"OK those are just suggestions so what do people think?"

I think it would be a massive boost to those who are trying to radicalise muslim youngsters. And they woudl be rightly aggrieved if they were treated like that.

"4) Mosques will remain open as normal EXCEPT that all teaching will be in English and a Christian priest will always be present."

Where are you going to get all your Christian ministers from?

Dung, nobody wants to paddle in this pool. We’re already involved in one controversial issue, we don’t want to embark on another.

That said, the problems we face are not Muslim per se, it could be any religion or race. When you think of how we’ve handed power to kids, you can see why we’re in trouble on all fronts. At some point we chose individualism and human rights over conformity and social responsibilities. We can’t even agree on a common set of community rules by dint of majority because for every rule there is a sufficient number of people who prefer that issue to be unfettered. Take smoking. Most are very happy that it’s now banned in public places but a significant minority want their right to smoke back and don’t give a stuff what everyone else thinks. Shouldn’t they just shut up?

So the problem is not how to stop Muslims doing their own thing, it’s deciding what the right things are in the first place.

Dung, please stop bumping this post if you really are not simply a malicious troll out to punish the bish for daring to delete your blog comments. There is a greater battle to be fought here than your sensibilities, and if you care anything for it then you should desist.

I started it on BH because I saw it as a group of open minded highly intelligent people but so far that is not proving to be a reliable assumption.

No, you started it because you're a bigot on a mission.

"our way of life" really, Dung? Do you need it explained to you?

You are the sort of person alarmists point to when they refer to a denier.

If you really do care about the climate issue then you would stop this harmful crap.

But you don't, you lump it in with a basket of bigotry and prejudice in your addled brain. You really are a moron.

I'm sure you are - because you are one.

Sad little racist.

What Muhammad did you may do. What Muhammad did not forbid you may not forbid. Such is the "Prophetic Methodology".

Muhammad is revered as The Perfect Man to be emulated. He was a warlord, a slaver, a murderer, implicated in beheadings and the rape of the wives of his defeated enemies.. Islam is not a religion of peace it is a religion of intolerant aggression against all other faiths and sects within Islam itself. The Quran is a "radical" document. Jihadis can find in it all the justification they need for whatever heinous act they commit.

Muhammad is a totally inappropriate model for anyone today.

Until the Quran is savagely edited of all its aggressively intolerant threats against those who do not accept Muhammad as God's last prophet it will continue to cause grief in the world and in Islam. But who will volunteer to edit it to make it seemly for the 21st century multicultural global village? No-one, unless he wants to be decapitated in the street. There is no such thing as a "moderate muslim" so long as they pay lip service to Muhammad's doings, his demands of the faithful and his example.

Dung (and his ahem 'friend' marchesarosa), since we've had reasonably civil conversations in
the past I will take pity on you. Let me try to explain to you by analogy, since it's obviously NOT
obvious to you why you are being an idiot.

Imagine there is a beleaguered group of people fighting for a cause they believe in passionately.
Let's say it's the 1850s and we're a band of abolitionists arguing for the disbandment of slavery.

Polite society thinks we're idiots - the economy of the south would collapse without it, and anyway
there is biblical precedent for it, the Africans are little more than savages and at least they are
educated in Christianity while they are here, so their souls are being saved as well as being useful.

We, the abolitionists, see that the 'consensus' position of society is dead wrong, on many levels,
and we think slavery is evil and must be stopped for our own sakes as well as the poor slaves.
But we have been unable to convince many people of that because in the previous decades, the
only people who espoused an anti-slavery message were Quakers and evangelicals and other
mad religious sorts considered not worth listening to by polite society.

We are being tarred by the brush of previous incumbents of the abolitionist position.

After many years working hard to establish our position, we start to find the ears of people who
matter. Our message is slowly becoming less outlier, and more and more people are starting to
listen to us, and come to our weekly gatherings. We can feel the ground starting to change. If
we can just convince the people that we aren't the mad idiots they thought we were before, then
perhaps our message can gain some traction with the wider population. We are making some
progress.

Then, at the next meeting of the Abolitionists, a Reverend Dung stands up to address the crowd.
In that crowd are a number of people simply curious about our message, here to see if perhaps we
are actually talking sense, and if convinced, perhaps join the growing clamour to end slavery.

Reverend Dung stands up and says "I know you've come here to hear about the evils of slavery,
but while I'm allowed a platform, I'd like to discuss something else.... you know when you are
beating your wife... do you find a tawse or a cane gains best results?

People start leaving the room, finally convinced we are crackpots, never to return.

Detention for Dung minor.

One of the reasons I post climate opinions under the name TinyCO2 is because that's what Tiny discusses. For other issues I tend to don a different name so that my views do not merge into each other. I don't want people to agree or disagree with me based on something unconnected to the issue at hand. I have no personal internet identity. I have no Face Book page, I don't tweet, I don't even like email. I am deliberately hard to pigeon hole. Politics is something of an exception because it has such a huge impact on the climate bandwagon, which is ironic since this is a country where on paper all parties agree.

I do have opinions on religion and Islam and even what we do about them but not here.

PS smoking wasn't displaced for medical reasons (although that was the excuse) but because non smokers hate the smell but were too cowardly to say. While there was a majority of adult smokers there wasn't a lot that could be done about it but then the balanced tipped the other way. It wouldn't matter now if passive smoking was disproved, non smokers would strenuously resist a return to free smoking rules. As you wrote 'it requires political will and courage' but it's never 'simple' if you're on the wrong side of public opinion.

dung, I am not from the UK so I cannot comment on the specifics. When you say 'danger to the country and our way of life', I presume you mean the threat of 'jihad' -based violence (danger to country), and political-cultural ideologies and practices (danger to way of life). The problem of saying 'Islam' is there are many types of religious tendencies and gradations within it. Clearly, the question is not about all of them and as you point out it is not about the religion itself, but a culture. Correct me if I am wrong - the culture in the UK and in general in the West is post-Enlightenment, post-religious with roots in Christianity. The clash is between recalcitrant religious cults within a religion and a post-religious society.

One thing I noticed is how Islamists (ie. those for whom Islam is a sociopolitical tool, rather than a religion) use the norms of a post-religious secular setting to silence their opponents and buy the silence of the majority of their coreligionists from allegiance to the common faith. (Observe carefully, and you will environmentalists do the same thing). Good people know it is not good manners to discuss religion (it will take you nowhere and you will only lose friends); they respect freedom of expression including religious expression. Does that mean murderous and violent religious ideology should get a free, unopposed run? The trick is to untangle the two, and sometimes it is not easy to do so on the fly.

Dung & others - have you read -

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it Hardcover– 25 Oct 2006
"It's the end of the world as we know it...Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn--the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world--shows to devastating effect.
The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope. Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny--but it will also change the way you look at the world."

Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-QaedaHardcover– 3 Jul 2014
"Morten Storm was an unlikely Jihadist. A 6'1" red-haired Dane, Storm spent his teens with a biker gang or in jail. But after converting to Islam he embarked on a transformation that led from a militant madrassa in Yemen to a close friendship with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who would emerge as al-Qaeda's greatest threat to the West.
Then Storm's story took another dramatic twist.
He lost his faith and was recruited by the CIA, MI6 and MI5, becoming a double agent. His ultimate mission: to bring down his mentor al-Awlaki.
This is the searing memoir of a man who sought purpose in a community of believers before rejecting their extremist ideology. In a quest for atonement he lived undercover for five years, travelling the world to complete high profile missions. As well as single-handedly thwarting multiple terrorist attacks, he led the intelligence services to some of al-Qaeda's most dangerous terrorists, all the while knowing his own life was expendable.

Agent Storm takes readers inside the Jihadist world like never before, showing the daily life of zealous men set on mass murder: from dodging drones with al-Qaeda leaders in the Arabian desert to Jihadist gyms in Birmingham. It also gives a rare look inside the world's most powerful spy agencies, including their tradecraft, after-hours carousing - and their ruthless use of a beautiful blonde in a honey trap."

makes you think :-) and no harm in thinking/posing questions