Clash of cultures connects Britain and Orlando
By Georgie Anne Geyer
These weeks were destined to be the last chance for Brexit, as the days dwindle down to the historic June 23 British referendum on leaving the European Union.
The fierce arguments pro and con have been mutually mustered; the strident voices on both sides are now even more strident; and the rest of Europe is looking at "this royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle," with all the understanding George Washington might have drummed up for Benedict Arnold.
Those who are FOR Britain's exit from the E.U. - that "bureaulith" of Brussels that, in its formative years, was the butt of many jokes - essentially are arguing for Britain's "sovereignty." Not for them to forget that their little islands once constituted an empire on whose shores the sun never set!
The anti-Brexit forces, not surprisingly, are English bankers, industrialists and most of the diplomats. This is no longer 1940, they argue, when Britain "stood alone." In today's world, every nation stands alone only at enormous risk. As the Financial Times editorialized this week: "The gains from pooling sovereignty speak for themselves. Britain joined the E.U. as the 'sick man of Europe.' Now its economic performance is among the best."
Too bad, of course, that so much of the public conversation this week has not had to do with Brexit. Too bad that our airwaves have been dominated by still another horrific slaughter of innocents in America, this one in Orlando.
Too bad - because this new self-inflicted tragedy knocked Brexit off the front pages just when readers needed most to understand it, but also because Orlando had NOTHING at all to do with Brexit.
Yet, I now find myself begging to disagree with myself. (I often do.) For when I think more deeply, I realize that Brexit and Orlando are actually two RELATED problems. Ones, moreover, that we foolish humans ignore at our peril. Think of this wisdom-challenged relationship in terms of two outstanding questions.
First, why did the 29-year-old shooter sweep into an LGBT club in the early morning hours of June 12, firing like a madman and killing 49 innocent people? While mental instability and an inordinate hatred of outlier groups surely are part of the explanation, the fact that he was of Afghan heritage and at least claimed before he died that he identified with ISIS and Osama bin Laden should not be ignored.
He was born in America, of Afghan refugees. But please note that his Afghan-born father only hours before the slaughter, posted a video on Facebook called "Provisional Government of Afghanistan." In it, Dad was dressed in Afghan army fatigues and pretending to be the Afghan president, ordering the police and intelligence to immediately arrest almost the entire American-approved government and get rid of them.
The play's the thing.
Second, what does all of this have to do with the fact that the British vote on whether to remain in the E.U. may sever Britain from the organization of 28 European member-states begun with great patience and wondrous hope after World War II?
E.U. secretaries-general have told me repeatedly when I have visited Brussels headquarters: "The E.U. means there will be no more wars within Europe. It will be impossible with so many economic and financial ties between nations."
Only one catch: Even though Britain, in its present agreement with the E.U., chose NOT to take part in the controversial Schengen agreement, by which national borders are abolished and people move freely from one nation to another, it still is being overwhelmed by immigrants, drawn by its blooming economy, by metropole London and by still-superior English laws and institutions.
The problem is that Britain has thousands, maybe tens of thousands of potential shooters. The north of England - smaller cities like Birmingham and Rotherham - is overwhelmed by Pakistanis. If policies are to be judged by the empirical evidence we have at hand, then the story here is not a pretty one.
British newspapers are finally telling the story of the 1,400-or-so English teenagers groomed, beaten, raped and sold as sex slaves, many by Pakistani immigrants. The events of last New Year's Eve in Cologne are also engraved in most European and British minds now. That was the night when refugees kindly taken in by Germany assaulted, raped and robbed hundreds of women in the very shadow of the city's sacred cathedral.
It never stops: In the next step, Muslim "educators" are trying to take over schools in the north of England where they can have only Muslim education. Even in America, little-known, but dangerous new carriers of the radical Islamic thematic keep suddenly appearing, as out of nowhere.
In Orlando itself, The Washington Times reported, radical Islamic scholar Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar spoke earlier this year at the Husseini Islamic Center. In a 2013 speech he urged that gay people should be killed, according to Islamic law. "Death is the sentence," he reportedly said that day. "We know. There's nothing to be embarrassed about this. Death is the sentence. ... Out of compassion, let's get rid of them now."
There is no question - from all the polls and surveys, from all the interviews and politicians, from the extreme hatreds involved - that uncontrolled immigration, particularly when it involves cultures with institutions as different as Christianity's and Islam's, is at the root of both the Brexit fears and many of the repeated gun attacks in America.
Is Britain going to leave, or is it going to stay? Is America going to take charge of its out-of-control immigration and its sick gun mania, or is it going to keep killing itself?
Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.
© 2016, Universal