Is Britain a No-Go Area?

Michael Nazir-AliI’ve written previously about Michael Nazir-Ali, the Anglican Bishop of Rochester. Dr. Nazir-Ali made recent headlines for uttering the unutterable: there are “no-go zones” in British cities, due to the presence of thousands of Muslim immigrants and their descendants clustered in urban areas.

For his cardinal sin Dr. Nazir-Ali was reprimanded by the cognoscenti of Britain, including members of the Anglican hierarchy. There are some things you just don’t say.

Deny the Trinity… Trash the Bible… Urinate on a crucifix… But keep your hands off our Multiculture!

Now the good bishop has received death threats for his efforts:

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, is under police protection after he and his family received death threats over his claim that parts of Britain had become “no-go areas” for non-Muslims.

The Bishop is also facing anger from the most senior members of the Church of England hierarchy for his comments on Islam.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has made Islam a priority of his archiepiscopate and set up a Muslim-Christian forum to promote relations between the faiths in 2006. One senior cleric told The Times yesterday: “The Bishop of Rochester is in effect threatening to undo everything we have done.”

[…]

Dr Nazir-Ali was in India when staff at his home in Rochester took a number of phone calls threatening his family and warning him that he would not “live long” if he continued to criticise Islam. He has been given an emergency number at Kent Police, along with other undisclosed protection measures, and said that the threats were being taken “seriously”.

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Speaking to The Times, Dr Nazir-Ali, who is on the conservative evangelical wing of the Church and is Britain’s only Asian bishop, said: “The irony is that I had similar threats when I was a bishop in Pakistan, but I never thought I would have them here. My point in saying what I did was that Britain had lost its Christian vision, which would have provided the resources to offer hospitality to others.”

He said that this absence of a Christian vision had led to multiculturalism. “Everyone agrees that multiculturalism has had disastrous consequences, and that segregation and extremism have arisen from this.”

Ah, Dr. Nazir-Ali, if only it were true! I agree with you, and most of our readers do, but thousands of well-educated and well-meaning people sincerely believe that Multiculturalism is the best thing since sliced tofu.

The Bishop said in an article in The Sunday Telegraph that Islamic extremists had created no-go areas across Britain where it was too dangerous for nonMuslims to enter. He said that people of a different race or faith faced physical attack if they lived or worked in communities that were dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.

Dr Nazir-Ali told The Times: “I have had 1,000 letters, and 95 per cent have been supportive. There is no point in being in denial. We have to face the consequences.”

The Bishop went further last night with an additional statement posted on his website. He said: “It has been asked what I meant by ‘no-go’ areas. I would wish to make it clear that I was not referring, as some have implied, to the situation which arose in some neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland some years ago which the authorities felt constrained from entering.”

IRA, Al Qaeda — same thing!

He said that he was referring to a development reported by bodies such as the Commission on Integration and Cohesion last year and Trevor Philips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, more recently. The Bishop said: “This is the phenomenon that is referred to as ‘parallel lives’, ‘separated’ or ‘self-contained’ areas or communities.”

The French have a bureaucratic designation for their no-go areas: Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or ZUS. We need an English-based Newspeak nomenclature for the phenomenon. Perhaps “Areas of Cultural Integrity”? Or “Multicultural Identity Regions”?

Anything to obscure the unpleasant reality.

He said that Christian workers in some areas were unable to practise the full range of ministry “either because it is felt to be inadvisable or because of intimidation by extremist views and actions”. In addition, converts to the Christian faith found it “difficult or impossible” to live in certain areas. “This is too widespread a phenomenon to be ignored and deserves proper discussion and debate,” the Bishop said.

“I repeat what I said in an earlier comment, that I deeply regret any hurt and do not wish to cause offence to anyone, let alone my Muslim friends, but unless we diagnose the malaise from which we all suffer we shall not be able to discover the remedy.” Muslims should only be granted the right to broadcast a “call to prayer” from a mosque in Oxford if church bells are allowed to ring out across Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia, Christian campaigners said yesterday. Eddie Lyle, chief executive of Open Doors, the missionary agency that serves persecuted Christians, called for “reciprocity” from Muslim countries. The Rev Charlie Cleverly, Rector of St Aldate’s in Oxford, said this week that the proposal for an Islamic call to prayer from a mosque in Oxford should not be approved by the city council.

1985, Anthony Burgess’ novel of a dystopian future Britain, opens with these words:

It was the week before Christmas, Monday midday mild and muggy, and the muezzins of West London were yodeling about there being no God but Allah:

“La ilaha illa’lah. La ilaha illa’lah”

Bev Jones shoved his way through the multiracial shopping crowd past the screaming Diskbutik, the tinseled supermarket, the former pub that was now a travel agency specializing in trips to Mecca but still known as Al-Bulnbush, turned the corner of Tolpuddle Road on to Martyr Street and arrived at Hogarth Highrise.

Mr. Burgess was prescient. The muezzins of Oxford are likely to yodel a call to prayer very soon, long before any church bell rings out over the dusty streets of Riyadh.



Hat tip: Queen.

13 thoughts on “Is Britain a No-Go Area?

  1. The irony of the good Dr. having to have protection due to threats on his life seems to have escaped the offended multi-cultis. Once again the point that Islam is dangerous is proven but the believers fail to see. Is there a word for this condition?

    Whenever an individual with uncommon bravery emerges like this, or Geert Wilders, Mark Steyn et al, we, GoV supporters, need a way to deliver a message of support to that person. Any suggestions?

  2. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has made Islam a priority of his archiepiscopate and set up a Muslim-Christian forum to promote relations between the faiths in 2006. One senior cleric told The Times yesterday: “The Bishop of Rochester is in effect threatening to undo everything we have done.”

    How can anyone undo what was never possible anyway. The above statement is trying to make Bishop nazir Ali a scapegoat.

    And in parallel news

    ‘No one leaves Islam,’ judge rules
    Egyptian court bans convert to Christianity from changing ID card

    According to the Judge, “Since Islam is the “final” and “most complete” religion, Muslims already have full freedom of religion and are not allowed to return to the “less complete” Christianity or Judaism, the ruling said.”

    http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59985

    This was not a “nutty” decision by some loony Islamic cleric in the middle of nowhere, but in a proper court in Egypt.

    If this is the view of a court in a proper Islamic court, how on earth can any meaningful “dialogue” between Christianity and Islam take place? That is a question I would like to pose to the person who occupies Lambeth palace. In passing, this is exactly what Pope Benedict was referring to, when he was rudely interrupted by Muslims.

  3. One senior cleric told The Times yesterday: “The Bishop of Rochester is in effect threatening to undo everything we have done.”

    The joy of using this argument is that it’s open ended and double sided. When a recent expedition to the arctic, undertaken to draw attention to “global warming” had to be cancelled because one of the team got frostbite (probably from setting out in a bikini in anticipation of the banana plantations sure to be springing up in Santa’s garden), the organizers didn’t miss a beat in explaining that “global warming is unpredictable.” Apparently, global warming causes frostbite.

    Chamberlain and his appeaser entourage often used the same argument against Churchill, “Give him power (and I paraphrase here) and he will undo everything we’ve worked for toward peace. Fortunately in this case the sheer weight of events shone a clear light, at least in hindsight, on the fallacy.

    When multicult appeasement fails and cars burn, the Bishop will be to blame, regardless of the cause. “See?” the senior clergyman will say, “We told you so! It’s not multicult, it’s the Bishop of Rochester’s xenophobia.”

    Irony upon irony.

  4. “Islam in a man is as dangerous as rabies in a dog”.

    Sir Winston Churchill.

    The great mans message to his peoples today.

    and from the grave in now which he turns!!.

  5. Dialectical Community Relations: No doubt the multiculti’s believe that if you refrain from saying Islam is violent you will not get a violent response and the people who do say Islam is violent are merely reinforcing a prejudice of violence that they faslely attribute to Islam and not to their offensive comments. Ergo, if you want a demonstration of the religion of peace don’t say Islam is violent. That the inception of the idea of Islam being violent might lie in what the observation of Islamics doesn’t seem to enter the debate, sadly.

    A dialectian believe that all things come in dialectical opposites, and to deny one opposite invalidates the the whole concept. If saying Islam is violent provokes a violent response, one must refrain from saying Islam is violent and voila! you have a religion of peace.

  6. Is there a list of these zones somewhere? I’d like to visit England, especially London, before it totally goes to ****, and I’d like to avoid areas where the locals feel entitled to hurt you because you’re a dirty kuffar (see recent row in Germany for example).

  7. Multi-culti leading to segregation? Imagine that! And look who’s enforcing the segregation! Sorry, Charlie – you can’t pin the blame on the BNP – it’s the immigrants themselves who are the bully boys.

    Yes, I know… only Europeans are allowed to be called racists or bigots…

  8. As far as a name for the “no-go” areas, how about “Shires of the Caliphate”?

    Clearly the Archbishop of Canterbury knows nothing about Islam and doesn’t care to learn.

    He’s willing to let an upstart 1400 year barbarianism that has wrought only destruction and failure for much of its history overwhelm Christian teaching which has lasted 2000 years and underpins the most advanced societies the world has ever known.

    There are no Christian warriors to beat back the hordes at the Gates of Vienna or anywhere else in Europe this time.

  9. I’m a former Jesuit seminarian, and thus I bring to the way I approach life a certain curiosity and desire to learn. I had an Iranian Shia roommate my last two years of college, and I took a course in comparative religion. This was back in 1980, but even then there was the standard revision of history and very superficial understanding of Islam in the course texts. It was only after 9/11 and reading Robert Spencer and Bat Ye’or that I finally decided to slog through the Qur’an. It’s not an easy book to read. In fact, it’s been the most difficult I’ve ever encountered, for a variety of reasons that only those who have so attempted can relate to.

    My larger point is this: that there are many Christian clergy WHO DO NOT DO THIS, despite the very high stakes involved and the intensity of the fourteen hundred year jihad against us Christians. There are even many Jesuits who do not familiarize themselves with the Islamic scriptures and the exegetical/hermeneutical principles that authoritative Islamic scholars and jurists apply to the Qur’an.

    The net effect of this neglect is manifest all across the Churches. An atmosphere of intense intolerance of the critics of Islam is rampant, even here in North America. The people who maintain this repression of Islam’s critics are guilty of, at the very least, intellectual sloth. This is inexcusable among men (and women)who are supposed to be scholarly and care about the truth. Instead, too many are overeager to impose an ideological template on the controversies.

    This is a great disappointment to me. Would Saint Anselm, St. Benedict, St. Dominic, and St. Thomas Aquinas have fallen into this trap? The current atmosphere of intolerant somnolence will get us all killed or enslaved.

  10. “The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has made Islam a priority of his archiepiscopate and set up a Muslim-Christian forum to promote relations between the faiths in 2006.”

    Christians and Jews = no problem
    Christians and Buddhists = no problem
    Christians and Hindus = no problem
    Christians and different denominations = no problem

    Christian and Muslims? Anyone remember what happend to the pact between Stalin and Hitler?

  11. EnglishSummer: from the grave in now which he turns!!.

    Ahh, that explains the persistent, high-pitched whirring sound I hear in the background.

  12. What Churchill said about Islam will stand as testimony when the real crunch comes. Men of good sense and clear thinking should keep Churchill in mind and not fall into the trap of all that crap about a peaceful religion and such like nonsense. Recent events and articles in the news all over the Western world seems to indicate that the West is capitulating just like what Chamberlin did to Hitler.

    The evel before us is more virulent than Hitler a Million times. Be forwarned. Do NOT regret when it is too late. History itself should reveal to the world what happened to Dhimmies in the past.

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