Is the Tide Turning in the UK?

Maybe:

THERE HAVE BEEN SIGNS of a political as well as a popular reaction against the consolidation of Britistan. Labour politician and former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, with 25,000 Muslims in his constituency, has suddenly come out and insisted Muslim women remove their veils when they talk to him. Previously, as journalist Charles Moore put it: "Mr. Straw has always stood out for his Islamophilia, and has sometimes been craven towards extremists. When the Danish cartoons of Mohammed were published, he attacked the European papers that printed them, not the mobs who burnt the Danish flag. I even have a strong memory -- though I have not been able to trace it -- of him say 'the Prophet Mohammed -- Peace be upon Him' on the radio."

There have been Muslim demands for Straw's resignation. And guess who else attacked Straw for his stand? The Morning Star, ghostly undead successor to the Communist Party's Daily Worker, which still carries the red star of Communism on its masthead!

It seems at least some of the Tories are toughening up too. Tory defense spokesman Gerald Howarth has said Parliament may need to legislate to ban the veiling of women and that "It's time we stood up for our Christian heritage." Such sentiments have not been heard from any mainstream politician for many a long day.

But most incredibly of all, even an element of the Anglican Church, normally seen as having the gumption of a wet crumpet, now seems to be acting up. In an extraordinarily strong document, "Cohesion and Integration," prepared by the Archbishop of Canterbury's interfaith advisor Guy Wilkinson for the House of Bishops, it has attacked multiculturalism and says divisions between communities have been deepened by the government's schizophrenic approach to multiculturalism and "privileged attention" to Islam.

It says the Church of England has been sidelined and preferential treatment has been afforded the Muslim community despite the fact it makes up only two or three per cent of the population. It says Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country and moves to label it a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda.

The document goes on to list moves made by the government since the 7/7 bombings including using public funds to fly Muslim scholars to Britain and shelving legislation to ban forced marriages. This attempted appeasement has produced no noticeable positive impact on community cohesion, the report says.

Even more astonishingly, it is reported that the Bishops received the document well. One bishop said it was the first time the Church had launched into such a defense of the country's Christian identity. This, says commentator Melanie Phillips, is "a seismic reversal, in a Church that for decades has been its inter-faith knees before multiculturalism and abandoned its defense of Britain's Christian identity. Can it be that Christianity is at last starting to defend Western civilization?"

And is there a new wind blowing through literary and intellectual circles? Speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, novelist Martin Amis, son of Sir Kingsley Amis, attacked "miserable bastards" in the British Muslim community who were brainwashing young men into joining a death cult.

If so, it wouldn't be the first time the Brits woke up to a danger and met it head-on.