LONDON – Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday it was the duty of all immigrants to integrate into British society, stoking a simmering debate over religious tolerance and cultural assimilation in the country.
Blair also announced plans to more carefully allocate funding to faith groups, saying grants would no longer be awarded to organizations that do not promote understanding.
“When it comes to our essential values – belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage – then that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common,” Blair told invited guests at his Downing Street office.
He said he believed it was the duty of all immigrants to embrace those values.
“Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. So conform to it – or don’t come here,” Blair said. “We don’t want the hatemongers, whatever their race, religion or creed.”
Blair said the recent debate in Britain over Muslim head scarves is part of a larger concern over the integration of the country’s 1.6 million Muslims into society.
Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw set off the dispute in October by saying that he requested – but did not insist – that Muslim women remove face-covering veils during one-on-one meetings in his office. Blair said at the time that veils were seen as a “mark of separation.”
The suspension earlier this year of a Muslim teaching assistant who insisted on wearing the veil at school also fueled the debate.
Blair said Friday it was “plain common sense that when it is an essential part of someone’s work to communicate directly with people, being able to see their face is important.”
He also said the four suicide bombers who killed 52 commuters in attacks on the London transport network in July 2005 had exposed problems in the relationships among Britain’s religious communities. Three of the bombers were British-born children of Pakistani immigrants, and the fourth was a naturalized Briton born in Jamaica.
“Their emphasis was not on shared values but separate ones, values based on a warped distortion of the faith of Islam,” Blair said. “It has thrown into sharp relief the nature of what we have called, with approval, ‘multicultural Britain.’”
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