Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.
"Your thoughts on this would be appreciated."
There are grains of truth in the article - though he is scaremongering and pushing it to the boundaries to underline his main point. As long as the Sun is the UKs best selling newspaper we are still a huge leap from tolerating pockets of Sharia law! The main point that resintates with me is that we bend over backwards as a nation to be seen to reinforce the quintessential British notion of 'fairplay' to all comers within our borders. We naively let ourselves down when when we extend that 'fairplay' to people who have no intention to recipricate.
Our government took the wrong line on the Danish cartoons - it may indeed give comfort to those who think they can play us for suckers.
I live in a city (Birmingham) that has a % muslim population that would probably send most freepers into a headspin. This proportion is represented in the staff at my UK office. Most British Muslims live decent, hardworking, tax paying, charitable lives. The problem is there is no getting away from the fact that I also live within two miles of a mosque attended by more than one of the failed (14 July) London Bombers. It gets very difficult not to look at every single person with a tan. an overlong beard, and what look to me to be pyjama's and presume they are hostile to all we stand for.
I think second generation British Muslims are struggling to find an idenitity - most I see go the right way - they get a proper job, they reject the yashmack (though some choose to keep headscarves - most go the full western make-up route). I can also tell you they embrace the British Pub Culture if nor our Bacon Butties! However, there is still this (too big) number who reject the core of their adoptive homelands soul and go down the full ultra-conservative path that lead them to strap on Backpacks and climb on commuter trains. What we need is for the ones who live the 'British' life, to stop having so much fun, and take responsibility in their own community for rejecting the immans - and forcing the point that there is such a thing as a secular muslim and making a show of it. I fear they don't appreciate that these 'moderate' muslims are loosing the PR battle so badly it is difficult for those who don't live in proximity of them to accept they even exisit. In fact I don't think they realise that they aren't even IN the PR Battle.