Years of permissive multiculturalism is to blame for the rise of Sharia courts and the Rotherham rape scandal, an academic claimed yesterday.

Dr Rumy Hasan, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex’s Centre for Migration Research, said “do-what-you-want” and “laissez-faire” policies had let immigrant communities live as if they were still in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

This has led to a “psychiatric detachment” from mainstream British culture, he added, which in turn leads to a “social detachment” where minority communities do not mix with wider society.

Dr Hasan – who is a former Muslim – also said that Muslim rape gangs in towns such as Rochdale and Rotherham were an “inevitable consequence” of this.

The Sun quotes him as saying: “The authorities in towns and cities — Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford, Oldham, Birmingham — kept quiet because they were embarrassed.

“It’s time we woke up and smelled the coffee.”

Dr Hasan made his comments at a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society in the UK Parliament discussing the rise of Sharia law in the UK.

Also on the panel was Machteld Zee who has recently written a report on Sharia courts in the UK. She said how 95 per cent of all cases heard in these courts are women seeking divorces after being caught in “martial captivity” where they are unable to get a religious divorce.

She disagreed that these courts were necessary to free women, and even said that “martial captivity” should be a criminal offence in the UK and that Muslim women should seek arbitration from a civil judge.

In July last year, a poll found that more British people think multiculturalism makes Britain a worse place to live than those who thinks it makes Britain better.

The YouGov poll found 38 per cent thought it had been bad for the country, compared to 37 per cent who thought it was good. The rest either thought it made no difference or had no opinion.

The poll also found growing antipathy towards Islam. More than half of Britons thought Islam posed a threat to the West, and 79 per cent though Britain would be the victim of a large-scale terror attack in the future.

When asked in 2001, just a month after the 9/11 attacks, whether Islam posed a threat, just 33 per cent said it posed ‘some’ or ‘a major’ threat.