"Sharia law is spreading as the authority of British justice wanes" ran the headline in The Daily Telegraph. Sharia's great strength is the effectiveness of its penalties, we're told by Aydarus Yusuf, 29, a "youth worker" from, eh, Somalia -- where else! The report continues: Dr Prakash Shah, a senior lecturer in law at Queen Mary University of London, said such tribunals 'could be more effective than the formal legal system'. (Joshua Rozenberg, "Sharia law is spreading as the authority of British justice wanes", The Daily Telegraph, 29-11-06, p.10.)

Oh gosh! It must be a terrible time to be a true-believing, reality-denying multi-culturalist. What on earth do they make of this sort of thing?

For those of us who live in the reality-based community -- those of us who make our decisions on what is, rather than what should be in a perfectly equalised world -- it is all so predictable.

Tony Blair tells "radical Muslims" they have a "duty to integrate" into British society. (Will Woodward, "Radical Muslims must integrate, says Blair", The Guardian, 9-12-06.)

That sounds real nice, but Tony…radical Muslims will not "integrate" because there is no need for them to integrate.

What political or social or legal or cultural or religious or economic pressure compels Muslims, or any other kind of immigrant from anywhere, to "integrate" to the British way of life?

Not one! And if there was, it would probably be illegal!

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "INTEGRATION"
Firstly, religions cannot integrate. The best they can do is brush alongside each other and often not very successfully. But they cannot integrate, unless you're talking "conversion". So it is fatuous to talk about Muslims "integrating" to Christianity or vice versa. So forget about integrating on a religious level.

However, integration potentially could occur at a variety of other levels: economic, social, cultural.

Economic integration becomes less likely when there are large numbers who can integrate economically with themselves.

Social integration can be enforced by law. Social integration is also about having friends and colleagues who are of different races and faiths and nationalities. This is more likely to happen when immigrants actually need friends and colleagues of a different race or faith or nationality -- that is, when they are very much in the minority.

Next, there is cultural integration which again is more likely when the immigrants are a tiny minority who feel compelled to adapt in order to fit in with everyone else. This compulsion disappears when there is lots of other immigrants behaving culturally just like them.

When immigrants don't have to integrate -- when they don't have to make an effort to adapt to new ways -- then they will continue in their own ways, and why shouldn't they!

WHEN INTEGRATION WORKS
"Integration" only works when 3 requirements are in place:
One, the number of people coming into the country is few.

Two, the rate at which they are coming is slow.

Three, the host culture is confident of itself. That is, it is not timid, or morally confused about its legitimacy.

There is a fourth requirement for quick and easy integration -- the incomers should be very similar to the host community.

However, even if the incomers are significantly different in every way, they can still be "integrated", to an extent, if the above 3 facts are in place. For example, Britain could integrate a very few little green men from Mars, providing they remained few, scattered, unorganised and with each passing year, gradually losing their inherent Martianness, to a greater cultural Britishness.

However, if their numbers were such that they were able to develop a significant Martian community, which was self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing, then that would begin to have political, social and cultural consequences for everyone else.

Thus the first 3 are the most vital. Where any one of these 3 essential requirements does not exist, then there will not be any integration, only a lot of different people living in the same space.

HOW INTEGRATION USED TO WORK
"Integration", and the thinking behind it, really is kind of 1950s!

Here is how social integration used to work:
Say you were working at your homogenous white, Christian office. One day a nice Mr Ahmed becomes employed. Mr Ahmed seems a bit alone, out of his depth in a foreign country, so you decide to invite him out one evening, to the picture palace, to see the new Ealing comedy, said to be exceedingly good, called The Ladykillers, starring Alex Guinness.

A couple of weeks later you invite him to your house, with Mrs Ahmed, for a dinner party with your other colleagues and friends.

Mr Ahmed is likely feeling a little bit awkward about alcohol on the table, but he realises he will just have to get used to that in this foreign country. However, you are careful, as a matter of courtesy, to ensure that you don't put any pork on the menu. After a couple of years, Mr Ahmed begins to feel more comfortable in his new country with his new friends. His children are a bit of a rarity at the local school, but everyone knows them because they are a bit different and they stand out.

Within a few years he feels quite at home and his children grow up saturated with the culture of their white British friends, trying always to be like them, and seeking their approval. They begin to feel a bit embarrassed about their religion, which starts to play less of a part in their lives as they grow up -- less than it did in the lives of their parents. As adults, they may well have largely dispensed with their old religion. It just didn't seem relevant and with their new British mentality they just don't need it. To all intents and purposes they become just like everyone else, albeit with different coloured skin…and so we have "integration".

WHY INTEGRATION DOESN'T WORK TODAY
But when there are a lot of people coming in, then the nice Mr Ahmed doesn't need any white British friends to introduce him into any social circles or to try to make him feel comfortable.

He has a ready-made Asian and Muslim community into which he and his children slide effortlessly and where their essential differences are strengthened, perpetuated and reinforced, not dissipated and lost.

Why should he bother making the awkward cross-cultural effort to be at your dinner party when he has scores of Muslim friends with whom he'd rather be having dinner?

When these numbers are coming in fast and without end -- when there is effectively an invasion situation -- then the host community feels no moral impulse to be friendly, or to make anyone feel welcome.

The only sentiments from the host community are alarm, resentment, and anger, at the numbers moving into its living space.

And if the host community is morally confused and paralysed by constant propaganda which questions the host community's legitimacy, and even its existence, then the host community has no moral stamina to demand that incomers "integrate", even if the numbers were few enough to make it possible.

What this is saying is that integration can only work in circumstances completely different to those which exist today.

What we have today is invasion. There can be no integration with invasion! When you have invasion, people react in the same way, whether in peacetime or war. Those who have been invaded retreat, if they can, to find peace and to stay with what they know. The invaders stick with themselves and expand outwards.

Today, we don't have integration, or assimilation to the host community, we have its replacement.

The debate has moved on. The question now is no longer primarily, "How do we help these people integrate?" but rather, "How do we stop these huge numbers coming and how do we encourage many of those already here to leave?"

For our part, democratically we can support and vote for politicians and parties committed to those aims.