nonetheless, however seriously or unseriously the woman ought to have been taken, i want to strongly suggest that this is the wrong tactic and wrong approach. it is apparent and obvious that concerns about the behaviours and beliefs of the muslim minority are valid considerations, but these considerations should be addressed by aggressively enforcing british law and not by declaring jihad against them. british law should be enforced as paramount, not concerns about cultural sensitivity.
so long as the muslim majority adheres to british law, there is no longer a concern about their behaviour. that's where the issue needs to be addressed.
it is not outside of the bounds of probability that, at some point in the future, the mosques might become centres where islamic militants organize to try to take over the country. that is not unlikely at all and it would require a different response. however, it isn't true right now, and concerns about beliefs and values need to be kept to scale in a secular society.
muslim clerics in britain should be made to feel welcome in order to integrate them, which will help them adjust to secular norms and values, which do not exist where they came from. we want the mosques to be as bland as the anglican churches and their followers to get bored with them and willingly embrace apostasy. threatening to blow up the mosque, however unseriously, will have the opposite outcome, it will make muslims feel outside of the british culture and have them cling to their faith as a sense of identity. that's when they lash out at a society that doesn't accept them.
i'm more concerned with organizing an education program to help turn the rioters into activists than i am with sending them to jail. these rioters need to be taught better strategies to get to the outcome of better integration in a dominantly secular culture.
an example of a better tactic would be to rent an area close to the mosque and turn it into a gay bar, and then instruct the gays to try to make friends with the muslims, or at the least to exist in their midst, to normalize them to it. there has not been a clear motive released yet, but the assumption is that it was a cultural attack; this is a 17 year-old stabbing little kids, so it seems unlikely to have been the result of some kind of rejection. so, you bring the dance classes closer to the mosques and you assert your right to exist in the presence of their religious institution and you try to integrate and welcome them into your cultural activities by laying down the cultural expectation of tolerance in the muslim community for non-muslims. you drop the need for them to be tolerant on their lap, and you prosecute them if they reject it, you don't threaten to blow them up, however disingenuously.
this is important. it has to be done.
we just fought this fight in the west a few decades ago, and the tactics should be fresh to native britons, who today are overwhelmingly atheist. this actually isn't hard. britain just went through this with the christians and just got out of it. the tactics are the same, and they should know what to do, but it requires these teachable moments for the poorly educated, who need to be better organized.