Non-Defenders of the Faith: Christianity Under Assault in England

'It was a riot—a riot perpetrated by Muslims. So, of course it could not openly be described by the police as being a riot; that would contradict the official government narrative that all the agitation was on one side only here.'

From Crisis

By Steven Tucker

Muslims and mosques were not the only targets attacked during the recent U.K. race riots. Christians and churches were targeted too—but most media and politicians don’t want you to realize that. Even worse, nor do certain prominent priests.

Not that you’d know it from mainstream media, but the most persecuted religion in the world right now, in terms of sheer numbers of those affected, is Christianity. Yet there are certain places on the planet where you might not expect this to be the case: traditionally Christian countries, for example, like England.

During the U.K.’s recent race riots, the distinct impression was given that the only places of religious worship targeted by hooligans and protestors were mosques. But was this really so? 

In the early hours of August 7, a statue of the Virgin Mary standing in an illuminated external niche outside St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in the London suburb of Wembley was reduced to rubble by person or persons unknown. Unlike bricks being hurled at English mosques of late, however, this particular outburst of iconoclasm received precious little domestic media coverage. News of the statue’s ruination only really made it out via social media, where the following photograph was spread:

This caught the attention of the only sizeable U.K. outlet besides The Catholic Herald to touch the story, GB News, a conservative rolling-news station. On  August 11, GB News ran a detailed online report headlined “Christians left PETRIFIED after attack on church during riots as media IGNORES mob chanting ‘Allahu Akbar.’” Here, they spoke of having seen unspecified videos “that appear to show attacks on Christians in London.” GB News reporters tracked down the local Wembley worshipper who had posted the viral photo of the ruined Virgin Mary statue, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity, for the sake of safety. 

The congregant told GB News his or her immediate thought was “to get this online” as otherwise “I knew there wasn’t going to be news coverage on this.” Why? Because, said the informant, there was an obvious possibility this was the work of “someone who had a motive of hatred towards Christians,” something which, unlike the criminal actions of people motivated by hatred of Muslims, was not a topic the British media were terribly interested in. 

Referring to a highly partisan post-riots speech by Britain’s new left-wing Labour Party Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, in which he had hyperbolically accused an organized network of neo-Nazis of attacking English mosques through sheer race-hatred, the congregant continued as follows:

I wanted to push the message out that Christians are being attacked too… We feel fearful. If the police actually did their job and protected all citizens, I think that would be positive. Our Prime Minister talks about how we should protect the Muslim community—using language that enrages half the community [by disingenuously labelling all anti-immigrant protestors as Nazis] when actually he should be protecting the whole of the UK as our Prime Minister.

Maybe he should. But as is so often the case for Western politicians like Starmer, it seems that certain communities are now much more equal than others.

Nobody knows yet who destroyed the statue of Mary in Wembley, but the apparent implication of the local worshipper is that, under the rule of “Two-Tier Keir,” should the police or mainstream media discover it happened to have been a Muslim, they could not necessarily be relied upon to report the fact openly or honestly. After all, as part of the same report, GB News also provided details of another disturbing incident which also took place on August 7 in a separate London suburb, Croydon, where a mob of around fifty Muslim males, many clad in balaclavas, rampaged through the high street completely trashing it whilst chanting “Allahu Akbar!”

Once again, unlike the endlessly replayed attacks on mosques, this event was curiously under-reported—to the extent that most British people don’t even know it happened, as they are not supposed to. If the media’s chosen tactic of cover-up was simple silence, however, then that of the police was one of blatant lying. Even though riot police had to intervene to restore order by making several arrests, this is the tweet London’s Metropolitan Police put out to “explain” the incident:

Of particular significance is the line “This is not linked to protes this appears to be pure anti-social behavior,” as if they were just a bunch of random drunks. This sounds like nothing less than a clear two-tier policing attempt to publicly absolve the Muslim community from the specific charge of rioting, something obviously only evil white “neo-Nazis” ever do, never non-white Muslims. In actual fact, though, the “anti-social behavior” in question appeared to have been organized in direct response to a fake rumor that fascist thugs were about to descend on Croydon Mosque and pummel it. 

GB News unearthed the following alleged account of a direct witness: 

Somebody claimed that some of the EDL [English Defence League, an old U.K. far-right group who don’t even exist anymore] had arrived near North End. Some guys went down to see if they were there. They weren’t. Police arrived saying they had intelligence that some of the Muslims had weapons. They searched a guy, it turned into a scuffle. 

In other words, it was a riot—a riot perpetrated by Muslims. So, of course it could not openly be described by the police as being a riot; that would contradict the official government narrative that all the agitation was on one side only here, when clearly the truth was otherwise. You can see why the St. Joseph’s parishioner didn’t trust the media to cover the vandalism of the Virgin Mary statue properly in the land of Two-Tier Keir.
U.K. authorities simply seem to care far more about hate directed against Muslims than against any other faiths these days. As the riots continued, Starmer’s Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, M.P., announced a “new rapid response process” to offer millions of pounds to any mosques wanting to increase the security around “these important places of worship.” 

Considering mosques were the main buildings being targeted, this initially sounds reasonable. Until, that is, you realize this was simply building upon an already pre-existing government-funded “Protective Security for Mosques Scheme,” already primed to hand out up to £29.4 million this year anyway. The U.K. government will fund security for threatened Christian churches, too; but they have to apply to a more generic “Places of Worship Security Funding Scheme,” alongside Sikhs, Satanists, Scientologists, and anyone else. 

The fact that Muslims (and Jews) get their own separate protection funds could either be seen as a recognition that mosques and synagogues are simply more under threat in Britain (the latter largely from some of the more extreme worshippers to be found in the former) than Christian churches or Sikh temples are. On the other hand, it could once again be seen as an indication that the quietly anti-Christian British State just views Christians as unspoken second-class citizens. 

Interviewed earlier this year, Nick Tolson, a former official on the U.K.’s Places of Worship Security Panel, argued that

Crime against churches is often assumed to be normal crime unless proven otherwise, whereas crime against other faith communities is [automatically] considered hate crime unless proven otherwise. This creates an imbalance in recording that crime which in turn can create disharmony between different faiths as one can seem to be treated differently from others… It is often the one that shouts loudest [i.e., Muslims yelling “Islamophobia!”] that gets the Government funding rather than the ones that actually need funding.

Crime against Christian places of worship is actually widespread in the U.K.: the last available figures, for 2020/21, record over 4,000 incidents, whether hate-based or other more opportunistic offenses like theft. Some of these do indeed appear to be committed by Muslims. 

Earlier this year, in the Essex seaside resort of Southend, a church and two shops were daubed with intimidatory graffiti reading “This is a Muslim area,” something a local community organizer explained away as follows: “We believe it was a one-off incident by one idiot.” If the graffiti had been on a mosque and halal food stores, reading “This is a Chrisitan area,” it would have been the work of a sinister, hundreds-strong, neo-Nazi cabal. As local ostentatiously tolerance-loving councillor James Courtney explained, “Southend is a vibrant and diverse city where differences are celebrated, and people feel safe to be themselves.” Not if you invite thousands of people who are not terribly tolerant at all to come and live among you they won’t.  

Perhaps the most telling anti-Christian crime in Britain in recent years came in 2017, when a Pakistani immigrant named Tajamal Amar was knocked unconscious in the street by, he says, a gang of Muslims offended by the fact he had a visible cross displayed in his car. This was no one-off, he lamented: “When they first find out [I am Christian], many [local Muslims] stop talking to me. My wife and I have often been shunned.” Ironically, Amar had escaped Pakistan due to being shot after refusing to convert to Islam; now he wished to escape his adopted English hometown of Derby, too, as it was now every bit as full of Muslims as Islamabad: “I fled from Pakistan to escape violence such as this, but more and more the same violence is coming into Britain.”

When Pakistani asylum-seekers in Britain are compelled to seek further asylum elsewhere because certain parts of Britain are now more like Pakistan than Pakistan itself, you know the country is in deep trouble.

But the most prominent representatives of the Christian churches in Britain just don’t seem to really care. In the wake of the riots, some anti-immigration groups began claiming demonstrators were merely defending Christianity against demographic conquest from abroad. The alleged Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, disagreed, writing an August 11 op-ed in left-wing newspaper The Guardian, calling all such rallies “anti-Muslim, anti-refugee and anti-asylum seeker.” To object to a borderless world was now “fundamentally anti-Christian,” said the Arch-Imam: 

The Christian iconography that has been exploited by the far-right is an offence to our faith, and all that Jesus was and is. Let me say clearly now to Christians that they should not be associated with any far-right group—because those groups are unchristian. Let me say clearly now to other faiths, especially Muslims, that we denounce people misusing such imagery as fundamentally antichristian.

Elsewhere, Welby went on national radio to declare of protestors that “They defile the flag that they wrap themselves in… They talk about defending this country’s Christian values…Jesus said: ‘Love God, love your neighbour, love your enemy.’” Yes, but love your self-declared enemy even to the point of handing your nation over to them wholesale? 

Summing up the recent unrest, Welby concluded: “This is not the UK, it is not British, it is not English.” Indeed not: “This is not the UK.” Isn’t that precisely what the protestors were trying to tell you, Archbishop? Never mind the actions of the biased government, police, and media. Who will now defend English Christianity if not even the actual, literal, Church of England?