Among the cultural consequences of the danger symbolised by Al Qaeda has been a growing scepticism towards the multicultural, ‘black armband’ view of history, with its instrumental emphasis upon division, grievance and victimhood rather than the positive values, both past and present, which shaped our society and which most immigrants to these shores wish to share. Even that expatriated ragamuffin ‘Sheikh’ Omar Bakri Mohammed thought better of the country he wished to destroy once he faced the grim alternatives of Israeli shelling or capture by his Syrian fellow-countrymen in the Lebanon in addition to separation from a large family that lives on handouts from British taxpayers. 

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