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Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar (Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest). Ash-hadu alla ilaha illa-llah (I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship but Allah).
The call to prayer resounds across the rooftops before dawn, bringing echoes of the Levant to provincial Luton and its 30,000 Muslims. But for infidel locals, the holy wake-up is a curse. "I'd like to pull the plug on that caterwauling," a second-generation Luton Irish woman tells me. "I go to work, and I've got two small kids. It's just not fair on non-Muslim families around here."
While nearly three out of four people in Britain claim some form of Christian affiliation, Christianity makes ever less demands on the public space. Even nativity plays are surrendering to the sensitivities of secularists and other faiths. But the impact of Britain's estimated 1.6m Muslims is increasingly assertive. Asian Muslims account for about 1 in 50 of British citizens, yet they dominate entire districts in the vicinities of their more than 1,350 mosques: 10 of them in Luton alone. Are Muslim enclaves making a contribution to a flourishing multicultural mosaic? Or are they undermining the cohesion of Britain's civil society?
When Archbishop Rowan Williams delivered his ratiocinations on adoption of sharia, it sent shockwaves through the nation. His initiative was emphatically rebuffed. Earlier, Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistani-born Anglican Bishop of Rochester, caused a rumpus by calling for an end to "‘no-go' areas" for non-Muslims in Britain, suggesting Islam must integrate with us. He was applauded and disparaged in equal measure by faith leaders and community activists. Muslim extremists issued death threats. But where are the alleged "no-go" areas?
And how do they constitute a danger to the fabric of British society?
Lunchtime prayers at Luton's Central Mosque. There are some 70 male worshippers dressed in traditional baggy linen trousers, ample shirts and skullcaps. As they slip off their shoes and douse their arms and faces in the washroom, they greet this infidel with a solemn "As-salamu alaykum" (peace be upon you). As they pray, their foreheads meet the carpet and their posteriors rise towards the ceiling. "Islam" means total surrender to God.
A mild-eyed young man called Osman comes to squat next to me where I sit with my back to the wall. "What does total submission entail?" I ask. "We don't leave our religion in the mosque," he says reverentially. "We take it out into the streets, the workplace, into our homes." Osman is joined by three other curious worshippers. One of them embraces me and starts to talk about the Prophet: "Peace be upon him." I ask him why, if their religion is truly peace-loving, it perpetrates crimes like honour killings and supports terrorism. "Islam is a religion of peace," he says. "There is no such thing as Muslim terrorism, just as there is no such thing as Muslim alcoholism, no such thing as Muslim pig-eating."
The majority of Muslims do not kill women for running away from brutal husbands and forced marriages, nor are they terrorists, yet moderate Muslims nevertheless appear to be creating divisive enclaves within this country as a result of routine Muslim religiosity and lifestyle. Consider the following. In Dewsbury, imams petition Mid Yorkshire Hospital NHS Trust to request nurses to turn beds of sick Muslims to face Mecca five times a day. A Muslim shop assistant at Reading's Marks & Spencer refuses to touch a book of children's Bible stories because it is "unclean". In hospitals around Britain, female Muslim surgeons refuse to follow hygiene guidelines stipulating scrubbing up bare arms (a measure to combat MRSA and Clostridium difficile). In Oxford the imam of the new central mosque is requesting amplified calls to prayer, prompting Christian clergy to predict "white flight" from a city of burgeoning minarets.
The overall picture is of cumulative assertiveness, but there is evidence too of proselytising aggressiveness. A south London hospital chaplain tells me: "I created a multi-faith prayer room in a hospital I serve. The Muslim visitors left Islamic literature and prayer mats against the spirit of non-sectarianism I wanted to promote. Every time I set out holy books of other religions alongside the Koran, the non-Muslim books were chucked in the bin." On a grander scale of missionary zeal, the Muslim group Tablighi Jamaat is proposing to build the largest mosque in Europe, for 12,000 worshippers at a time, close to the London Olympic site. The organisers aim to convert Britain to Islam.