[Livia]

Originally Posted by MTVN

Do you not think there would be such a demonstration in London if we witnessed the couple of days that Paris did though? I know we've had terror attacks before as well (which in Lee Rigby's case at least did prompt some demonstrations from the Muslim community against the killers: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-w...ng-islam-wrong) but I think the way that most the world is now uniting against Islamic extremism has meant that opposition to it is now mobilising in greater numbers. It could be that there's a greater appreciation of the problem now, a lot of the backlash to increased extremism originally manifested itself in some uncomfortable ways in this country with the rise of the EDL which made it difficult to rally widespread public opposition. In fairess the founder of the EDL did realise that hence his splitting from the movement and now works with the Quilliam foundation alongside Muslims.

I don't think that Muslims in the UK are less opposed to extremism than they are in France. If anything France has a greater problem with there being a large gulf between a lot of the Muslim community and the rest of France, a lot of them feeling marginalised and disillusioned by French society.

I don't think for one minute that Muslims in the UK are less opposed to extremism, I just think the mind-set here is different. I don't think they feel the need to be vociferous because people in this country don't require the Muslim community to stand up. The reaction on this forum endorses that for me. When the kosher deli was attacked in Paris, some of the first comments up here were 'I hope the Muslim community isn't caught in a backlash', followed by comments that it was probably a coincidence it was a kosher deli and nothing to do with any kind of anti-Semitism. We have endless comments about Muslims and terrorists being two quite different things, which they are. Yet I have been questioned quite aggressively by more than one person about Israel's stance on Palestine simply because I'm Jewish, indeed, one poster said on the thread about the Jewish man being spat at in Paris, that we have to stop arming Israel.

I think that 7/7 was at least on a par with the Paris incident, don't you? What we're having here now is an orchestrated campaign with professional photographs to encourage people to take part, not a spontaneous outpouring of public solidarity.