Well, Ash Kotak talks good sense, at least.

As for the “Brick Lane community” response, Greer is assuming a community speaks with one voice; it is patronising and arrogant. Any community is made up of a group of individuals. However a community together tries to protect and uphold common values, not everyone will support them all the time. This Brick Lane media-generated controversy has reinforced the truth that a community which has little voice – and some of those within it who have no voice – will continue to remain invisible.

Eg-zacktly. And the dang Guardian and the dang BBC don’t help by calling twenty people ‘the community’ all the time. Which surely they must be beginning dimly to realize, since people keep telling them and telling them and telling them – you think some day they’ll stop?

For some people living within such communities, that place is their entire world. There is little reason to “escape”, especially when you consider the outside, alien world to be hostile – examples of which are keenly sought by the protectors/oppressors within. Even though the protesters, generally, have been marginalised, a few self-appointed community leaders have perpetuated the stereotypical belief of the limited and inward thinking by “them” in the minds of the British public. To publicise their views is the same as giving one of the self-appointed Sikh community leaders a platform on Bezhti, the play that prematurely closed in Birmingham, and representing it as the voice of the community.

Isn’t it just. Ash Kotak, you rock.

Read the whole letter; it’s spot on.