Liz suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Ken’s mega-mosque will encourage extremism

Irfan al-Alawi & S. Schwartz

Wednesday, 3rd January 2007

Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz warn that the Olympic mosque has been conceived by Islamic radicals, supported by politically correct politicians, and will add to divisions in Britain

In 2007 Britain will almost certainly be the chief testing ground of the attempt by radical Muslims to gain more power and influence in Western society.

The United States, too, is threatened by militant Islam — not least by the prospect of terrorist attacks on its own territory — but the problem in the United Kingdom is much greater. In America, radical Islamists have used civil rights legislation and the habits of multicultural courtesy to gain advantages that might not be available to them in Europe. At any rate there has been no debate there about niqab or face-covering. Britain, however, gives the impression of a society approaching a fork in its historical road: either towards more ‘Islamisation’ of the broader society or towards a powerful backlash as Britons grow increasingly troubled by the apparent forcible dilution of the majority culture.

The fork in the road could be reached later this year if the go-ahead is given for the building of the massive, intrusive — and bizarre — Sunni mosque complex to sit alongside the 2012 London Olympics centre. All the indications are that the go-ahead will be given.

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Cummins may be part of the green ink brigade, but he was right about Islam

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle looks back at the case of the British Council employee who dared to speak the truth about Islamic ideology — and notes that what was heretical in 2004 is now almost orthodox