The End Of England?

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
First Posted Monday, June 02, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Culture: Two Christian preachers in Britain have been told that trying to spread the gospel to Muslims is a hate crime. It's another sign that much of England has given up on being England.
British media are reporting that Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, American evangelical ministers who've been living in Great Britain for years, were told by a police community support officer to "stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham."
Cunningham said the officer told him and Abraham in February that they "were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."
The men also said the officer told them that if they returned, they would "get beaten up." It's not clear from media reports who would administer the beatings, the Muslims or the police.
Either way, this is another disturbing example of a great nation ceding its culture because its elites are too invested in political correctness. They're so intent on establishing themselves as models of tolerance and moral defenders of diversity that they're willing to be cowed by the radical elements of Islam that are eating away at their civilization.
Already the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has said that "Shariah law is inevitable" in the United Kingdom, and menacing no-go areas in Muslim neighborhoods where non-Muslims should fear to tread have cropped up.
Maybe Williams has given up. But one Anglican bishop, a brave soul who happens to have a Muslim name, has not. Pakistan-born Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, has made it clear that England has to fight for its cultural life and cannot yield to Islamic extremists who he says are taking advantage of the moral vacuum left by a nation that has largely abandoned Christianity in the wake of the 1960s cultural revolution.
As Archbishop Williams was busy surrendering his nation and his faith earlier this year, Nazir-Ali dared to publicly refer to the no-go areas in Muslim neighborhoods and blame them on government multicultural policies that create divisiveness. For that, this courageous clergyman has received death threats.
England would do well to listen to Nazir-Ali, tune out Williams and resist giving in to the impulses of opinion shapers who have opted for moral cowardice. If not, there will be no England, no Great Britain, left.
As it is, England has become a revolving door of migration, the rotation of which is putting a new face on an old nation. Britons are leaving in large numbers and are being replaced in larger numbers by outsiders.
While many of the foreigners relocating in Britain are skilled workers who are necessary to the health of the economy, the country is experiencing a brain drain, the worst in 50 years, the media say. The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development says no other nation is losing qualified people so fast.
A large number of Britons are no doubt leaving because of better financial opportunities elsewhere in the Anglosphere. But how many are quitting because they no longer see the Britain they grew up with and the Britain of the future for which they longed? Have they sensed that in another generation, Great Britain as we have known it, the nation that spread the grand principles of the Western culture throughout the world, will no longer exist?
England isn't the only country where the culture is disappearing. Growing Muslim populations across Europe and a tendency for Europeans to roll over for their invaders rather than insist that they assimilate have raised legitimate fears that we are watching the formation of Eurabia.
All over the Continent, policymakers are giving in to Muslim demands for special protection under the law while trembling in fear they might offend Islamists. Our fear is that if the trend isn't reversed, the U.S. will yet again have to rescue Europe from itself.