We are proud to announce the launch of the following teaching materials that have been produced by the team at Faith Matters and in partnership with Syeda Ali and Professor Becky Taylor, from the University of East Anglia. We are particularly grateful to Syeda Ali from the University of Cambridge and Professor Becky Taylor from the University of East Anglia in helping Faith Matters to compile these resources for use at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 in schools.

They are, we hope, a valuable teaching resource for teachers when they are looking at issues of social cohesion, citizenship, migration and integration, as well as how the Commonwealth has intersected with British history. These teaching materials tell the story of a community that is fast being forgotten and whose impact on British history over the last 200 years has been significant.

The teaching materials are part of the ‘From East to West’ project that was founded by Fiyaz Mughal – the Founder of Faith Matters and researched by Max Russel. It has been a personal journey for him to document and to collect the stories of those who were expelled and to get the information and pictures into materials that can inform young people about the history of the Ugandan Asians. Mr Mughal is himself, of Ugandan Asian heritage who was expelled from Uganda when he was aged just 15 months, with his family being hosted in refugee military bases such as the RAF base in Stradishall.

We hope that these materials can assist those in Key Stages 3 and 4 in understanding how the impact of the British Empire and its resource needs, drew in people from across the Commonwealth. Many of them were used as cheap labour, inculcated with a sense that they were part of Britain and its Empire, re-settled in Uganda and then forcibly expelled by Idi Amin in 1972. They found themselves at the brunt end of Idi Amin’s anger at Britain, which led to much discussion by the British Government at the time, as to what should be done for the Ugandan Asians.

The sad fact is that Idi Amin was a product of colonialisation. He was brought into the Ugandan army by the Briitish, nurtured and let loose on other Ugandan tribes. He was an enforcer of British rule in Uganda and thereby a by-product of Empire. His impacts were to be felt by the Ugandan Asians who arrived in Britain in August 1972, dressed in clothing that was meant for the heat of East Africa, rather than the cold autumn that was coming in late 1972. These Ugandan Asians, (about 28,000 of them), moved from a land of light, colour and greenery, to the cold, grey and rain of Britain.

This is their story – the story of a displaced people – twice over. Once from India, and then again from Uganda. Yet they have made their home in the United Kingdom, but for many, it has come at a cost of what they lost in terms of their possessions, their memories, their childhoods and their health. This is their story.

Read more: 50 years on, no-one talks about the trauma that affected the Ugandan Asians

There is a violent Islamist extremist group called Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), which we have highlighted on many occasions. Here are just a few examples of their support for the murderers of innocent people they regard as ‘blasphemers’. (See here and here).

We have highlighted many times, the fact that TLP is trying to target British Muslims of Pakistani heritage. Their aim is to gather human resources and donations from the British Pakistani community and which will then be sent back to Pakistan. The issue with this, is that anyone donating to this group, will be donating to a violent Islamist extremist group. Whilst it is registered as a ‘political party’ in Pakistan, its core aim is to ‘defend Islam’ through force, violence and the message that ‘blasphemers’ will be killed.

We will be getting in touch with Twitter to shut the following U.K. focussed Twitter account down. Below we list an example of the vile beliefs that they support.

Tanveer Ahmed was involved in brutally murdering shopkeeper Asad Shah in Glasgow. The force of the attack was so severe that the Asad Shah suffered numerous cuts and stabbings to his body. The only reason for this was that he had ‘blasphemed’ in the eyes of Ahmed.

Sentencing Ahmed in August 2016, Judge Lady Rae said he had committed a “brutal, barbaric and horrific crime”.

https://twitter.com/TLPEngland/status/1102577707764850688

We have been systematically and methodically documenting the rise of extremist groups affecting the United Kingdom and there have been more complex and increasing risks from countries in Europe where far right extremism is on the rise. However, Islamist extremism in the form of groups such as Tehreek-e-Labaik, who are based in Pakistan, is becoming a risk to UK communities of Pakistani heritage, as speakers seek to enter and promote their views in our country. This group in particular, can only be described as murderous and determined to harm those it regards as ‘blasphemers’.

However, existing extremist groups in the UK have not been challenged enough, whether by Government or by civil society groups. The latter are not willing to put themselves in a space that is challenging with limited resources. The former is just not able to respond and with strategies that are incoherent and disconnected. Within that space, extremist groups have thrived with their hatred against Jews, LGBT communities, Muslims and others and have been instrumental in building a deep sense of victimisation in communities. Such groups have fund-raised within communities by building a sense of ‘them and us’ – where the ‘them’ are the structures of the State in which they live and the ‘us’ being victimised communities.

For far too long these extremist groups have been allowed to operate. They have filled some of those spaces with their bully-boy tactics and false narratives, yet still, there is no singular entity that is able to put together a coherent plan and strategy to counter them publicly and to untangle their hatred and rhetoric. That has to change.

Whilst we warmly welcome the work of the Commission on Countering Extremism led by the formidable Sara Khan, the Commission is going out to communities in a bid to assess what extremism means to them and what it looks and feels like. This is much needed. This also means that for the next 2 years, the space to challenge extremist groups in the UK may develop, though there is nothing to fill that space now, nor is there any firm guarantee that the next 2 years will see non governmental agencies take on the mantle of openly challenging such groups. There is clearly a void and a real risk to communities.

As each month goes by, there are missed opportunities to challenge these purveyors of hate. Either the Government and its agencies are serious in tackling the poison being pumped into communities through co-ordinated action which is needed now, or they should step back and allow determined and focused groups to take on that challenge. Right now, the lack of action is dangerous.

British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt accused Google on Thursday of abandoning its moral values by failing to remove child abuse content while launching a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites.

The British government has repeatedly criticized online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove abusive material or sexual content posted online even after they were notified.

“Seems extraordinary that Google is considering censoring its content to get into China but won’t cooperate with UK, US … in removing child abuse content,” Hunt said on Twitter. “They used to be so proud of being values-driven.”

Alphabet’s Google plans a search engine in China that will block some search terms and websites, two sources told Reuters earlier this month, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

Google said in a statement they agreed with Hunt that child sexual abuse was “abhorrent and must be removed, that’s why we co-operate with governments to fight child sexual abuse online”.

Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand invited major technology companies to attend a meeting on tackling child abuse and extremism on their websites, but the firms declined to attend, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

Google said they did offer to send an executive to the conference.

In January, Prime Minister Theresa May used an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos to say investors should use their financial power to force internet firms into taking more responsibility for stopping militants and paedophiles using their platforms.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged Google not to bow to censorship demands in China because by doing so, they allege, the company would be complicit in the repression of freedom of speech.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept website said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The project, code-named “Dragonfly”, has been under way since the spring of 2017, the news website said.