Christians, not Muslims, suffer discrimination – and it’s time to fight back!

Olga Craig complains that it’s Christians, not Muslims, who are being discriminated against in Britain today:

“The cause for such a difference in treatments, many believe, lies with Christianity itself, with its own over-eagerness to encompass multi-faith movements. Damian Thompson, the editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, said: ‘The fact that Christians are persecuted and harassed, while Muslim extremists are left alone to spread their propaganda, can be partly attributed to the incredible wimpishness of Anglican and Catholic bishops in Britain, who have spent decades wringing their hands and apologising for the sins of Christianity – and, now that it is under threat, they simply do not know how to speak up for it forcefully,’ he said. ‘Much of the damaging appeasement of extreme Muslims can be traced back to the multi-faith movement embraced so vigorously by the liberal clergy in the Seventies and Eighties. Offending Muslim sensibilities frightens Church leaders far more than acts of terrorism.’…

“Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, believes that ‘any society must be based on its values. And for the UK they are Judaeo-Christian. The pluralism of the Seventies and Eighties marginalised Christianity. Then secularism came along and effectively neutralised it. So, now we have a moral/spiritual vacuum and anything that is seen to be Christian can be attacked.’…

“One who has fought back is Major Malcolm Hampton, of the Salvation Army. When his band was asked to play carols at the switching on of the Christmas lights in Oakengates, Shropshire, he refused, because the local council had rebranded the event as ‘winter celebrations’ to avoid offending non-Christians. It was, Mr Hampton felt, the final straw. ‘We decided to take a stand’, he said. ‘We are a Christian church and it is a Christian festival which we did not want to see undermined or demeaned. They decided to remove the word Christmas from the event and we thought it was the thin end of the wedge. Enough is enough’.”

Sunday Telegraph, 10 December 2006