September 14, 2009

Communities Talking

...This weekend John Denham compared today's far right to Oswald Mosley's 1930s fascists, and announced a drive to counter the extremists within white working-class communities. Yet it won't do for the government to extend its current counter-terrorist policies to treat the white working classes as another "at risk" category. It should first reflect on just how effective the policy has been...

... Last week, the imam giving the Friday address at the Harrow mosque invited those outside, who were calling for no more mosques in Europe, inside for talks. That would be a good start: polemics cannot be a substitute for understanding and reconciliation.

I am heartened by the reaction from the Imam. In Finsbury park years ago I tried to arrange an opportunity for members of the UBA to put their concerns to Mr Hamza as a lot of them had come all the way from Yorkshire. Not surprisingly in the situation it didn't work which I thought was a shame but I managed to record one interesting exchange when they returned a little while after Hamza's arrest.

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