Skipper

There can be little doubt, in contradiction to the claims of Blair in the wake of the 7/7 bombings, that his foreign policy has enraged and alienated indigenous UK Muslim opinion. Another top rate article by Tomothy Garton-Ash in today's Guardian explores this worrying trend in some depth. He reports the Channel 4 documentary fronted by John Snow which cited a poll in which almost a third of British Muslims agreed that the 7-7 bombings were justified 'because of British support for the War on Terror'.

Other figures were as alarming and depressing: one third of those aged 18-24 said they would prefer to live under Sharia rather than British law; only half said they thought of Britain as 'my country'; and 81 per cent said they saw themselves as Muslims first and British second, a higher proportion than that registered in Jordan, Egypt or Turkey and exceeded only in Pakistan.

Garton-Ash adds than at least part of the Muslim critique of our society is 'true' citing 'we drink more alcohol faster, sleep around more, live less in long-lasting, two-parent families, and worship less than almost anyone in the world.' If he is claiming our 'libertine' lifestyle provides a justification for Islamic dislike of their host country, I'm not sure I agree. Surely, if one does not share religious restrictions on such behaviour then it is the personal sense of conscience and social responsibility to which one is accountable?

That we should have within our midst a significantly large group of young, second generation immigrants, who appear to hate our guts seems like a recipe for a number of seriously bad future developments: growing indignation and reciprocal alienation among even the most liberal minded Brits; increasing involvement of British Muslims in terror-related activity as the current air travel scare seems to illustrate; and a growing risk that the Pandora's Box of racism will be opened up with disastrous consequences.