United Kingdom

On Monday, I wrote in the Daily Mail that proposals for schoolchildren to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen and other measures to be proposed by Lord Goldsmith to recreate a sense of shared national purpose were absurd irrelevancies when British national identity had been fragmented and all but destroyed by a cultural onslaught rooted in a profound loss of national self-belief. Yesterday, I received the following email from a British Muslim, which I reproduce as it was written:

PLANS to extend Harehills Cemetery to provide more Muslim burial spaces have been rejected by Liberal Democrat councillors as too costly. They are now calling for spaces for Muslim burials to be provided at a new cemetery planned for Whinmoor Grange. An extension at Harehills would cost an estimated £2,000 per burial plot compared to just £20 per plot at Whinmoor Grange, say the Liberal Democrats.

British politicians are now running away from “multiculturalism,” yet it refuses to die. It’s simply too entrenched in British life to be expunged. Conservatives might think that the Labour government has created a monster, but the truth of the matter is it has created a religion. Like Chinese State-endorsed Buddhism it is not a real religion, but a proxy that must pronounce government policy rather than spiritual understanding.

UK. An unemployed father-of three who admitted possessing an al-Qaeda training manual has been jailed for 16 months. Khalid Khaliq, 34, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court after he confessed to owning the CD, which was found in a police raid at his home on May 9, 2007.

The Bishop of Oxford has been sent death threats after backing plans for a Muslim call to prayer in the city. Having in principle backed plans for mosque leaders to make the loudspeaker call, the Rt Rev John Pritchard said the "dark underbelly of British society" made a number of threats against his life.