The Centre For Social Cohesion

Civitas has established the Centre For Social Cohesion because of widespread and longstanding concern about the diminishing sense of community in Britain. Work has begun and we are now actively recruiting new staff.

Today’s Times carries an interview with Ken Livingstone, spread across two pages, that is designed to reveal to Londoners what a dynamic and entrepreneurial friend of capitalism their once-ultra left-leaning mayor has become.

To rub home the message about how safe the nation’s capital is in the hands of its present mayor, the newspaper also carries a leader entitled ‘The capital’s capitalist’ whose subtitle describes him as ‘a natural City boy’ and which concludes by announcing the newspaper is ‘now long on Livingstone, the capital’s capitalist’.

At the end of last month news came through from Brussels that EU officials had compiled a lexicon of words that should and should not be used. Specifically aiming to avoid mention of ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorism’ in the same sentence, the lexicon banned words such as ‘Islamic’ and ‘fundamentalist’. Any mention of ‘jihad’ is apparently right out.

The letters ‘ELM-LMC’ stand for the East London Mosque- London Muslim Centre. Situated in Whitechapel Road, the Mosque was opened in 1941, with the London Muslim Centre being opened in June 2004.

The current chairman of the ELM-LMC is Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, who also finds time to serve as Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain as well as on the Organising Commitee of London Olympics.

On the website of the MCB, under the title ‘Triumph of community spirit – Inauguration of Western Europe’s largest Muslim centre’, the opening of the LMC is recounted in loving detail and the reader informed it is ‘set to provide to people of all faiths and none’.

That same ecumenical inclusive aim is echoed by what the ELM-LMC declares to be its mission which is ‘to provide a range of holistic, culturally sensitive services for the communities of London with a view to improving quality of life and enhancing community cohesion’.

Doubtless, a good indication of the ELM LMC's good-faith and sincerity in its stated mission was its choice of guest of honour to open the Centre in 2004. This was Shaykh Abdur-Rahamn al-Sudais, imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, who, in one of his sermons there in April 2002, according to a MEMRI report, ‘beseeched Allah to annihilate the Jews [and] … urged the Arabs to give up peace initiatives with them because they are “the scum of the human race, the rats, of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs”.’

Dominating the sky-line of Regent's Park's Hanover Gate entrance is the now somewhat slightly tarnished golden dome of the Central London Mosque. Its leafy affluent environs are a far cry from the congested run-down streets of Whitechapel home to the East London Mosque which was the subject of last Tuesday’s posting.

Some of the messages being purveyed at the Regent’s Park mosque, however, are no less worryingly divisive than those being purveyed at its East End counterpart that formed the subject of Tuesday's posting.

In his comment piece in today’s Times, entitled ‘Don’t try and put the ration into immigration’, David Aaronvitch takes exception to all forms of governmental limit to foreign immigration into this country.

His stated reasons for opposing all such limits are lame indeed.

Towards the end of last year, following separate exposes by John Ware and Martin Bright of just how immoderate the views and policies are of the leaders of the Muslim Council of Britain, until then the government’s preferred interlocutors when dealing with the country’s two million Muslims, it looked as though at last the government was finally about to get serious about henceforth dealing with and supporting only genuinely moderate Muslim organisations and their leaders.

In a blaze of publicity, Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly announced ‘a fundamental rebalancing’ of the government’s relations with the Muslim community, indicating that, in future, only those Muslim organisations that had shown themselves to be genuinely moderate could expect any government grants or its ear.

Well, we can see from two news items in today’s press just how feeble and short-lived this government resolve has turned out to be.

Speaking on the second day of the major London conference ‘Islam and Muslims in the World Today’ David Cameron has spoken of the need to re-invent British-ness in order to tackle the growing problem of “cultural separatism”.

“The challenge now is to create a positive vision of a British society that really stands for something and makes people want to be a part of it," he said.

However Cameron also said that much of the onus also lay with Muslim religious leaders and that “confronting the false basis of this perversion of Islam is one part of what needs to be done.”

It seems unlikely however that Cameron is likely to attempt to separate ‘the true Islam’ from its numerous “false” perversions.

Instead the presence of Ali Goma, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, at the event – which Tony Blair had addressed the previous day – indicated a possible new direction for government policy.

Today’s Times carries a comment piece about the resolution adopted at last month’s annual conference of UCU, the British universities’ lecturers union, calling for an academic boycott of Israel.

Entitled ‘This boycott is not just wrong, it’s anti-Semitic’, its authors, Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz, argue the call is not just ill-judged in strictly political terms, something for which they make a convincing case. They also argue it is motivated by anti-Semitism, a claim for which they do not make out a convincing case, despite it being the main burden of their piece.

‘[Although] our own commission was set up in the wake of 7/7, … we would recommend that central Government …[adopt] a whole community approach to be the driving force of central Government engagement on integration and cohesion. Although the Government rightly takes a particular approach when working with Muslim communities to prevent extremism, work to build integration and cohesion is something separate – and something that has to be about all different groups, and the bridges between them. We therefore ask that Government set out a clear narrative about the difference between the two agendas.’ (4.11)

Today is the last day to sign an online petition on the Downing Street website against the so-called Mega Mosque which a Saudi group aims to build in the East End ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

The petition - which has so far received over 270,000 signatures – puts its opposition to the mosque in stark terms:

“We the Christian population of this great country England would like the proposed plan to build a Mega Mosque in East London scrapped. This will only cause terrible violence and suffering and more money should go into the NHS.”

Already the proposal has generated a great deal of heated debate but the true nature of the mosque project – funded by Tablighi Jamaat, a secretive Saudi-backed organization – can be judged by the caliber of its supporters.

To mark next month’s sixtieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan, earlier this month the BBC Asian Network commissioned a poll of 500 young British citizens of south Asian extraction, aged between 16 and 34. A control group was also polled about the same matters made up of 235 young whites of comparable age currently residing in Britain. However, the results of the poll, whch were published yesterday, leave it unclear how many of these whites were British citizens as opposed to being immigrants from the EU.

The results of the poll make very interesting reading, but not for the reasons the BBC chose to highlight in its account of the poll issued on its website yesterday.

A Salafi group calling for the establishment of a Sharia based Islamic state in England is being left free to recruit and openly discuss its ideologies in a busy town market.

Followers of Call of the Salaf, a Luton based group, were seen openly handing out flyers advertising their ideologies while calling on shoppers to attend a talk on ‘Sharia & Khilafa: Every Muslims Duty’.

‘How would the Muslim community respond if ITV made a programme challenging Muhammad as the last prophet?’

So, according to a report in Saturday’s Guardian, does Anglican canon Dr Patrick Sookhdeo protest against the decision by ITV to broadcast, on some as yet unnamed future Sunday, a one-hour documentary setting out the Muslim view of Jesus.

Doubtless, Dr Sookhdeo is perfectly correct to surmise, in the wake of the worldwide Muslim protests at the publication of Danish cartoons of Mohammad, that it is almost unthinkable in today’s climate that any British TV company would have courage enough to screen a documentary setting out Christian conceptions of Islam and of its founding figure.

However, neither that lamentable fact - nor the fact that, to Christians such as Dr Sookhdeo, the Koranic denial of Jesus’ divinity is ‘unacceptable’ - should be considered good enough reasons for right-minded people, whether they be Christians or not, to oppose the documentary to which Dr Sookhdeo takes such strong exception.

This is so for several reasons.

British Muslims will hold their own version of the Live 8 at Wembley Stadium to highlight the current humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

The concert on October 21, coinciding with the end of the holy month of Ramadan, will be aimed at raising awareness of the situation among Britain's 2.0 million population.

Anti-racism campaigners believe peer pressure is the best way of stamping out racist chants at football games.

Mido, Middleborough’s centre forward, was targeted by Newcastle United’s fans with songs referring to his Muslim background during last week’s premiership clash.

To the tune of Blue Moon, they sang: “Mido, he’s got a bomb Mido…”

No society can flourish in the absence of its enjoying a considerable degree of cohesion among its members.

In determining how much cohesion a society enjoys, few factors play a more decisive role than do the policies it adopts towards two decisive matters. These are immigration and education.

Last Friday, the Charity Commission announced the creation of a new Faith and Social Cohesion Unit to lead its work with faith-based charities.

In the first instance, it announced, the new unit will focus on Muslim charities and communities. Directing its work will be a newly created Project Board the members of which, we were told, will include representatives from MINAB, the Mosques and Imams Advisory Board.

Thus, the public watchdog supposed to ensure registered charities engage only in benign charitable activity, and neither political lobbying nor anything more nefarious, has appointed as its advisor on Muslim matters representatives from the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain, two of the four Muslim organisations currently on MINAB.

On Sunday the Centre attended the third annual two-day Global Peace and Unity event (GPU) at London’s Excel Centre presented by the new Islam Channel and supported by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

The day didn’t start well: when we asked directions on the DLR, the attendant, completely deadpan, replied: “Oh the Muslim event, they gave me a free Quran, it’s interesting…haven’t got to the bomb-making section yet.”

The GPU’s aim is "building bridges for a better future." Clearly there is a long way to go.

Today saw the ‘historic’ launch of the Draft Constitution and Standards Document for the consultation of the Mosque and Imams National Advisory Board’s (MINAB) at the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in West London.

Through various speakers representing the four founding groups, the group outlined what MINAB hopes to achieve during the consultation period and raised the issues they want to tackle: extremism, the role of women in Islam, the role of women in mosques, a balanced and representative collection of books on Islam in libraries and child protection issues.

Was it Ted Cantle? John Denham? Charles Clarke? Hazel Blears?

Wrong, if you thought that it was any of these.

According to John Stuart Mill, and I have not come across anything to contradict his claim, it was Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Muslims News has reported that the Charity Commission has “vehemently” rejected claims made by Gordon Brown, prime minister, that the main objective of its new Faith and Social Cohesion Unit is to stop the exploitation of Muslim charities by extremists.

The newspaper reported that a spokeswoman for the Charity Commission said: “It is absolutely not true that new Unit will focus exclusively on one faith or will fight extremism.” The paper did not disclose the source.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Coalition to Stop Child Soldiers have called for Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to investigate whether Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna, a former Tamil Tiger warlord, who entered the UK on a forged passport, to be prosecuted for war crimes.

The Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), Karuna's pro-government paramilitary faction that broke away from the Tamil Tiger rebels, has been condemned by United Nations for hostage taking, torture and using child soldiers.

A society enjoys social cohesion when, between its members, there exist associative bonds sufficiently strong as to dispose them to be mutually civil and solicitous of each other’s welfare.

Associative bonds between the members of any society will be strong in proportion as they share the same beliefs, values and tastes, or at least certain important ones.

Not content with having flogged off Britain’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices, and signed up Britain to what is a European constitution in all but name – something his predecessor vowed would not happen without a referendum, it now turns out that Gordon Brown personally authorised abolishing the image of Britannia on the country’s coinage.

Forgive me for returning to the claim made last week by the Archbishop of Canterbury that it is now unavoidable in the interests of social cohesion that certain elements of sharia become recognised by or incorporated within British law.

Despite having been gone over so well by now, his remarks raise such an important issue concerning the future direction of this country that they are well worth revisiting. For, despite all the attention his remarks have received, there are certain dangers in what the Archbishop is calling for that have yet to be sufficiently spelled out.

Muslim groups staged a vigil outside Downing Street Saturday 16th February, protesting what they call a week of ‘appalling displays of prejudice and contempt towards Islam and Muslims’.

The protest was co-ordinated by the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), and backed by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and the British Muslim Forum (BMF).

The Department of Communities and Local Government has published an in-depth study of social cohesion based on the 2005 Citizenship Survey.

The report (available in full here, or in summary here) found that while ethnic diversity in an area can often increase feelings of community cohesion, such cohesion was often undermined by poverty and economic deprivation.

The council of the London borough of Tower Hamlets has withdrawn funding for a series of public debates after the group running them refused to drop a prominent Islamist from the speakers list.

150 Muslims in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets voted in agreement with Dr Abdul Wahid, head of the British branch of the worldwide Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, that political participation has failed British Muslims.

Wahid encouraged Muslims to work outside the political system. Joining a mainstream political party was “selling out”, he argued. Referring to Britain’s “moral crisis” he asked: “Why don't we establish those Islamic values in our country as an example for people to look up to?”

A 2006 study by the think-tank Policy Exchange found that 84 percent of British Muslims felt they had fared well in British society.

An article in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, the influentual US magazine, examines how "ethnic nationalism" in Europe - arguably the root cause of countless conflicts over the past century - is far from dead.

Indeed, Jerry Z Muller, the article's author, warns his US readers against assuming that Europe's relative peace over the last 50 years is the result of Europeans abandoning their nationalist outlooks. Instead, he argues, the post-1945 creation of ethnically-homogenous nation-states has simply entrenched nationalism while also allowing Europeans to deny that such primal feelings exist:

More than enough, perhaps, has already been said about the speech given last week by the Minister for Culture Margaret Hodge in which she criticised the Proms and other unnamed iconic cultural events -- the Henley Regatta?, Glyndebourne? -- for not being sufficiently inclusive.

So well does the Culture Minister's speech epitomise a central flaw in so much current governmental thinking about community cohesion as to warrant a brief re-visitation.

A man connected to the July 7th London bombers was yesterday jailed for 16 months for possession of a CD containing an al-Qaeda training manual.

Khalid Kaliq of Beeston, Leeds, admitted one count of possessing a document likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation today published a new report 'Immigration, faith and cohesion' examining challenges to "community cohesion" among recent immigrant communities.

Focusing mainly on Muslim communities in Birmingham, Bradford and Newham, the report, which was based on interviews with 319 individuals, idenitified a number of important trends:

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.”

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 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.

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.

British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) held their officially launch event in central London yesterday.

Their official launch consisted of a debate chaired by Baroness Faulkner called ‘The Secular State – the best option for Muslims?’ The panel consisted of BMSD chair Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Ed Husain, Usama Hasan and Inayat Bunglawala.