British PM Cameron Lays Out Vision for Fighting Islamic Extremism In Heavily Muslim Birmingham

The problem of growing Islamic extremism in Great Britain that Prime Minister David Cameron addressed in a speech Monday is responsible not only for sending British recruits to ISIS, but also fueling persecution of Christians at home. Speaking in Birmingham, where there is a significant Muslim population, Cameron pledged to tackle extremist ideology and "the failures of integration" which he said has led to hundreds of Britons joining the Islamic State group, according to the BBC:

One of the communities most affected by the home-grown Islamism is the immigrant Pakistani Christian community. In many cases, the victims are going through a second persecution.

Take Stephen Anjum. He left his native Pakistan in a hurry in 2009, along with his wife, Thomasena, who was shot by members of the Taliban. According to Anjum, she recovered "miraculously."

The couple and their children sought asylum in the UK, but according to an acount he gave in an interview with Aleteia, it has been an uphill battle, beginning with his asylumn application. Anjum said the official of the Home Office who interviewed him was accompanied by two Muslim women who were being trained by the Home Office and ended up objecting to Anjum’s claims.

The family finally did win asylum status, though, but life in Birmingham, where they were assigned a place to live, has been challenging, to say the least. Living among Birmingham’s immigrant, largely Islamic, community, the Anjums have had to defend themselves and their children at almost every step of the way.

The latest was just a fortnight ago, when Anjum, who is diabetic, stepped outside his office on his lunchbreak to eat a banana and was soon accosted by two Muslim youths who virulently accused him of breaking the Ramadan fast.

The incident might be humorous were it not so common. The Anjums have been accused of desecrating a local mosque by placing their trash in a receptacle near the house of worship. Their children have faced threats in the local public school because their Muslim classmates believe they converted from Islam to Christianity (in fact, both the mother’s and father’s families have been Catholic for several generations), 

"We complained because a group in the school was trying to teach him Islam," Anjum said. "A group of teenage girls were always giving him religious books about Islam. … The children are so radicalized they don’t tolerate any Christian child in their environment. They believe conversion is a sin, so they were always bullying him."

Anjum said there are areas of Birmingham that are now considered "no-go areas for white people. If they go they smash their car windows. They say, ‘Why do you come here? This is our area.’

"My wife and I used to go there to buy Asian foods," he said. "We were scared to go there because sometimes she wears trousers, and one day there were two Muslim clerics on the road who said, ‘Why are you not wearing a scarf? Where is your burqa?"

One person who has been in a position to see what is happening also represents an immigrant Christian community in the UK, Bishop Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom. He notes that such persecution tends to affect Christian immigrants from Pakistan much more than those from Egypt or other parts of the Near East.

"One of the traits of the Muslim community in Britain is that it does cluster, very much as you would have, I think, in Dearborn, Mich.," he said in an interview Monday. "I’ve witnessed cases [of persecution] in the Pakistani community, and it especially falls upon Muslim background converts."

Bishop Angaelos, a native of Cairo who will be conferred the honor of Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to international religious freedom, believes the problem is getting worse "in some areas." Of particular concern are sections of England where there is "clustering" of Islamic immigrants "and it becomes much more introspective, much more exclusive, and it becomes a community within a community, which is kind of destructive. These communities become separate unto themselves and they don’t have much interaction with the wider community, and I think that’s damaging for them and the wider community."

Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, has said written that conversion from Islam is a phenomenon that especially raises the ire of some Muslims. "In every branch of Islamic law [it is] punished by death, certainly for males, and usually for females," Chowdhry says. "Some experts suggest that about a third of so-called ‘honour-killings’ in the UK are the killing of relatives who have converted from Islam, nearly always to Christianity."

Chowdhry says the problem is so bad that some Christian groups have felt the need to set up networks of safehouses for such converts, or those fleeing from forced marriages.  His organization is raising money for such safehouses. 

Says Chowdhry, "Speaking out is a must, and not being cowed by a culture dominated by a cultural and moral relativism that would rather cling to conformist factoids to than to confront hard facts."

John Burger is news editor for Aleteia’s English edition.