The Centre For Social Cohesion

It is rare to be able to report a really good news story. But just such a story has emerged from Lahore, where a demonstration took place last week. And before you say it, this wasn’t another demonstration including effigies, books, a bottle of paraffin and a box of matches, but rather a rally pressuring the government to move against the radical students in Islamabad who are running ‘a Taleban-style anti-vice campaign’ in Pakistan’s capital.

Neil Addison, the distinguished barrister and author of the legal textbook, Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law (Routledge Cavendish) shows some of the perverse consequences that can be expected to flow from Part 2 of the Equality Act 2006, which comes into force today, along with the Sexual Orientation Regulations. ‘Causing offence’ is now legally relevant and likely to give rise to a good deal of over-zealous litigation. It is worth reflecting on what John Stuart Mill said about giving offence.

There are already some voices calling for personal Sharia law to be applied in parts of the UK. Is it anything to worry about? Recent German experience suggests that any such calls ought to be firmly resisted. Johann Hari in the Independent describes a recent ruling by Judge Christa Datz-Winter involving a Muslim woman who asked for an early divorce because of the severe beatings meted out by her brutal husband. The judge declined to grant an early divorce because, despite police evidence of extreme violence, there was no "unreasonable hardship". Why? Because Muslim women should have "expected" to be beaten. The judge went on to cite passages from the Koran granting Muslim husbands the "right to use corporal punishment", including Sura 4, verse 34.

Today's newspapers contain two different horticultural stories each with a bearing on social cohesion.

The first concerns the opening yesterday of a ‘multi-faith’ garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, reportedly designed ‘to show how faiths use plants and flowers as symbols and are linked through horticulture’.

Time Out has just confirmed that it is not a magazine of theology.

Before revealing that the Church Times is not the place for nightclub-listings, or that the lavatory-arrangements of bears are largely woodlands-based, it is worth mulling an extraordinary article in the current issue of Time Out which suggests that the magazine should be re-titled. Perhaps ‘Way Out’. Or just ‘Nuts’.

In ‘Is London’s Future Islamic?’ the author (one ‘Michael Hodges’) begins with a heavy-handed parody of what he thinks critics of Islamism think an Islamic Britain might look like. But stick with it, because it’s only after the attempt at parody that the real hilarity gets under-way.

Among the benefits the writer seriously argues an Islamic Britain would enjoy are: greater green-ness, better health-care, better education, better food, and better arts. He also concludes that an Islamic London would be ‘a little less cruel.’

The Charity Commission has found that George Galloway's Miriam Appeal - an organisation set up to campaign against UN sanctions on Iraq - may have indirectly received as much as $376,000 from Saddam Hussein's government.

The Commission said that large sums of money donated to the charity by Fawaz Zureikat - a Jordanian businessman and one of the Miriam Appeal's trustees - had come from the sale of Iraqi oil through the oil-for-food programme.

The Commission found no evidence of wrong-doing however and merely said that Galloway and the charity's trustees should have "should have been extremely vigiliant" about accepting donations.

The findings of the Charity Commission look set to put new pressure on Galloway - an MP for the anti-Iraq war Respect Party - at the very moment when the portly Scot is attempting to receive his politcal fortures by taking a new role in TV's Big Brother as a presenter.

"Unfortunately, the U.S.A., Britain, the alliance, our government... are driven... by the obsession to eliminate the Muslims from the surface of the earth. Whether my colleagues, companions and Muslim brothers die today or tonight, every drop of blood will invigorate the Muslim movement."

So reportedly said the leader of the “British brigade” in explanation of why "his team" stands ready to carry out suicide attacks in Great Britain. He reportedly did so in a valedictory speech delivered at a graduation ceremony for future suicide-bombers held ten days ago at a training camp somewhere inside Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.

According to the recently published Siddiqui report entitled Islam at Universities in England: Meeting the Needs and Investing in the Future, there is one vitally important form of information about Islam which Britain's universities are currently failing to provide to their students, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. This is information about ‘how the teachings of Islam can be put into practice in a contemporary pluralist society.’ (p.4)

On Friday, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), in a farcical press conference that ended up in a curry house after the initial venue suffered a 'powercut', launched its new report entitled 'Radicalisation, Extremism & Islamism: Realities and myths in the 'War on Terror''.

In the 38-page paper, the group blamed Western colonial powers for the current state of the Muslims world by supporting "tyrannical Arab states that suppress its own masses, thus fueling extremist ideologies".

The report also said that the association between Islam and contemporary politics – often termed 'Islamism' - is part of a process that increases the Muslim community's vulnerability to the use of violence.

On Friday, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), in a farcical press conference that ended up in a curry house after the initial venue suffered a 'powercut', launched its new report entitled 'Radicalisation, Extremism & Islamism: Realities and myths in the 'War on Terror''.

In the 38-page paper, the group blamed Western colonial powers for the current state of the Muslims world by supporting "tyrannical Arab states that suppress its own masses, thus fueling extremist ideologies".

The report also said that the association between Islam and contemporary politics – often termed 'Islamism' - is part of a process that increases the Muslim community's vulnerability to the use of violence.

Just weeks after several Muslim doctors were arrested on suspicion of trying to set off bombs in central London and Glasgow, a leading Muslim doctor has called for homosexuals to be fined or punished.

The Pink News, a gay paper, said that the doctor, Muhammad Siddiq, made the suggestion in a letter to the Pulse, a magazine for GPs:

"There is punishment and fine if you throw rubbish or filth in the streets. The gays are worse than the ordinary careless citizen," Siddiq wrote in the letter.

A 40-year-old man has been charged with assault after an attack on an imam inside Regents Park Mosque.

The assault which left the imam critically injured, has highlighted fears that Muslims are suffering a sharp increase in race attacks, following terrorist attempts to blow up clubbers and holiday seekers this summer.

Ryan Donegan, 40, was charged with committing grievous bodily harm and assaulting a police officer, the police said in a statement.

The 58-year-old cleric, suffered heavy blood loss and damage to both eyes, Mosque officials said.

Al-Dubayan, the mosque’s spokesman, described the gruesome attack in detail.

More than a dozen angry Arab protesters gathered outside Regents Park Mosque calling for the removal of the Saudi-backed board and justice for the Sheikh who was assaulted earlier this month.

The group also alleged that a member of the Mosques, which we will refer to only as Ali, failed to act accordingly because of previous allegations made by the Egyptian Sheikh that ‘certain elements within the mosque are hauling money out of the gold pot’, a protester said.

Ali, feeling rather brave in front protestors, walked up to Mohammed, the ring leader, and demanded that he leaves the Mosque’s grounds.

The two tussled before police intervention.

Some 200 mosques and Islamic schools mainly in West Yorkshire are teaching Muslim children to take on extremism with radical preachers' own choice weapon: Islamic scripture.

A new program of lessons devised by Sajid Hussain, an Imam with the Bradford Council for Mosques, aims to teach Muslim children civic values using examples from the Quran.

“It’s okay saying Islam teaches against suicide bombings, but we need to know why,” Hussain told The Sunday Times. “It’s very important that young Muslims understand that their faith is not divisive.”

According to the Times, Riyadh ul-Haq, is set to become the UK leader of the Deobandi movement, a neo-fundamentalist, revivalist Islamic movement.

Despite being educated and trained at an Islamic school in Britain, the 36 year-old still has a radical agenda that encourages and approves segregation and hatred.

Although we rightly worry about the potentially divisive effects of faith schools, on-campus extremism, and the hateful intolerance that some Muslims show former co-religionists who leave Islam, in actuality the battle for social cohesion will be lost or won not so much by what takes place in Britain than by what happens in the Middle East.

For it has been there where the Islamist virus currently plaguing the world was first spawned, and it has been this aggressive, intolerant and supremacist ideology that ultimately fuels all demands and forms of activity by Muslims that so currently imperil social cohesion at home.

One could imagine the look of fear and horror on the face of the Indian police officer as the Quran, in slow motion, slipped through his sweaty fingers.

A riot soon ensued around the Deabandi Jamia Milia Islamia University in the district of Sahinbagh.

A story appeared in yesterday's Daily Mail on which I have been pondering hard since reading it.

It concerned a visit a fortnight ago by two police officers to a 71 year old priest of an East London Catholic church. They had called on the priest unannounced to interrogate him for nearly two hours over whether, in posting a comment on his web-based parish bulletin a year or so ago about the Shabina Begum case, he had been intending to incite religious hatred against her or her co-religionists.

The prime minister was anointed Govardhan Brown by a “large” crowd of “cheering” Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, celebrating Diwali, the Hindu Forum said in a press statement.

The statement read: “Brown, wearing marigold garlands around his neck and a bright vermilion teeka on his forehead, received the honour at the Hindu Forum of Britain's annual event to celebrate the faith's festival of light at parliament.”

Ramesh Kallidai, the general secretary for the Hindu Forum of Britain, introduced the prime minister to guests as "Shri Govardhan Brown".

He told Brown, "Govardhan" had a "sacred and auspicious" meaning in Sanskrit as a hill in paradise.

"From today, you are an honorary member of the Hindu community, as Govardhan Brown," he said.

A protest rally took place in Oxford on Tuesday evening against a forthcoming debate on free speech scheduled for next Monday at its prestigious Union to which David Irving and Nick Griffin have been invited to attend as speakers.

Whether next Monday's debate goes ahead remains to be seen. The matter is to be put to a vote of Union members after a debate on the matter tomorrow.

In a follow-up piece in today’s Guardian Unlimited to his important debate on Islam last week with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ed Husain laments the woeful ignorance about that religion whch he claims is displayed by her and other ex-Muslims and non-Muslims who condemn it in toto on the strength of what he argues are only certain immoderate versions of it.

In Husain's view, these critics of Islam do not appreciate its many moderate traditions whose discovery he says provided him with the Ariadne's thread by which he was able to extricate himself from intolerant Islamism.

Today’s Times contains a report entitled ‘Universities join battle against terror as guidelines’. It tells of how Britain’s university chiefs have finally agreed ‘to inform the police of any extremist behaviour by students or visiting speakers that they suspect may lead to terrorism’.

The announcement of their long overdue agreement coincides with the publication today of university guidelines issued by Universities Minister Bill Rammell on what they can and should do to combat the on-campus radicalisation of students to the point they enlist to commit or otherwise support acts of violent extremism.

The Court of Appeal has ruled that a marriage between Muslims that was permissible under Sharia law cannot be recognised in the UK.

The man in question, a 26 year old Briton known only as “IC”, had severe learning difficulties and the mental age of a three year old. He was married over the telephone to a Bangladeshi woman chosen by his parents in September 2006.

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.