So proud, so very proud

Addressing the Pakistan National Council of the Arts, on a visit to the country, our beloved Home Secretary Jacqui Smith favoured her auditors with the following remarks:

After Christianity, Islam is the largest faith community in the UK. 1.6million declared themselves Muslims in the 2001 census, and that figure may now be as high as 2million. Islam is one of many faiths which are practised in UK communities. We are proud to live in such a diverse country.

Three points:

1. It's interesting to note that Jacqui Smith does not refer to the 'community', but to "UK communities". An inadvertent admission, perhaps, of the extent to which mass immigration and multiculturalism are turning the UK into little more than a patchwork of disparate groups, having nothing in common beyond the fact that they inhabit the same patch of land.

2. The fact that the Muslim population of Britain has increased by 25% in just seven years demonstrates quite how rapidly Islam is spreading within our country. True, their numbers may still be comparatively insignificant, at just 3.3% of the total population, but, on the basis of present trends, they will not remain so for long. Considering how much influence they already wield, and the extent to which they are already in receipt of preferential treatment, one wonders how far the craven politicians and media will go in their efforts to appease the Muslims in the future.

3. Who, I wonder, is this "we", who "are proud to live in such a diverse country"? Is it the public at large? Well, since 53% of us say that Islam poses a threat to the West, I rather think not. The British public have never been consulted on whether they wanted to live in "such a diverse country"; they have simply had it imposed upon them, together with the mantra that failure to show sufficient appreciation for "diversity" is to mark oneself out as an evil bigot of the worst kind.

I'm certainly not proud to live in a country with an ever-increasing Islamic population. I am, however, deeply worried. After all, the increase in the size of the Islamic population probably means that the number of people in the UK who want to impose Sharia law has, since the start of the millennium, risen from 640,000 to at least 800,000, not to mention a parallel increase in the numbers who want to engage in such wholesome activities as killing apostates. Hardly an occasion for pride, I would have thought.