The bandwagon.

What are the dangers of joining a "bandwagon". The picture of that small child who had drowned in the crossing he and his family had made trying to get to Europe seams to have been a focus for all the terror of overloaded boats leaving to escape Africa. This emotional story which has captured the minds of people, with the creative help of the media played a major part in developing the story, we are now being asked to provide a home for untold numbers Arabic Muslim people who wish to try to get here.
The picture which our humanitarian impulse is being asked to absorb is one of shared concern. Beneath every breast beats a heart like ours, through every vein pumps the same blood, how or why should we differentiate between us and them.
On a purely physical basis which in religious and humanitarian terms is enough to confirm our kinship, we are the same. But as in so many of my blogs I contend that the "we" has little to do with the physical aspects but much more the characteristics of the mind. It's the mind and the way it thinks about the society which is crucial.
The mind is groomed through culture and religion. Its contact with the people who surrounded it as we grew is crucial to the way we think and react. The way we conceive our fellow man is through these learnt experiences and in many ways we are the prisoner of our upbringing.
The Arabic world has manifestly different views and opinions to our own.
We see it in the patriarchal evaluation of women and their place in the Arab and Muslim society. We see it in the observance of a religion which views everyone outside the religion as being Kafur  separate, beneath. If these traits of mind, encompassing the Jews also, in stigmatising people who are not of their faith, if these concepts of superiority are allowed to because the distinctive way people evaluate others then there is a definite danger that the immersion of significant numbers of Arab/Muslim people into our own society will only throw up yet another "ghetto" within our society which will bring trouble further down the line.
Is it fair to ask British society which has born the brunt of so much assimilation over the recent years, where it wishes to go in this humanitarian experiment.  It all hinges on the size of the influx and the demands it makes on our already stretched resources. We are no longer the "Great" Britain a power house exporting across the world we can't even balance our books without borrowing and if I, as an individual ran my private finances as this country runs its finances, I would be declared bankrupt. Can a poorly performing nation, and there are many such nations across Europe, afford to further increase its potential debt as it struggles to find the resources to provide the extra houses,school places and hospital beds which are the corollary  to any significant increase in population.
Will the demands for the special needs which every significant cultural group make on the existing society, be met without further alienation ?