.... As guardians of a faith followed by a quarter of Brummies, including a plurality of the city’s children, the mosque’s leaders play a growing role in civic life. They and other Muslim elders emphasise that they can help to make the city stable and prosperous. But they are equally clear that others must accept them for who they are: products of a conservative Muslim culture.
Birmingham is not a city “where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in”, as a Fox News pundit wildly claimed in 2015. But it has a reputation as an incubator of jihad, because several terrorists spent time there.
As the leaders of the central mosque see things, the city’s social peace is fragile – for reasons to do with austerity as much as inter-cultural tensions. “One of our big fears is that because of cuts in the police budget, ordinary crimes will spin out of control and be blamed on us Muslims,” Nassar Mahmood, a mosque trustee, says.
.... As people at the central mosque acknowledge, there is a vicious circle in which Muslims stick to areas where they predominate because they fear abuse or assaults elsewhere; and as those districts become more overwhelmingly Muslim, others move out. [inews.co.uk] Read more
