Saturday, November 04, 2006

Integrate Or Die

You've got to feel as sorry for this poor bastard:

Mr Riaz, a factory worker, died at 8.33am, having sustained 60 per cent burns in the blaze at the family’s end-of-terrace home in Accrington, Lancs.
as for his wife and four daughters:

...Caneze, 39, a community worker, and sisters, Sayrah, 16, Sophia, 13, Alisha, 10, and Hannah, three, (who) perished in the fireball that engulfed their home...
and the family's sole survivor:

Adam Riaz, 17, (who) received the news as he lay seriously ill in a hospital bed with leukaemia.
The gut kicker:

Detectives then confirmed to him the fact that his father, Mohammed, 49, had been the sole suspect in their hunt for the arsonist.
Why sorry for a man who killed his family?

Because he never had a chance:

Mr Riaz, already with a reputation for being moody, apparently had spoken of feeling isolated from the rest of his family... he held low-paid jobs and centred his life on the local mosque (emphasis added)...
while:

It emerged yesterday that he had become depressed both by Adam’s illness and the gradual disintegration of his arranged marriage.

Having mastered only a little English since coming to Lancashire with his British-born wife in the late 1980s, he felt isolated as she and the children became increasingly westernised.
Little English after more than a decade in England. No wonder when his life centred on his local mosque and the likes of Australian Mufti Sheik Taj Cat Meat al Hilaly - more than 20 years in Australia and refusing to learn the language - are running the show.

What kind of hope could Mohammed Riaz have when the thing that should help him - his faith and his church - encourages him to stand apart, deepening his sense of isolation and murderous, suicidal despair?

-- Nick

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