Posted on 10/22/2006 11:46:30 AM PDT by neverdem
The row in Britain over Muslim women wearing the veil could trigger riots and worse, the country's race relations watchdog chief warned.
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said the divisions exposed in the debate that his dominated British media for more than two weeks risked sparking "fire" on the streets.
He said the friction between communities risked becoming "the trigger for the grim spiral that produced riots in the north of England five years ago. Only this time the conflict could be much worse".
"All the recent evidence shows that we are, as a society, becoming more socially polarised by race and faith," Phillips wrote in The Sunday Times newspaper.
"The only place where this may not be true is in our schools and the main reason is that in many of our cities things cannot get any worse."
He called for a "civilised" debate on race.
The veil has been at the centre of a political storm over Muslim integration, with Prime Minister Tony Blair entering the debate by calling the veil a "mark of separation".
Jack Straw, the leader of parliament's House of Commons and a former foreign secretary, sparked renewed debate when he disclosed that he asked Muslim women to remove their veils when they came to consult him in his constituency.
Straw represents the industrial northwestern English town of Blackburn, which has a large Muslim minority of South Asian origin.
Phillips criticised Muslims who had lambasted Straw.
"The so-called Muslim leaders who initially attacked Straw were wrong," he wrote.
"They were overly defensive and need to accept that in a diverse society we should be free to make polite requests of this kind."
He warned the veil debate was becoming dangerously polarised.
"On one side of the trenches we have those who want a fully fledged auto-da-fe (burning of a heretic) against British Muslims in which anything any Muslim does or says must be condemned as a signal of their willful alienation and separation.
"On the other hand the defensiveness of some in the Muslim communities has hardened into a sensitivity that turns the most neutral of comments into yet another act of persecution.
"This is not what anyone intended and it is the last thing Britain needs."
Welcome to Londonistan - quit appeasing the mullahs!!!!
"This is not what anyone intended and it is the last thing Britain needs."
You must all surrender as quickly as possible. Othewise there could be trouble.
The Muzzies should be worried about the backlash from the Hindus, Sikhs and BNP that's just around the corner...
Muslims, or anyone else, living in another country should be tolerant of that country's customs and traditions. Muslims cannot expect England to change just for their benefit. If they are not satisfied with the traditions and customs in England they should go elsewhere.
In a free and open society people who go around masked are suspect.
If the Koran mentioned Muslim men baring their bottoms in public, would the UK have to put up with that?
Well, there's the end of the issue. We have to be r-e-a-l-l-y N-I-C-E or they will h-u-r-t us.
If the Koran mentioned Muslim men baring their bottoms in public, would the UK have to put up with that?
As a matter of fact, yes. By this logic the answer is a firm yes. And oh, by the way, beating wives, stoning women and honor killings are OK too. Not to mention lying under oath. All just part of the changing scene my good man, what, what?
It would depend upon the relative pleasantness of viewing their buttocks.
There just isn't enough to be concerned about these days I guess.
I agree, but when it comes to it, I feel this battle will won on the streets - regardless of how the lefty media spins it.
Muslims who wish to live under a system of sharia law should leave Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality suggested yesterday.Speaking in the wake of demonstrations against Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Sir Trevor Phillips said those living in the UK had to accept that British values include a commitment to freedom of speech, even if that means offending people.
“What some minorities have to accept is that there are certain central things we all agree about, which are about the way we treat each other—that we have an attachment to democracy, that we sort things out by voting not by violence and intimidation, that we tolerate things that we don’t like,” he told ITV1’s Jonathan Dimbleby programme. “Short of people menacing and threatening each other, we have freedom of expression. We allow people to offend each other.”
Sir Trevor—who stirred controversy with his attacks on multi-culturalism and calls on ethnic minorities to integrate—said a consequence of freedom of speech was that non-Muslims must accept imams’ right to denounce homosexuality.
He rejected the idea that British Muslims should be allowed to live under sharia law in their communities. “I don’t think that’s conceivable,” he said. “We have one set of laws … and that’s the end of the story. If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.” Sir Trevor said he wanted to promote a sense of “Britishness” in the UK. “One point of Britishness is that people can say what they like about the way we should live, however absurd, however unpopular it is,” he said.
You know I find it interesting that Western Civilization spent the last 5 - 6 centuries trying to avoid Islam and the Middle East as much as possible. Witness Christopher Columbus, and those who followed afterward. Relatively cheap oil, idiotic leftist deconstructionism and the end of colonialism brought us back to this mess. How did anyone think that they could avoid it?
Every time I think our country is screwed up, I just look to Europe. Then I realize that Europe is screwed up compared to Britain, but I look to Britain, and it's still screwed up compared to us.
A fricking "race chief".
what ever happened to the word "deportation"?
get rid of the louts, get the societal burdens, trouble making, non integrating SOB's out....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.