If you're someone who doesn't have Muslim friends, and your only experience of Islam is what you see on the news - the angry man with a beard doing or saying something terrible - then you may inadvertently associate that with Islam and think that is what it's all about.

As an ethnically Asian Muslim, born and bred in this country, I am British. I have never felt a conflict between my country, my religion, and my background.

I am proud that London is a city where, the vast majority of the time, Jewish people, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, those who are not members of an organized faith, black, white, rich, young, gay, lesbian - don't simply tolerate each other but respect, embrace, and celebrate each other.

We should recognise the mirrors of exclusion and mirrors of extremism in our society. The inequalities and disadvantages among visible minorities are also prevalent in the white working class. Political extremism and disengagement is mirrored between white and ethnic minority communities.

Probation is a less-well-known branch of our justice system, compared with, say, police and prisons, but that doesn't make it any less important. Hundreds of thousands of offenders each year are rehabilitated back into society by probation, which is crucial for the public's safety.

Thousands of people's lives improved in this country through human rights laws. Individual people taking on the all-powerful state and winning. You'd think a very Tory thing to do. Sadly not, under Cameron's leadership.

Victims want to know that the true perpetrators of their crime are convicted - legal aid helps achieve this.

Legal aid is crucial in ensuring those truly guilty of crimes are convicted after due process, and those innocent are able to clear their names, by ensuring that access to legal representation is available for everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

Legal aid gets a bad press. Some rail against handing taxpayers' money to criminals; others attack fat cat lawyers, while some argue that we spend far more on legal aid than other countries. But let's get some facts straight: saying that legal aid is just about criminals is wrong - most goes to people before any decision is taken on their guilt.

Legal aid is central to righting wrongs and rectifying injustice.

Major miscarriages of justice have occurred because of the absence of proper legal representation.

Being reliant on legal aid is probably inconceivable to most of us. But this is no different from other branches of the welfare state established at the same time as our legal aid system - being diagnosed with a major illness and needing the NHS, or losing a job and needing the support of social security.

Labour was founded to make the lives of working people better and to create more opportunities for everyone. Whether it's aspiring to work as a nurse in a hospital or setting up and running your own business, Labour should be about ensuring fairness so that everyone has the same chance in life to reach their goals.

We should celebrate when optimism and hard work triumph over cynicism, lethargy, and fatalism.

The best way for people to understand each other's faith is to share experiences.