I think that NCFC4Life's point

is that our experiment in multi-culturalism has hit a few problems. Being liberal tolerant sorts ourselves, we have always been keen on allowing other cultures to express themselves however they saw fit, on the tacit assumption that they would be liberal and tolerant too. Unofrtunately, the rise of militant Islam has shown that that was a false assumption. A small but fierce minority within Islamic culture is content to live in the UK, but not content to adopt any form of liberalism or tolerance. This minority shares the same beliefs as militant Islam in the Middle East - that is, that western society is hopelessly decadent, godless and corrupt. They have no wish to associate with it or participate in it. A tiny minority even wish to destroy it.

It is the ultimate test of liberal tolerance as to whether it is prepared to tolerate a foreign culture which despises liberal tolerance (and indeed regards it as a sign of weak decadence). It would be a seismic shift in culture for the UK, but there are signs of new political thinking along the lines that perhaps we haven't been very wise to allow militant Islam space in our country, and that what we really should have been doing was to encourage immigrants to integrate into our society, and to understand adopt our ways of thinking, particularly in relation to liberal tolerance.

Posted By: Old Git on October 11th 2006 at 11:21:44

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