LONDON (AFP)
Islamic extremism has turned some areas of Britain into hostile "no-go areas" for non-Muslims, a Church of England bishop said on Sunday, calling for less accommodation of Islamic practices.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Nazir-Ali said non-Muslims find it hard to live or work in these separate communities.
Muslim leaders and politicians dismissed the bishop's comments as scaremongering and said there was no evidence to support his views.
The Pakistan-born cleric compared the hostility found in these "no-go areas" to the intimidation associated with some supporters of far-right political parties.
"Alongside these developments, there has been a worldwide resurgence of the ideology of Islamic extremism," said the cleric, whose father converted to Catholicism from Islam.
"One of the results of this has been to further alienate the young from the nation in which they were growing up and also to turn already separate communities into 'no-go' areas where adherence to this ideology has become a mark of acceptability.
"Those of a different faith or race may find it difficult to live or work there because of hostility to them. In many ways, this is but the other side of the coin to far-Right intimidation." |
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Less accommodation Nazir-Ali went on to criticize British attempts to accommodate the practices of other faiths, including the Muslim call to prayer and incorporating aspects of Sharia (Islamic) law into the country's civil code or banking system.
His comments are likely to fuel further discussion about the effects of immigration and Britain's tolerance of other cultures, which has been increasingly questioned by the country's mainly right-of-center press.
Nazir-Ali said he feared that by not upholding Christianity as the British faith, a multi-faith "mish mash" was being created that lacked the "underpinning of a moral and spiritual vision".
"(The) establishment of the Church of England is being eroded. My fear is, in the end, nothing will be left but the smile of the Cheshire cat," he wrote.
"If it had not been for the black majority churches and the recent arrival of people from central and eastern Europe, the Christian cause in many of our cities would have looked a lost one."
But the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said Nazir-Ali was "talking nonsense" and had no evidence to support his views.
"This is irresponsible scaremongering," an MCB spokesman said. "Where are these so-called areas that he's talking about?"
The newspaper also noted a survey of the Church of England's "parliament" the General Synod suggesting 63 percent of senior clergy thought the Church could cease to be the preferred national religion within a generation. |
