“The theory of multiculturalism and its malevolent companion, political correctness, arrived on these shores from North America and was quickly taken up by the liberal, urban political elite. These theories were foisted on the British people without any consultation and the terrible consequences are only appearing now…. A Muslim festival like Eid is given as much importance as Christmas or Easter. There is something very wrong here.

“Minority groups, especially those from the Indian sub-continent, were encouraged not to integrate or mix, but to keep their own customs as though the UK did not exist…. So in many of our cities we have a society within the wider society with a religion, Islam, which often seems to the outsider to be more of a political movement than a way to being at peace with God and one’s neighbour. This society within a society has been encouraged to revel in its alleged victimhood, and, due to its lack of maturity, has never looked at its own faults but blames outsiders for all its ills…..

“The day that Muslims can accept rational criticism without the predictable cries of ‘Islamophobia’ will be the day when they are finally accepted into British society like the descendants of other immigrant groups over the centuries. Fear of western secular society and its achievements is perhaps due to the nature of Islam itself.”

Letter in the Herald, 9 August 2005