When I arrived in London in September it had been more than forty years since I had last spent any time in the city. If I hadn’t kept up with recent events through my British contacts, the changes would have been startling indeed.
The most popular tourist spots appear much the same, and the commercial areas are still thronged with shoppers. No matter where you go, however, the presence of Islam makes itself felt. With the rapid increase in the Muslim population over the past decade, the capital of Britain has moved that much closer to becoming an Islamic city.
The process of Islamization is not always as obvious as in this poster, which appeared one morning last July at a bus shelter on the corner of Mission Grove and Carisbrooke Road, in the Waltham Forest area of East London:
A straightened out close-up provides a clearer view of what the devout Muslims of Waltham Forest are demanding:
This is the new Islamic Britain as envisioned by the fire-breathing radical Anjem Choudary and Muslims Against Crusades. MAC’s latest initiative is called The Islamic Emirates Project, and its stated goal is “Breaking the Foundations of Western Civilisation”:
Muslims across the UK collectively declared their disgust of British values and their desire to live by the Shari’ah.As Muslim enclaves across Britain rapidly edge closer to Islamic autonomy, Muslims Against Crusades in conjunction with several other leading Muslim organisations would like to declare the next chapter in the ongoing campaign to transform Britain into a thriving Islamic state.
Mr. Choudary lives in Ilford, but he and his supporters are also active in East London, Luton, and other parts of England where Islam is ascendant. He is the most forthright and plainspoken of Britain’s Islamic radicals. No taqiyyah or kitman (sacred lying) for him. He proudly proclaims the coming Caliphate in public, volubly and repeatedly, into the microphones and in front of the cameras.
Denial is rampant among the multicultural oligarchs of the political class. The British government prefers to believe that Anjem Choudary and other Islamic zealots are not serious in their avowed intentions. Their incendiary pronouncements are thought to be mere rhetoric — what they really want is more funding, more generous welfare benefits, new state-supported Koran schools, or more parking spaces around their mosques. Everything is business as usual to the politicos.
The leaders of the three major political parties find it impossible to accept that these “extremists” mean exactly what they say. Acknowledging the problem would force the government to actually do something to save the country from destruction. In the second decade of the 21st century — with millions of Muslims already in Britain, and hundreds of thousands more arriving or being born every year — what could they do? How could Islamization ever be reversed without enormous expense or unimaginable violence?
No, it’s better to pretend that everything is harmonious and peaceful and normal in Modern Multicultural Britain.
From time to time the coming Emirate intrudes even into the tourist zones of London. On Saturday, September 24, under the sponsorship of Mayor Boris Johnson, a huge officially-sanctioned Eid Festival was held in Trafalgar Square. The domed building in the background is part of the National Portrait Gallery:
The cave-like structure below is a stage for performers. When I arrived, loud drumming was coming over the speakers. In the background you can see Nelson’s Column, which serves as a reminder of the greatness that once was, but is no longer:
The drumming was soon replaced over the PA by “Muslim rap”. A large display screen behind the fountain provides an incongruous contrast between the rapper and the nautical-themed statue in the foreground:
The Islamic presence is visible all over London. From Marble Arch to Docklands, from Piccadilly to King’s Cross: on virtually every street can be seen women in hijab, often pushing strollers, and men wearing skullcaps and Islamic robes.
One of my British contacts is a longtime observer of Muslims in the capital, and has analyzed the pattern of their street behaviors:
I regularly walk up and down Ladbroke Grove, Portobello Road and Harrow Road and have noted a process of coagulation or clumping of the sidewalks by Muslim women:• Two Muslim women, each with baby pushcars, can present a significant amount of biomass on a sidewalk — a phalanx of piety? — to the extent that evasive action is required.• Groups of two or three Muslim women are increasingly common — more towards the North Kensington end — in Harrow Road and Kensal Road.• It is also increasingly common to see non-Western dress among Muslim men, both old and young.
Mosques are prominent in many different areas of the city. For example, this is the Regent’s Park Mosque, in a leafy middle-class neighborhood not far from Marylebone Road:
Certain areas of the city are more thoroughly Islamized, however. Tower Hamlets, which hosts the East London Mosque, has a majority-Islamic borough council and a Muslim mayor, Lutfur Rahman:
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