David Cameron: What I learnt from my stay with a Muslim family

[enaya]

Conservative Party leader David Cameron spent 2 days staying with a Muslim family in Birmingham last week. He now says 'British Asians' are a role model for British society. He wrote this article for The Observer today. It's not clear sometimes whether he is talking about 'British Asians' or 'British Muslims' though:

What I learnt from my stay with a Muslim family
by David Cameron, The Observer, 13 May 2007

The challenges of cohesion and integration are among the greatest we face. I wrote in these pages in January that we cannot bully people into feeling British: we have to inspire them. Last week, I spent two days staying with Abdullah and Shahida Rehman and their family in Birmingham. The experience has strengthened my conviction about the right way to build a more cohesive Britain.

First, a concerted attack on racism and soft bigotry. You can't even start to talk about a truly integrated society while people are suffering racist insults and abuse, as many still are in our country on a daily basis. We must also be careful about the language we use. No Muslim I've ever met is offended by Christmas, or supports its replacement with 'Winterval'. But many Muslims I've talked to about these issues are deeply offended by the use of the word 'Islamic' or 'Islamist' to describe the terrorist threat we face today.

We do need greater understanding of the true nature of the terrorist threat. There's too much complacency about it among non-Muslims, and too much denial of it in the Muslim community. But our efforts are not helped by lazy use of language. Indeed, by using the word 'Islamist' to describe the threat, we actually help do the terrorist ideologues' work for them, confirming to many impressionable young Muslim men that to be a 'good Muslim', you have to support their evil campaign.

There's no easy answer. I don't think this is something that can or should be addressed through a government edict, but the BBC, as our national broadcaster, has both the responsibility and the opportunity to give a lead.

The second priority for building cohesion in our country is more integration: people from different backgrounds sharing public services, neighbourhoods, social networks. As I found in Birmingham, this is something they naturally want to do, and local institutions - including religious ones - provide the opportunity.

For example, those who say that faith-based schools hinder integration are wrong. The three Muslim children in the household I stayed with go to a local faith school - a Jewish faith school, which is massively oversubscribed, has a mixed roll with some 60 per cent of pupils from Muslim families, around a third from Birmingham's Jewish community and the rest a mixture of Christians and Sikhs. My obvious question to Abdullah - why do you, a practising Muslim, send your kids to a Jewish school? - does not get just the obvious answer: good discipline and good results. On top of that, the very fact that the school has a faith and a strong ethos is seen, at least by Abdullah and his family, as a positive advantage.

And the third step in promoting integration is to ensure there's something worth integrating into. 'To make men love their country,' said Edmund Burke, 'their country ought to be lovable.' Integration has to be about more than immigrant communities, 'their' responsibilities and 'their' duties. It has to be about 'us' too - the quality of life that we offer, our society and our values.

Here the picture is bleak: family breakdown, drugs, crime and incivility are part of the normal experience of modern Britain. Many British Asians see a society that hardly inspires them to integrate. Indeed, they see aspects of modern Britain which are a threat to the values they hold dear - values which we should all hold dear. Asian families and communities are incredibly strong and cohesive, and have a sense of civic responsibility which puts the rest of us to shame. Not for the first time, I found myself thinking that it is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian way of life, not the other way around.

Saying goodbye to Abdullah I was given gifts of T-shirts, shoes and a traditional robe which he said would be perfect for any visit to Pakistan. It's another reminder that integration is a two-way street. If we want to remind ourselves of British values - hospitality, tolerance and generosity to name just three - there are plenty of British Muslims ready to show us what those things really mean.

source: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comme...078446,00.html

British Asians are role models, says Cameron (May 13)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/polit...078667,00.html

is it me or will he make a good PM?

[Nσσя'υℓ Jαииαн]

Sounds good to me! And hes right about many things in the article.

[Nyomi]

Goo artical

[MTAFFI]

good article! I think that what this man is proposing is not necessarily all great, but I think he definitely has the right idea. Learning to live with one another peacefully and happily is something the world is nearly without today, in my opinion. The leaps and bounds in the transportation industry have meshed us all together so fast I think that people have simply not had enough experience with all the cultures yet to really "get along", but hopefully the more people do like this man did and actually try and learn about another culture or people, the more we will find out that our differences in skin color, language and religious background make no real difference in the type of people we are, in other words, we all really came from the same place, we all belong here on Earth and no one is better than anyone else. Our appearance and beliefs may separate us but on the inside you could not tell the difference

GREAT POST

[Goku]

Cameron has definately helped the Conservative party appeal to British voters. Nice article, it may be a tough choice between him and Gordon Brown in the 2009 General election, or maybe the Lib Dems will have someone more competant....

['Abd al-Baari]

Intersting article, Jazakallah Khair for sharing

[glo]

Sorry, this is completely off topic, but I noticed that the family Cameron stayed with has the name Rehman.
Is that of Pakistani origin? And is it a common name?

Thanks

[khushnood]

nice one.thanx for sharing.

[Dawud_uk]

assalaamu alaykum,

i used to be a small time conservative political party worker and to be honest i still feel they are the best of a bad bunch but it still doesnt change things as they are still promoting kufr,

their agenda is kufr, no matter how much it is simular to our beliefs and attitudes if it does not come from the shariah it is still kufr to rule by it, to vote for it etc.

also remember they are pro-war, pro-american, have swallowed the gay lobbies agenda, so really they might be marginally better than the rest of the shower in politics but why choose them and why commit kufr by choosing a deen other than islam by going into the voting box and voting for them?

Assalaamu alaykum,
Abu Abdullah

[Snowflake]

Indeed, by using the word 'Islamist' to describe the threat, we actually help do the terrorist ideologues' work for them, confirming to many impressionable young Muslim men that to be a 'good Muslim', you have to support their evil campaign.

So true. About time someone figured that out.

[Bittersteel]

were those Muslims putting up an act?were they liberals?

[MTAFFI]

assalaamu alaykum,

i used to be a small time conservative political party worker and to be honest i still feel they are the best of a bad bunch but it still doesnt change things as they are still promoting kufr,

their agenda is kufr, no matter how much it is simular to our beliefs and attitudes if it does not come from the shariah it is still kufr to rule by it, to vote for it etc.

also remember they are pro-war, pro-american, have swallowed the gay lobbies agenda, so really they might be marginally better than the rest of the shower in politics but why choose them and why commit kufr by choosing a deen other than islam by going into the voting box and voting for them?

Assalaamu alaykum,
Abu Abdullah

Well if you want Shariah why not move to a land where you have a better chance of living under shariah? Obviously anywhere in the west is not going to be Shariah law, so then is a Muslim living in the west Kufr? It is very obvious that Muslims come from a very different culture than the rest of the world... I often feel as though Muslims wish to isolate themselves and they feel as though they are better than the rest of the world, so if this is in fact the case, why not either accept the values and lifestyle of the west and be happy when someone like this guy comes along or go to Saudia Arabia or Iran? Not trying to pick a fight, just asking a serious question

[Dawud_uk]

Well if you want Shariah why not move to a land where you have a better chance of living under shariah? Obviously anywhere in the west is not going to be Shariah law, so then is a Muslim living in the west Kufr? It is very obvious that Muslims come from a very different culture than the rest of the world... I often feel as though Muslims wish to isolate themselves and they feel as though they are better than the rest of the world, so if this is in fact the case, why not either accept the values and lifestyle of the west and be happy when someone like this guy comes along or go to Saudia Arabia or Iran? Not trying to pick a fight, just asking a serious question

no offence taken, i do certainly intend on taking myself off to live in a muslim land as soon as i have developed the necessary language and life skills i will need there.

Abu Abdullah

[MTAFFI]

no offence taken, i do certainly intend on taking myself off to live in a muslim land as soon as i have developed the necessary language and life skills i will need there.

Abu Abdullah

Oh yeah!! Sorry about that Dawud, it has been a while since I last talked to you, you told me that then too....sorry about that, glad to see you are still intending on pursuing your goal!

[KAding]

were those Muslims putting up an act?were they liberals?

You mean like the majority of Muslims in the West?

[wilberhum]

We here so often that we shouldn’t judge a group by the actions of a few. Of course this only applies when the actions are negative. Let those actions be positive and the rule no longer applies.

[Philosopher]

If people gave up these pre-Medieval fairytales and embrace science and logic, then the world would be more stable and peaceful.

[barney]

Dave Cameron stayed with the family in order to learn more about multicultural diversity and to promote harmoney between the upper-class toffee nosed conservative snobs that vote Tory and the Ummah of Britain.

He also had a picture taken last year on a Huskey drawn sldge in order to find out about global warming.

He rides a bicycle in order to save the planet.

What a Guy!

[Muezzin]

We here so often that we shouldn’t judge a group by the actions of a few. Of course this only applies when the actions are negative. Let those actions be positive and the rule no longer applies.

Well, yeah. It's a double standard, but it's polite, wouldn't you say? Unless you don't value giving people the benefit of the doubt.

[beespreeteam]

If people gave up these pre-Medieval fairytales and embrace science and logic, then the world would be more stable and peaceful.

Religion isn't against science and logic. In fact, when Islam was in it's twilight, they were a major contributer to science and everything around us today.

Don't believe me? Check out 'The Father of Chemistry'.