Taking Righteous Umbrage

"Being more confident about our status as a Christian country does not somehow involve doing down other faiths or passing judgement on those with no faith at all."
"Many people tell me it is easier to be Jewish or Muslim in Britain than in a secular country precisely because the tolerance that Christianity demands of our society provides greater space for other religious faiths, too."
British Prime Minister David Cameron, article, Church Times

David Cameron. Photograph: John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Images

"We respect the Prime Minister's right to his religious beliefs and the fact that they affect his own life as a politician. However, we wish to object to his repeated mischaracterising of our country as a 'Christian country' and the negative consequences for our politics and society that this view engenders."
"Although it is right to recognize the contribution made by many Christians to social action, it is wrong to try to exceptionalise their contribution when it is equalled by British people of different beliefs."
"It needlessly fuels enervating sectarian debates that are by and large absent from the lives of most British people, who -- as polls show -- do not want religion or religious identities to be actively prioritised by their elected Government."

(signed) by 55 public figures, inclusive of writers Philip Pullman, Ken Follettt, Sir Terry Pratchett; Maureen Duffy; philosophers A.C. Grayling; Nobel Prize scientists, Sir John Sulston, Sir Harold Kroto, Prof. Steve Jones; comedians Tony Hawks, Richard Herring, Tim Minchin.

Great Britain, the sceptered Isle, has always been a fundamentally Christian country, first as a Catholic, then an Anglican nation; the Queen of England is head of the Church of England. Christianity has informed the heritage and the culture of the country. The sanctimony of the letter written by the 55 offended public figures was an illustration of left-wing claptrap, ultra-sensitive to the multicultural face of modern Britain.

Immigration has indeed altered the religious makeup of the country, as it welcomed for inclusion into its society a multitude of peoples from across the Globe, with a good many of them representing people from Britain's former colonial era. The signatories, in their condemnatory letter claim that aside from a "narrow constitutional sense", no evidence exists in justification of describing Britain as Christian in its religious character.

Huffing and puffing in indignation and railing against reality will not serve to make it less a reality; it serves only to illustrate how ridiculous people can be in bending themselves into pretzel-shape to gratify and endear themselves to those they perceive as underdogs or disadvantaged or simply minorities whom they themselves aspire to haul into an atmosphere of warm inclusiveness. And this attitude serves admirably to assure malign elements that have infiltrated Britain they're on the right track.

It's not just that Muslims have a perfect right to practise their religion just as anyone else should, in a free and equal society. The facts on the ground, however, point to the influence of numbers, and the numbers are growing, steadily, both by birth and through immigration as Britain's Muslim population steadily increases, and the universal laws of England are infiltrated by accommodating Sharia law, and Muslims insist on their 'rights' as Muslims, not as British civilians.

For Muslims the old adage of "when in Rome do as the Romans do" holds no attraction whatever, even as a civil courtesy. All countries value their heritage and their customs, their laws and their civil rights, and when the latter two are missing, and people see the advantage of migrating where they will be assured civil rights and equality under the law, they bring their heritage and their customs with them, usually to meld into the prevailing culture, but not necessarily.

With Muslims, the 'not-necessarily' option prevails, because in Islam it is not an option it is a requirement of the faith. And so a gradual adulteration of the welcoming culture and social system takes place and more and more attempts are made by well-meaning and ultimately naive people to satisfy the 'comfort levels' of the immigrants until the creeping upheaval of all that is recognizable transforms the welcoming society. And so it is with Islam.

Increase: By 2011 the Muslim population had grown to 2.7 million people or 4.8 per cent of the population

With its clerics fond of preaching in their mosques that the time will come when Britain will be Sharia-led and an Islamist country. New statistics reveal that one in ten children is born to a Muslim family. Mohammed is the most common boy's name in parts of Britain. "It certainly is a startling figure. We have had substantial immigration of Muslims for a long time", explained David Coleman, Professor of Demography at the University of Oxford.

"Continuing immigration from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India has been added to by new immigration from African countries and from the Middle East. Birth rates of Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin remain quite high, although falling. There seem to be very low levels of falling away from religion among Muslims", an wry understatement if ever there was one.

Census data from 2011 show the number of people in England and Wales describing themselves as Christian fell from about 72% in 2001 to just over 59% representing a decline of 4.1-million people. There are 136 Muslim schools in Britain, 125 in the private sector, according to the Department for Education. A total of 1,600 mosques exist now in Britain. 

The large number of young Muslim children, according to Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain owes to the confidence Muslims place in Britain which they see as encouraging them to bring up their families there. "I just wouldn't want our fellow citizens to be alarmed by an increase in number", said he. 

"This generation is very much British. They feel very much this is their home. It's not about Britain becoming a Muslim country but about Britain enabling the practise of Islam, which gives confidence to the vast majority of Muslims. It's a great country to regard as our home." As long, that is, as no one in authority in Britain exercises the unforgivable effrontery to claim it to be a basically Christian country, culture, nation. For the time being.

"We wrote this letter as a result not just of one recent speech and article but of a disturbing trend", said Professor Al-Khalili, an Iraqi-born physicist, author and president of the British Humanist Association. Mr. Cameron's 'intervention', he stated, was part of a "disturbing trend". That disturbing trend being for a country to proclaim itself proud of its heritage.

Representing an abhorrent assault on the sensibilities of incoming cultures and religions?