According to the 2004 census, whites made up 92.1% of the British population and all minorities combined made up the remaining 7.9% [see below].
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=455
Muslims currently make up around 4% of the population in Britain. The overwhelming majority of them are normal peaceful people who eek out a normal life the same as the rest of us. OK, some of them have idiosyncrasies in how they dress, marry, eat etc... but then you could group together other people that have idiosycrasies in how they live too :
o Vegetarians and Kosher Jewish people eat a very rigid and specific diet. o Roman Catholics are restricted from sex before marraige and their priests are not allowed to have sex at all ! o Goths dress in a certain way... even the police, army etc... are restricted in how they dress whn on duty.
All of us are belong to a minority in one way or other.
Here's where the problems start.
Say a very small bunch of people start to cause trouble for the public at large - terrorism, killings etc...
Say they claim to be acting for a cause on behalf of a minority group - even though they've had no mandate from the minority group to do that.
Say that minority group can be highlighted by some quirks of the way they dress, eat etc...
The public at large quickly but erroneously point fingers at the wrong people... they go for the entire minority group instead of pinpointing the trouble makers.
If you were a member of that minority group, and were being antagonized by everyone else, how would you feel ? Unless your a nutter/pyscho or something, you wouldn't feel revengeful, you wouldn't want to take up arms and cause trouble. Like any normal person, you'd feel scared... Scared in your own country.
Let's not tar 4% of the British population [2.4M people] with same brush as the extremist nutters that kill people because they are not. Its no different from saying that every Irish person was a member of the IRA and had a hatred of all things British... when the reality was that the IRA were seen as perpetrators of distress and disdain by the overwhelming majority of Irish people whose only interest was peace.
Oh and a final thought. If nothing I've said so far resonates with you... and you feel that 'something must be done about' the muslim population as a whole. What would you be prepared to do ? What actions would you take ? How far would you go ? Would you be prepared to be hands on involved yourself ?
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