Just listening to Talk Radio, the host describes routinely taking a Taxi ride after work driven by a Bangladeshi chap. The man in question explained that his Bangladeshi community live cheek by jowel "within" the community. In other words, they live a polit existence, they get on with the people they interact with, but they don't mix. They are a community within a community, they don't go to the pub or broadly engage in the social activities of the host community, if I may put it that way. This is all very well, but it isn't integration and has already seen challenges in the past. The once was a Political agitator, Dr Khalim Siddiqui, who once wrote for the Guardian, when it was the Manchester Guardian. He constantly berated British people as racist and unaccommodating, be cause we wouldn't accept in part or whole, sharia law. He called it the Dictatorship of the majority dressed up as Democracy. His solution was a recognised Muslim state within the UK, with its own laws and customs.
'Kalim Siddiqui, a militant Muslim leader who convened the assembly in London Jan. 4-5, denounced what he called "the dictatorship of the majority dressed up as democracy."
His fiery inaugural speech to 155 members of the parliament at Kensington Town Hall, London, drew sharp rebukes from government ministers. Reactions by other British Muslims revealed a community sharply divided on claims of a need for their own parliamentary body.'
The quote, albeit, is from the Christian Science Monitor. But is none the less reliable as a result. I recall back in the early 1990s this chap was constantly on the attack, verbally, against western customs and liberal attitudes. I hope I'm dealing fact here and not some form of ignorant rabble rousing. I've tried to attach a link but it won't take so here's another quote from the text;
'Home Office Minister John Patten called Dr. Siddiqui's address "nonsense" and warned British Muslims that it came perilously close to being an incitement to racial hatred.
Siddiqui responded to Mr. Patten's criticism by accusing the minister of having a "condescending attitude" toward Muslims.
Moderate Muslim groups responded by saying that the so-called parliament's members did not represent their views.
But Mohammed Faridi, general secretary of the Association of Muslims in Britain, a moderate grouping, warned that the so-called parliament was well funded, well organized, and "unlikely to listen to the government or to the voice of reason, Muslim or otherwise."
He pointed out that Siddiqui, who was born in Pakistan and heads London's pro-Iranian Muslim Institute, came to prominence nearly three years ago when he endorsed the late Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa (death sentence) on novelist Salman Rushdie. On that occasion he narrowly escaped prosecution for advocating murder.' I fully accept that Dr Siddiqui was an extremist but I was quite shocked at the time that someone should advance such a view and of course there are always moderating voices, but I think we should be more descerning about who the asylum seekers are. There may be no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker, but to split hairs, there is such a thing as a 'bogus asylum seeker'. I also accept that this thread should be moved to Jet Blast, but as always the debate widens and accusations of racism and being DM reader turn it into what it is, so I thought I'd provide smoe historic insight.
FB
PS The original article appeared on 8 January 1992.