Mailonline:
David Goodhart argues that a new patriotism can unite our nation again
- We will have an ethnic minority population of around 25 per cent by 2020
- Goodhart says a confident and inclusive national identity can emerge
On Saturday, the leading liberal commentator David Goodhart described the profound effect mass immigration has had on social cohesion. He admitted that, for decades, liberals like him failed to realise its implications. Today, concluding his series, he sets out his vision of how a new Britishness can bind the nation’s fractured communities.
Large-scale immigration has created an England that is increasingly full of mysterious and unfamiliar worlds — as I discovered one day sitting in an enormous minareted mosque in a sedate London suburb among thousands of men in Pashtun dress listening to the words of an elderly man.
Mirza Masroor Ahmad is not any old preacher. To a couple of million Muslims of one particular sect, the Ahmadiyans, he is the holiest man on the planet.
New landscape: Merton’s mosque, which dominates the skyline of the south London suburb, and can accommodate 10,000 people
The mosque in Merton, which dominates its neighbourhood, replaced an Express Dairies bottling plant which provided a few hundred jobs for local people and lots of milk bottles — an icon of an earlier, more homogenised age.
Categories: Ahmadiyyat: True Islam, Anti-Islam Attitude, Anti-Islam Campaign, Europe
Overall a positive article with a bad heading. The heading is unfortunate. Yesterday there were even immediate comments about this from some people living in Merton who said they do not agree with the article or its observations.
Little cynical