Briefing the cabinet last week on the latest strategy to encourage new arrivals in the UK to integrate, Sajid Javid did not shy away from citing his own background.
How is it, he asked, that one British Muslim lad born in Rochdale grew up to be a cabinet minister and yet another born at the same time ended up a radicalised, violent Islamist extremist?
Some may believe the question to be glib but coming from the man with the only non-white face around the top table it was also uncomfortable, and deliberately so. Sensitivities around what was once called “community cohesion” and is now termed “integration” remain acute in Whitehall so it is little surprise that the latest effort to promote it has been stuck in the system.
.... With her characteristic bluntness, Dame Louise Casey, who authored a previous report on the subject, has made clear that she thinks the document released today will fall short, at least in terms of scale.
She is right to serve notice that without follow through — and where necessary, funding — the latest drive to bring Britain’s isolated communities into the mainstream will do little to help.
[TOP RATED COMMENT 69 votes] As Vladimir Putin has put it so nicely: "If minorities prefer Sharia Law, we advise them to go to those places where that is the state law. Russia does not need minorities. Minorities need Russia, and we will not grant them special privileges, or change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they shout "discrimination".
Perhaps our government should take some advice, regardless of its source.
[2ND 50] Countries where Sharia applies are places where people flee from; secular countries are where they flee to, and once allowed to settle show no inclination to leave for anywhere Sharia compliant. Why on earth import elements of such a system into our relatively attractive and successful society?
[3RD 47] Sharia law has no place in the UK, in Britain British law and language is predominant. if people want to live under the restrictions of Sharia law they know what they should do.
[4TH 33] The headlines should read: 'Muslim organisations and ideologues will whip up hysteria and threats in opposition to any measures which threaten their influence or growing powerbase'.
[5TH 30] In other words,politicians have realised,allbeit years too late,that many of England's towns and cities are now ghettoised dumps. [The Times (£)] Read more
