Monday, March 26, 2007

Reverse Assimilation and Creeping Sharia

Be prepared to read a lot more about Pakistan in the years ahead.

Mark Steyn looks at murder, cricket, and creeping sharia. An except:

If you had to draw one of those organizational charts of the world's problems, Pakistan would be at the center of them. We speak of the northwestern tribal lands as some of the most remote places on Earth. But, in fact, when they wanted to, the Saudis had no problem getting to them, spreading a ton of walking-around money, and utterly transforming those villages. From the North-West Frontier Province, the Saudi money and Wahhabist ideology seeped through the country, into the mosques of the cities, radicalizing a generation of young Muslim men. From there it moved on to new outposts of the jihad, to Indonesia, Thailand and beyond. The flight routes from Pakistan to the United Kingdom are now the most important ideological conduit for radical Islam. The London bombers last summer were British subjects of Pakistani origin. Last week, two more were arrested in connection with the Tube bombings at Manchester Airport as they prepared to board a plane to Karachi.


Meanwhile, flying back from Karachi and Islamabad to Heathrow and Manchester are cousins, lots and lots of them. In his detailed study of the Mirpur district in Pakistan, Roger Ballard estimates that at least half and maybe up to two-thirds of those living in Britain of Mirpuri descent marry first cousins. This is a critical tool of reverse-assimilation: instead of being diluted over the generations, tribal identity is reinforced; in effect, Pakistani tribal lands are now being established in parts of northern England.

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