And I agree with DMB & Berberella about the constant encroachments - Camden council now uses only halal meat for it's school dinners
The horror! I mean, the whole no pork thing is kind of annoying, but why would anyone care if the tasteless chicken or beef the kids are given at school is halal or not, unless you're an animal rights weirdo (in which case you'd probably be raising your kids to be veggies anyways)? In my opinion, for chicken and for beef cold cuts, halal and kosher meat tends to be of better quality than your standard non-halal/kosher meat, so, if anything, I'd regard that kind of "Islamification" as a good thing.
my muslim colleagues insist on going off to prey,
Prey on what? Small animals? Maybe the blood of Christian children?
regardless of how busy we are - nobody else would get away with that .
You're a union activist, right? Well, why don't you fight for your coworkers of other faiths to have the right to pray during the workday if they feel their religion compels them to, rather than turning against your union brothers and sisters because they happen to be practicing Muslims?
And I think it's understandable that people are concerned about big mosques appearing in their neighbourhoods - mosques do change the character of a neighbourhood .
And what would be your solution to this?
I recently went to visit relatives in edinburgh , at one point I nipped out to get a couple of bottles and was amazed to find the corner shop that's been there for years has stopped selling alcohol . Went down the road , same thing , I had to walk quite a long way to get what i wanted . I asked my brother about it he said all the local shops had stopped selling booze since the new mosque opened .One of the shopkeepers told him he wasn't happy about it as he's lost all his old customers , but he felt he had no choice . Some of you might think this sounds trivial , but it's the kind of thing that interferes with people's lives and causes resentment .
As a hard drinker myself I would find this kind of situation extremely annoying and frustrating, but neighborhoods change, economically and culturally, in ways the old residents often don't like. What's to be done? Have the government impose racial, cultural and religious segregation laws? Discriminate against Muslims who want to have a mosque in the neighborhood they live in?
and ,more seriously ,there is the increasing self censorship going on in our media , the response to the Danish cartoons does not bode well for a free press
The fact that Brits are "politically-correct" wusses has very little to do with Islam.
One last question, and be honest-- are you a BNP voter?
Topic: Mark Steel: So has anyone really been 'Islamified' against their will?