Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed of Rotherham no less (actually Mizpur, Pakistan but no matter), has joined the big push for integration.

Labour’s leading Muslim peer reignited the row over the full-face veil on Tuesday by condemning its use as “defiance” of British values.

Lord Ahmed said that “the veil is now a mark of separation, segregation and defiance against mainstream British culture.

... They were supposed to be worn so that women would not be harassed. But my argument is that women, and communities as a whole, are now being harassed because they are wearing them. They are physical barriers to integration.

This is insulting.  Alien people with a less than endearing religious culture [video 48min] can’t just decide to “integrate”, and whether their women (and their terrorists) do or do not wear big black tents is completely immaterial.  We possess the power of choice, in that we can choose who belongs with us and who doesn’t.  The decision with Moslems appears to me to have been taken decades ago, and it isn’t going to change.

I grant that if we were nothing more than the capacious cultural bag of Britishness, into which anything can be stuffed, Rotherham Sahib might have more of a point.  But we are not.  We are the English.  That is, we are genetically of that Northern European sub-set identifiable as English.  Britishness is only an elected, political thing, and it is dying fast.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that Rotherham Sahib is genetically Pakistani, with all that implies:-

A Pakistani minister and woman’s activist has been shot dead by an Islamic extremist for refusing to wear the veil.

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a “fanatic”, who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said.

Mrs Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

This sort of behaviour does not and never will belong to us.  But if our sense of uniqueness, our understanding of our true national character is rising, so is that of young Moslems.  The gap is widening every day and neither Ahmed nor Blair nor Straw nor anyone else is going to close it by attacking the veil.

This is good.  We want to balkanise.  Everything we can do to increase the understanding of our distinctiveness must be done.

Haul away, boys.