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| “The Lord has not forsaken me.” - Open Doors Revisits Nigerian Widow of Pastor killed by Fulani militants |
"Over 340 million Christians suffer persecution and discrimination. They follow Jesus, no matter the cost. With your help, we're bringing them resources and hope. - Open Doors"
From The Nigerian Voice: "3,462 Christians Hacked To Death By Nigerian Jihadists In 200 Days,3000 Abducted, 300 Churches And Ten Priests Attacked".
These are far away problems for Christians in the West where Anglican clergy share their joyous lives with others on Twitter. Life is 'lovely' in their little bubbles. Less so for others.
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| Speaker's Corner Mail Online |
Mail Online reports: "Met Police are slammed for failing to catch knifeman five days after he stabbed Christian preacher, 39, in Charlie Hebdo T-shirt at Speaker's Corner in front of 30 witnesses in broad daylight."
Christian Concern addresses the problem in "Speakers’ Corner stabbing: ‘Freedom of speech is already in danger’."
But where is the concern from the top? Instead, the Archbishop of Canterbury apologises for events in the past.
Now the Church of England is to apologise for medieval expulsion of Jews: "Bishops confirm that an 'act of repentance' is being planned to atone for anti-Semitic church laws which led to the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290."
In 2752, in the unlikely event that there will be a Church of England, perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury will apologise for ignoring the plight of Christians in 2021!
Welby speaks with a forked tongue at the best of times.
ReplyDeleteHe has nothing to say of any interest to me.
The so called Christians in Llandaff and Wales are so busy debating gay marriage that they don't have time to consider those dying for their faith just a couple of thousand miles away.
ReplyDeleteThey make me sick to my stomach and ashamed to be a. "Christian".
I am sure that the Governing Body will note it in September, probably offering mealy-mouthed words, before moving on to talk about gay marriage, which is so important!! Committees are good at making minutes and wasting hours. Thank you, AB, for highlighting this important issue of what our Christian brothers and sisters have to endure, not only in Nigeria; but in Mozambique, Kenya, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Here in Britain, the attack on Hatun Tash was utterly disgraceful - but then if the perpetrator was caught, what would their punishment be? A slap on the wrists, and a "don't do it again". Isn't the wall of silence from Britain's bishops deafening?
ReplyDeleteSeymour
I worry less about the violent excesses of very occasional lone fanatics, because we've always had those - ranging from the mentally ill whose delusions very frequently take a religious tone ('God spoke to me and instructed me ...') to the gimlet-eyed sectarian utterly convinced of his possession of the truth and of his vocation to destroy error and the peddlers of error. The only difference over the last half century is that Britain now has more Muslim specimens of that second sort - simply as a consequence of Britain now having more Muslim residents than was once the case.
ReplyDeleteWhat does worry me a good deal more is my sense that a considerable number of ostensibly calm and peaceful Muslims living in Britain, people who would genuinely deplore violent physical attacks of the sort reported here, nevertheless believe that legislation ought to be introduced to proscribe certain things which Islam views as blasphemy and which are heavily punished in Muslim-majority countries.
Only in the last few decades - well within my adult lifetime - have we as a society finally pretty well shrugged off the ancient legal inhibitions against 'Christian' blasphemy: those of us of a certain age recall Mary Whitehouse, the proposal to prosecute the producers of 'Life of Brian', &c. An authentic God doesn't really need his creation to protect him from insult, and when I finally saw 'Life of Brian' (years after it was first shown) it struck me as quite a religious piece of work in terms of its theme!
What I do fear is that, in response to this apparently significant current of Muslim opinion, we'll end up, not with an updated blasphemy law, but rather with legislation which effectively defines public critique of the teachings of Islam as 'hate speech' inviting prosecution and a sentence by a court. That, rather than blasphemy, would be how it'd be termed these days!
But in effect it would be a blasphemy law - but one which solely safeguarded the susceptabilities of Muslims. And that strikes me as wholly unacceptable in our sort of society.
You must remember that their aim is to transfirm "our sort of society" into their "sort of society".
ReplyDeleteI doubt that the sort of people whom I described - 'ostensibly calm and peaceful Muslims living in Britain, people who would genuinely deplore violent physical attacks of the sort reported here' - are co-ordinated enough or sufficiently militant to actively seek to 'transform "our sort of society" into their "sort of society"'. As I see it, it's rather that their sense of propriety conflicts with ours.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me is that, prompted by the advocates of 'inclusiveism', we might conceivably accept and implement their agenda.
"Ostensibly"?
DeleteTaqiyya.
Are you seriously proposing that every Sunni Muslim individual holds to an identical agenda involving the Islamization of government in Britain? Having lived for a decade in an area of north-west England with a latge south Asian Muslim population, that certainly hasn't been my experience.
ReplyDeleteReally?
DeleteHow many churches have closed, been taken over and reopened as mosques?
How many traditional British butcher's shops have been closed and replaced by Halal butchers?
Have you tried asking for non Halal meat or meals at Subway, Pizza Hut, McDonald's or Burger King? Or non halal meals on wheels, at school kitchens, NHS facilities or prisons?
Have you ever even tried asking the question?
Churches close because circumstances change, or congregations dwindle, and they become unviable and ultimately redundant. Non-Christian groups which have grown numerically in the last half-century buy at least some of them after they've closed, because they're both large enough and adaptable enough to serve their purposes for worship and community. I recall one former Congregational church in the area of north-west England where I used to live - made redundant by the unity scheme between the Congregational church in England and the Presbyterian Church of England - which was indeed sold to a Muslim group. And by now quite a flourishing one.
DeleteBut Muslims aren't the only purchasers. I recall one redundant chapel building in the south Wales valleya quite some years ago which was reincarnated as a small factory making beds. And the last two redundant free church chapels of my acquaintance weren't bought by Muslims: one has become a Hindue temple and the other a Buddhist centre.
As to butchers' shops, if the proprietor retires and puts his premises up for sale, he's very likely to accept the best offer that he gets. That's human nature! No conspiracy is necessarily implied by the purchase.
As to the purveyors which you list, I haven't asked the questions which you pose because I rarely if ever eat the sort of highly processed meats in which most of those purveyors specialize. They're not good for you!
However, before retirement I was professionally, if peripherally, involved in the the provision of 'meals on wheels'; and there was certainly no interest whatsoever in ensuring that any meats utilized were 'halal'. The over-riding concern was to provide quality meals at the least cost! And in reality minority ethnic communities tended not to use the 'meals on wheels' service, because the meals provided were created for 'native British' tastes rather than for the food preferences of minorities. Market forces tend to rule in such matters!
Might I gently - and, I hope, courteously! - suggest to you that it's possible to become a tad paranoid about this issue?
I fear you're choosing to be somewhat naiive John.
DeleteThe point isn't whether the foods are highly processed but whether a, they're halal, b, whether they're being forced on the rest of the population by stealth, or c, both.
If the provision of meals on wheels was just as you state, then why did Cardiff County Council's social services complaints procedure (known as AM3A) from the 1990s cite, as aavalid example of discrimination, the lack of halal foods in their meals on wheels provision?
The same procedure makes no mention of kosher or non halal foods at all.
What of school, NHS, immigration detention centres and prison kitchens? I realise you probably don't eat there either John but those who do are undoubtedly being given halal without being told or offered a choice.
There's a very significant difference between using halal meat as a matter of course - which rumour suggests has happened occasionally in some organizations, public bodies included, simply because it simplifies procurement and thus cuts costs - and catering specifically for the dietary requirements of minorities. In short, I'm wholly opposed to the former and wholly in favour of the latter - across the board, indeed, whether in the area of social care or in prisons.
DeleteHaving said that, my experience was that south Asian ethnic minorities make next to no use of social care facilities of any sort, 'meals on wheels' included, because in their communities the expectation is that care of the frail elderly and disabled relatives is squarely and entirely seen as the responsibility of the family. In practice, this means that it's the job of daughters, daughters-in-law and sisters! To 'palm it off' on to state institutions is seen as disrespectful and dishonourable, and carries a social stigma in their community. Alongside poverty, that culture is the explanation of the number of multi-generational households which have given Covid-19 such a successful run in south Asian heritage households.
My experience was that use of statutory social services by the south Asian heritage community was negligible to the point of near non-existence. I do recall one Gujerati Muslim family who did seek social service involvement around the care of an elderly relative. Each time I went to the house a different member of their community was present, visiting; I never saw the same visitor twice. Their disapproval of the family seeking to shrug off their responsibilities - as the visitors saw it! - was palpable, though they were invariably pleasnt and courteous to me and I was alwys given a dish of 'Bombay mix' along with a cup of tea - the only time I've ever tried it.
The Afro-Caribbean heritage community does make more use of social services, but there the issues which are primarily concerning you don't arise. I know of one district in which they're concentrated where they organized themselves to operate a voluntary day centre for the elderly, to which the local authority gave financial support. It suited everyone, because the elderly clients could natter comfortably to one another in Jamaican patois which would have wholly baffled indigenous old folk if they'd all been thrust together. There are perhaps a few forms of apartheid that do make sense!
Though I do take your point about the introduction of halal meat 'by stealth', so to speak, which strikes me as both undesirable and unethical. But my impression, arising from such media coverage of the issue that has come my way, is that this is driven primarily not be Muslims but by wholesale butchers and meat purveyors on the basis that 'Muslims have very particular dietary requirements and the majority community as a whole doesn't - quicker and easier, then, (and cheaper!) if we just use halal meat across the board, for everyone. Emphatically not something that should be happening!
Come, come John.
DeleteWe both know this issue has absolutely nothing to do with simplifying procurement or cutting costs and everything to do with political correctness and pandering to an increasingly vocal minority in the interests of "community relations".
The issue also has very little to do with south Asian minorities for precisely the reasons you provide.
I cannot agree with you that any form of apartheid "makes sense", ever. As for any patois, following hopefully a long and fruitful life in the UK, a basic level of conversational English should have been mastered.
Do you know of financial support given by local authorities towards day care centres for elderly Welsh, Polish, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hebriw or other ex pat communities within our socially engineered multi-cultural society?
I think there is a paranoia around about undermining 'community relations'; hard to draw any other conclusions from the reluctance of authorities in parts of England to acknowledge that the issue of 'grooming' is related to one particular community. I have my own theories as to why that's the case, but that would be a distraction in our current conversation!
DeleteBut I've never heard of a single Muslim who pursued the agenda of trying to ensure that most if not all Brits were engineered into adopting - whether they knew it or not - a halal diet. Their concerns in my experience have always been focused around the religious and cultural sensitivities of their own people.
Though I do want to modify something I carelessly said in my previous post. Generally I'm indeed happy that the cultural/religious preferences of discrete communities are respected by authority. But that ought not to allow exemptions when a decision as been arrived at by the wider society here. If the consensus here in the UK is that animals should not be slaughtered without having been stunned first, there should be no exemptions to that - even if Muslims, and Jews too, argue that this offends their religious beliefs. Minorities attempting to dictate are an instance of the tail seeking to wag the dog.
I favour the French approach enshrined in their political doctrine of 'laïcité', though I think they take it farther than necessary: to forbid an observant Muslim woman from wearing a hijab in civic premises strikes me as no less 'over the top' than penalizing a civil servant for wearing a crucifix at work. But the principle that civil society and religion are two different things is in a fundamentally secular society a sound one. The French, having gone through their revolution, have adjusted to that rather better than Brits, because here the vestiges of the old order (e.g. the monarch having to be an Anglican) have thus far survived. In France all that was swept away after 1789.
But I can't see any reason why facilities for minority groups shouldn't be assisted by local authorities, where the voluntary sector is able to provide them because there's a demand. The notion that everyone should be corralled into one uniform provision strikes me as unnecessarily totalitarian. Socialist, even! Old people - especially with cognitive impairment - relate to their past rather than their present. And if they prefer to chat to peers with a similar history in Jamaican patois, where's the harm?
The Afro-Caribbean day centre which I mentioned was assisted by two neighbouring local authorities, because the West Indian heritage population lived in their areas. Few lived within the boundaries of the authority for which I worked, so we weren't involved with that. Nor did we have any significant numbers of elderly residents of Welsh, Polish, Hungarian, Latvian or Lithuanian heritage, so there was no demand for facilities for those groups.
What we did have, within the local authority for which I worked, was the greater part of the largest orthodox Jewish community in the UK outside London. That community too had evolved a voluntary sector social care organization providing residential as well as day and home care for members of the Jewish community. And the council for which I worked, alongside a neighbouring local authority where a lot of Jewish folk also lived, provided support to that organization too, to help continue its operations. Just as that other local authority which I previously mentioned did to support the continuance of day care facilities for the Afro-Caribbean heritage community.
The same overriding principle was applied across the board. And, I think, rightly.