News that religiously motivated attacks have increased 600 per cent in London following the bombings there on July 7th vividly illustrates that such atrocities provoke hatred as well as fear. They include verbal and physical attacks on Muslims and criminal attacks on mosques.
Vigorous public debate on stop-and-search policing methods reinforces worries that London could lose much of its distinctive identity as a successful multicultural city, 40 per cent of whose inhabitants are first or second generation immigrants from 160 different countries. How these problems are handled has lessons for many other societies, Ireland's included.
British Home Office minister Hazel Blears has warned police not to use racial profiling as a basis for stop-and-search operations, but to rely rather on intelligence-led information. Her comment came after a leading police officer said searches are "going to be disproportionate. It is going to be young men, not exclusively, but it may be disproportionate when it comes to ethnic groups".
Dramatic policing breakthroughs over the last week, in which the main suspects for the London bombings were arrested, confirm the central importance of intelligence-led methods. They also underline unexpected aspects of this story and the dangers of racial profiling, since those arrested are of African not Asian background. In her encounters with Muslim representatives Ms Blears was told that political and religious extremism is confined to small minorities, but that heavy-handed policing will provoke a backlash of reprisals from the young people targeted by crude racial profiling.
A focus on identity and not on action opens up the political resentment which stokes recourse to extremism in Britain's minority communities. The war in Iraq looms large in explaining how this happens, according to both minority leaders. It is a message the Labour government does not want to hear, but ought to pay much more attention to. This does not excuse terrorism but helps to explain it better than a profiling approach.
British multiculturalism has been based more on autonomy and coexistence than cultural assimilation. This crisis has certainly exposed the policy's shortcomings, insofar as minority communities have minimal participation in, or loyalty to, the host society. That this is wrong is no longer controversial. But correcting it requires much greater sensitivity in creating a more common approach than has so far been displayed by political or civic leaders there.
Ireland has much to learn from the British experience and the current debate, despite differing histories. The rapid transition from an emigrant to an immigrant society here throws up comparable dilemmas, as yesterday's CSO survey about perceived discrimination and civil rights shows. This issue cannot be left simply to market forces. It needs close political attention to long term adaptation and active citizenship for these newcomers to Ireland's shores. Many of them are here to stay.