06 December 2016

I despair of the British Muslims who choose to live under a virtual apartheid, writes Dr Taj Hargey

.... Not long ago I spent an afternoon walking around Highfields in Leicester. During my visit I saw only black and brown faces — not a single white person. If that situation had been imposed by a dictatorship, we would fight against it with all our might.

Why should it be acceptable in a modern democracy?

This isolationist trend feeds on itself: Muslims, especially women and children, are encouraged to withdraw from the rest of society, to keep themselves 'unsullied'. They are taught that they are 'superior' because they are destined for heaven while the 'kuffars' (the unbelievers) are not.

Shut away in their homes, many go day after day without seeing anyone who is not Muslim. They watch Islamist TV stations and read Islamist websites, and so the isolationism is reinforced.

Dame Louise's report is at last an official acknowledgment that we have a problem of segregation in this country. But, as I say, it doesn't go far enough.

For instance, the report says more English classes should be organised for Muslim children, to encourage them to venture out of isolation and to discourage the home-schooling of children.

But we need to be far more muscular than that. We have to mix up the population of schools, so that immigrant groups are never predominant in any classroom. If necessary we should be busing people to different schools to ensure this. [Daily Mail] Read more