In embracing diversity, UK ‘is allowing Islamist terror to flourish’

POLITICAL correctness is allowing Islamist terrorism to flourish and is fuelling the growth of the extreme Right, police leaders were warned last night.

Dame Louise Casey, who carried out a two-year review into integration in the UK, said the desire to embrace diversity was creating division and also letting down some of the most vulnerable members of society.

Speaking at a summit of police chiefs and crime commissioners, Dame Louise said it was time to have the difficult conversations about what was going on in less integrated communities in places such as Bradford, Birmingham, Oldham and the East End of London.

She said that while police would address factors such as ethnicity and religion when it came to most crimes, there was a reluctance to have similar conversations around extremism.

“Islamic extremists are often terrorists and pose the most threat, it is very difficult for us to have that conversation and to deny that seems to make it worse.” But she went on: “The far-right milk it every time we are overtly politically correct and unable to deal with Islamic extremism … Everybody saw how the Rotherham sex scandal was milked by EDL to fuel Islamophobia.”

She said people often came together to oppose far-right marches but failed to show the same unity when it came to addressing inequalities in the communities they were wanting to protect.

She told police chiefs: “I would like to see the same team-building when we know we have Islamic extremists and people who think that wearing short skirts on a Friday night is so wrong and Westernised. It legitimises very harmful views about young women growing up in this country. And we don’t seem to be able to muster it. There are good reasons we don’t like people being victimised but we have to have those difficult conversations.”

During her integration review, Dame Louise spent time in some of the country’s least integrated communities and said she had been dismayed by some of the attitudes she found.

“I was very upset and saddened by the level of unequal treatment and I was struck by the lives, because of culture, we think it is acceptable for women to live in Bradford, Birmingham and the East End of London.”

She explained that she had found examples of teenage girls being let out of school for prayers on a Friday and then not allowed to leave the house again until Monday. “I don’t think girls should be growing up in this country where they don’t leave their houses over the weekend,” she said.

“We are helping the extreme Right wing if we do not take these issues on. I also think in our desire to embrace diversity we creating division.”

Dame Louise’s report was published in December, but she accused the Government of placing it in the “difficult to deal with filing cabinet”, adding that ministers had failed to adopt any of her recommendations.

‘The far-right milk it every time we’re overtly politically correct and unable to deal with Islamic extremism’