Whenever harsh Islamic laws in Muslim countries come into question it seems that British Muslims are quick to defend those laws by pointing out that above all, Islam preaches that Muslims must have respect for the laws of the country in which they live. If pushed, British Muslim leaders admit that true Islamic law calls for the death penalty for those who leave Islam and convert to other religions or for those who become atheists (AKA apostasy).
On the weekend two different articles published in the Telegraph newspaper predict that a fifth of the European Union will be Muslim by the year 2050 and if this figure is accurate then what changes to our laws might we very well expect to see as a result?
Many will point out that if even if the forecast of 20% is accurate, Christians will still remain the sizeable majority but while this may very well be true, what is sometimes forgotten is that all religions are not equal. Christianity, for all its past and present evils, is a relatively benign force when compared to Islam. In addition a child growing up within the Christian faith is sooner or later free to decide whether to stay or to leave the church. The same can not be said for Muslims.
In recent history American fundamentalist Christians were responsible for several very violent anti-abortionist attacks and another, Timothy McVeigh, blew up a building full of innocent people. There have been a few other examples of this sort of extremist behaviour but the violence by Christian fundamentalists has hardly been on a par with attacks by Muslims on the rest of Christendom or even with attacks by Muslims on other Muslims.
Of course many British Muslims would disagree. They would no doubt argue that our armed forces have been marching all over Muslim countries killing people just like the Crusaders did in the eleventh and twelfth centuries but surely this is unfair as Christianity was not the driving force behind their actions. The reasons for their presence have little to do with any Christian versus Muslim mentality. They are there to attempt to promote stability for the majority of the indigenous people of those countries. Indeed some of our soldiers are themselves Muslim and wherever possible their agenda has been largely one of training police and armed forces so that those countries will eventually become responsible for their own stability.
I am an atheist who is moving more towards anti theism with each fresh atrocity that I see perpetrated in the righteous name of religion. My ideal world would be one without any gods; one in which a child born in Dublin would be labelled neither Catholic nor Protestant but would just be seen as a child. We would never call a child whose parents were bird-watchers an “ornithologist child” so why with religion do we label a child from birth and thus make it someone’s enemy before it has even learned to walk?
I think that there is a cause for concern over the growth of Islam in Europe. However much we would like to pretend that all religions are equal, they plainly are not. Islam has been so slow and unwilling to adapt thus far. Its core beliefs are rooted in dogmatism of the purest immovable order and its most central belief, that the Koran is the literal word of God, makes it unlikely to change. The majority of its followers are taught that the rest of the world will adapt in order to accommodate and incorporate Islamic belief rather than the other way around. What hope can there be when faith explicitly forbids compromise?
See:
“A fifth of European Union will be Muslim by 2050”
(Telegraph 08.08.09)
and
“Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent”
(Telegraph 08.08.09)
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