The Centre For Social Cohesion

I suppose we should welcome the fact that, as reported in today’s Times, the 100,000 Muslim children currently in attendance at madrassas in this country are to be required to receive lessons in citizenship that are designed to encourage them to share ‘British values of justice, peace and respect’.

However, I am not altogether convinced that the means chosen to accomplish this end will be entirely up to the job, desirable though that end undoubtedly is.

According to the news report, the specially designed citizenship curriculum is to ‘highlight Koranic teachings on respect and tolerance, and emphasise the value it places on human life’.

Since the Koran is precisely what forms the inspiration and supplies the intellectual and moral license for today’s jihadis, I am not sure making it the basis for underwriting the liberal values associated with British citizenship is necessarily going to do the job that it is being called upon to do.

A poll by the respected Pew Research Center has caused concern in America with its finding that one in four young American Muslims consider suicide bombing sometimes acceptable.

But to us here in Great Britain, one figure ignored in the States stands out even more.

Reaction in Pakistan and Iran to the knighting of Salman Rushdie has not been celebratory.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini has said: ‘Honouring and commending an apostate and hated figure will definitely put the British officials [in a position] of confrontation with Islamic societies.’

The head of Blackburn’s only state girls’ Muslim school pledged his support for an oath of allegiance to be introduced in British schools.

Head of Tauheedul Islamic Girls High School, Mufti Hamid Patel, agrees with former attorney general Lord Goldsmith that encouraging school-leavers to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country would give teenagers a sense of belonging.