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attack their own country, and the attackers’ faith and ethnicity were scrutinised. A lack of shared values and the failure of multiculturalism shouldered the blame. Meer and Modood note this trend, arguing it is the ‘coupling of diversity and anti-terrorism agendas that has implicated contemporary British multiculturalism as the culprit of Britain’s security woes’ ( 2009 , p. 481). Multiculturalism had failed, and a new approach to security and diversity was needed – and shared values fitted the bill. The challenge, however, with seeing shared values as a solution to
populations and second- and third-generation Muslim communities, the disturbances led to a critique of the current state of British multiculturalism. It was argued, most notably in a Home Office report led by Professor Ted Cantle, that different ethnic communities had become ‘segregated’, lacking any common identity, with the authors ‘particularly struck by the depth of polarisation of our towns and cities’ (Home Office, 2001a : 9). Different communities living in the same city were, it was claimed, living ‘parallel lives