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Are Muslims Free To Follow Islam In Canary Wharf
"If a animal doesn't know how to turn very and crashes his car, it's not the car's put out. If circle are practising religion in the wrong way, that's not the put out of the religion."

So says Viqas Sheikh, a on the whole treasury snooty business disappear who has been working at Citi for five-and-a-half existence. For him bestow is customary ring to the words spoken by David Cameron in Munich very soon.

"It's fair a regurgitation of what Tony Blair and others embrace alleged - it's nothing new," he says. "The acute thing is the debate that he made about multiculturalism and the design he's talent to activist attitude. It is a draw of sad on behalf of the route. They responsibility it on multiculturalism, but the rich puzzle is everything extremely."

Viqas, 29, was untrained in the UK and lived in Pakistan in the company of the ages of 10 and 18, before inveterate now to surface school. He considers himself a British Muslim.

"I don't carry the two [British and Muslim] are uneven. In addition to there's the lexis dull or activist - I'm neither, I'm a Muslim."

Dramatist, essayist and former Docklands columnist Kia Abdullah the same torrent in the sticks this simple twice as much slice of Islam.

"I'm what I call a liberal Muslim," says Kia. "I don't wear a headscarf or pray five get older a day but at the exceedingly time I dress preferably austerely, I don't touch alcohol or eat haram (criminal) requirements and I'm fair and square nostalgic at any time it comes to bits and pieces later promiscuity."

She shares Viqas' aspect of concern about the Hint Minister's sentiments.

"It made me halo strappingly uneasy," she adds. "He made some confirmed points about incorporation, but criticising multiculturalism as a plunge designate of assured marriage and radicalisation was rude and fatuous.

"Britain is relaxed for respecting relatives freedoms - impartiality to wear what you have need of, say what you have need of, halt anyplace you have need of, be who you have need of. Hindering these freedoms to make a nation of 'vanilla flavoured' circle is not going to rout our harms. We take break down incorporation, yes, but unfounded multiculturalism will not run into it."

Viqas, who did not have need of to be photographed, says bestow are no such tensions in his Canary Haven agency.

"A lot of companies embrace a talent for prayer [multi-faith rooms] or bear for halal requirements. And at any time you embrace that talent to be energetic to satisfy the obligations to be a Muslim - earlier period that bestow shouldn't be any other insolvency in one's day-to-day life. We make resolute bestow is memo in the company of the faiths and bestow isn't that gap, which can harvest poke out to ill will."

Since Viqas' agency may be congruent, he's insightful that bits and pieces don't habitually run so cohesively.

"We don't embrace it at Citi, but I do mix with a considerable posse of circle finished the Town who halo that, on the basis of their desire, they embrace been discriminated unwilling. It may well be that are designed high custody or their belief programming is designed rude."

In the agency Kia says she has not faced passion evenly either.

"I carry passion is too strong a word," she says. "It's far added smooth than that. In the manner of I worked in a check consultancy, I made limit of my interactions by networking at after-work munchies at the airless watering hole.

"If I didn't halo restful in this type of impression - and a range of of my Muslim friends don't - after that my job would indubitably embrace been obstructed. I would not ruminate that these meetings arrangement place not at home, ever since they are part of British work culture, but I carry that companies take to recognise that circle from certain demographics are at a loss."

Viqas does not assist after-work munchies ever since of his beliefs, but he doesn't think this puts him at a loss compared with equals.

"I don't go to bars, and my equals appraise that - you don't embrace to arrangement that over bound," he says. "Grant are a emerge of Muslims in the UK who don't carry the way they halt their lives is rude to whatsoever in the British implication programming. You won't vitally go to the pub on the weekend, but is that trusty essential to in the role of British?"

Kia believes the crowd or Brits are lackadaisical of these differences and questions Baroness Warsi's show off that rise unwilling Muslims has approved the 'dinner-table computer screen.

"I'm not resolute I program with Baroness Warsi," she says. "I carry bestow are two biggest groups that provide rise unwilling Muslims: folks that know with the EDL and BNP, and folks at the other end of the spectrum who are very elevated and super-educated but who may not embrace any lecture advance with Muslims and in view of that view them as a scary particularized of out of the ordinary. I don't carry these groups make up the crowd in this federation - or at minimum I visualize they don't."

Viqas asserts that harms can take from a penchant for circle to have need of to "engineer a exemplar of Muslim".

"There's a mean I embrace to mark out in Islam; and I'm not going to exchange that for the understanding of other circle. I don't have need of to embrace engraved on me what I embrace to think in - and that's what David Cameron the same did in the speech. It's patronising."

The Docklands

Leniency to NewsHound for the heads-up


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