Mass shooting in Orlando Nightclub

My name is URL wrote: »

I've never felt in any particular danger from muslims here. Have you, honestly?

There's an Iranian born orthopedic surgeon living a few doors away from me. Should I be worried? If he and his wife have kids should they be considered a potential terrorist cell?

I'd be more worried about the amount of Irish born, trained and taught doctors, nurses and surgeons that emigrate every year tbh.

I'd love to see your face if ever you find yourself in a situation where the only professional help available to you happens to be brown and/or muslim.

I'm sure you'll stand by your laurels and tell them where to go then /s

You and your ilk want severe and over-reaching controls on people coming here. Are any of you prepared for the controls and restrictions that would be put on you in order to ensure it could work?

Trevor Phillips On Race, What Muslims Think And Getting Support From The Far Right‘

Had it occurred to you that the Muslim friends you have might not be entirely typical of people who live in Burnley or Dewsbury?’

“I don’t think I’m saying anything that shocking or particularly that new,” says Trevor Phillips, the self-described ‘Prophet Of Doom’ on race and integration in Britain. Middle class people like him are not affected by the dangers he is warning about, he says. The only way an unprecedented level of immigration impacts them is “it’s probably easier to find a Brazilian cleaner than it used to be.”

The former Labour politician, Equality and Human Rights Commission chair and television journalist published last month his essay on diversity Race and Faith: The Deafening Silence, arguing the country was “sleepwalking into catastrophe” while we “hum to the music of liberal self-delusion” by not confronting the “dark side of the diverse society”. The son of immigrants from Guyana argued that the scale of immigration and the hostility to liberal values of some arrivals meant we could not simply expect them to integrate on their own. Unless we adopt a more proactive approach to integration, he wrote, we tolerate a level of ethnic segregation that will “set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties, and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long”. The essay followed two incendiary Channel 4 programmes he presented: What Muslims Really Think in April and The Things You Can’t Say About Race last year. In the latter, he argued multi-culturalism had become a “racket” exploited by people to entrench segregation.

When he meets me in the Highgate offices of the production company he works with, Ofcom has just decided not to investigate complaints that What Muslims Really Think “increased Islamophobia“. The programme was based on polling that said, among other things, just 18% of British Muslims thought homosexuality should be legal. By comparison, Phillips cites YouGov polling of devout Christians that showed nearly half of them supported homosexuality being legal. As well complaints to Channel 4 and Ofcom, some criticised the polling for focussing on areas with larger Muslim populations, likely to be home to more new arrivals from more conservative countries. Phillips dismisses this as “complete crap” from “people who can’t add up”. “Polls are re-weighted anyway, so the sample reflects the census-derived demographics. It reflects the whole group of Muslims,” he says.

He is particularly angry that people tried to argue that the poll sample of 1,000 could not reflect the views of three million Muslims. Phillips, a scientist by academic background who went into journalism and then politics, says “anyone with three weeks of statistics” knows this is a representative sample size. “I was irritated by that not because it was critical because it was so ignorant,” the 62-year-old tells me. “The truth is people would not make that kind of argument if it was about anything else. But because they so desperately don’t want to deal with the fact British Muslims, overall, have a rather different way of viewing the world and significant minority [has] views that are hostile to the mainstream views on key questions.”

He cites a conversation with a journalist as an example of the “elite conversation” wealthy people have on the issue. “A very distinguished newspaper columnist, he’s one of our most respected columnists, I’ve known him for years, said to me: ‘Well this really can’t be true because, I have quite a lot of Muslim friends and they don’t believe homosexuality is wrong’. I said to him: ‘Had it occurred to you that the Muslim friends you have might not be entirely typical of people who live in Burnley or Dewsbury or in Tower Hamlets?’ His next response - this is important point about this class - ‘well I grew up a Catholic and when I was young, Catholics would’ve said the same about homosexuality but of course we’ve changed.’ That’s just not true.”

I ask whether Islam is the most sensitive issue in the debate about multi-culturalism to Britain. He concedes it is the “most difficult” for many people but not for him. As chair of the EHCR, he prosecuted people who share his ethnic heritage for discriminating against gay people. “I had to go to court, people who are black lost their jobs. I think that is equally sensitive,” he says. “I don’t have any particular thing about Muslims.”

ongarboy wrote: »

You sound like Trump tarring all Muslims with the same brush. The vast majority of Muslims are law abiding, kind, loving, peaceful citizens. Please don't be so ignorant.