Two news items from yesterday, both of which make me wonder what the firth colum in our ranks hope to gain? Both from the Telegraph. First –
British Muslims should not be forced to “assimilate”, the country’s most senior counter terrorism officer has said, as he called for greater understanding of marginalised communities.
Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, who is the country’s highest ranking Asian officer, (I believe he is a Hindu with Indian heritage – a group who usually have no illusions about Islam) said that in a successful, integrated society, people should be free to practise their religion and culture openly rather than having to hide away.
He also said more needed to be done to eradicate poverty, improve education and increase social mobility if community cohesion was to be improved. . . He said the majority of those who were seeking to carry out attacks were British born or raised and therefore more needed to be done to explore social problems they were experiencing.
Rejecting the idea that British Muslims needed to assimilate, Mr Basu, who is of Indian heritage, said: “Assimilation implies that I have to hide myself in order to get on. We should not be a society that accepts that. You should be able to practise your culture or religion openly and still be accepting of others, and others be accepting of you. That is a socially inclusive society.”
He said people who experienced poverty and deprivation whatever their backgrounds and culture, were more “malleable” to terrorist recruitment.
Mr Basu said: “Policies that go towards more social inclusion, more social mobility and more education are much more likely to drive down violence … than all the policing and state security apparatus put together. It is much more likely to have a positive effect on society. The prescription for me is around social inclusion – it’s social mobility, it’s education, it’s opportunity.”
If he is seriously interested in increasing social mobility, the biggest increase ever seen in this country was the post war years when the Grammar schools gave hundreds of thousands of bright working class children (me!) the best academic education which got us god careers and qualifications. It had to stop – we were challenging the middle class. Not voting Labour no matter what, expecting Conservative businessmen to pay decent wages… but the impetus carried on for a few more years hence the attraction of mass immigration.
The Telegraph had a comments facility in which most readers disagreed with him. That vanished overnight. See my next post.
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
One Response
“…and still be accepting of others, and others be accepting of you. That is a socially inclusive society.” And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Can devout, pious Muslims who take the texts, tenets, and teachings of Islam ever be accepting of others who are not Islamic?