The Tribune

PRINCE Charles, on a six-day tour of the Middle East, kicked up a bit of a desert storm over the weekend when he suggested that persons who make Britain their home should “abide by British values”. In this context he was referring specifically to the radicalisation of British Muslims, who have turned their backs on all things British.

“The radicalisation of people in Britain is a great worry, and the extent to which this is happening is alarming, particularly in a country like ours where we hold our values dear,” Prince Charles told BBC Radio 2’s Sunday Hour. “You would think,” he said, “the people who have come here, or are born here, and go to school here, would abide by those values and outlooks.”

“In a staunch defence of Britain’s ‘Christian standpoint,’ he denounced the radicalisation of young Britons by Islamic fanatics and said they should show more respect to ‘the values we hold dear’,” Britain’s Daily Mail reported this week.

In a new book, just published, the Queen is said to be worried that her son, heir to the British throne, will be an “activist king.” This recalls the early thirties when his uncle, the Duke of Windsor, for the short time that he was King Edward VIII – before abdicating the throne for the “woman I love” – caused quite a stir in government circles in the UK for speaking his mind on Britain’s social conditions. Such a topic is a “no-no” for British monarchs who are not supposed to meddle in politics. King Edward’s comment that “something should be done” for out of work miners after visiting impoverished coal mining villages in South Wales, made headlines in England and raised many Tory eyebrows at the time.

But we agree with Prince Charles. People, who go to another man’s country, should respect the customs and beliefs of that country.

We still recall the words of our late father – Sir Etienne Dupuch – when he sent us off to boarding school in England at the end of World War II. “When in Rome,” he advised, “do as the Romans do. If you don’t like it, catch the first plane home.” The only problem in 1946 was that there were few planes home, so we hunkered down, fitted in and loved every minute of it.

However, England, by bending too far backwards to create a multi-cultural society in which the whole world can feel comfortable, dealt herself a mortal blow by surrendering too many of her own standards for the sake of accommodation.

Today, too “politically correct”, she is suffering the consequences. Everyone who has travelled in the Middle East knows that no consideration is ever given to any outsider who visits their lands — it’s either toe the line, respect the customs, face prison or even worse. Yet in England there was the mad suggestion in 2008 by no less a person than Rowen Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, that the adoption of Islam’s sharia law was “unavoidable”, that “one law for everybody” was “a bit of a danger” and that sharia was not “an alien and rival system” – therefore, it should be adopted by the British. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he was turning somersaults to convince Britons that they had misunderstood him. What he had really meant to say was that Britain should not have a “legal monopoly” and that British Muslims should be able to choose to be dealt with under either sharia or English law. Can anyone imagine going to an Arab country and selecting the law under which one would want to be tried or resolve disputes or regulate transactions?

Obviously, some in England had gone mad and foreigners, although by now British, had eschewed the British way of life and were still clinging to their native traditions and polluting the proud land of Magna Carta. The heir to the English throne has every reason to be concerned.

A tragic example of political correctness taken to a lunatic extreme has resulted in a criminal investigation and the recent resignation of Rotherham’s town council. Fear of being labelled “racists”, the police of Rotherham – a town in South Yorkshire, England — have looked the other way for more than 16 years as 1,400 young English girls have been sexually abused, mainly by the town’s Pakistani-Muslim young men.

Reported Forbes magazine:

“They (Rotherham’s towns people) know, and have known over fifteen years, that there are gangs of predators on the look-out for vulnerable girls, and that the gangs are for the most part Asian young men who see English society not as the community to which they belong, but as a sexual hunting ground. But they dare not express this knowledge, in either words or deed. Still less do they dare to do so if their job is that of social worker or police officer. Let slip the mere hint that Pakistani Muslims are more likely than indigenous Englishmen to commit sexual crimes and you will be branded as a racist and an Islamophobe, to be ostracised in the workplace and put henceforth under observation.”

We also agree with the ruling of the judges of the European court of human rights in support of France’s banning of the wearing of the burqa – a covering of a woman’s body from head to toe when she’s in public. France’s argument is that they want their society to live together – the burqa sets a Muslim woman apart. In France it’s against the law to cover one’s face in a public place, this includes balaclavas, hoods and even helmets when not worn on a motor cycle.

One never knows what a burqa is hiding. We recall an incident at The Tribune in 1990. We remember the date because it was at the time that the Jamaal al Muslimeen made an attempt to overthrow the Trinidad government. Over a six-day period the Muslimeen held Prime Minister A N R Robinson, his cabinet, and other government officials hostage at the Red House, the seat of parliament, and the Trinidad and Tobago government’s television headquarters. During the encounter Robinson was beaten and shot — wounded, not killed – when he tried to order the army to attack. The attempted coup eventually ended in the surrender of the Muslimeen.

It was during this six-day period that the door to The Tribune’s editorial department suddenly swung open and in strode a tall, burqa-clad being — we say “being” because to this day we are not satisfied that it was a woman under the flowing black garment. Behind her, she dragged a small, elderly, well dressed — coat, tie and hat — Bahamian man. She yanked him as though he were a rag doll as she strode into the room and across to our desk. At times the feet of little man hardly touch the floor as she violently pulled at him.

We were so shocked at this apparition that we don’t even remember what she in her anger had come for – probably to complain about “babylon” or “beelzebub” — the rastas’ nicknames for the police, which was the common complaint at that time as the rasta’s way of life was becoming a part of the Bahamas.

Although the gruff voice behind the burkha introduced itself as a woman, we were satisfied that we were dealing with a man – and a very angry man at that.