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Anti Mosque petition which I will not be signing



Originally uploaded by Karin in Paris.

I received an email asking me to sign a petition against a proposed mosque in east London. I will not be signing it.

It was not clear exactly what was proposed nor exactly what was opposed but it referred to Britain as being a Christian country. As the email had come from and been circulated among people, whom I have never known to darken the doors of a church, this looks like bare racism and I said as much to the person from Brighton Swimming Club who had sent me the request to sign the petition. If the originator of this is traced and reprimanded, it will be well deserved, but as I am far away, it isn't going to be me.

However, all this is not to say that I do not regard the unintegrated Muslim presence as problematic.

I am at present in Sweden, which like Denmark, has generously offered hospitality to people in need of refuge, in line with a long and honourable tradition, only to find it abused. So to claim there is not a problem is a dangerous pretence. On the whole, Moslems are not integrating. They come from such a different culture that they are inevitably going to be at odds with our secular materialist one. In this respect they differ utterly from the large number of Christian immigrants from the Middle East and Asia who now make up a significant minority and have mostly integrated well. So this is not a question of racism.

A further layer of complexity is created by an unholy alliance anti-Christians masquerading as liberals who are anxious to pretend that there is not a problem. The trouble with petitions like the one I was asked to sign is is that they play into the hands of stupid little Englanders like those who dominate Brighton Swimming Club through which I received the request. And equally, it enables the unholy alliance to dismiss the problem as mere prejudice and bigotry.

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