Part 4
Blackburn
A BBC Panorama documentary about separation and segregation between Muslim Asians and white Britons in Blackburn in Lancashire can be viewed
here. According to the BBC:
"For all the hopeful talk about 'integration,' 'multiculturalism' and now 'cohesion,' the reality on the ground appears to be that Britain's Muslim Asian community and its white community have few points of contact, and that the white majority often feel they share little in common with the growing Muslim Asian minority."
Professor Ted Cantle, an expert on inter-cultural relations, told the BBC:
"There is not just simply residential segregation, but there is separation in education, in social, cultural, faith, in virtually every aspect of their daily lives, employment too.
"It exists as a problem, to some degree or other, throughout the country, and it may be in small pockets and neighborhoods within larger cities like London and Birmingham and therefore not quite so evident.
"It might be whole boroughs or whole cities, but to some degree or another it exists. There is some degree of separation or segregation in most towns and cities."
Bradford
In 2001, the Principal Race Relations Officer at the Commission for Racial Equality, GV Mahony,
warned about the proliferation of Muslim-only areas in Bradford:
"Not all Muslims in Bradford want Muslim-only areas. Traders, retailers, restaurant owners want and need a broad-based custom profile. However, there is a drive amongst the mosque-attending older generation who would like Sharia areas. There is also the minority of highly disaffected young men who want to control their patches. These two opposite ends of the spectrum desire the same thing albeit for different reasons and it is likely that they will support each other in order to attain their goals."
London
Native white Britons are already in the minority in London (45%). According to Ludi Simpson, 23 of London's 33 boroughs are now "plural." In the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (sometimes
called "Britain's Islamic republic"), white Britons (31%) are outnumbered by Bangladeshis (32%).
Tower Hamlets and other parts of East London have been the focus of repeated attempts by Islamists to impose Sharia law on members of the public.
Extremist Muslim preachers — sometimes
referred to as the Tower Hamlets Taliban — have
issued death threats to women who refuse to wear Islamic veils. Neighborhood streets have been
plastered with posters declaring: "You are entering a Sharia controlled zone. Islamic rules enforced." And street advertising deemed offensive to Muslims has been
vandalized or blacked out with spray paint.
Left, an example of the posters that have been put up in Muslim enclaves in Britain. Right, British jihadists in Syria encourage British Muslims to take up arms for the Islamic State, in a recruitment video entitled "There is No Life Without Jihad".
The
Sunday Telegraph uncovered more than a dozen other instances in Tower Hamlets where both Muslims and non-Muslims have been threatened or beaten for behavior considered to be a breach of fundamentalist "Islamic norms." Victims said that police ignored or downplayed outbreaks of hate crime, and suppressed evidence implicating Muslims in them, because they feared being accused of racism or "Islamophobia."
One victim, Mohammed Monzur Rahman, was left partially blind after being attacked by a mob in Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, for smoking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "Two guys stopped me in the street and asked me why I was smoking," he said. "I just carried on, and before I knew another dozen guys came and jumped me. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital."
A group of Muslim men
attacked a 23-year-old American student, who had only been in the country for three days, after they saw him drinking on an East London street. The student suffered extensive injuries, including a smashed eye socket. The perpetrators are now in prison.
The owners of restaurants and shops in Brick Lane in Whitechapel, a popular area of London, have been
warned that they faced 40 lashes if they continued to sell alcoholic products.
In Leytonstone in East London, the former Home Secretary John Reid was
heckled by the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen who yelled: "How dare you come to a Muslim area." A four-minute video of the incident can be viewed
here.
Muslim gangs have also been
filmed loitering on London streets and demanding that passersby conform to Sharia law. In a series of videos, the self-proclaimed vigilantes — who called themselves Muslim London Patrol — are seen abusing non-Muslim pedestrians and repeatedly shouting "this is a Muslim area."
One video records the men shouting: "Allah is the greatest! Islam is here, whether you like it or not. We are here! We are here! What we need is Islam! What we need is Sharia!"
The video continues:
"We are the Muslim Patrol. We are in north London, we are in south London, in east London and west London. We command good and forbid evil. Islam is here in London. [Prime Minister] David Cameron, Mr. Police Officer, whether you like it or not, we will command good and forbid evil. You will never get us. You can go to hell! This is not a Christian country. To hell with Christianity. Isa [Jesus] was a messenger of Allah. Muslim Patrol will never die. Allah is great! Allah is great! We are coming!"
In January 2015, twelve of the men were
given Antisocial Behavior Orders ("Asbos"), forbidding them from "forcing their views on others" for a period of three years. Their spiritual mentor is a British-born Islamist agitator named
Anjem Choudary, whose parents migrated from Pakistan.
In July 2011, "Muslims Against Crusades," a group founded by Choudary,
launched a campaign to turn twelve British cities — including what it calls "Londonistan" — into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic Sharia law and operate outside British jurisprudence.
The Islamic Emirates Project named the British cities of Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, as well as Waltham Forest in northeast London and Tower Hamlets in East London, as territories to be targeted for blanket Sharia rule.
Muslims Against Crusades (proscribed in November 2011) is one of the many reincarnations of the Muslim extremist group al-Muhajiroun, which was banned in January 2010. A
study published by the London-based Henry Jackson Society in September 2014 found that one in five terrorists convicted in Britain over more than a decade have had links to al-Muhajiroun.
An investigative
report published by the British anti-fascism group Hope Not Hate in November 2013 concluded that al-Muhajiroun was "the single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history."
The group's founder, Anjem Choudary, remains free and continues to call for the implementation of Sharia law in Britain.
Meanwhile, Britain's first directly elected Muslim mayor — a close ally of Choudary named Lutfur Rahman, who runs Tower Hamlets Council — has been
accused of using illegal tactics to get re-elected in May 2014. Muslim residents were allegedly told that they would not be "good Muslims" unless they voted for Rahman, who was born in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and moved to Britain as a child.
