In north ilford, an affluent Tory-voting part of eastern London, there is a mosque where people from Pakistan used to run the show. Recently some Muslims from Somalia turned up. Things were awkward at first, but now the newcomers have been fully accepted; ties of faith have prevailed over difference of culture. At Islamic Channel, a television station in London, the young sound assistants chat in Urdu, the language of their south Asian forebears, as they record an interview with Brian Paddick, a senior London policeman. But when the channel's director, whose native tongue is Arabic, walks in, the language switches seamlessly to English, interlaced with Muslim greetings.
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