“In Britain today there is a mismatch between how non-Muslims often perceive Muslims and how Muslims typically perceive themselves. This disconnect is down to a tendency by non-Muslims to assume that Muslims struggle with their British identity and divided loyalties.”

Leon Moosavi writes at Comment is Free. He lists the following statistics:

• 83% of Muslims are proud to be a British citizen, compared to 79% of the general public
• 77% of Muslims strongly identify with Britain while only 50% of the wider population do
• 86.4% of Muslims feel they belong in Britain, slightly more than the 85.9% of Christians
• 82% of Muslims want to live in diverse and mixed neighbourhoods compared to 63% of non-Muslim Britons
• 90% of Pakistanis feel a strong sense of belonging in Britain compared to 84% of white people

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Grooming children for sex is a growing scourge that cuts across all communities, West Yorkshire’s chief constable warned yesterday as he met Muslim community leaders at a summit to tackle the problem.

Sir Norman Bettison insisted the crime was not a racial or cultural issue. The type of exploitation seen in cases such as the recent Rochdale scandal, in which a gang of Asian men preyed on vulnerable young white girls, was just one of its many faces, he said.

“I believe there is a problem that is very widespread, not just in Yorkshire, not just within the Muslim or Asian community, but there are girls who are vulnerable and those vulnerabilities are more and more often these days exploited,” he said. “What these cases have done is they have shone a light on this type of exploitation.”

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