Civitas

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see SpinProfiles Civitas

Contents

Civitas and neoconservatism

Civitas set up the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, with funding of £274,669.[1]The Centre's director is Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why we need it.[2]

Civitas on Islam

Anthony Browne highlighted Britain's Muslim community in his November 2002 Civitas pamphlet, Do We Need Mass Immigration?.

As I write this, the UK is heading for war with Iraq, and even moderate Muslim leaders are warning the government of the impact on social relations with Britain’s two million strong Muslim community if Britain does attack another Muslim country (the less moderate leaders are warning that it will bring suicide bombing to Britain). Whatever the merits or demerits of war on Iraq, it is hardly a national strength to have a large minority with such divided loyalties during war.[3]

Civitas published The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy? by Caroline Cox and John Marks in June 2003.[4] The pamphlet's methodology was based on a distinction between Western societies on the one hand and 'ideological societies' on the other, a category which lumps together fascism, communism and Islamism.[5]

The propaganda battles of the Cold War, as understood through the work of figures such as neoconservative propaganda theorist Roy Godson and through Cox and Marks' own earlier writing, were cited as a precedent for the struggle with Islamism.[6]

it was the long ideological battles of the Cold War and the massive efforts by Marxists to subvert, and thus to subdue, Western societies from within that was most difficult for the citizens of these societies to understand and thus effectively to resist.[7]

Similar tactics were attributed to Islamists by Cox and Marks, but the possibility they might be used by Western societies was not considered.

The tactics used in the current Islamist attack on Western societies resemble those used by Marxists in the last century —deceptions of many kinds together with the drip, feeder and multiplier effects which enhance the overall effectiveness of the committed ideologists even if their numbers are not large.[8]

The 1997 Runnymede Trust report Islamophobia - A Challenge for us all is cited as an example of the 'drip effect.'[9]

Cox and Marks drew a distinction between moderate Muslims and idealogical Islamists, but argued that "the distinction depends in practice on moderate Muslims being more forthright in distinguishing themselves from their ideological co-religionists."[10]

Patrick West's September 2005, Civitas book The Poverty of Multiculturalism criticised local councils for funding Islamic Awareness week while refusing to celebrate Christian festivals.[11] This formed part of a wider critique of multiculturalism as cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism, the philosophy that no culture is superior to another, is one of today’s widely accepted doctrines. In the twenty-first century, to assert the superiority of Western civilisation over any other culture elicits accusations of eurocentricism, arrogance or even racism.[12]

Civitas published A Nation of Immigrants? by David Conway in April 2007.[13] The pamphlet argued that current levels of immigration are historically unprecedented and threaten the reproduction of Britain's political culture.

Of late, there has been a growing realisation of the plausibility of some such claim in light of the discovery that all four suicide bombers of 7 July 2005 were British-born, second generation British Muslims who had grown up in Britain in highly segregated enclaves in which normal patterns of acculturation into mainstream British life have apparently become far harder to sustain. It is particularly in light of how quickly and recently many such enclaves have sprung up in Britain, and are continuing to grow apace, that all those who want to see Britain remain the stable, liberal, and tolerant country it has been for so long need to consider carefully how much truth or falsehood is contained in the claim hat Britain is and has always been a nation of immigrants.[14]

In February 2009, Civitas published Music, Chess and Other Sins, a pamphlet on Muslim schools by Denis MacEoin with the assistance of Dominic Whiteman. It argued that some Muslim schools "are threatening the social cohesion of Britain by promoting a fundamentalist version of Islam that encourages children to despise the British society in which they live and to confine themselves to enclaves.".[15]

In May 2009, the think-tank published the pamphlet Disunited Kingdom: How the Government's Community Cohesion Agenda Undermines British Identity and Nationhood , in which David Conway argued that "the main threats to community cohesion in Britain today come from mass immigration and the radicalisation of young British-born Muslims."[16]


Civitas and the media

An analysis of Civitas' relationship to the UK print media can be found at a separate page: Civitas and the Media.

Notes

  1. ↑ Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2007.
  2. ↑ CV, douglasmurray.co.uk, accessed 30 May 2009.
  3. ↑ Anthony Brown, Do We Need Mass Immigration?, Civitas, November 2002.
  4. ↑ Caroline Cox and John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?, Civitas, accessed 31 May 2009.
  5. ↑ Caroline Cox and John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?, Civitas, accessed 31 May 2009, p.9.
  6. ↑ Caroline Cox and John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?, Civitas, accessed 31 May 2009, p.9 note 13.
  7. ↑ Caroline Cox and John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?, Civitas, accessed 31 May 2009, p.9.
  8. ↑ Caroline Cox and John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?, Civitas, accessed 31 May 2009, pp.62-63.
  9. ↑ Caroline Cox and John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?, Civitas, accessed 2 June 2009, pp.64.
  10. ↑ Caroline Cox and John Marks, The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?, Civitas, accessed 2 June 2009, p.74.
  11. ↑ Patrick West, The Poverty of Multiculturalism, Civitas, 25 September 2005, p.7.
  12. ↑ Patrick West, The Poverty of Multiculturalism, Civitas, 25 September 2005, p.1.
  13. ↑ A Nation of Immigrants? A Brief Demographic History of Britain, amazon.co.uk, accessed 31 May 2009.
  14. ↑ Unparalleled levels of immigration threaten Britain's cohesion as a nation, Civitas, 23 April 2007.
  15. ↑ Music, chess, Shakespeare, cricket and Harry Potter banned on fundamentalist Muslim schools' websites, Civitas, 20 February 2009.
  16. ↑ New Publications, Civitas, accessed 31 May 2009.
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