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What difference does it make? They're building a parallel society. If you give them a street and they commit less crime it's still not yours to live on. If you give them a city and they make it rich it's still not your money to spend. If you give them your country it's not yours anymore, it's theirs.
Unless they were integrating. Are the Sikhs integrating? Apparently they have their own rituals we have to grant them religious exemptions for. And they don't behave like White Britons -- by your own argument they don't commit crime at the same rate. Presumably they are different.
(Not that I would assume they commit crime at lower rates anyways. Basically every immigrant group commits more crime than native Brits with the exception of other European groups and the Japanese. It's possible the Sikh are genuinely exceptional and I know they are different from standard Indians / Muslims / Arabs / etc. But if a random Sikh murders a kid and his family helps him cover up the crime I'm going to assume that they're actually not exceptional: I've never heard of a Japanese immigrant family doing that.)
Are Jews integrated in the United States? Are the Irish? Are Texans? What are the standards for 'building a parallel society' such that we should apply it to British Sikhs?
If an Irish man used a religious exemption to acquire a weapon to murder somebody and his Irish friends and family closed ranks to help him hide the weapon and spin up bogus anti-Irish racism charges, I would not consider that proof of integration.
You put "building a parallel society" in quotes and I'm not sure if I should read that as scare quotes. But to be clear, there are absolutely Muslim, ethnic, and immigrant neighborhoods in major cities in Britain and across Europe that function as parallel societies. There are parts of London where it is not safe to be gay. There are parts of Marseilles where it is not safe to be white. Would it make a difference to you if those areas had lower reported crime stats? It doesn't to me.
That's not what happened here. Sikhs have a religious exemption that allows them to carry a knife as a religious article. If the murderer had converted to Sikhism in order to acquire a knife with which to murder someone, this argument might have legs, but it didn't.
However, the Irish were and are religiously deviant from the US' predominantly Protestant culture, have a long history of "overperforming" the nation as a whole in crime, and to this day many of them live in ethnic enclaves with distinctive social norms. Really, I'm just trying to get some clarity as to what constitutes non-integration by your standards, since you allude to some yardsticks, but don't state them clearly.
I'm quoting you. You are claiming that Sikhs are building a parallel society in Britain. On what basis do you claim this? So far, the primary justification you've offered is that they get a religious exemption that allows them to carry a kirpan.
Ok I see how you read what I wrote to connote something different than what you just wrote, but I mean that he "used a religious exemption to acquire a weapon" which was used "to murder somebody". Which I think is the same thing.
British society was changed in a small way to accommodate an immigrant. (A normal British man would not have needed a Sikh religious weapons exemption, even if a normal British man could have theoretically converted to Sikhism.) What did British society get for this? In this case, a murderer and his family. Maybe there is some other greater benefit that renders this a price worth paying? I'm not seeing it.
Yeah, and I'm not sure whether to read your quotation back to me of my own words as using scare quotes or not. I do not think it is controversial to say, however, that many immigrants to Britain are building a parallel society. This is why I am repeating my claim. I think it is evidenced, at a minimum, by the fact that a Sikh immigrant murdered someone and his Sikh family sheltered him and advised him on how to get out of it. They don't act like integrated citizens putting Britain's interests above their prior clannish loyalties. We could start looking at other examples if you like. But to me it's a claim so obviously in evidence that when you quote my words back to me in that form, and I can't read your tone of voice, it becomes unclear to me what is actually under dispute. If you are disputing the point that I find totally uncontroversial, then we have a really different disagreement than if you just want me to elaborate on a related or unrelated point.
Right, mass migration changed America permanent ways, many of them negative. Some American cities are still governed by the descendants of the political machines the Irish (and other immigrant groups) begot. Nobody today would claim (I would not claim) that the Irish aren't American. It basically worked out. But it was not an easy or painless process! In some sense we're still paying the cost today.
So if you want to tease out what it means to be integrated, that's one thing, but if you want to dispute the costs and benefits of mass migration, that's another. I think the case of the Irish proves my point in fact. Unless you're just trying to tease out what it means to be integrated. Which is why it matters whether I read your quotation of my own words back to me as a case of square quotes or not.
Hundreds of thousands of orderly, productive citizens? Like, you bring up the costs and benefits of migration, and this has always been the slam dunk for immigration. The cost of Irish immigration was not primarily in material damage caused by Irish immigrants (which was minimal, and more than offset by the benefits of millions of additional people, not to mention the fact that they helped save the Union), but in the backlash against them by nativists (which gets to the broader problem of nativists hating immigrants more than they love their countries).
Also, I just double checked the details of the case, and Nowak wasn't stabbed with a kirpan but another knife. As far as I can tell it wouldn't be covered under religious allowances (which is presumably why efforts were made to hide it), so that detail is most likely irrelevant.
And I think this is taking a singular event and treating it as a trend. The friends and family members of criminals providing support to the guilty part, while unfortunate, is not particularly unusual. We'd need to have some reason to think British Sikhs are unusually bad about this compared to other Britons. If you have affirmative evidence of such a trend, I would be interested in seeing it. As far as I can tell, @MadMonzer 's claim that British Sikhs are, on the whole, more law abiding than the general British population seems to be correct.
It was covered, the refutation is a lie put around by Redditors. If you read the judge's closing statements, he makes it clear that both knives are kirpans and that Digwa was permitted it because of the religious exemption. Usually Sikhs wear one small one, but he was part of a group that wears an additional massive sharp one and this is permitted.
Digwa specifically got a reduction in his sentence because, as a Sikh, it was legal for him to have the murder weapon. For a normal UK citizen that would be considered a serious aggravating factor and result in an extended sentence.
The sentencing remarks said (emphasis mine):
In other words, the Court didn't rule on the legal question of whether the big knife was legal to carry*, it ruled on the factual question of what Digwa's motivations were in carrying it. If Digwa's motivation for carrying the knife in the first place was to use it as a weapon, the starting point is a life sentence with a 25 year minimum. If his motivation for carrying the knife was something else, then the starting point is a life sentence with a 15 year minimum. The judge ruled that Digwa's motivation was religious. The same analysis would apply if a pastry chef murdered someone with a breadknife - the non-murderous reason for having the knife reduces the presumed level of premeditation.
* Digwa was also convicted of illegally carrying a knife, but on the technicality that whether or not the knife was legal originally, it became illegal when used for an illegal purpose.
Right, but that wouldn't fly for me. His Sikhness is directly related to the relative leniency of his sentence. Our society bends over to accomodate the Digwa's of the world whilst when Keir Starmer needs white rioters and people who say racially inflammatory things on Twitter to disappear, they disappear into extremely punitive jail sentences with magnificent speed.
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