The BBC Goes Dhimmi

Christianity has been under attack by the left since the days of the French Revolution. It is part of their larger attack on the foundations of traditional society. The latest left wing salvo comes in Britain, a Christian nation for over a millenium, and it comes from the BBC - that wildly left wing organization wholly and coercively funded on the British taxpayer's pence. The BBC has opted to place a Muslim in charge of its religous programming.

This from the Daily Mail:

The BBC yesterday appointed a Muslim as its head of religious programming in a radical departure from broadcasting tradition.

The post - considered one of the most influential religious roles in the country - has gone to Aaqil Ahmed, who has been working as an executive at Channel 4.
The appointment will cause dismay among the Christian churches.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams raised concerns over the prospect of a Muslim head of religious broadcasting during a meeting with the corporation's director general Mark Thompson in March.

It comes at a time of deepening worries among Christian leaders that their faith is being sidelined and downgraded by authorities.

Both Dr Williams and Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu have made repeated public complaints over the indifference and occasional hostility to Christianity shown in Whitehall and from other authorities.

Last year the BBC gave the job of producing its most popular and longrunning religious programme, Songs of Praise, to a Sikh, Tommy Nagra.

The Church of England points out that 70 per cent of the population of Britain professes to be Christian, but only 3 per cent are Muslims. . . .

This really is grotesque. Note that there is an fine blog across the pond devoted to exposing the perfidy of the BBC. It is approrpiately named, Biased BBC. As one of the commentors to that story noted, "The self loathing of the English intelligentsia knows no limits."

(H/T Dinah Lord)

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A Call To Ban Building Mosques In Britain

Britain's Muslim population is large, growing, and the most radicalized in all of Europe. Indeed, many of the Deobandi mosques preach a version of Islam even more radical than that preached in the hinterlands of Pakistan. It is a mess that the Labour government refuses to even acknowledge, instead burying its head in the sand. Today, one senior member of the Anglican Church has called on Britain to ban the building of any further mosques, citing the danger that Britian is on its way to becoming an Islamic state.
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This from the Daily Mail:

A senior Church of England member called yesterday for the building of mosques to be banned.

Alison Ruoff said more construction would lead to Islamic no go areas dominated by exclusively Muslim populations living under sharia law. Mrs Ruoff, a member of the General Synod, the Church's parliament, added: "If we don't watch out we will become an Islamic state. It's that serious."

Leading clerics have been divided over how the Church should respond to Islam. The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams caused controversy by calling for sharia law to be given full legal status. He later told the the Synod he took the blame for "distress and misunderstanding" that swept through the Church in the wake of the speech.

But Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistani-born Bishop of Rochester, has warned against the spread of Islamic no-go areas and said amplified calls to prayer at mosques impose an Islamic character on nearby areas.

Mrs Ruoff, a former nurse and magistrate, is a conservative evangelical regarded as one of the more outspoken Synod members. She responded to Dr William's sharia lecture by calling for the Archbishop's resignation.

Speaking on Premier Christian Radio, she said: "We are constantly building new mosques, which are paid for by the oil states. There are enough mosques for Muslims in this country. . . . You build a mosque and then what happens? You have Muslim people moving into that area, all the shops become Islamic, all the housing will become Islamic and that will be a no-go area for anyone else.

"They will bring in Islamic law. We cannot allow that to happen. We are still a Christian country, we need to hold on to that."

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "These are very narrow-minded and bigoted remarks.

"As a Christian, she surely ought to be working to build good ties between different communities."

Read the entire story here.

Those remarks from Mr. Bunglawala are simply incredible for their hypocrisy, and the Daily Mail is grossly negiligent for not including the relevant information needed to put his remarks in context. His organization, the MCB, has called for Sharia law to be instituted throughout Britain. And as for Bunglawala himself, you can find out a bit him at Wiki:

In January 1993 Bunglawala wrote a letter to Private Eye, a satirical magazine, in which he called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman "courageous." After Abdel-Rahman's arrest on charges of masterminding the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in July that year, Mr Bunglawala guessed that it was only because of his "calling on Muslims to fulfill their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere". Five months before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bunglawala also circulated writings of Osama bin Laden, whom he called a "freedom fighter", to hundreds of Muslims in Britain.

Bunglawala opposed a government proposal to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist organization, under Terrorism Act 2006. Bunglawala sees the late Ahmed Yassin, the co-founder and leader of Hamas, as a renowned Islamic scholar. He has not supported the expulsion of the Muslim Association of Britain from the Muslim Council, although senior MAB member Azzam Tamimi supports suicide bombings in Israel. . . .

Bunglawala is a living example of how radical Islamists are attempting to use the freedoms of the West to destroy it. And indeed, he himself is the poster boy for why Britain needs to ban mosques and further immigration from Muslim countries until it gets a handle on the aggressively separatist Muslim population within its borders. Bunglawala should not be quoted in a British newspaper, he should be deported from Britain. My hats off to Ms. Ruoff for her remarks. She has my support.

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Henry the VIIIth Must Be Spinning In His Grave

Henry VIII was the English King who, in 1534 broke from the Roman Catholic Church and, by the The Act of Supremacy, declared himself "the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England," or, as it is better known, the Anglican Church. He took this act largely out of pique that the Pope would not grant him an annullment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, though it is likely that the chance to pad the Royal treasury with Church lands probably played no small role in the decision also. This set off a firestorm of events and violence that has reverberated through the centuries. Indeed, it is a measure of the lasting mortal enmity that developed out of this "English Reformation" that the English Bill of Rights of 1689, provided for those subjects "who are Protestants" to own weapons for their self defense (this is the precursor to our Second Amendment) and England's national holiday celbrates the torture and execution of Guy Fawkes, a papist who conspired with other Catholics to blow up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot. And in a rather grisly reminder of that event, a book bound in the human skin of one of the plotters was recently auctioned in Britain. Update: Much more on the history associated with the English Reformation at Bookworm Room.

Yet you can call this week the revenge of the Pope. It has only taken about half a millenium. Just a few days ago, Britain's former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, converted to Roman Catholicism. And today, it has been revealed that the dominant Church in England is no longer the Anglican Church, but rather the Catholic Church. This from the Telegraph:

Britain has become a 'Catholic country'

. . . Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country's dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.

This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.

Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.

The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans ­worshipping.

The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had previously been dwindling.

. . . Worshipping habits have changed dramatically with a significant rise in attendance at mid-week services and at special occasions - the Church of England expects three million people to go to a parish church over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

In an attempt to combat the declining interest in traditional religion, the Anglican Church has launched radical new forms of evangelism that include nightclub chaplains, a floating church on a barge and internet congregations.

. . . The Rt Rev Crispian Hollis, the Bishop of Portsmouth, said that the Roman Church had been active in trying to win back lapsed worshippers, but conceded that mass immigration had been a significant factor in swelling its numbers.

. . . "We don't want to be seen to be scoring points over the Anglican Church as we are in no way jealous of its position as the national church, but of course these figures are encouraging. It shows that the Church is no longer seen as on the fringes of society, but in fact is now at the heart of British life." . . .

Read the entire article here.

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From Iraq, A Christmas That Carries With It Hope

This message today from Rev Canon Andrew Whit, the Anglican Priest for Iraq, from his Church in Baghdad:

Yesterday, after I left my prefabricated hut in Baghdad's heavily fortified International Zone and made the journey of just one mile to St George's, the city's Anglican Church, I was greeted by more than 150 excited children.

"Abouna, Abouna," they cried, using the Arabic word for "Father". "This year we are going to have the best Christmas ever!"

I have to be escorted to my church by Iraqi Special Forces in armoured cars. As I took off my bulletproof clothes, I thought about the children's optimism.

St George's is still surrounded by razor wire and barricades to deflect bomb blasts. We cannot walk Baghdad's streets safely as we could in the days of Saddam and my parishioners tell me terrible stories of death and destruction, almost daily.

But the children are right. There is a sense in the air that things are slowly changing and this Christmas, for the first time in many years, will be a time of hope.

Last Christmas it was far too dangerous for us to hold our services in our church. We met, instead, in the prime minister's office. It may sound grand but for most of the time we had no electricity.

We managed to enjoy ourselves thanks, in part, to a pile of presents donated by an American church and brought to us by the US military.

. . . Life for everyone in Baghdad has been unbelievably difficult over the past five years. But now there are real signs of hope. I know things are changing for the better because my Iraqi congregation tells me so.

The most noticeable improvements are with the electricity supply and security. In summer, Baghdad got perhaps half an hour's electricity a day. Now it gets up to eight hours' supply.

And while this is still a deadly city, fewer people are being killed. The gunfire and explosions in the streets are lessening, as is the intimidation of my congregation.

We have streetlights for the first time in ages, which makes things seem safer and more normal.

With every corner shop that reopens for business, with every cafe-owner who serves coffee again, it is possible for us to start thinking positively once more.
And, at last, we are back in our church and we are looking forward to Christmas. My congregation is quite remarkable.

About 1,000 people come to our church – a fairly typical example of Thirties Church of England architecture set in a dusty Baghdad street.

None is an Anglican. They nominally belong to every possible denomination in Iraq – Syriac Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and others – but come to our church because they live nearby and it is too dangerous to travel.

. . . Last week we were able to hold a Christmas bazaar and it was a huge success. These are not normally part of an Iraqi Christmas, but all the women in our church now belong to the Mothers' Union and have learned of such events from the British-based organisation.

It was a small but significant step back to normality for a city where life continues to be, in so many ways, grim.

A visitor to the bazaar asked where all the men were. We have only six in our congregation. I responded in a matter-of-fact way: "Oh, most of them have been killed." I wasn't being blasé.

. . . [Christmas] is a time when they can celebrate life in all its fullness. It is about simple hope for the future.

There is much more. Read the article here.

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