Originally posted by Stigma
Cool. Which part of London btw? Central London is great! First time I went there and I had a good luck to see the Queen few feet away as she was attending some celebration in a church. I also stayed for some time in West London, closer to Heathrow.I've actually seen the whole tube stops with signs in English crossed out and phrases in Arabic written in spray paint.
There were also areas that my friends warned me not to go into because they are "taken over" by the Muslims and violence against non-Muslism is common. I have a few stories in mind that come from friends who are white and non-white, but all non-Muslim.
Indeed, given that some of those friends were Hindus or Latin Americans it made me realize that it's not only a problem of Muslims targetting people who are white, but it's an ideological problem that Islam imposes on other cultures.
Anyways.... I hear North England is pretty rainy 🙂
I lived in Camden, which has seen some major changes in the years that I've left (I moved up North in 2009), it's become a lot safer and cleaner generally. I like London a lot, but I find it hard to stay there for long periods of time. I'm moving back there in under a year, so I'll see how that goes...
Gang culture and ghettos definitely do exist, it's very much dependant on the area you're in, though. I never found Camden too bad for crime but I lived in a less ghettoised part of it, although I did go to school in what was at the time essentially a ghetto. I have very mixed experiences with the heavily Muslim-populated areas in Camden, on the one hand I often feel that in Muslim-owned shops they treat me with less respect than people of their own community and can often be quite rude, but other white friends of mine are quite friendly with their local Muslim shop owners. I went to a 90% Muslim school and it was actually a lot less violent than some of the other more culturally diverse state schools that were in the borough (I didn't get beaten up once, which is unusual for any school), but I did in the first three years there experience mild bullying due to being an ethnic minority (White British made up about 3% of the school population), and before I got moved to a higher set in Science classes, the lessons were often interrupted by incensed students objecting to being taught 'lies' like evolution and the big bang theory.
It had its ups and downs. I don't believe that constant immigration can allow for integration to ever fully happen as it means that people will constantly be integrating, and as such I think it's a good idea to curb immigration so as to see how the different cultures interact for long periods of time. I have heard and fully believe that there are plenty of Muslim areas in which non-Muslims are not safe, I've even seen that up North to be honest, but I've met people who I went to school with who were raised Muslim who are friendly, decent and socially conscious individuals, who often keep their religious beliefs but are able to temper them with (it has to be said) the more civilised aspects of English culture. Respect for women, respect for non-Muslims, etc. I can assure you there are plenty of Muslims who are good people despite their draconian religion, and more power to them for that, I say. I think it's mostly a matter of education and intelligence – the smarter Muslims found integration easier than the stupid ones, who had nothing better to do than to hang onto their strict, archaic beliefs.
These are just my personal experiences, though, it is heavily dependant on the area you're in and what kinds of people live there. If a community is almost entirely Muslim then they have no reason to learn any new customs and so will continue to be the way they were before they moved here, and thus their children will be the same, which is no good for British society. There are definitely pockets of extremism and hard-line Islam, but luckily they are still small and few and far between, and I think that if we curb further immigration then even these few pockets will disappear, allowing for a society with no place for radical ideals that infringe on our culture and our standards of living.
I can confirm that the North is really bloody rainy.