Faith Central - Times Online - WBLG

Nazir Ali no-go backlash

Predictably, though without any visible authority, some Muslim leaders are calling  for Bishop Nazir Ali to resign after his remarks about "no go areas" colonized by Islam in Britain.  Equally predictably, the Daily Mail has found the Chairman of the Muslim Forum to write in support.  Meanwhile Archbishop Cranmer's blog reports that a British blogger called "Lionheart" (modelling himself on the Crusader king, no doubt) is theatened with arrest for objecting to British Islam,  and doughtily says
   "Even if Lionheart is a deluded idiot, political extremist or a raving lunatic, it is concerning that he should be threatened with arrest for his writings. In an important judgement on a case dealing with religious freedom of speech in the High Court on 23rd July 1999, Lord Justice Sedley quoted Socrates and two famous Quakers when he declared: "The irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and provocative have a right to be heard."
    The cross Blogistan sticks in its tuppenceworth too -  but does make the generally lacking point that the Bish has not actually named any no-go areas, and that nobody so far has found one.  Startling, though, is the claim that Nazir-Ali is "biting the hand that feeds him...if  it were not for multiculturalism, the idea of an Asian bishop of a southern English bishopric, let alone a Black archbishop of York - the second highest-ranking clergyman in the whole church - would be unthinkable"   What?  Race, surely, is not equivalent to culture? 

Muslim areas, no-go for Christians?

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali - Britain's only Asian bishop - has written strongly in the Sunday Telegraph claiming that ill-advised multiculturalism is creating areas in Britain with an Islamic character  where it is is difficult for non-Muslims to live and work.  He refers to debates like the Oxford mosque's application to transmit the Call to Prayer).  Apart from issues about noise levels, Dr Nazir-Ali said it also raised questions about "whether non-Muslims wish to be told the creed of a particular faith five times a day on the loudspeaker".
   The Muslim Council of Britain insists that this is unhelpful and that the mosque call is no different from church bells ringing (though it is hard to think of any churches which ring their bells five times a day). But the Bishop's criticism goes far wider than mere noise; and a Synod survey this week says that the multi-faith society is threatening our Christian heritage,  which would have died on its feet were it not for Polish and black African Christians arriving....