Throughout the past decades, and gaining considerable steam in the recent decade, radical Islam has gained a true foothold in traditional British institutions - schools, government offices, hospitals, banks, the workplace. This seems largely due to the reticence of the general population and the reluctance of the British government to take a stand.
Witness Archbishop Rowan Williams (see ASKEW article, who astounds the western Christian world with his blatant antics (which includes announcing that Shariah Law is "inevitable" in Great Britain), yet receives hardly a word of criticism from his own church. Witness the vitriolic preaching in Arabic - inciting a takeover of Great Britain for Allah - not only in mosques in even small cities now, but in public squares. Notice the announcement of the intent of Britain's banks to incorporate Shariah-based banking into their institutions. Notice the courts bending over backward to find ways to begin to allow Shariah Law-based "justice" for Muslim cases (one hardly knows which is more offensive: the ugliness that Shariah represents, or the willingness of a western country to so disrespect centuries of a liberty, fairness and equality-based judicial system).
Americans would be wise to study what is happening in Britain and take a good (second) look at that which is occuring in our own institutions. The article at Bridgend Patriot ends with a thought-provoking statement:
The irrationality and barbarism found in the sharia code and Islam has no place in British Christian society.
The scary point is that it isn't COOL to have a "Christian society" in Britain, nor America, no anywhere else in Western Europe. It has become so uncool that the cultural elite would prefer to allow another religious ideology - no matter how fundamentalist and cruel in its philosophy - to usurp the foundation that centuries of Christian/Judeo thought has built - one that has assured liberty, has guaranteed to a greater extent equality in our justice system, which has worked to benefit both worker and conglomerate, which has pressed for equal opportunity for women and minorities, which sees persecution due to religious belief as wrong (let's remember that Britain has centuries of Protestant and Catholic blood already paid to learn that lesson).
How far we've come in this insane PC ideology - how far beyond logic or reason it's morphed - that we not only refuse to acknowledge the positive influence of Christian/Judeo thought on our society, but we even refuse to allow our children to learn it. (Although learning the Pilars of Islam is chic enough to invade the average classroom!)
The day will come when we all have to make some choices. When our backs are against a wall - and they will be - we will each have to define right and wrong for ourselves. The shame is that the West will see a lot of pain before that time, and pay a high price for its determined blindness.
