Why are English people so big on retaining cultural symbols, yet not the actual culture itself?

Question

For instance, they claim to keep the monarchy because it's a sign of their culture and history, yet they just bend over and let Islamification take place? London will be predominately Muslim by 2050, yet they're worried about still having the Monarchy instead?

Answer 1

that is what SHALLOW means

Answer 2

The same reason we Americans are.  And any other government and people.  Everyone likes to feel their 'moving forward,' making strides 'toward the future.'  No one want to feel like, "oh, lets return to the good old days before Penicillin and other antibiotics."  So, forward it is.

We in the U.S. are taught in Early Education that the U.S. is a "melting pot" of people from all over the earth.  They've come here for freedom, a chance to make it on their own worth and not based on religion or skin color and that as long as they 'try' to fit in, THEY WILL.

Now for when your grown up and in the real world.  We just lost our laws protecting our minorities to good schools and jobs and I'm sure it will just go downhill from here for a while.  Instead of gaining ground, we seem to be moving backward and that's NOT a good feeling!

Answer 3

Religion changes don't matter, by 2045 75% of America will be athiest and does that bother you

Answer 4

you answered your own question: symbols of their imperialistic predatory past is their only culture. Remove the royals, the shakesperean diatribe and a few ugly buildings and the english have nothing but smelly ale houses, bland soups and unintelligible if not offensive accents

Answer 5

England's only real religion is indigenous forms of paganism. Other than that, the rest is imported.

Answer 6

A quick look at English newspapers almost any day of the week shows how much they are struggling with multi-culturalism.  Similarly, employers in most of Western Europe for the last half century have brought in increasing numbers of guest workers primarily from Islamic countries to do the work that most Europeans really didn't want to do.  The American Southwest likewise has employed many Hispanic immigrants as manual laborers during the last 50 years.  However, what at first appeared to be a simple solution to the problem of how to get the trash taken out and the luggage handled didn't end up quite so simple after all.

Shortly after World War II, most people living in Europe were, for lack of a better term, ethnically European just as most Americans with the exception of the Africans brought over as slaves in the 16th and 17th century were of European origin.  The English were Anglo-Saxon, the French, Gaelic, and so forth.  As recent current events have shown, however, no longer can European countries equate ethnicity with citizenship particularly if they prize truly representative government.  

Multi-culturalism means appreciating the worth of other cultures, but it doesn't mean abandoning or denigrating one's own heritage. Thus, I will defend a Muslim's right to freedom of religion--along with my own belief in Christianity.  Islamic culture, by way of contrast, traditionally really doesn't separate civil government and religion while secular society in Western Europe and the United States has kept the two separate as a means of keeping society "civil" since the Renaissance and Reformation.

Incidentally, the English have come up with a few contributions to Civilization (with a capital "C") through the years, for instance, the English common law system and parliamentary government--not to mention some very world-class literature that is certainly not limited to William Shakespeare.