"Hardened" Tony Blair Deaf To Muslim Marginalization in Britain
British-based reporter Sarah Lyall puts some racial spin into Saturday's "Britain's Plans for Addressing Its Muslims' Concerns Lag," on combating Muslim extremism in that country.
Lyall puts the onus not on the Muslim community, but on Tony Blair's Labor government for setting a hostile tone: "The Home Office began holding citizenship ceremonies for immigrants and said it would begin requiring new citizens to take tests on British culture and traditions. Hazel Blears, a government minister, said she found the notion of United States-style hyphenated identities - where people are known as, for instance, Korean-Americans - 'quite interesting.'
"If such statements appealed to traditional, white Britain, which already felt that multiculturalism had gone too far, thank you very much, it made Muslims feel even more marginalized.
"But [Blair's] tone has hardened. He recently declared that the problem of Muslim extremism was not the government's to solve, despite all its efforts in the past."
