Here's what might happen when dialog opens up between groups - though this dialog is often hard to engage in:
Tommy Robinson, who this piece is in large part focused on, was one of the founders of the English Defense League, an organization which is focused on "opposition to what it considers to be a spread of Islamism and Sharia in the United Kingdom" to quote the Wikipedia article. Following interaction with Mohammed Ansar, Robinson eventually left the English Defense League citing the dangers of far-right extremism. The result is a somewhat-more-moderate Robinson, though still not without some quite critical views expressed at the Oxford Union.
Worth thinking about is that Robinson mentioned a cousin of his being the victim of a gang-rape by Asian / Pakistani men being one of the things that motivated him. This is the same type of issue that recently gathered a lot more attention in Rotherham, wherein a lot of sexual abuse of children had been covered up due to fears of society being seen as racist. The British Home secretary eventually blamed "institutionalised political correctness" for the problems of Rotherham. Looking at cults and what motivates people to join them it seems to me that there are parallels between them and the English Defense League:
No one ever joins a "cult." People join interesting groups that promise to fulfill their pressing needs. They become "cults" when they are seen as deceptive, defective, dangerous, or as opposing basic values of their society. Cults represent each society's "default values," filling in its missing functions. The cult epidemic is diagnostic of where and how society is failing its citizens.
It seems to me that the existance of the English Defense League might also be at least in part attributable to that same institutionalized political correctness. Robinson in his present form now seems to view a relatively small percentage of Muslims as being problematic, though he certainly hasn't backed down from his opposition to this smaller group.
On a similar vein it's also worth thinking about KKK Member Walks up to Black Musician in Bar-but It’s Not a Joke, and What Happens Next Will Astound You (HT: Chris Blattman):
Most people in this day and age probably would have turned and ran right out of that good ol’ boy’s bar, but not Davis. He stayed and talked with the Klansman for a long time. “At first, I thought ‘why the hell am I sitting with him?’ but we struck up a friendship and it was music that brought us together,” he says.
That friendship would lead Davis on a path almost unimaginable to most folks. Today, Davis is not only a musician, he is a person who befriends KKK members and, as a result, collects the robes and hoods of Klansmen who choose to leave the organization because of their friendship with him.
