Published: 3 February, 2012

• Your anonymous correspondent seems to think that “Britishness” and multiculturalism are incompatible (Our shared culture, January 27). What nonsense!

Britain (and especially London) is thoroughly multicultural – indeed, it has been for many years. I’m not sure what the letter writer means by “our shared culture” which makes other cultures incompatible with it. After all, the British cuppa was imported from the East, including from Muslim countries.

Sadly, our diversity of cultures has come under attack, both from the likes of David Cameron in relatively polite terms and by the racists and fascists in more open ways. And, yes, in both cases Muslims are a main target, in coded ways by Cameron, in vicious hatred by the far-right.

A high proportion of the racist incidents that occur almost daily across the UK involve hatred towards Muslims.

There have been far fewer instances of race-hate in Islington recently than there were 30 years ago but they still happen.

The London North Central Mosque in Finsbury Park is regularly targeted – death threats to Imam Ahmed Saad and a pig’s head on the railings outside are two of the more extreme examples.

As to homophobia, most homophobic incidents are perpetrated by “white British” people.

The most notorious – the nail bomb which killed three people at the Admiral Duncan pub in 1999 – was carried out by a far-right sympathiser who hated ethnic minorities, including Muslims, just as much as he did gay people.

Richard Kirkwood
Islington Unite Against Fascism