fleets were regularly raiding the northern coasts, making encroachments inland, building settlements, and establishing a domain of their own, which happened to be inclusive of many of the original peoples who were left from the Roman occupations of Celtic Britain. The "Vikings" of the north clashed violently with the Anglo-Saxons of the south, and it was a while before anything like stability returned.

Then the French invaded.

Well, the Normans in any case, and they made a much better job of it. It wasn't long before Britain was under French rule.

There was then a long period of much greater stability, during which the the ruling French elite governed over the people of England, which were by this time an integrated mixture of Celtic, Germanic and Nordic people the words of English derived from French, even today, have a ring of snobbery about them, simply because it was the French language that was then spoken by aristocrats.

It was not until several hundred years later, when the connection with France was severed and England was frequently at war with France, that the next major influxes occurred. During the Enlightenment, which theoretically has its roots perhaps in the early 1600s, trade and commerce spread across the world. As the old Feudalism and religious rule waned, free capitalism took much of it's influence from the Netherlands, and there was a massive cultural influx from that quarter. Meanwhile, the succession to the throne was taken by Hanovarians, and the slave trade brought huge numbers of Africans into the country.

The last hundred years has seen Indians, Chinese and Eastern Europeans enter England as citizens in vast numbers, certainly greater than any number from the middle east. Perhaps you will find it ironic that the greatest social challenge facing us today is to integrate swathes of Polish people suddenly taking advantage of all the awful jobs we have here that no one else wants. It's great for our economy, but tricky for the police and other authorities who have to spend a lot of money on translators right now. I say ironic, because church attendance among Polish people is swelling the ranks of the Christian faithful, albeit only slightly.

With the exception of America, England is just about the biggest bastardised, rag-bag conglomerate of vagrant nationalities on the planet, and still economically doing pretty well. Integration was never instantaneous, though.

I'm immensely proud of my country (though I didn't do it all myself, I admit), but you completely miss the point if you think a few quotes from Winston Churchill are the source of that pride. You try to paint these threatening vistas as if they are the greatest novelty ever beheld, yet for a small island with few natural resources, the influx of other cultures has never really never been anything but a source of massive enrichment, indeed the basis for all our worldly success.

So, to answer your question, no, even if those students claimed to want to only practice privately, that would not grant them exception to the requirements of a medical exam. Can you think of any other subject in which claiming to only need half of its skills permits graduation with less than a complete knowledge base? No, of course not. Neither would it be true here.

I don't identify so strongly with my culture that I feel insulted by your derogatory opinion of British sensibilities, but nevertheless, you make grossly stereotypical (and rather fanciful) assumptions about us. History may be somewhat shorter in America, but that's no excuse. There is rather a lot of fear in your words as if you might be terrified of change. I say 'as if,' I'm only speculating and don't wish to pigeonhole you. I think you might feel rather less afraid if you considered how much change and fluctuation has occurred throughout history, and how resourceful that has caused our respective cultures to become. The truth is, there has never really been a British or American people our roots spread far and wide.