“Britain’s Muslims are at a critical juncture. A fortnight ago, a terrorism-supporting group gathered with 300 supporters in council property in Britain’s most densely Muslim-populated area, Tower Hamlets, and called for rejection of British law and support for convicted terrorists in prison. They beamed in from Lebanon the banned cleric Omar Bakri, who called on young Muslims to disobey the law….

“In Britain’s most prominent mosque, in Regent’s Park, there are meetings every weekend of a group dedicated to creating an Islamist dictatorship, destroying Israel and which advocates Muslim supremacist views. These lines will be read: nothing will be done. Muslim leaders will remain as ostriches, and wider society will not ‘interfere’, lest we cause ‘offence’….

“Matters are made worse by unsustainable levels of immigration flooding our mosques; men with no experience of British society and a poor grasp of English becoming imams and spreading their ideas throughout Muslim communities. Just as we adjust to our surroundings in Britain, a new wave of immigrants are reintroducing village dialects, customs and attire, and adding to the confusion of young British Pakistanis or Bengalis. The British people deserve a serious debate on immigration, free from yells of racism….

“I am a member of Labour and I am ashamed that the party, after 11 years in power, shies away from addressing the failures of multiculturalism. Pandering to so-called cultural differences has led to more than 70 per cent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in Britain today being unemployed.”

Ed Husain in the Sunday Telegraph, 30 November 2008

It would be tempting to observe that the Whittaker Chambers of Islamism has found his rightful home – in a right-wing Tory newspaper. Unfortunately, it is not only the Tories who are eager to give Ed Husain a platform. There are idiots in the Labour government – notably Hazel Blears at DCLG – who take this charlatan seriously.

Mind you, if Cameron wins the next general election, or is clearly on course to win it, I think we can anticipate Husain swiftly ditching Labour in favour of the Tories, who will find the support of an embittered ex-Islamist particularly useful in their assault on multiculturalism, not to mention their plans to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir. His Sunday Telegraph piece certainly looks like a pitch for an invitation from the Tory party.

The Guardian interviews Tory shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve:

“Grieve has also been thinking deeply about the ‘terrible’ impact of multiculturalism which has, he believes, compartmentalised people from different traditions and downplayed the identity of white Britons.

“‘We’ve actually done something terrible to ourselves in Britain’, says Grieve who was asked by former Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith to look at community cohesion in 2002. ‘In the name of trying to prepare people for some new multicultural society we’ve told people, particularly long-term inhabitants, ‘Well your cultural background isn’t really very important, or it’s flawed, or you shouldn’t be worrying about it’. And then we’ve been shocked that far from producing the new model citizen who easily adapts to multiculturalism, people are very resistant, very fearful and very lacking in self-confidence. And we have the same problem with some second- and third-generation immigrant communities who say they don’t know what British values are and that they’re alienated.’

“The vacuum created by multiculturalism is to blame for extremists on either side of the spectrum. ‘In this vacuum, both the BNP and Hizb ut-Tahrir rise. They are two very similar phenomena experiencing a form of cultural despair about themselves and their identities. And it’s terribly easy to latch on to confrontational and aggressive variants of their cultural background as being the only way to reassure themselves that they can survive.’

“Grieve feels uneasy about the restriction of debate by what he calls ‘fundamental Islam’. ‘Our country has adapted because people have been tolerant, which has often required a lot of forbearance and acceptance of things they didn’t like. That is how Britain has evolved. When I address an Islamic audience I always point this out’.”

So Grieve buys into the myth about the damaging effects of multiculturalism, for which there exists no evidence at all. He claims that the culture of “long-term inhabitants” (read “white people”) has been ignored. And he can’t tell the difference between a peaceful if highly sectarian Islamist organisation like Hizb ut-Tahrir and a neo-fascist party like the BNP, many members of which have convictions for violence and incitement to racial hatred.

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In an exclusive interview, Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, reassured the Muslim community that he would continue in the step of his predecessor Ken Livingstone on supporting diversity and equality projects.

“One thing I decided very early on was that the only way to run London is to support diversity and to recognise that you have got to be proactive and give encouragement and support to all communities,” Johnson said.

Muslims were also concerned about the Mayor’s and his new Director of Policy, Anthony Browne‘s negative remarks on Islam in the Spectator magazine. For example, Browne argued in July 24, 2004 that Islam wants to conquer the world etc. “I understand completely people’s concerns,” he said and argued that one has to “distinguish between the kind of slightly careless polemical things people may say in their journalistic capacity which can be drawn out and used against them. You have to distinguish between that and what they really want to do in London.”

Johnson gave assurance that Browne was “utterly committed to a glorious multi racial multi ethnic, multi faith London in which we emphasise the achievements of all communities and he will be going out of his way to prove that point.”

Muslim News, 26 September 2008

To be fair to Browne, the “Islam really does want to conquer the world” standfirst to his 2004 Spectator article and “The Muslims are coming” front cover were the responsibility of the editor rather than Browne himself. And who was the editor of the Spectator at that time? None other than Boris Johnson, of course.

Update:  For more on Browne see Boris Watch, 28 September 2008