Amid all the bad news, Tariq Jahan made me feel proud to be British
We like to think of ourselves as a calm people: unpanicky, steady under pressure. We like to imagine, too, that we are orderly and self-reliant. True, we can be violent, too: for at least 600 years, visitors have remarked on the cheerful belligerence of the British, and riots were a common occurrence for much of our history. But local communities were trusted to maintain order, and unrest was generally quelled, not by the forces of the central state, but by devolved volunteer units.
The system wasn't perfect, of course, and the fact that local militiamen tended to come from the propertied classes could lead to antagonism, as happened infamously at St Peter's Field in 1819, when pro-democracy demonstrators were ridden down by sons of local shopkeepers and gentry serving in yeomanry units and as special constables. Still, the underlying idea was a sound one: those who had the most stake in the maintenance of order and property were expected to play their part in policing their own neighbourhoods.
One of the more baleful consequences of the expansion of the central state is the erosion of community responsibility. These days, when a law-abiding citizen directly tackles criminality, the police are less likely to thank him than to issue a finger-wagging warning against being "a have-a-go hero". Defend your own property against a scoundrel and you could find yourself more harshly sentenced than the intruder.
The social compact been ruptured, not by the citizen, but by the government. The state circumscribes our right to self-defence, arguing that it will discharge that function on our behalf. It then fails to do so, yet prosecutes us if we attempt to compensate for its failure. The government takes more than 50 per cent of GDP, and yet is unable to despatch assistance in response to a 999 call.
Understandably, people have stopped waiting for officials to do their jobs. Instead of calling the council, they get their brooms out. Instead of depending on the police, they protect their shops. The Turkish shopkeepers and restaurateurs who patrolled Dalston, the Sikhs who stood with drawn swords before their temple, are reacting as generations of British people reacted in similar circumstances. Rather than simply whining about the failure of the state, they took responsibility. It would obviously have been better had they not been forced into this position; but, finding themselves there, they acquitted themselves rather heroically.
In all the monstrous news of the past five days, one moment stands out as an example of the kind of dignified and understated stoicism which foreigners used to associate with us. It came yesterday from Tariq Jahan, whose son Haroon had been deliberately run over as he tried to protect shops in Birmingham from looters. Contrast the humanity of this grieving father's words with the rage of those trolls who infest so many comment threads, blaming every social ill on Islamic immigration.
I don't blame the police, I don't blame the government. I'm a Muslim: I believe in divine fate and destiny. It was his fate, his destiny, and now he's gone, and may Allah forgive him and bless him. Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise calm down and go home – please.
So long and thanks for all the clicks
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