Category Archives: UK

Another dubious tale of cultural ‘surrender’ to Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Daily Express carries a report that a Muslim shop assistant at a Marks & Spencer store in Reading refused to serve a customer buying a children’s book on Christianity on the grounds that it was “unclean”. Except that, even by the Express‘s own account, this story is disputed. A “source close to the shop assistant” is reported to have said that there has been a misunderstanding. “I think there was some confusion over what the customer heard”, she is quoted as saying.

Not that this leads the Express to question the accuracy of its report, of course. An editorial, headed “Surrender to minority is a parable for our times“, states:

“That a Muslim shop assistant working for Marks & Spencer should feel entitled to refuse to serve a customer buying a book of Bible stories says a lot about what is wrong with Britain today. The absurd culture of political correctness does not only hold the public sector in its grip but is now increasingly dominant among large private sector companies, too…. The incident hints at a workplace culture in which the unreasonable demands of a minority group routinely hold sway…. Every time our institutions surrender to the unreasonable demands of minorities to be excused tasks which the majority are expected to perform, they hammer another nail into the coffin of harmonious race relations.”

And the Express is of course well known for its consistent promotion of harmonious race relations.

Meanwhile the Daily Star opines: “So, here’s the latest news from the frontline of multicultural Britain. A Muslim working as a Marks & Spencer checkout operator refused to sell an ‘unclean’ book of Bible stories. It’s a pity she wasn’t sacked on the spot.”

Update:  The Daily Telegraph reports: “Shop sources said the assistant may have been referring to her hands which were dirty and she did not want to touch the book for fear of marking it. A Marks and Spencer spokesman said: “We are surprised by the allegation and are investigating it thoroughly. It appears there has been a misunderstanding over what was said.”

Diana’s mother ‘condemned her as disgrace for seeing Muslim men’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Diana, Princess of Wales, was condemned by her mother as a disgraceful “whore” who was messing around with Muslim men, the inquest into her death heard today.

Paul Burrell, the Princess’s former butler, told the High Court that he had been allowed to listen into a telephone call where Frances Shand Kydd rounded on her daughter for having a relationship with Hasnat Khan, a Pakistani consultant cardiologist.

Mr Burrell said: “Well she called the Princess a whore and she said that she was messing around with f****** Muslim men and she was disgraceful and said some very nasty things.” It was this telephone conversation, Mr Burrell admitted, that prompted the Princess to sever links with her mother, who has since died.

Times Online, 14 January 2008

‘Al-Qaeda’s white army of terror’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Hundreds of British non-Muslims have been recruited by al-Qaeda to wage war against the West, senior security sources warned last night. As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source…. Security experts say the growing secret army of white terrorists poses a particularly serious threat as they are far less likely to be detected than members of the Asian community.”

Scotland on Sunday, 13 January 2008

Paranoid nonsense, you might think, but let’s be fair –  it does provide a strong argument against racial profiling.

Muslims must do more to integrate, says poll

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An ICM poll  conducted for the Sunday Telegraph reports that reveals that 56% of respondents believe that Muslims should do more to integrate – which is hardly surprising given the avalanche of propaganda to that effect.

Other statistics are more positive, however, and show that at least a substantial section of the general population remains resistant to the relentless media campaign against the Muslim community. More people disagreed with Nazir-Ali’s comments about “no-go areas” than agreed (38% as against 35%), while 51% thought that the Muslim community enriched Britain and was not a threat compared with 37% who disagreed.

Predictably, the Torygraph wheels out Patrick Sookhdeo of the right-wing evangelical Christian group, the Barnabas Fund, who is quoted as saying: “Muslims are being told not to integrate into British society, but to set up separate enclaves where they can operate according to sharia law.” He claims that the process of “cleansing” Muslim-majority areas of non-Muslims has already begun, with white residents urged to leave and churches threatened.

‘Muslim Britain is becoming one big no-go area’ – Shiraz Maher backs Nazir-Ali, and is joined by Ed Husain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Perhaps it had to be someone like Michael Nazir-Ali, the first Asian bishop in the Church of England, who would break with convention and finally point out the elephant in the room.

“His comments last week about the growing stranglehold of Muslim extremists in some communities revived debate about the future of multiculturalism and provoked a flurry of condemnation. Members of all three political parties immediately clamoured to dismiss him. ‘I don’t recognise the description that he’s talked about – no-go areas and people feeling intimidated’, said Hazel Blears, the communities secretary.

“A quick call to her Labour colleague John Reid, the former home secretary, would almost certainly have helped her to identify at least one of those places. Just over a year ago Reid was heckled by the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen in Leytonstone, east London, during a speech on extremism, appropriately. ‘How dare you come to a Muslim area’, Izzadeen screamed.”

Former Hizb ut-Tahrir member Shiraz Maher in the Sunday Times, 13 January 2008

Is Maher really so stupid that he believes the rantings of an isolated and unrepresentative nutter like Abu Izzadeen tell us anything about the attitudes of the Muslim population of Leytonstone?

Meanwhile over at the Sunday Telegraph another former HT member welcomes Nazir-Ali’s intervention. Ed Husain writes:

“Our political class, media and civil society are dominated by good-hearted, middle-class people who do not wish to admit that a well-intentioned idea – multiculturalism – can have such devastating effects. A weekly curry in Brick Lane is not enough to understand the the underworld that extremists manipulate to ensure that their version of a rigid, soulless political ideology – Islamism – reigns supreme in so-called ‘Muslim areas’….

“In the name of multiculturalism, we have created monocultural ghettoes. A shopper in London’s Green Street or Birmingham’s Alum Rock Road may as well be somewhere in India.

“My objection is not to a cluster of retail outlets specialising in ethnic attire – much like, say, Jermyn Street in Piccadilly for men – but to the surrounding communities where people languish for decades without access to English, education, social mobility or contact with mainstream Britain. The uncontrolled arrival of new immigrants only compounds the insularity.”

For Yusuf Smith’s response to Husain (“I do not see a debate about multiculturalism: I see an orchestrated attack on it, based on exaggerations and untruths”) see Indigo Jo Blogs, 13 January 2008

‘I feel like an alien in my home town’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Oak Lane BradfordIt has been more than 40 years since Tim Carbin walked the length of Oak Lane, the Bradford backstreet of his boyhood. Then, when he lived with his grandmother Florence Pawson, a matriarch within the community, his task after school was to run errands. Down to Foster’s, the baker’s, for a loaf of bread and a pound of bacon from Donald Gilbank the butcher. “And mind it isn’t too fatty,” Florence would tell him.

Mr Carbin, then 13, knew all the local storekeepers by name, just as he knew the families in the surrounding terraces. Yesterday, outside number 95A, his grandmother’s former home, Mr Carbin gazed in bewilderment as he scanned his old haunt. Not surprisingly, the stores of his youth had gone: such has been the change in our shopping habits over the decades that they have given way to supermarkets and fast-food outlets.

But that was not all that had changed irrevocably in Oak Lane. Among the new stores, the clothes shops sell Muslim dress, the butcher stocks halal meat and even the local takeaway advertises halal pizza. “I feel like an alien, like I’m on a street in Karachi,” Mr Carbin says, awkwardly. “I don’t feel I have anything in common with this area.” He now lives just 10 miles away, in the north of Bradford. He hasn’t returned because Oak Lane, like so many similar areas of so many northern cities, is now an almost exclusive Asian Muslim community.

“This isn’t, as the Government would like us to believe, a multicultural society,” he says. “This is pure racial segregation. And it’s like this because the Muslim community simply refuses to integrate. So people like me feel like outcasts in our own country.”

Sunday Telegraph, 13 January 2008

Bishop of Blackburn on relations with Muslims and ‘no-go areas’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nicholas ReadeThe Rt Rev Nicholas Reade is questioned by Christian Today about his views on Michael Nazir-Ali’s comments and relations between Christians and Muslims. Sample quotes from the Bishop:

“In my own Diocese of Blackburn we have got areas with a high Muslim population but we have absolutely no no-go areas. We can go everywhere. We have extremely good relations with the Muslim communities.”

“The Church has got to accept that if you are the church in an area with a high Muslim population, then the church isn’t there to evangelise in the traditional sense but to dialogue and build relationships.”

“We’re not being pushed out of the public square. I have my cathedral here in Blackburn and there are no Muslims here trying to push me out of my cathedral!”

“I think there has to be equality for all under the law, but I am not aware of preferential treatment [for Muslims]. I don’t see any evidence of that.”

Bishop backs Muslim prayer call

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Bishop of Oxford has rejected another senior clergyman’s fears that broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer in East Oxford could create a “no-go area” for non-Muslims. The Rt Rev John Pritchard backed plans for the call to prayer in Oxford – splitting away from controversial comments made by the Anglican Church’s only Asian Bishop, the Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, of Rochester.

Bishop Michael said attempts were being made to impose an “Islamic character” on communities, creating no-go areas where people of different faiths would find it hard to live and work. But Bishop John said: “I want to distance myself from what the Bishop of Rochester has said. There are no no-go areas in this country that we are aware of and in all parts of the country there are good interfaith relationships developing.”

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‘Balls steps back from faith schools plan’, Torygraph claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The spread of faith schools across the country has been shelved because ministers fear they could help create a new generation of Muslim extremists, it was claimed last night. In a Commons committee on Wednesday, Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, appeared to take a step back from plans to create more. He said ministers had no ideological commitment to faith schools, in which children are admitted on the basis of their parents’ beliefs.

Last night it was claimed the Government may have woken up to the potential dangers of Islamic schools. At present, there are seven state-run Muslim faith schools and more than 100 in the independent sector. Keith Porteous Wood, the director of the National Secular Society, said that the Government now appeared willing to consider the negatives of faith schools.

He claimed the Government may have abandoned its drive for faith schools in general because of concerns about Muslim schools in particular. “This Government has gone down the faith school route and they find it very difficult because there will be pressure for them to have Muslim schools,” he said. “I hope that they have the courage to say ‘no more faith schools’.”

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families insisted that the Government had not changed its policy on faith schools of any denomination.

Daily Telegraph, 11 January 2008

In fact Ed Balls stated back in September last year that the government had “no policy to increase the number” of faith schools.

What the government’s 2007 report Faith in the System does do is recognise that “in relation to the overall size of their populations there are relatively few faith school places in the maintained sector available to Muslim, Sikh and Hindu children compared to the provision available for Christian and Jewish families”. The report goes on to commit the government to “encourage independent schools to enter the maintained sector in their existing premises”.

So what we are likely to see in the immediate future is not more faith schools as such but rather some of the hundred-odd independent Muslim schools being brought into the state sector. We can undoubtedly expect campaigns by anti-Muslim bigots against this process. And it is equally predictable that these campaigns will win the enthusiastic support of the National Secular Society.