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UK Muslim Group Urges Integration Strategy for All Britons

LONDON – A new report by a leading British Muslim group has called for equal integration efforts by all, urging the government to do its role with no burden placed on Muslim communities.

“If any integration policy is to succeed, as the government plans to do in 2018, it needs to be inclusive,” Harun Khan, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) secretary-general, wrote in a report, Arab News reported Thursday.

“The same goes for ‘British values’, a relatively new term coined after concerns of extremism. Many are worried that such values have been conceived in a knee-jerk fashion because some people are considered ‘not quite British enough’ and therefore must be subject to a civilizing mission,” Khan continued.

A new report by the MCB titled, Our Shared British Future- Muslims and Integration in the UK, was submitted to Parliament on Wednesday.

The report features 30 diverse voices from the Muslim community and calls for equal integration for all.

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In the report, MCB – the UK’s largest Muslim umbrella body of more than 500 affiliated organizations, mosques, charities, and schools – proposes steps to tackle real challenges to integration that Muslims face such as racism, threats by far-right groups, fair access to employment, housing shortages, and isolation.

Naz Shah, member of parliament for Bradford West, chaired the parliament session on Wednesday along with Miqdaad Versi.

Versi was named by the BBC as the “man correcting stories on Muslims”, having prompted more than 50 corrections over the past year, and a half from the national press for false stories about Islam and Muslims.

In the past decade, there has been a “moral panic” around Muslims, Versi wrote.

One of the problems MCB addresses is the irresponsible reporting about British Muslims that negatively affects the public’s perception of them.