The former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission has said that Britain should not expect Muslim communities to fully integrate.
At a meeting at the Policy Exchange think tank on Monday, Trevor Phillips said it was a form of “disrespect” to assume that Muslims will "become like the rest of us".
"Because what you are essentially saying," he said, "is the fact that they behave in a different way, some of which we may not like, is because they haven’t yet seen the light. It may be that they see the world differently from the rest of us.
"Part of the integration process is for the rest of us to grasp that people aren’t going to change their views simply because we are constantly telling them that basically they should be like us."
Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has spoken in the past about the problems caused by lack of integration in some Muslim communities. Social segregation, he said, provides "the opportunity for extremists to peddle their wares".
Push for Muslim migrants to learn English
Mr Phillips' comments were made after Prime Minister David Cameron said last week that migrants who fail to learn English could lose the right to remain living in the UK.
"New figures show that some 190,000 British Muslim women—or 22 percent—speak little or no English despite many having lived here for decades," Mr Cameron said.
Learning English, he argued, would help to better integrate Muslim women into society.
"It is our values that make this country what it is,” he said, “and it’s only by standing up for them assertively that they will endure".
Increasing demands to accommodate Muslims
Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, said that Mr Phillips' comments fail to recognise the risks that a lack of integration poses to society.
"Mr Phillips is right to recognise that the public space is not neutral. He fails to acknowledge, however, that it is not simply that some Muslims do not wish to integrate, but that there are increasing demands being made on public services to further accommodate Muslim communities.
"What about the growing influence of sharia law on the UK - including sharia-compliant finances and the serving of Halal meat? Recently, it emerged that some GSCE and A Level exams were rearranged in order to accommodate students fasting during Ramadan.
"It is not disrespectful to require that to live in our country, one must accept its laws and standards"
"David Cameron believes asserting our values will combat this problem, but he failed to define what our values are," she went on. "As shown by the government's 'counter-extremism' strategy, 'British values' has become a vague concept, as the nation's Christian foundation has been eroded by increasing secularism. We cannot ‘assertively' defend values that have been watered down."
The failure of multiculturalism
In 2010 Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali spoke out about the failure of multiculturalism, following a campaign backed by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, to stop Britain’s population reaching 70 million.
Speaking on BBC Hardtalk, he said he felt that multiculturalism is a "mistake".
"Multiculturalism" he explained, "is saying ‘we don’t know who we are, we don’t know you are, now let’s get on with our lives separately’".
He argued that this has resulted in isolated communities, which has given “the opportunity for extremists to peddle their wares”.
Bishop Michael expanded on this argument in an article in The Telegraph:
"Whilst we can acknowledge the reality and the value of a multi-cultural and multi-faith society, this should not again result in the kind of politically-correct multiculturalism which has led not to engagement and mutual learning between the different communities but to the isolation and segregation which has given extremists the chance to propagate their noxious ideology, especially among the young and impressionable."
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Related Coverage:
Muslims are not like us, race equality chief says (Times £)
Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali: immigrants should accept Britain’s Christian values (Telegraph)
Bishop Nazir-Ali: 'Multiculturalism was a mistake' (BBC)