It’s ironic that progressive Muslim Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, (here) asserts what radical-progressive Christian Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia doubts (here), that there is now active discrimination against Christianity in the UK – much of the responsibility for which I reckon lies at the door of this country’s particular brand of aggressive New Atheist secularisation.

Such discrimination in schools was highlighted in an Ofsted report published three weeks ago (here). And a publication ‘A New Inquisition: Religious Persecution In Britain Today’ launched a couple of week ago by the independent non-religious think-tank Civitas (here) and dedicated to Ben and Sharon Volgelenzang (see my previous post here) highlights how recent religious hatred legislation has been used in an “at best arbitrary and at worst biased” way particularly against Christians.

But discrimination against Christians in the UK is nothing compared to the persecution of Christians abroad. Over the past month:

On 1st July, Muhammad Guul Hashim Idiris, a convert from Islam, was publicly executed in the Hudur district of Somalia, apparently because of his Christian views (here).

On 5th July Maher el-Gowhary, also a convert from Islam who in the face of deep hostility is trying to get his conversion recognised by the Egyptian authorities, was ferociously attacked on a Cairo street while accompanied by his lawyer (here). According to Maher the attackers intended to behead him.

On 16th July Pastor Artur Suleimanov, another convert from Islam, was shot dead outside his church in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan (here).

On 17th July, at least eight Christians including the wife, two children and grandson of a priest were slaughtered in a previously peaceful village near Jos, Nigeria, (here) where the wider conflict is a complex tribal and economic/land issue as well as a religious one (here).

On 20th July, two local Christians questionably accused of blaspheming Islam’s prophet were shot dead outside court in Faisalabad, Pakistan (here).

On 27th July, a Christian centre in West Java, Indonesia, was attacked by Islamic extremists and buildings were destroyed (here).

There are fewer than sixty Catholic priests in Turkey and in June the fifth to be shot or stabbed in the past four years was killed and decapitated by Islamic ritual (here).

In Iraq the campaign of violence against Christians is so decimating and displacing the community that some commentators reckon it is possible Christianity’s 2000-year history in Iraq could end within a generation (here).

It is right of course that discrimination against Christians in the UK should be challenged by Hargey, Ofsted, Civitas and others.

But it is abroad where the real Christian persecution is taking place.

(Incidentally, I spoke outside 10 Downing Street yesterday at a protest against Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws. Organised by the British Pakistani Christian Association (here) and including Sikhs and people from other persecuted Pakistani minority faiths, it was held on the anniversary of the Gojra atrocity – see my previous post here – and had Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali (here), who is himself a refugee from death-threats in Pakistan, as keynote speaker.

I don’t hold much hope. Not only is the Pakistan government unwilling to address the evil effects of the blasphemy laws in their own country, they are actively promoting what is effectively a global Islamic blasphemy law at the United Nations. Pakistan, on behalf of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, etc, who are not exactly known for promoting human rights – proposed the Combating Defamation of Religions resolution (here) which was passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March; indicatively and ominously the resolution highlights Islam and Muslims four times but cites no other religion. It certainly makes no mention of the defamed and mistreated Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadiyya Muslim sect in the Islamic Republic’s own backyard.)

I am hoping that the Labour government’s £145m Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) initiative will get the chop as part of the new ConLib coalition’s spending cuts. The programme has been ineffective, wasteful, puts public money into extremists’ hands (here) and finds our avowedly secular and religiously-neutral government pouring £millions into anything from schools to soccer clubs, whose common identity overwhelmingly is that they are Islamic. As far as the UK is concerned, Buddhists don’t do violent extremism so their religion doesn’t get state financial support. Nor do Christians. Nor Hindus. Nor Jews. Nor Sikhs. Odd isn’t it?

It is also awful but ironic that a senior member of the government that introduced PVE has himself been assaulted allegedly by one of the violent extremists that PVE was intended to prevent.

Stephen Timms is the personally likeable Labour MP for East Ham. He was a member of Tony Blair’s cabinet and he also held senior portfolios outside the cabinet under Gordon Brown. He lives in Newham, describes himself as a Christian Socialist and is recognised as a hard-working constituency MP.

The alleged assailant Roshonara Choudhary, 21, lives with her parents and four younger siblings in East Ham, just a mile away from Timms. According to neighbours she is a devout Muslim who has given private English lessons to local kids for £5 an hour (here) . She is also bright. A reliable source says that she was an A-star student at a London college who dropped out and became unemployed earlier this year when she started getting involved in radical Islam and studying Islamist websites.

The same source says it appears the suspect would have preferred to get Tony Blair but, reckoning she wouldn’t be able to approach him because of security, she chose Timms instead as an easier target.

Apparently wearing an orange hijab and carrying two kitchen knives she attended Timms’ first constituents’ surgery after the 6th May general election when he was returned with the largest majority in the country. Unusually for a devout Muslim woman she allegedly put out her hand to shake the male MP’s hand – then apparently she suddenly plunged one of the knives into his stomach.

The wounds were not life-threatening and after a spell in hospital Timms has now recovered enough to attend both parliament and his surgeries. He also appeared at the Global Day of Prayer at West Ham FC, Upton Park, on Sunday (see previous post here) where he said he’d been helped by the large number of people praying for him.

(“The church is growing in London,” he also told the 10,000 worshippers, contra Alan Wilson’s Guardian article quoted in the previous post too, “and is a remarkably diverse group of congregations, but one in their faith in Christ.”)

Two thoughts struck me about the stabbing:

First, Timms’ alleged assailant is likely to spend the next decade or so in jail – what a waste of a promising young life. But even more, what a tragedy for the accused’s family who by all accounts are normal local people who will now have to live with the bewilderment, horror and shame that the attack has brought upon them. They deserve our sympathy.

Second, what is it about Islam that regular and socially-integrated people from normal families with good futures ahead of them serving other people can suddenly turn into monsters and killers who perpetrate unspeakable evil?  The Glasgow car bombers were doctors working in NHS hospitals and the leader of the 7/7 bombers was a primary school teacher with a young family. Outwardly there was little sign of the dark destructive thoughts that were corroding their inner beings.

The issue is a spiritual one of course and the crisis lurks deep within the consciousness of the individuals. I have noted before (here) the inner moral collapse that was the result of one intelligent middle-class Englishman’s conversion to Islam. How much more must have been the moral and spiritual collapse of the suicide bombers cited above?

PVE is not the answer. A spiritual problem requires a spiritual solution. As a committed Christian Stephen Timms will know this too.

Following my criticism of the National Secular Society as an essentially deceitful organisation (here), it’s interesting to find myself in agreement with them for once.

Last August Shamso Miah, described as an unemployed 25 year-old and devout Muslim, left his mosque and went to the East Ham branch of Lloyds TSB, just a couple of hundred metres from Newham Town Hall. There he was involved in a ‘queue rage’ assault on Mohammad Furcan, hitting him three times and breaking his jaw.

Miah came before Cherie Booth QC at Inner London Crown Court on 27 January, and the wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair gave him a suspended six month sentence plus community service.

But it was her comments that caused a minor storm. According to last week’s Newham Recorder (here), she told Miah that her reason for suspending the jail term was ‘based on the fact that you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before’. She added: ‘You are a religious man and you know that this is unacceptable behaviour’.

But the fact that Miah is a ‘religious man’ (she mentioned it twice) should not of itself qualify him for special treatment. In the UK at least, religious and non-religious people are all equal before the law and what the NSS wittily calls ‘Cheria Law’, with its apparent bias in favour of people of faith, is un-nuanced and inappropriate.

However judges have to take individual and personal factors into account of course and those of previous good character may expect to receive a more lenient sentence than habitual criminals. A law-breaker who is normally embedded in a stable family within a close-knit local community may be less likely to re-offend than a solitary unattached inner-city dweller. And a man who is a leader, earning obscene sums of money from his fans and promoted as a role model for youth such as John Terry, may expect less sympathy in court than ordinary Joe Soap. And in sentencing, religious belief is as relevant as these other personal factors

But spiritual discernment is required to assess such belief as not all religions are the same, and it’s regrettable that most of our judges, like most of society, are religiously illiterate. For instance, as the Royal Navy shows (here), many authorities seem to think Satanism may be treated as the spiritual and moral equivalent of, say, Quakerism. And it’s rare for a member of the media commentariat to throw political correctness to the wind and draw a fair distinction between ‘harmless’ Christianity and ‘sinister’ Islam, as Andrew Brown did recently in the Guardian (here).

Different religions, like different foods, have different effects on their consumers. And good food is good for you while bad food ain’t. And as a case in point, it ought to be blindingly obvious even to our secularised authorities that Devil-worship – including the Admiralty-approved variety – certainly ain’t good for a soul, a ship’s crew or society.

So instead of making blanket catch-all assumptions about ‘religious people’, Ms Booth should have looked at Mr Miah’s particular faith – as well as his crime record, employment status, family and home background, education, etc – and its effect on him personally. Then she could make the right judgement about an appropriate sentence for this particular individual in respect of his particular crime.

Tonight is Halloween. Ugh!

Sometimes the much-criticised Met Police get it exactly right. In each of our two local papers this week they have taken a two-page advert warning that Halloween “can be a particularly distressing time of year for some of the more vulnerable members of our communities – especially the elderly.”

They also caution people not to throw things like eggs and flour – a theme taken up incidentally by a couple of responsible shops at the top of our road who – like fireworks – won’t sell them to under-18s. The police say eggs and flour “can cause a great deal of damage and misery… (and) can be classed as criminal damage.”

Of course our pre-teen daughters watch the TV and listen to the chat in the playground and want to join in the ‘fun’.

But why would we let them make light of the powers of darkness as if these aren’t real? Why would we allow them to participate in blackmail and threats – “trick or treat” – as if this isn’t learning to bully and torment? Why should they frighten the elderly and lonely? Why should they learn to rejoice in evil as if it’s good?

Halloween is a sick celebration at both a spiritual and social level. Again, I reckon the police have got it right. They suggest that if people want to party on Halloween night “why not just stay at home and having a Halloween-themed party with your friends and neighbours?”

Actually I think this suggestion should have the force of law. If we can ban smoking from public places, how much more should we ban Halloween from our schools and streets too?

The liberal democratic liberties that hesitantly grew and then finally flourished across the UK and Europe over the past couple of centuries are under assault as never before. The continent is run by an unelected, interfering and financially incompetent (or corrupt) Commission that, as Ireland has found out, is utterly cynical about the will of the electorate expressed through the ballot box; the clout of the UK’s ancient Mother of Parliaments – sunk in the quagmire of the expenses scandal – has arguably never been lower; and the yawning gap of mutual incomprehension between the governing classes and ordinary people is feeding the growth of hard-line extremism on all sides, as the May election of two BNP MEPs and the recent UAF-encouraged Muslim violence at Harrow mosque (here) demonstrate. 

One by one – and despite the European Convention on Human Rights and associated national legislation – the lights of our liberties and freedoms are being extinguished in the name of our risk-avoiding, hurt-preventing, initiative-curtailing, target-worshipping, bureaucratic-meddling, money-mad, politically-correct, aggressively-atheist nanny state, which itself is only one stop away from a police state.

And the downhill slide towards this police state took a defining step forward two weeks ago when a Christian couple, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, were arrested following a heated argument about religion in front of guests in the restaurant of their nine-bedroom private hotel in Aintree, Liverpool. No violence took place, no mayhem ensued; but one Muslim participant reckoned her religious sensibilities had been insulted and went to the police. Plod knocked on the hotel door – and now the Vogelenzangs have been remanded on bail and await trial under the Public Order Act 1986, a measure designed to stop violence and disorder on the streets.

The details will come out during the court case in December, but it’s already clear that the robust but peaceful expression of religious beliefs and opinions in a semi-private place in England in 2009 is now subject to police intervention and arrest. Henry Porter in the Guardian called the decision to prosecute ‘daft’ (here). Others reckon the police action is ‘heavy-handed’. Actually it is much worse than that; it is deeply deeply ominous. The mind-set and management ethos of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has now become so Orwellian and Stasi-like that in my view we have crossed the anti-democratic Rubicon. The chilling effect of this prosecution – whether it succeeds or not – on free speech is momentous and we are now but a few steps from Gestapo knocks on the door in the dead of night for anyone who expresses peaceful but apparently contentious, odious, offensive or politically incorrect views especially, as in this case, about Islam.

Of course the normal courtesies of hospitality should have restrained the Vogelenzangs from arguing with one of their guests, and I am not surprised that the local hospital is no longer sending outpatients to stay at the hotel. I wouldn’t either. But that does not justify police arrest or the CPS decision to prosecute.

To paraphrase George Orwell, ‘Liberty, if it means anything, means the right to offend’. By being dragged into court the Volgelenzangs have already been penalised for exercising that right and by extension, as fellow citizens, so have we. And they may yet receive a substantial fine and a criminal record.

What is to be done? First, the Vogelenzangs’ fight is our fight so I’m sending £100 to their legal defence fund run by the Christian Institute (here).

Second, we must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them. I therefore intend to repeat their opinions – only more so – on this blogsite with a view to sharing a police cell and court appearance with them.

The exact nature of their offending views is open to dispute as the unnamed Muslim lady claims Ben Vogelenzang called the founder of Islam, Muhammad, a ‘warlord’ – but he denies this. However it seems agreed that Sharon described the hijab (Islamic headscarf) as a form of ‘bondage’ (here).

Now I certainly admire Muhammad as one of the great figures of history, up there with Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and King David (of Goliath fame, who established Jerusalem as Israel’s capital around 1,000 BC). And the modesty of much Islamic dress is to be applauded.

But it is also valid to see Muhammad – like other historical greats – as a very flawed figure. And the niqab (Islamic face-veil) is as controversial in the UK as in France (here).

So I hope my Muslim friends and acquaintances (that especially includes you Abdul, Asif, Mohammed, Humera, Tahire, Manish, Irfan and Yaqoob) will forgive me now as I write about both Muhammad’s flaws and Islamic dress in a way they may find offensive. But I need to do so (a) primarily in order to assert my right to freedom of speech, and (b) secondarily to get myself nicked so that I can stand alongside the Vogelenzangs.

“Muhammad was a warlord, a paedophile and a vindictive murderer, and the niqab is a hostile anti-social sign of female subjection which should be banned from public places.”

There, I’ve done it. Now if someone would kindly take a copy of this post to the police, please also tell them they can obtain my address via Newham town hall. I’ll await with anticipation the nocturnal knock on my door.

Ben and Sharon, wait for me. I’m on my way!

Some people claim that Green Street in Newham is to travellers from South Asia what Oxford Street is to North Americans. It provides a colourful variety of predominantly Asian clothing, foods, confectionery and jewellery usually of high quality and at relatively low prices. At weekends it is usually packed with shoppers looking for bargains, especially at the extraordinary Queens Market which is more of a bazaar or souk than a traditional East End street market.

We live just off Green Street so last night my family and I walked along the road to participate with our neighbours in the lively Pakistan Independence Day celebrations. The police had closed off part of the street to facilitate the event, and crowds of mainly young people bedecked in the national colours of green and white and blowing on hooters promenaded along Green Street enjoying the party. It was good fun.

But I also had a heavy heart. Just two weeks ago some eight of my co-religionists (including children) at Gojra in Punjab, Pakistan, had been brutally butchered (here) by a murderous crowd whipped up to a frenzy by militant leaders of local mosques. Some of the Christians – who form a small vulnerable minority in Punjab and indeed in Pakistan – were burnt to death in their homes while the local police looked on.

At the last count there were some 20,000 Pakistani-background people living in Newham, about 8.5% of the population. They are a minority but a respected one, and I was pleased to see Newham police actively cooperating while they celebrated their national independence from Britain that took place 62 years ago.

The contrast between the treatment of the respective minorities on Green Street and at Gojra was painful, so I wrote today to the Pakistani High Commissioner in London:

Your Excellency,

Atrocities against Christian minority in Gojra
Last night my family and I attended the Pakistan Independence Day celebrations on Green Street here in the heart of Newham in London’s East End where we live. It was a safe and vibrant street party for all and particularly for the large Pakistani minority in our area, thanks in part to the local police who closed off the road in order to protect and promote the event.

On Saturday 1 August a number of Pakistan’s Christian minority in Gojra were butchered by a mob apparently inflamed by leaders of nearby mosques over accusations of ‘blasphemy’ against the Quran. During the massacre the local police stood by, unwilling to intervene while Christians – including children – were burnt to death.

Reports indicate that a senior Gojra police officer has now been suspended. Nonetheless as a Newham councillor and a Christian I felt deeply the tragic contrast between the happy event for Newham’s Pakistani minority on Green Street last night and the gut-wrenching atrocity perpetrated with police collusion against the Pakistan’s Christian minority in Gojra two weeks ago.

The Gojra massacre follows a similar if non-fatal mob attack on minority Christian homes a few weeks earlier in the Kasur district of Punjab, also following accusations of ‘blasphemy’.

I am writing therefore to insist that the Pakistani government urgently:

(a) Ensures that the mosque and Muslim leaders who inflamed the violence together with the actual perpetrators are brought to justice;
(b) Carries out a full investigation into Gojra police collusion with – and inactivity during – the atrocity, makes sure that officers responsible are appropriately and severely punished, and guarantees that in future police attitudes towards all minorities is respectful and in line with Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s inclusive founding vision for Pakistan;
(c) Provides generous compensation for the grieving families and the traumatised Christian community in Gojra; and
(d) Abolishes or drastically amends the notorious Pakistan blasphemy laws that are used abusively against non-Muslim minorities and others, often in pursuit of non-religious petty disputes.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Councillor Alan Craig

I’ll update you on his reply and any developments in due course.

In my last post I laid into the BBC for aiding and orchestrating the dominant social-liberal agenda. Now the BBC has bitten back. TV journalist John Ware has produced a couple of BBC 2 programmes, The Death of Respect (here), the first of which was broadcast last Thursday. In them he tracks changes to British values and behaviour over the past 50 years.Ware distances himself from the easy cost-free optimism of the liberals: “You may be one of those who pats the nation on the head and says, ‘There there, don’t panic. We’re not all going to hell in a handcart’,” he said before stating emphatically, “I am not.”

There was lots of informative stuff in the first programme, including highlighting the shame of increased poverty for many despite our apparently growing national prosperity. But what interested me on this occasion was how the melt-down of the family is clearly shown to be the cause of so much social dysfunction.

Listen to these conclusions from the programme: “Marriage is the most successful arrangement we have yet discovered for raising children” and “The consequence of children growing up in single parent families have been profound – a huge increase in emotional and behavioural problems and a welfare bill that just keeps growing.” And this from the BBC! And from John Ware, himself a divorcee he tells us.

The Christian Peoples Alliance has been saying exactly the same for years of course and I ran in the London Mayor election last year on such a platform: “Promoting marriage and the stable family as a long-term solution to youth crime, educational under-achievement and child poverty” was our top policy priority. The evidence for marriage is utterly overwhelming for those with eyes to see. But policy-makers at the Home Office and elsewhere are so locked into their blinkered liberal mindset that they cannot acknowledge the truth when it hits them on the nose.

However it seems the Beeb has now done us a public service and helped get the story out.

Or has it? Ware’s programmes are broadcast on Thursday evenings – at 11.20pm. Yup, the BBC has given these quality programmes a graveyard slot. Now I’m not naturally cynical or suspicious, but maybe my original strictures about BBC bias were not too far wrong after all. The programme schedulers have effectively buried The Death of Respect.

So it’ll have to be another late night for me on Thursday.

Jamaica is known for its drugs, violence, Bob Marley music, white-sand beaches and Caribbean climate. It ought also to be famous as the birthplace of the church Street Pastors scheme. 

South London-based former Rastafarian Les Isaac visited urban churches in Jamaica, saw the effectiveness of their scheme in reducing street crime and launched a similar initiative in London in 2003. There are now over a hundred Street Pastor groups in towns and cities across the UK, from Inverness to Ilfracombe.

I first saw Street Pastors in action a year ago in Kingston (on Thames, not Jamaica) where there’s a thriving club scene. Every Friday and Saturday night, from 10.00pm to 4.00 am, groups of Christians of all ages walk the streets offering friendship and support to the large number of the boozed and frequently drugged young people milling around in the town centre.

The Street Pastors are trained to bring care and compassion but never confrontation or criticism. Where there’s tension or drink-driven violence, they usually back off, call the police if necessary and pray. But where there’s a bloke legless in the gutter or a girl hysterical because her boyfriend has two-timed her, the Street Pastors call (and pay for) a taxi or sit and listen for hours. I saw a girl asleep on the top of a wall by the river at 2.00am; if she’d rolled over she’d have fallen in. The Street Pastors gently woke her, carried her and set her down out of harm’s way until she had sobered up.

What amazed me was the warmth shown towards them by the clubbers, undoubtedly resulting from the many acts of kindness done over many months. I was part of a patrol at 1.30am when four young men lurched along moving from one club to another. “We love you Street Pastors!” they bellowed from the other side of the street. They were drunk but they meant it.

The scheme emphasises the involvement of men as Street Pastors because of ‘the lack of positive role models and mentors for young men from an early age’, but actually some of the most effective members are the older women. “The clubbers become just vulnerable kids when things go wrong,” explained a leader of the Kingston group. “Our older women are like the mums they need to help them out.”

The success of the scheme has been notable, with street crime reduced by 95% in Camberwell, 74% in Peckham and 30% in the first 13 weeks in Lewisham. As a result the police have become strong supporters of Street Pastors.

Since December Newham has boasted its own branch operating on Friday nights in Stratford, and I’ve recently joined the management team. By way of support both Newham police and the Met have given significant start-up grants.

And already the results have been encouraging and surprisingly entertaining. At our meeting last night Dave the Newham leader told us that (a) the team have bought a job-lot of flip-flop sandals to give to drunken girls who can no longer totter along on their high heels; (b) sprightly Len aged 83 has become one of our most committed members and is out clubbing (well, engaging with clubbers) into the early hours; and (c) the patrols have befriended and been praying with burly bouncers on the doors of two Stratford night clubs.

Also, a couple of weeks ago a patrol stopped a young man getting his head kicked in during a fracas outside a pub.

It’s gratifying. It’s Christian service and love in action. Watch this space.

At their request I was today interviewed again by Hertfordshire police. They are finalising their investigation into ‘Abdullah1425′ aka ‘Muhammed’ who was allegedly responsible for putting the obituary ‘death threat’ video, In Memory of Councillor Alan Craig, on YouTube. (See eg Daily Telegraph Report)

Extraordinarily, the prosecution case against him seems to depend largely on my feelings about the issue. The police want to know how, as victim, I felt about the video. What did I think when I heard about it? Was I afraid when I watched it? How did my wife feel?

The whole approach seems nonsense. The question isn’t, what did I feel? That is purely subjective. The important thing is whether the accused objectively committed a crime.

I tried to help the police during the interview and explained that as a person of faith I took a conscious decision not to be afraid nor to let the obituary video threat affect my life. But surely this shouldn’t be relevant as it was a deliberate decision taken by me after the alleged crime was committed and in response to it.

Or has our legal system now become dependent on subjective touchy-feely emotion-based ‘evidence’ ? Perhaps prosecutions and court cases should be sponsored by Kleenex.