Did anyone else catch the comment about showing European muslims how to integrate?
Absolutely typical of an attitude prevalent amongst many Americans that they are ahead of the field. But are they?
Lets compare my own country and the US.
US: Ellison is the first muslim elected to congress. There still has never been an Islamic senator.
UK:
In 1970 we had the first Pakistani born British citizen elected to office as a Councillor:
Bashir Mann
We now have over 200 Muslim councillors.
In 1998 we had our first Muslim Peer -
Baron Ahmed
Since 1998 we have had a Female Muslim peer in our upper house -
Baroness Uddin
In 1998 we had our first Gay Muslim peer:
Baron Alli
In 2000 we had another Muslim peer in our upper house:
Baron Patel of Blackburn
In 2001 another Muslim was made a peer and joined our opper House:
Baron Bhatia
Most recently in 2004 yet another Muslim was made a peer to sit in the House of Lords:
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
In 1997 we had our first Muslim MP elected -
Mohammed Sarwar.
In 2001 we had our first British muslim representative elected to the European Parliament:
Sajjad Karim
Khalid Mahmood was first elected to Parliament in 2001.
Shahid Malik is the first British born Muslim to be elected - he has held his seat since 2005.
Sadiq Khan was also elected in 2005 - he had been a local councillor since 1994.
In 2005 we had our second British Muslim representative elected to the European parliament
Syed Kamall
We also have Parsi, Sikh and Hindu politicians at all levels of government.
Perhaps America (or at least those as ignorant and too lazy to check out their facts as Glenn Beck is) could learn a thing or two from Britian in this case.