Wait, what? Being gay is a philosophy now?

Thanks for comments. There was no intention to say ‘you are as bad’ …. so apologies if it came across as that. There was no intention to mitigate or justify the attitude being correctly challenged.

I was trying to make a point – by contrasting with the non-used ‘female community’ as a synonym for women – about the fuzziness of the oft-used phrases ‘Muslim community’ and ‘gay community’ – which clearly have some meaning, but seem to me excessively homogenising, both when claims are made to speak for and lead them by pressure groups like the MCB, or to challenge them to “speak out” about an issue. (Another example is the so-called “Taxpayers Alliance” which does not speak for me and propagates views rejected by most taxpayers). I am a supporter of constructive feminism, but the mention of women was simply to make the contrast about nomenclature.

Richard F – It is not quite my place – as an secular, agnostic lapsed Catholic – to lecture Muslims on their understanding or misunderstanding of their own faith, nor would that achieve my goals of helping rather than retarding an equality agenda, but I do share a pro-equality and integration political project with those Muslims and those in any section of society working to entrench ideas of universal human rights and equal citizenship. That is why the Fabian Society has consistently sought to make platforming emerging Muslim voices part of a broader citizenship, integration and equality argument, in a way that might help to undermine and challenges extremist and polarising voices.

I wrote this about 5 years ago in a manifesto piece for a coherent British citizenship:

“Billions of overseas dollars have been invested in promoting a narrow extremist politics in Muslim communities in recent years. We need to do more than simply hope this fails. An intelligent integration agenda would take advice from those seeking to create a confident British Muslim identity about what outsiders can do to help, or cease to hinder, their efforts which, if successful, would have the potential to lead and influence debates about Islam and integration across Europe and beyond. Above all, we should recognise the diversity of these debates and tune into the many different voices urgently contesting major political and social debates within Britain’s Muslim communities. With a couple of exceptions, major media organisations seem to have lacked the interest or knowledge to capture this. Nobody can accurately claim to speak for all 1.6 million British Muslims and much more needs to be done”.

Re the points of Sunder: unfortunately the MCB seem like a bunch of bigots themselves and their recent PR has not been good (example of the comments about our troops in Iraq). The MCB does not represent many Muslims and for a ‘minority’ group I do not see why the Muslim community should have as much ‘control’ as they wish to have.

Everyone is equal BUT the majority rule in terms of the democratic process

Wouldn’t a more accurate article title have been 11 Parisian Muslims won’t play football against a gay team?
I am sure you can find 11 nutters in every worldwide community. I recollect Saudi Arabia won’t let you in the country if you have ever visited Israel…

“If these ‘minority’ groups want to live and work and play in our country then they play by our rules.”

I suspect they don’t, as they are living in France!

The Quran demands that gays be put to death, so it is hardly surprising that Moslems don’t want to play football with them (in several countries where Moslems are the majority gays actually are put to death).

BTW, the Quran forbis Moslems to expose their knees, so what are Moslems doing playing football in the first place? (The late Sir Harry Lauder got into a bit of bother in Egypt, if my memory serves me right.)