The Casey Review lays bare the failure to integrate Muslim minorities
The Casey Review is a profound and thorough demolition of decades of laissez-faire immigration policies, and an official culture which demonised as racist those who spoke out about the problems that exist in many Muslim communities.
Britain’s cultural relativism and moral blindness reached its apogee with the appalling revelations about the Rotherham rape gangs. Casey writes that it was “a catastrophic example of authorities turning a blind eye to harm in order to avoid the need to confront a particular community.” More than 1,400 children paid the price.
Progress integrating Britain’s myriad Muslim communities has been slow, complicated by the arrival of new “first generation in every generation” foreign wives who often don’t speak English, and a growing “sense of identification” among UK Muslims “with the plight of the ‘Ummah’, or global Muslim community.”
Every few months we have a new poll, survey or official report warning that the blind pursuit of multi-culturalism is leading us to catastrophe and urging the Government to take action.
Back in January Trevor Phillips warned that it was delusional to pretend “a group is somehow eventually going to become like the rest of us” “simply because we are constantly telling them that basically they should be like us”. [National Secular Society] Read more
Casey review raises alarm over social integration in the UK
…. At the end of a year-long study of community cohesion in Britain, Dame Louise Casey has branded ministerial attempts to boost integration of ethnic minorities as amounting to little more than “saris, samosas and steel drums for the already well-intentioned”.
…. “The problem has not been a lack of knowledge but a failure of collective, consistent and persistent will to do something about it or give it the priority it deserves at both a national and local level,” Casey concluded, who said there had been failures in each administration.
“The work that has been done has often been piecemeal and lacked a clear evidence base or programme of evaluation.”
Her report recommends a major new strategy to help bridge divides in UK towns and villages, with an “integration oath” to encourage immigrants to embrace British values, more focus on promoting the English language, encouraging social mixing among young people, and securing “women’s emancipation in communities where they are being held back by regressive cultural practices”. [The Guardian] Read more
Javid: many people in UK ‘leading parallel lives’ over social integration
Sajid Javid has said that people in Britain have been allowed for too long to lead “parallel lives” as politicians ducked the controversial issues of social integration for fear of being called racist.
The communities secretary made the comments in response to Louise Casey’s review into community cohesion with findings that he said rang true to him personally.
“I’ve seen for myself the enormous contribution that immigrants and their families make to British life, all without giving up their unique cultural identities,” he said.
“But I’ve also seen, with my own eyes, the other side of the equation. For too long, too many people in this country have been living parallel lives, refusing to integrate, and failing to embrace the shared values that make Britain great.” [The Guardian] Read more
Muslims are failing to integrate because men keep marrying abroad, major report warns
Muslim communities remain isolated even after decades in the UK because men keep marrying foreign wives, a Government adviser has warned.
Dame Louise Casey said that there is a “first generation in every generation” phenomenon in Muslim communities which is acting as a “bar” to integration.
The review also accuses Labour and local authorities of having “ignored or even condoned” harmful cultural traditions for fear of being branded “racist or Islamaphobic”.
It reports concerns that Sharia Courts in the UK have been “supporting the values of extremists, condoning wife-beating [and] ignoring marital rape”.
…. The review found one northern town where every councillor of Asian ethnicity had married a wife from Pakistan, while a study by Bristol University found that half of British Pakistanis married back in Pakistan. [The Telegraph] Read more
Migrants should swear an oath of allegiance when they arrive in UK, Dame Lousie Casey says
Migrants should swear an oath of allegiance as soon as they arrive in the UK, an official review has recommended as it warned that Muslims increasingly do not identify themselves as being British.
An 18 month review by Dame Louise Casey has found that the “unprecedented pace and scale of recent immigration” has had a significant impact on many communities.
It warns that parts of Birmingham, Blackburn, Burnley and Bradford up to 85 per cent of the local population is Muslim, with many holding “very socially Conservative views” about women and homosexuality.
Muslims living in the UK are, it suggests, increasingly identifying with a global Islamic “Ummah”, or community, rather than with being British. [The Telegraph] Read more
White liberals have speeded segregation in the UK. The great struggle now is to reverse it
Dame Louise Casey must have chuckled inwardly yesterday. Even before she had said a word about her report on social integration, commissioned by David Cameron, the blustering started. You know that you’ve hit the target when the BBC marshals a line-up of “ordinary” people who protest their desire to “integrate”, and the usual suspects attack any factual evidence as “slanted”, “Islamophobic” and even “racist”.
The aim of this verbal onslaught is to silence any deviation from the elite orthodoxy: all minority disadvantage must be the product of white bigotry. A close friend of mine wryly observes that many white liberal activists cannot imagine that anything, good or bad, happens to black or brown folk without their permission. [The Telegraph] Read more
‘Right on’ critics are ignoring problems caused by immigration, government tsar warns after Muslim groups condemn her ‘inflammatory call’ for newcomers to take a vow of allegiance
The author of a bombshell report on immigration and integration in Britain today slammed ‘right on’ critics for ignoring real problems.
Dame Louise Casey made a series of extraordinary recommendations today after months studying the impact of migration across the country.
Among her proposals is a demand for all new migrants to Britain to take an oath of allegiance where they promise to embrace liberal values before arriving.
Dame Louise said ghettos have formed because the pace and scale of immigration has been ‘too much’ and some towns and cities have been transformed ‘out of all recognition’, it says.
She said successive governments have ‘ignored or even condoned regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices, for fear of being branded racist or Islamophobic’.
But Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, has condemned the report as ‘inflammatory, divisive, pandering to the agenda of the far right’. [Daily Mail] Read more
Immigrants ‘Should Take An Oath Of Integration’ Casey Review Says
Britain can no longer hide from the “uncomfortable truth” of ethnic segregation after a major new study found that public institutions sometimes condone “regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices” for fear of being branded racist.
Dame Louise Casey’s year-long study, which was commissioned by former prime minister David Cameron found divisions within communities is growing in some places.
Casey said: “We can no longer duck difficult issues.” Public bodies were accused of going “too far to accommodate diversity and freedom of expression”.
The report also said immigrants should have to take an “oath of integration” and schoolchildren should be taught “British values” to help bring communities together.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, Casey said pockets were developing in the UK in places such as Oldham and Bradford where one ethnic group or religion is dominant.
“We cannot hide away from an uncomfortable truth and one of those uncomfortable truths is that some religions.. are pulling away and I think in some ways we are pushing some people in the Muslim community away,” Casey said.
The author of the report said she had visited communities where women who have lived in the UK for years are not allowed out of their house without a man’s permission. [The Huffington Post UK] Read more
Segregation at ‘worrying levels’ in parts of Britain, Dame Louise Casey warns
…. Afraid of being dubbed racist, afraid of losing support, afraid of challengingminority communities – that is Dame Louise Casey’s view of Britain’s decision-makers.
Criticising politicians and officials is the easy bit. The significance of this report is that it targets individual communities and faiths.
It contrasts with the language of people living “parallel lives” – a term used in an earlier report and designed to be neutral, placing no more blame on one community than another.
Dame Louise makes clear her outrage at what she calls “regressive practices” targeting women and girls. She accepts she is putting Muslim areas under the spotlight.
The question for Dame Louise – an official not immune to criticism herself – is how would she achieve change? What if an elected politician refused to take her oath? What if some people – of whatever community – simply prefer to live and educate their children separately? [BBC] Read more
Immigrant oaths can’t work when integration already looks doomed
…. For anyone who has followed Britain and western Europe’s attempts to deal with the mass migration that started in the 1950s, all this is familiar. Just as the same stories go round in each of our countries, so the same solutions rear up year after year. And nothing happens.
In recent years I have seen at first-hand the bifurcated societies identified by Cantle and Casey — not just in the north of England but across our continent. The phenomenon Casey describes is at least as evident in Sweden, Germany and France.
When I read her careful description of the effects of mass immigration on vast swathes of our country, I thought of the school in Malmo where even before the mass movement of 2015 no child had had Swedish as a first language for 14 years.
…. Were government to absorb rather than flick through reports such as Casey’s it would see that the obvious conclusion is to stop or dramatically slow the flow of people. What is the purpose of continuing to bring hundreds of thousands of people each year into a country that is so self-confessedly bad at integrating people? Even if Britain installed a citizenship oath, what would we do with those who refused to take it, took it with fingers crossed or took it and then broke it?
Reviews such as Casey’s may be little read today. But they will be pored over by future historians who will ponder the greatest question of all: how could countries so aware of their challenges have done so little to address them? [The Sunday Times] Read more
The tough questions on social integration are being ducked
…. But here’s what I didn’t really expect to find. As a nation, we are becoming ever more diverse, increasingly integrated, and more at ease with that difference too. Yet some communities are becoming more segregated at the same time. In some council wards, as many as 85% of the population come from a single minority background, and most of these high minority concentrations are deprived Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage communities.
But there’s more to it than that. I have also seen and heard that this sense of retreat and retrenchment can sometimes go hand in hand with deeply regressive religious and cultural practices, especially when it comes to women. These practices are preventing women from playing a full part in society, contrary to our common British values, institutions and indeed, in some cases, our laws.
…. A failure to talk about this only leaves the ground open for the far right on one side and Islamist extremists on the other. These groups are ideologically opposed to each other, but actually share the same goal: to show that Islam and modern Britain are somehow incompatible. They are, of course, wrong.
We have always been at our strongest when most united. We are better for being open and inclusive. Every person, in every community, in every part of Britain, should feel a part of our country and have every opportunity to succeed in it. There can be no exceptions to that by gender, colour or creed. Those are our rights. Those are our values. That is our history. It must be our future too. [Louise Casey, 91 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 491 votes] The Guardian’s been ducking them for years.
This all rings so hollow from this rag. You are unable to offer solutions because you’re part of the problem.
[2ND 448] Many have been raising these issues for years, only to be censored here and you accuse others of ducking the issue.
[3RD 406] “Often, the victims are foreign-born brides brought to Britain via arranged marriages. They have poor English, little education, low confidence, and are reliant on their husbands for their income and immigration status.”
OK lets stop this then. Problem solved.
[4TH 353] What a wishy washy article. Only just come to your attention has it?
Perhaps you should have visited somewhere like Oldham 25 years ago and had a wander round.
What is your solution?
I think decades of the liberal elite suppressing the debate has allowed the problem to grow to such an extent that the wonderful English cultural tolerance you are dewy eyed about is going to be going in only one direction.
[5TH 337] Well blow me down. Look, the emperor has no clothes. Decades of utopian fantasies of the ‘liberal left’ and the ‘liberal right’ have led to dystopian ghettoes in the cities of Britain where medieval cultural practices have flourished.
But hey, don’t listen to the facts. Put your fingers in your ears and shout ‘racist’.
It is the crass and almost immeasurable idiocy of these regressives that has led directly to Brexit and Trump and the growth of UKIP. You have driven millions of decent people into the arms of the right by your adamant refusal to listen to their legitimate concerns on culture, history and identity.
Time to wake up and realise that, much as you hate to admit it, not all cultures are equal.
[6TH 315] The true measure of integration is mixed families, anything else is just surface. The problem that the advocates of a multicultural society have failed to face for years is integration is not being blocked by white people. Identity politics struggles with the concept that prejudices occur in every community.
As you say the attitude seems to be if homophobia and abuse of women occurs in other communities, we turn a blind eye. A policy which is extremely disturbing and says a lot about identity politics.
Even if we accept this form of reverse racism, that liberal western values are only for white people. A racist policy of turning a blind eye won’t work. How many times have the British press self censorred, because of fear of the consequences of reporting certain stories? Not one paper would publish the Danish cartoons or the charlie hebdo cover? Think that happens if the cartoons were mocking the pope?
We already have Sharia courts for civil proceedings. As the Muslim community grows, how many other changes will we accept?
No doubt you will call me racist for saying that, but in a democracy numbers matter. With the Muslim community off limits as far as conventional politics and debate goes. We can’t change hearts and minds. Even if I believed that the liberal left had the stomach to try.
That is why I am pressimestic about the future. We have created ghettos with our misguided multicultural policies and no-one has a solution other than screaming racist to shut people up.
[7TH 291] It’s quite simple. No more multiculturalism. No more “communities”. Fit in or don’t come here in the first place. [Guardian Cif] Read more
Enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim
Some Muslims lead such separate lives that they believe Britain is an Islamic country where the majority of people share their faith, according to a report to be published this week.
Evidence gathered by Dame Louise Casey, the government’s community cohesion tsar, will lift the lid on how some Muslims are cut off from the rest of Britain with their own housing estates, schools and television channels.
Her report finds that thousands of people from all-Muslim enclaves in northern cities such as Bradford, Dewsbury and Blackburn seldom, if ever, leave their areas and have almost no idea of life outside.
A source who has read the report said: “Certain Muslims, because they are in these communities and go to Muslim schools, think Britain is a Muslim country. They think 75% of the country is Muslim.”
The correct figure, according to the 2011 census, is 4.8% of the population in England and Wales. Christians account for 59.3%. [The Times (£)] Read more
The Sunday Times Prints Correction For ‘Enclaves Of Islam’ Story. The Sun and the Mail On Sunday have also changed their stories
The Sunday Times has issued an apology after it was revealed a story it ran claiming “enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim” was based on a survey on one school and its perception of the country’s Asian population.
The original story, published on 4 December and also covered by The Sun, Daily Express and the Mail on Sunday, cited a report by government integration tsar Dame Louise Casey that had not yet been published.
It claimed thousands of Muslims in the UK were so cut off from mainstream society that they over-estimated the country’s Islamic population by a factor of 10.
The correction in the Sunday Times points out the results were based on one school who were asked about Asians, not Muslims. [The Huffington Post UK] Read more
Islam Surveyed 