Monday, June 11, 2012

Make Bradford British? Ed Miliband Proves He'd Never Heard of it While Wooing Muslims in Bradford

I don't know.

I think some of the British folks would like a bit more assimilation into British culture and tradition. Scroll forward to 12:30 minutes at the clip below.

And see Guardian UK, "Ed Miliband begins mission to woo back Bradford":

The leader of a major political party cannot be expected to have time to watch too much television. Nonetheless it was a tad unfortunate, when visiting Bradford on Saturday, that Ed Miliband had not heard of Make Bradford British. This was the much criticised reality TV experiment that stoked racial tensions in the West Yorkshire city by shoving Bradfordians of different colours and creeds together earlier this year.

It wouldn't have mattered had one of the first guests he met on his mission to woo Bradford not been Sabbiyah Pervez, a young Muslim mother sent by Channel 4 to pull pints in a local pub and then filmed being racially abused by the customers.

"I was on Make Bradford British," said the petite 23-year-old by way of introduction to the Labour leader. "Great!" said Miliband, beaming at her camouflage print headscarf and exquisitely made-up face. "Tell me about the scheme!" Pervez paused. "Didn't you watch it?" Miliband cocked his head to one side: this clearly had not been in his briefing pack. Pervez helped him out: "It was a TV programme."

In that case, said Miliband, he would most certainly be watching it now. Good, said Pervez, launching into an exuberant precis of her short life that not only detailed the racial intolerance she had experienced taking part in the documentary but also the forced marriage she suffered in the city as a teenager.

It was a little hiccup in what was an otherwise admirable and assured attempt at persuading the Muslim women of Bradford that the Labour party cared about them and their city. Miliband had been invited by the Bradford Muslim Women's Council (BMWC), an organisation set up in 2010 to give Muslim women a voice and access to a national political, social and cultural platform.

He had a mountain to climb. The 70 women who turned up to the event at the Media Museum were a polite, if sceptical audience, warned at the start to demonstrate the "Islamic etiquette of respectful dialogue".

Many of them had voted for George Galloway in the byelection in March and, like Pervez, had plumped for councillors from his Respect party at the local elections in May.

Worse, most of them had come to the conclusion that the Labour party did not welcome women like them. "It's an old boy's club!" shouted one woman. Another told Miliband that she had been a paid-up member of the Labour party for 15 years, but had relinquished her membership after being shunned by the men who dominated her local branch in the Manningham area of Bradford.
And see the Sun UK, "To end racism we must all enter the lion's den - Muslim mum's verdict on working in a tough pub in Bradford."

And don't forget this piece from Melanie Phillips from April, "A dangerous enemy of democracy who's being encouraged cynically by the Left':
Most commentators have dismissed this victory as a shocking one-off with no further significance than an upset by an entertaining maverick.

Not so. For with Galloway’s election, religious extremism has become for the first time a potential game-changer in British politics.

The point being so resolutely ignored is that Galloway ran on an Islamist religious ticket. It wasn’t simply that he was pandering to Islamist foreign policy obsessions. He made explicit references to Islam throughout his campaign.
Right.

So much for assimilation.

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