The Centre For Social Cohesion

Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch has been arguing the point for ages. But it took a cross-party House of Lords Committee to join the chorus before what he has been banging on about all this time finally to make it to the front pages of the national press.

A South London woman ordered to be executed by her father and uncle in a 2006 honour killing was “let down” by the police after she initially went missing, an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission has concluded.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was killed by her family because she loved the wrong man. Before her death, Mahmod had sought to warn police that her life was in danger – ultimately without getting the protection that might have saved her.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears today warned of the danger of “social apartheid” developing in Britain.

Blears said that community cohesion was under threat if immigration caused faith and ethnic groups to “totally dominate” neighbourhoods to the extent that members of other groups felt “alienated, insecure or unsafe.”

Prosecutors at the trial of seven men accused of attempting to bomb trans-Atlantic airliners in 2006 have told the court that the defendents had recorded martyrdom videos in which they said that they and others would "fight until the law of Allah is established on this earth".

A video featuring one defendant, Umar Islam, showed him sitting in front of a black flag with Arabic writing, and telling the camera that the attacks are "a warning for the non-believers that if they do not leave our lands there are many more like us and many more like me until the law of Allah is established on this Earth."

Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, appeared on the BBC's 'Big Questions' on Sunday.

Joining Richard Dawkins, Haras Rafiq, the head of the Sufi Muslim Council, Christina Odone and others, he discussed issues such as immigration, the place of religion in modern society and freedom of speech.

Last week, in a carefully calculated act of political spite and jockeying for position in his party, Secretary of State for Schools Ed Balls took Jewish voluntary-aided schools to task for having wrongly included in their application forms the information that parents are expected to make voluntary contributions, assuming they have means, to the costs of religious instruction and external security. Apparently, it is OK for them to include the information in their advertising and brochures, but not in their applications forms. Search me why not.

Jewish schools certainly would seem in need of every penny parents of pupils can give them.

Abu Qatada, a radical preacher described as Osama bin Laden’s “right hand man in Europe,” has successfully appealed a decision to deport him from the UK.

The Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Abu Qatada after deciding that evidence alleged to be obtained under torture may form part of a future trial in Jordan, the country where it was proposed he should be deported to. The government has said it will challenge the ruling, with Home Office minister Tony McNulty saying he believed the deportation would still go ahead.

The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) is stepping up its efforts to mobilise Muslim support for Ken Livingstone ahead of the mayoral elections on May 1st.

In a press release issued today entitled ‘Muslims Vote Smart for Mayoral Elections,’ MAB President Ahmed Al-Rawi said ‘Muslims think a lot more strategically when giving their votes. Ken Livingstone has been an outstanding ambassador for London and Britain. We call on all Londoners to come out on the 1 May to vote for him.’

The Radical Middle Way, a Muslim group funded by the Foreign Office to promote a tolerant, democratic and British form of Islam, has organised a new series of events.

The events - marketed under the name 'The Dangerous Ideas Tour' - include poetry-recitals, rap and music concerts in cities around the UK. They are a marked departure from previous Radical Middle Way events, attended by members of the Centre for Social Cohesion, where the speakers called on Muslims to impose Sharia law and re-create the caliphate.

A report written by Professor Anthony Glees, soon to be published by the Centre for Social Cohesion, has received coverage in the weekend press.

Both the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail reported on Glees’s study into the extremist ideas being taught at Islamic study centres on a variety of British university campuses.

Some claim faith schools are socially divisive. They want them replaced by mixed community schools where children of all different faiths will be schooled together. That way, so the argument goes, all will be forced to mix and thereby become friends. By so becoming, the theory continues, they will be freed from the prejudices and negative stereotypes about each other caused by their lack of familiarity.

Theory does not always work out in practice, as the mother of a fifteen year old pupil at a community school in Swindon tragically learned a year ago last January.

The government has unveiled new plans to target radicalisation within the Muslim community.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith today announced that an extra 300 police jobs were being created with their mandate being to "dissuade that very small minority of people" who may be plotting acts of terrorism. Smith has also revealed that moderate Muslim clerics are to be imported from Pakistan in an attempt to combat extremism in British mosques.

The BBC has published partial transcripts and video-clips from alleged 'martyrdom videos' filmed by six of the men who are accused of planning to carry out suicide attacks against trans-Atlantic airliners in 2006.

The six videos show the men seated in front a black Islamic flag saying that they intend to commit the attacks in order to obtain entry to paradise and to punish non-Muslims.

Abu Izzadeen and Simon Keeler were sentenced to four and a half years at Kingston Crown Court today after they were found guilty of fundraising for and inciting terrorism.

Izzadeen, tried under the name Omar Brooks, and Keeler were convicted on the basis of speeches they gave at London’s Regent’s Park Mosque on November 9, 2004.

At the time, US-led forces in Iraq were fighting in Falluja. The men urged their audience to fight British and American forces in Iraq and to donate money to fund terrorism, calling September 11th 2001 a “great day”.

A day before the official launch of the Quilliam Foundation on Tuesday, Islamists have stepped by their attacks against the new organisation - composed of former members of Hizb ut-Tahrir - which aims to tackle radicalisation among British Muslims.

Potentially one of the most damning attacks comes in the form of a new blog 'Quilliam Foundation Exposed!' (www.quilliamexposed.blogspot.com) which says it is "dedicated to exposing the fraud of an organisation going by the name of the Quilliam Foundation".

"What legitimacy is there in a Parliament which makes crucial decisions on immigration with just fifteen ethnic minority MPs when there should be more than sixty? How can a House of Commons expect its decisions on counter-terrorism to be taken seriously by Muslim communities when there are only four Muslim MPs in the House of Commons?"

Trevor Phillips posed these rhetorical questions in a much publicised speech he delivered at the week-end to mark the fortieth anniversary of Enoch Powell’s notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech.

The British Museum is more than just a grand relic-house. It is a repository of much of Britain’s national heritage, from the Anglo-Saxon treasures of the Sutton Hoo ship burial to the spoils evoking the length and breadth of the British empire. Strolling through the galleries, one reflects on how many once-disparate elements today combine to make up the face of modern Britain.

Among more recent additions, Islam. On Tuesday, the museum hosted the launch of the Quilliam Foundation, a new British Muslim think-tank dedicated to combating Islamic extremism and promoting a genuinely Western Islam.

The jury in the London suicide bombings case has been shown footage of Mohammad Siddique Khan saying his farewells to his baby daughter.

Siddique Khan, the ringleader of the July 7th 2005 terrorist attacks on London, tells his daughter that he "has to do this thing for our future". The video was shown as part of the trial against Waheed Ali, Sadeer Saleem and Mohammed Shakil, who deny involvement in the attacks.

A senior High Court judge has ruled that the Government does not have the legislative power to freeze terror suspects’ bank accounts. The government viewed these powers as being key in tackling domestic terrorism.

Commenting on the case, the judge described the freezing of terror suspects’ assets as “another example of an immediate reaction without it being thought through properly — which is rather the pattern with the anti-terrorism measures.” The Treasury has said it will appeal the ruling, and the suspects’ assets will remain frozen pending the outcome.

A letter published in Saturday’s Guardian, purporting itself to be from ‘a cross section of the Muslim community’, has criticised the Quilliam Foundation for being unrepresentative.

The signatories claim to represent ‘a cross section of the Muslim community’ seems disingenuous. The letter is the combined effort of Anas al-Tikriti, Yvonne Ridley, Ihtisham Hibatullah, Ismail Patel and Roshan Muhammed Salih. The signatories say they represent a plethora of different organisations, however the letter fails to point out their extensive links.

Patriotic history harmful to pupils; St George’s Day celebrations cancelled over spurious health and safety concerns; postal voting fraud on epidemic scale; Britain being carved up by Brussels into a set of regions of which the parts of some lie across the Channel.… With each day comes news of some fresh assault on the body-politic of this once great country.

What is the cause of this spiral of self-destruction into which Britain seems lately to have chosen to descend?

Andrew Ibrahim, 19, appeared in court yesterday on terrorism charges after police found bomb-making equipment inside his flat – including a peroxide-based explosive similar to that used in the July 7 London bombings.

Ibrahim faces charges of possessing explosive substances and articles for terrorist purposes as well as an intent to commit terrorism. He is currently being held without bail until another hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, May 23.