Not someone I would generally post - and this is not a new article - but it is an important and good read IMO.
It takes a while to get to where it needs to get - it goes through the foreign policy and actions before coming back to the domestic stuff:
Meanwhile at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge John Denniss is industriously sentencing demonstrators who gathered near the Israeli embassy to rail against that state's attack on Gaza, one of the worst acts of state terrorism in recent history. Our government said nothing then, and were therefore complicit. Protesters came from all backgrounds but the vast majority of those arrested were young Muslim men. Dozens are being sent down for insignificant acts of bravado. Some were about to go to university, to train as dentists and the like. Their homes were raided, families cowed and terrified. Joanna Gilmore, an academic expert on public demonstrations, says never before have such disproportionate sentences been handed out, not even with the volatile anti-globalisation protests. Denniss intends his punishments to be a deterrent. To deter us from what? Having the temerity to believe we live in a democracy and are free to march?
And then the crypto-fascist, Aryan Geert Wilders, is invited into the Lords by UKIP and crossbench peers to show his vile anti-Islam film in the name of freedom of expression. Freedom my arse. It is just another entertaining episode of Muslim-baiting. I dare the same peers to now invite David Irving, the Holocaust denier, to share his thoughts freely in the Lords, and get Omar Bakri over from the Lebanon with films of himself making fiery speeches on what to do with infidels. Again Muslims are made to understand that different standards apply to others. We are on trial, always, and always must expect to lose.
She is one of these columnists - every paper has them - who is so consistently partisan that after a while if I am not agreeing I tire of reading it. She paints this ugly picture of a Britain you won't raise kids in because discrimination is so terrible. I don't know, I'm not a Muslim, but I think she just paces in circles making contradictory points each week using a very manipulative anecdotal approach. She slips in political PoV in an article where that only undermines her point. The points she does make are overblown, such as the visit by Geert Wilders, desperate evidence. But then, you know there are a lot of things I would disagree with her about. Maybe my reading has no merit. I mainly don't like this fear-mongering, it seems to have come from several quarters at a highly irrelevant moment, which tells me some emails are flowing.
If there was anyone I would not put her as part of some orchestrated campaign because mostly I doubt many Muslims can stand her viewpoint and would be outright offended even at her claim to even be a "Muslim-lite".
She may be playing this up, but there is a very real issue of sentencing IMO and there have been a few voices about how some people seem to have been sentenced especially over the Israeli embassy protests in 2009 and even some earlier stuff that I can remember even over the race riots a decade ago.
There is a question of justice and whether the long arm of the law is really blind to people's creed (or skin colour? it does not have to be an issue of religious leanings as I suspect most of the people with unjust sentences were also of ethnic minorities).
This also plays into a question of trust as if the Police are only seen as a stick, this will make the task of policing that much harder where the trust deficit may cause vital failings (with the communities that are fearful also bearing the major brunt of the crimes).
I don't like playing a victim mentality or a victim card as I think that weakens people and plays towards a hopelessness that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy but I think there are underlying issues that need to be fixed.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
I just find her arguments scatty, recalling some of the less clear-headed thinkers I know, but you can probably think of a lot more supporting evidence so I won't argue too strongly. My criticism isn't just about the victim thing its about the doom thing, I don't like how people behave when they are mobilised by negatives.