The UK’s relentless slide into self-destruction

Tom Lennie reviews ‘No Go Zones’ by Raheem Kassam (2017, Regnery Publishing).

There has been much heated debate in recent years regarding the extent and effects of Islamic extremism across Europe, with Donald Trump being vilified for daring to suggest that Sweden was experiencing major problems with its steady influx of Muslim immigrants.

The idea that there are actual ‘no-go zones’ in various European cities – Muslim-dominated districts where Sharia law can prevail and from which the police stay well clear - has caused even more contention, many liberal commentators insisting that such ‘zones’ are purely a figment of the ‘far right’s’ imagination.

Both the title and sub-title of this book – ‘How Sharia Law is Coming to a Neighbourhood Near You’ - are deliberately (and perhaps unnecessarily?) provocative. The author, a former senior advisor to Nigel Farage and editor of the Breibart website, is himself an ex-Muslim, being brought up in the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam.

In this his first book, Kassam (now a self-confessed atheist) takes on the role of investigative journalist, as he makes a personal tour of the most potent Islamic community-strongholds across the Western world – or at least across Europe and North America.

Kassam makes a personal tour of the most potent Islamic community-strongholds in the Western world.

Selective Survey

I was surprised that the Kolenkit area in Amsterdam isn’t given a mention, nor one of the Muslim-majority districts of Rotterdam. Instead, Kassam restricts his European survey to four other countries - France (various Parisian suburbs, such as Aulnay-sois-Bois, and the southern town of Beziers), Sweden (particularly Malmo, but also Stockholm), Belgium (the north Brussels district of Molenbeek, home to one of the surviving terrorists who took part in the 2015 Paris attacks which killed 130 people and injured hundreds more), and the United Kingdom. Here attention is focused on the Yorkshire town of Dewsbury and on various parts of London.

Crossing the Atlantic, the areas the author is concerned with in the USA are Hamtramck, Michigan (“essentially an Islamic colony in the Midwest”), and the Californian city of San Bernardino – quite different communities to those investigated by Erick Stakelbeck in his 2011 book, ‘The Terrorist Next Door’.

Conversations On the Ground

Kassam discusses the varying degrees to which these districts truly are ‘no go zones’ – clearly not wholly so, since he himself entered each of them relatively freely, although he was careful in his movements. He converses with local residents of differing ethnic backgrounds, as well as local policemen (whose anonymous testimonies often contradict official police reports) and other intelligent parties. 

Through these, and his own insights, Kassam provides evidence that in each of these districts ‘infidels’ are made to feel distinctly unwelcome, a subculture of resentment is fostered against the very nation that hosts them (and very often houses, clothes and feeds them), every effort is made to ensure that Islamic law governs, and extremism is growing at an alarming rate.

Kassam converses with local residents of differing ethnic backgrounds, as well as local policemen.

A Compelling Read

While the intent is clearly to shock and disturb, Kassam does provide a degree of balance.

He is first to admit that the areas discussed in the book are not aflame (for the most part) with radical Islam. You won’t get flogged if you enter them, and you’re unlikely to encounter screeching Islamist imams on their street corners. As is stated in the foreword, often the people who inhabit such districts are victims of their own community leaders, whose very desire is to create no-go zones and to drive a wedge between migrant communities and native populations.

It’s a fast-moving, compelling read, which also discusses the degree to which socio-economic factors play a role in extremism, as well as the part played by Western media and governments, who constantly downplay the reality of the tensions within such ‘problem’ communities. All in all, a fascinating book.

‘No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is Coming To A Neighbourhood Near You’ (256pp, hardcover) is available widely, including on Amazon. RRP £20.99. Also available as an audio-book and as an e-book. 

How to pray for a nation that has turned its back on God.

Today, 8 September, is being observed as a day of prayer by many Christians throughout Britain. Exactly 77 years ago, on 8 September 1940 (a Sunday), King George VI called the nation to a day of prayer.

It was intended to be a day of thanksgiving for what had become known as the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’, when some 330,000 troops were evacuated safely with the help of an armada of little boats to get them off the beaches in France and back to England. But 8 September, as if by some prophetic foreknowledge, came at the height of the Battle of Britain, with thousands of enemy bombers darkening the skies of England.

The prayer day was perfectly timed and the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the RAF took a tremendous toll of the German air force. Then, for no rational reason, Hitler suddenly ordered the Luftwaffe to cease attacking RAF airfields. By 17 September 1940 the German Supreme Command issued an order saying that the invasion of England was postponed “until further notice”. The Battle of Britain was won and Winston Churchill addressed the nation with his iconic speech, declaring, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

Exactly 77 years ago today, the King called the nation to a day of prayer.

How to Pray?

I am on record as saying that I can no longer pray for the health and wellbeing of the United Kingdom. That does not mean that I do not pray for the nation - but I am careful how I pray. I need to pray in line with what I’m hearing from the Lord.

I cannot pray “peace, peace”, if the Lord is saying “There is no peace”! And I cannot pray for revival and blessing if I know the Lord is saying there will be no revival until there is repentance – at least repentance in the Church, if not repentance in the nation.

If there were repentance in the Church, there would undoubtedly be an outpouring of the Spirit of God. This could be the spark that ignites evangelism to the nation as a whole, with the potential of widespread revival. But that is unlikely, because there is so little understanding among Christians of the nature of the battle we are facing.

Political and Religious Red Lines

In Jeremiah’s day both the politicians and the religious leaders were in rebellion against God. They each crossed a red line and that was why Jeremiah was told to stop praying for the wellbeing of the nation and concentrate instead upon praying for those things that would lead to the fulfilment of God’s good purposes.

Jeremiah was appalled by the actions of the king and his political advisers when the envoys of all the nations surrounding Israel met in Jerusalem to hatch a plot to revolt against the Babylonian Empire (Jer 27). Zedekiah had sworn an oath in the Name of the God of Israel to be loyal to Nebuchadnezzar when he was appointed king, so Jeremiah saw this plot as dishonouring to God. He knew that it would lead to disaster for Jerusalem and the whole nation - it was a political red line.

Jeremiah knew that both politicians and religious leaders had crossed red lines – which was why he was told to stop praying for the nation’s wellbeing.

The religious red line was in the rejection by the priests of what’s known as Jeremiah’s ‘Temple Sermon’ (Jer 7), where he outlined the sins of Jerusalem and followed this with a vivid description of the way whole families were involved in idolatry on the streets of the city: “The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven.”¹

All this was going on under the noses of the priests and Temple authorities, who were so convinced that God would never allow the Gentiles to destroy the Temple or the Holy City that they did not care what the people were doing. They were deaf and blind to the dangers facing them.

Britain’s Red Lines

In Britain, there have been successive warnings to both Church and State as we have drifted farther away from biblical truth as a nation and embraced secular values that are directly against the word of God.

As far back as 1985 we began our warnings in Prophecy Today, commenting on the lightning strike on York Minster the previous year, which had occurred only hours after the consecration of David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham. Jenkins had famously described the resurrection of Jesus as a “conjuring trick with bones”. His lack of belief in the Bible shocked the nation, but he was appointed by Archbishop Runcie, who also had little respect for the Bible and was more interested in forming a one-world religion. He led the Anglican Church for 10 years while the forces of secular humanism were gathering momentum in the nation and there was a great need for a strong Christian presence.

In Britain, there have been successive warnings to both Church and State as we have drifted farther away from biblical truth as a nation.

We believe that the political red line was crossed in the UK when David Cameron came back from an EU leaders’ meeting in 2010 determined to be a good European and obey their directive that all member states should accept same-sex marriage by the year 2013. Cameron managed to meet that deadline by driving the Act through Parliament, against the wishes of more than a hundred of his own MPs.

Judgment immediately fell upon Maria Miller, the Minister who had steered the Act through Parliament, who lost her job within weeks. Cameron was spared long enough to call the Referendum enabling Britain to get out of the godless EU, but Brexit immediately ended his political career.

The Church of England Synod in July this year breached a religious red line when it rejected an amendment committing the Church to be more active in evangelism and sharing the Gospel with people of other faiths in Britain, while at the same time agreeing to devise a service to celebrate the new gender of transgender people. This committed the state Church to supporting the objectives of the LGBTQ movement, which is determined to destroy the family and human identity as men and women created by God.

God’s Good Purposes

I believe the Lord has now removed his cover of protection over the land which has already resulted in an increase in acts of terrorism and disasters such as the Grenfell Tower fire. So how do we pray for a nation that has deliberately put itself against God?

I believe the Lord has now removed his cover of protection over the land.

Again, Jeremiah gives us the answer. He says, “The Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of the temple of the Lord” (Jer 24:1). One was full of good figs and the other full of rotting fruit. Through this picture God revealed his long-term purposes for the good of the nation.

We need to discern the purposes of God for Britain – for the Church and for the nation as a whole. I am convinced that in the long-term God does have good purposes for the nation that will bring blessings and prosperity, but we will have to go through a difficult time which will truly test the dwindling faith of the nation.

This is where the faithful Christian minority has a vital role to play, to do what Ezekiel calls ‘standing in the gap’ (Ezek 22:30): to seek the Lord together, to intercede for those who do not know how, to discern how the Lord would help us recover what is being lost to our spiritual enemy and to pray positively into these issues.

This is where the wisdom of the Holy Spirit is vital and where mature, Bible-believing Christians can play an historic part in reviving the Church and bringing the nation back under God’s protection.

Notes

1 The ‘Queen of Heaven’ was a title for Ishtar, an Assyrian and Babylonian goddess (also known as Ashtoreth/Astarte).

Does Team GB's Olympic success prove that Britain is still 'Great'?

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, Britain is undergoing something of an identity crisis. Our news media are populating our screens with stories that reassure us in some way that Britain still has lots to offer.¹ We do have potential, we do have a future – we are still Great Britain!

Olympic Fuss

Newspapers and TV screens are filled with Olympic success. Never have our athletes done better! Next week they will be coming home with pockets full of gold and silver and bronze. Our ranking in the medal tables has exceeded all expectations. Team GB has done brilliantly, but has the media coverage been excessive? It is as if the rest of the world has stopped turning for two weeks!

Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, rescued in Aleppo. See credits below.Of course, it is the 'silly season' for news when politicians are all at their beach resorts trying to forget Westminster, the economy, the world and all the other things that fill their minds through the rest of the year. But do we risk shutting our eyes to the horrors of war still taking place in Syria? Dare we turn a blind eye to the little boy in the ambulance in Aleppo, his blood-stained face in deep shock, too traumatised even to cry – his home just blown from around him by a Russian or a Syrian bomb?

Perhaps, as a nation, our confidence has been so greatly shaken during the past three months that we are trying to focus upon something which increases our sense of security and self-worth. The removal of the EU crutch by the Brexit vote left us suddenly feeling wobbly and vulnerable, in need of something else to grab onto to steady ourselves. The Olympics came at just the right time!

The news media has seized the moment to rejoice in a new wave of patriotism² – it's a bit like the last night of the Proms as we watch our athletes getting gold and the world listening to our national anthem! Is this heralding a return to the old nationalism – the patriotic sentiment that much of the media were ironically so keen to dismiss during the Referendum campaign as old-fashioned and backward-looking, compared with the glamourous, cosmopolitan lifestyles promised by the EU?

Suddenly Britain's national 'greatness', our position relative to all other nations, has become all-important again – at least for the Olympic fortnight.

Our national confidence has been so shaken during the past months – no wonder we are trying to increase our sense of security and self-worth.

The Search for Fulfilment

It is human nature to seek security and safety, identity and fulfilment – and this is true at a national level as well as for individuals. For Britain, we are at a very special juncture in our history: trying to come to terms with the imminent removal of that which has given us a major sense of security and identity - of 'who we are' as the United Kingdom - for more than 40 years of EU membership.

Of course, the shock of Brexit might ultimately be good for our island's entrepreneurial spirit – forcing us to go it alone and prove that we Brits 'have what it takes' to succeed in the modern world, instead of riding on our past colonial successes or our membership of the EU bloc.

But ideally, the shock will also encourage people to ask deeper questions about our direction as a nation, rather than just grit their teeth and struggle on.

Blessed Assurance

Whether they are quite conscious of it or not, many people are feeling shaken and unnerved by the current volatility – politically, economically, socially, culturally - both at home and abroad. All bets are off; our previous 'way of life' can no longer be taken for granted. Nobody knows what the future holds.

Given this state of affairs, it is not surprising that the mainstream media is scrabbling around desperately for something else to lean on, something seemingly stable. But as the nations are shaken, God's loving intention is that people turn to him – not to some other definition of identity that revolves around our own strength and prowess as human beings. Ultimately, we were designed to seek and find our fulfilment in the God of Creation, before anything and anyone else.

Many people are feeling shaken and unnerved by the current volatility – all bets are off.

There may be a strong sense of anti-climax when the Olympics are over but if those who do have a faith in God can use this opportunity somehow to present a more hopeful vision for the future, we could see the nation gaining a new sense of purpose and direction – a newly-strengthened identity in God! We should not overlook the fact that a huge amount of prayer for the nation preceded the Referendum - the opportunity is there now for Christians to share their faith in God with others.

The only ones who have access to true stability and peace in these difficult days are those who have found their ultimate security, fulfilment and protection in the immovable Rock of Ages, the Lord Jesus. Our fellow Britons will not find genuine stability from any other source – so we MUST make sure that they see him in us! We have a mandate to declare and live out the truth that God alone holds the key to all unknown – and will be a sure foundation for all who trust in him.

References

1 Perhaps they are assuming that those who voted Remain are still in the depths of despair, and/or hoping that those who voted Leave have since changed their minds!

2 See similar analysis from Alan Cowell of the New York Times, 18 August 2016.

Paul Luckraft reviews 'The Servant Queen and the King she serves' (2016, 64 pages, Bible Society, HOPE, LICC), a unique and magnificent tribute to Her Majesty.

This book is being published jointly by the Bible Society, HOPE and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC), to mark the Queen's 90^th birthday in April. In a year in which the UK will be looking ahead to its future in or out of the EU, we also have the opportunity to reflect on the many decades of faithful service of one of the most remarkable and Godly monarchs in our long history.

Co-written by Mark Greene of LICC and Catherine Butcher of HOPE, this short book is a magnificent tribute to Her Majesty. It focuses primarily upon her own words delivered in her Christmas messages over the course of her long reign - words which reflect her deep faith in Christ and the gospel. Her gratitude to God for his steadfast love and continued faithfulness is commented upon in the foreword which Her Majesty wrote especially for this publication.

In the foreword, written by Her Majesty especially for this publication, her gratitude to God for his steadfast love and faithfulness shines through.

The book also contains several well-chosen anecdotes - sometimes humorous, always enlightening, which add to the overall impression of a real person behind all the pomp and ceremony of her position. Despite having many servants (though she would never regard her staff as mere servants) she always feeds the corgis herself!

Pictures of her smiling face as she meets and greets people while going about her duty are plentiful, but perhaps most striking is the close-up of her face in quiet prayerful reflection on Remembrance Day.

Through this book we come to understand just how dedicated she has been to the calling placed upon her and how hard she works on a daily basis. Her devotion to us stems from her devotion to God, and for that we can all be profoundly grateful.

Her Majesty's devotion to her people stems from her devotion to God, and for that we can all be profoundly grateful.

Two small snippets of information stood out for me. There was one part of the Coronation ceremony which was not televised as it was considered too sacred to show, but which is described here. This was the moment when all the regalia was removed and, dressed in a simple white dress, the Queen was anointed with oil and set apart to serve.

The other fascinating insight recounts how, when in residence at Sandringham, she often comes unannounced to join the local congregation at the church on the estate. No chauffeur, no ceremony, she slips in through the small side-door and takes a seat in one of the pews - not even the special one reserved only for her. She has simply driven herself to church because she wants to be there.

Overall, this is a very moving account of the private faith of a very public person. For me, what comes through these pages is an overwhelming sense of true majesty. I felt a strong impression that to simply stand - or kneel - silently in her presence, before her throne, would be to get a foretaste of what it will be like one day when we stand - or kneel - before the eternal throne of the King of Kings (and Queens!), the King she serves. And that she would humbly accept our homage as such.

This is a very moving account of the private faith of a very public person – and what comes through these pages is a sense of true majesty.

Bible Society, HOPE, LICC have designed this unique book to be given away to friends and colleagues, to start conversations and to bring communities together.

You can order 'The Servant Queen' through CPO by following this link.

Single copies are priced at £5 + P&P, with bulk orders (packs of 10) bringing the cost down to £1 + P&P. Extra resources also available for school and community distribution.