Rise of radical Islam is filling moral vacuum, says bishop

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE decline of Christian values is destroying Britishness and has created a moral vacuum that is being filled by radical Islam, a leading Church of England figure says today.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, claims that the social and sexual revolution that began in the 1960s led to a catastrophic decline in the influence of Christianity over society, which church leaders failed to halt.

Britain has become gripped by the doctrine of endless self-indulgence, he says, which is leading to the destruction of family life, rising levels of drug abuse and drunkenness, and violence on the streets.

The bishop gives warning in a magazine article that traditional values cannot be restored by politicians' watchwords of “respect and tolerance”, and says that radical Islam is moving in to fill the void created by the decline of Christian ethics.

This comes only days after he accused the Church of England of failing in its duty to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

Dr Nazir-Ali is a leading Church conservative and his claims will put him further at odds with Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has been at pains to promote better relations between Muslims and Christians and who said this year that the adoption of some elements of Islamic law (sharia) could not be avoided.

But the bishop’s words will strike a chord with many people following a week in which Islamic extremists in south-west England were said to have radicalised a young man to carry out a bomb attack on a family restaurant, and in which two more teenagers were murdered, taking the total for the year so far to 29. A string of recent official reports have also provided evidence to back Bishop Nazir-Ali's claims.

One study showed that almost half of newly married couples would end up divorced, while new figures show that the number of people requiring hospital treatment for alcohol abuse has more than doubled since 1995.

Dr Nazir-Ali writes in the new political magazine Standpoint that Britain was a "rabble of mutually hostile tribes” which could never have become a global empire without the arrival of Christianity.

But he says the Church's influence began to wane during the 1960s after centuries of defining the country's beliefs and culture, and quotes an academic who blames the loss of “faith and piety among women” for the steep decline in Christian worship.

Marxist students encouraged a “social and sexual revolution” to which liberal theologians and Church leaders “all but capitulated”, the bishop says. “It is this situation that has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves. While the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place.”

The bishop, who faced death threats this year when he said parts of Britain had become no-go areas for non-Muslims, says Marxism has been exposed as a nonsense but “we are now confronted by another equally serious ideology, that of radical Islamism, which also claims to be comprehensive in scope”.

Asking what weapons are available to fight this new “ideological battle”, he says the values trumpeted by politicians such as “respect, tolerance and good behaviour” are “hardly adequate for the task before us”.

He adds: “The consequences of the loss of this discourse are there for all to see: the destruction of the family because of the alleged parity of different forms of life together; the loss of a father figure, especially for boys, because the role of fathers is deemed otiose; the abuse of substances (including alcohol); the loss of respect for the human person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks on people.”

The bishop, who was born in Pakistan, says Christian hospitality has been replaced by the “insecurely founded” doctrine of multi-culturalism, which has led to immigrants creating “segregated communities and parallel lives” within Britain.

He says that many values respected by society, such as the dignity of human life, equality and freedom, are based on Christian ones.

In an implicit criticism of Dr Williams's claims about sharia, Dr Nazir-Ali says: “Recognising its jurisdiction in terms of public law is fraught with difficulties precisely because it arises from a different set of assumptions from the tradition of law here.” The Church of England must retain its importance in public life even if it does not remain privileged as the established Church.

His comments come after the Vatican's head of relations with Islam called for teachers and imams to do more to combat extremism among British youths.

Mark Pritchard, a Tory MP, welcomed Dr Nazir-Ali's comments. He said: “The calculation of an increasing national moral drift with a passive Church of England and a proselytising Islamic faith should be clear to all policy-makers and national leaders.

“Dr Nazir-Ali's often helpful, but sometimes siren comments are only drowned out by the deafening silence of the majority of other bishops, who fail to accept that these key social issues need to be addressed.”

But Khalid Mahmood, the Muslim Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, said: “The Church of England has watered down its religion too much and should probably go back to the essence of the religion rather than trying to make it fit all people. It's not that radical Islam is taking over, but the Anglican Church needs to look at what it's doing.”

The Ramadhan Foundation, a British Muslim youth organisation, said Dr Nazir-Ali's comments promoted intolerance.