A Conservative government would tackle the rise of “separatism” in the UK by uniting people “around a common culture and a common identity”, Kemi Badenoch has announced.

In a speech laying out a series of planned commissions focused on integration, the leader of the Opposition said Britain has become “too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics for their own gain”.

She defined separatism as “a way of living that keeps a group apart from the wider society” which leads to sectarianism and “the politics that follows when people are taught to think in blocks”.

Mrs Badenoch claimed separatism was “most visible in some Muslim communities, with extremism its most violent expression,” but said the issue was also emerging elsewhere.

Concerns have been raised about people forcing family members to vote in a certain way in the recent Gorton and Denton by-election, with Nigel Farage claiming it was a victory for “sectarian voting and cheating” after Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer won the seat.

Mrs Badenoch said she did not believe women were “marched into the voting booth to stop them from voting Reform”, but claimed something “much deeper and disturbing” was happening.

She added the by-election featured campaigning “designed to mobilise voters on ethnicity and religion, not domestic priorities”.

“People were voting not based on who would increase their wages or fix their schools, but on who would protect the interests of their identity groups and punish those who they disagree with. This is not healthy and it is not British,” she said.

Mrs Badenoch added her party’s approach would be “bold” and “brave” but strike the “right tone” to avoid fermenting division.

She added: “It is about bringing people together around a common culture and a common identity.

“There is a vacuum of competence on this issue right now and that is why Conservatives have to lead. No-one else will do this properly. We have to.”

Mrs Badenoch said: “British culture exists. We live it. We benefit from it and we have a duty to defend it and pass it on.

“The answer to this is integration, but for integration to work people have to know they are integrating into a culture which is strong and self-confident.

“It does not work if Britain is a mess of competing cultures and it cannot work if we are not brave enough to say who we are and what we expect.”

She said her party would launch a commission to recommend an integration and cohesion plan that “sets out the culture that we want people to assimilate into, what we expect and what we will enforce”.

She added: “But first we must do away with what has failed. Integration being treated as an administrative process has not worked. That era is over.

“We will act on a simple doctrine. We will end identity politics in the state full stop. No racial preferences, protected characteristics will not be used as criteria for hiring, promotion, admissions or procurement.”

Mrs Badenoch promised to establish “universalism”, described as “one set of rules for everyone, enforced fairly”.

Expanding on the concept, she added: “Universalism will run through every aspect of government policy, from education to policing, welfare to immigration.

“We will review every single code of practice to ensure standardisation across public bodies and prevent them from doing their own thing.

“We will replace the promotion of multiculturalism in schools with a national story, one that is inclusive of the many people who have come to Britain, but without the grievance or the guilt which is corroding our cultural confidence.

“We will not teach our children that all cultures are equal. Instead we will teach them why Britain’s civic culture matters.”

She also said her party would “end institutional self-censorship that stops people from doing the right thing”.

Lord Toby Young has been asked to lead a review on this element of the plans.

A commission will be established to assess how to overhaul the Equality Act “so it prioritises meritocracy and strengthens integration”, Mr Badenoch said.

Germany’s lower house of parliament on Thursday voted to step up efforts to combat anti-Semitism and called for the creation of a new government post to oversee the issue, backed by an independent panel of experts.

The proposal was jointly introduced and backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the pro-business Free Democrats and the Greens.

The far-right Alternative for Germany party also voted for the measure, while the radical Left party voted against, citing what it called substantive deficiencies in the proposal.

The voice vote, which lays the groundwork for a spate of legislative initiatives during this session of parliament, was welcomed widely by Jewish groups.

Volker Kauder, head of the conservatives in parliament, spoke in favour of the proposal given Germany’s Nazi past and the murder of 6 million Jews during the Third Reich.

“We have a particular responsibility to ensure that anti-Semitism does not continue to grow in our country,” he said during the parliamentary debate.

Kauder also vowed to examine whether Germany could ban the burning of Israeli flags, following incidents in December during protests against a U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Anti-Semitism remains a hugely sensitive issue in Germany more than 70 years after the end of the Nazi-era Holocaust.

Jewish and civil rights groups have long called for the appointment of a special commissioner to address growing anti-Semitism, which they say has been fuelled by right-wing populism and the arrival of many migrants from mostly Muslim countries.

The Central Council of Jews welcomed the vote, calling it an important signal that their concerns were being addressed.

“The fight against anti-Semitism is all of our responsibility,” the group said in a statement. “The respectful treatment of minorities is part of the core values of our democracy.”

Josef Schuster, the group’s president, called for increased efforts to include anti-bias training in integration courses for migrants, but explicitly rejected any effort to instrumentalise the issue to discriminate against Muslims or others.

Jewish groups last month called for legal changes and increased enforcement to crack down on anti-Semitic acts following the burning of Jewish symbols and Israeli flags.

The proposal calls for the creation of a new commissioner post to coordinate efforts to tackle anti-Semitism by the federal government, states and civil society.

It foresees the creation of an independent advisory panel with Jewish and non-Jewish experts from academic, education and other sectors, as well as a federal-state commission.

The proposal also calls for improved gathering of statistics on anti-Semitic incidents, tighter laws banning Holocaust denial on the internet and consequences for the immigration status of foreign citizens who incite hatred.

]]> 7050 https://www.faith-matters.org/labour-did-the-right-thing-on-antisemitism-now-the-conservatives-must-on-islamophobia/ Fri, 06 May 2016 20:46:39 +0000 https://tellmamauk.org/?p=7798 Enquiry into the Direction of the Campaign Needs to be Undertaken by the Conservatives It took Jeremy Corbyn some time to ensure that he set out an Inquiry into Antisemitism which will be headed up by Shami Chakraborty. The Inquiry is needed given the charges of antisemitism that should be looked into and given the

The post Labour Did the Right Thing on AntiSemitism, Now the Conservatives Must on Islamophobia appeared first on TELL MAMA.

The Islamic students’ society at the London university attended by the militant known as Jihadi John is dominated by hardline, ultra-conservative believers who refuse to even speak with female Muslim staff members, according to an independent report into inclusion among students at the institution.

Complaints about the conduct of the University of Westminster Islamic society, some from other Muslims, tended to be ignored or underplayed because staff and student unions officials were worried about appearing Islamophobic, the inquiry found.

Members of the society itself acted as “apostles of a self-contained faith, concerned very largely with matters of religious orthodoxy and perceived heresy”, according to the four-strong inquiry panel, who included the historian Lord Kenneth Morgan and Fiyaz Mughal, a former adviser to Nick Clegg on interfaith matters.

Their report found university officials tacitly tolerated a “sometimes hostile or intimidatory” attitude to women on the campus, calling this “totally unacceptable”. Islamic society committee members would refuse to engage with female Muslim staff, the panel were told, obliging these to seek help from male colleagues to communicate with the group.

Westminster commissioned the report into its balance between free speech and diversity in the wake of concerns about extremism on its campuses, including the revelation in February that the British Islamic State militant Mohammed Emwazi was a graduate of the university.

Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, was named as the masked figure who appeared in a series of Isis videos in which British, US and other hostages were beheaded.

Following the identification of Emwazi the Westminster Islamic society cancelled a planned address by Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad, a preacher who has reportedly described homosexuality as a scourge and a criminal act.

However, a recording has emerged of Hadded addressing a 2013 event at the university, in which he talked of a future in which Islam was dominant. He said: “Once we as Muslims become one of the superpowers of the world, justice will prevail. Everyone will enjoy the benefits of Islam.”

The panel’s report was released more than a week ago, but has not been publicised by the university and remains on a hard-to-locate part of its website.

Mughal, who now runs the Faith Matters thinktank, said the Islamic society could not necessarily be called extremist, as there was no evidence that its members fomented hatred, for example against Jewish or LGBT students. However, he said, it appeared dominated by men espousing very conservative views on matters like correct dress and faith.

“It’s not a breeding ground for extremism, but it’s a breeding ground for very ultra-conservative views,” he said. “The question has to be asked, in a modern pluralistic society where information is changing the way we think rapidly, how is that healthy and how will those students be able to relate in the world we are in?”

University of Westminster staff were doing the best they could to balance the competing needs of an institution with more than 150 nationalities among its 20,000 students, Mughal said, but had clearly made mistakes, notably in allowing the “far too divisive” al-Haddad to speak.

The report found the university tended to be wary of taking action against a particular group for fear of seeming prejudiced. It said: “For example, the panel heard repeatedly that action over concerns about the conduct of the Islamic society had not been taken for fear of appearing Islamophobic.”

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