'Mosques Take Over Our Cities'

“Mosques take over our cities,” cried the Daily Star; “Church diocese is axed because of Muslim influx,” howls the Daily Express. You can almost picture the wide eyed reaction of the public who read these headlines over the prospect of Muslims taking over cities in Britain.

They follow a Mail on Sunday article which reported that a Church of England diocese in Bradford is set to be merged with a neighbouring diocese because of financial difficulties.

Do the headlines suggest financial problems being the cause of the merger? No. They – and the subsequent line of argument taken by all three articles – suggest that an ‘influx of Muslims’ is causing the number of people that regularly attend the church to decrease.

The Mail on Sunday article states:

“Insiders said the crisis was particularly acute in parts of the country where population shifts had accelerated a general decline in churchgoing, hitting church collections which feed diocesan coffers.”

One “insider” said: “Some areas with a high concentration of Muslim migrants have experienced ‘white flight’ and the Church is struggling to maintain a foothold.”

So the argument is that population demographics have shifted because of Muslim migrants and this has led to a decline in churchgoers. Is the reason not the decreasing numbers of Christians who attend church on a weekly basis that has contributed to the decline in numbers?

This seems to have bypassed the thought process of the writers of these articles. Furthermore, a comment piece in the Mail on Sunday used this opportunity to yet again attack multiculturalism.

“The transformation of this country into a multi-cultural archipelago, whose inhabitants largely ignore each other and where there is no universal agreement on what kind of nation we ought to be, has for years been supported by our liberal establishment, including much of the Anglican hierarchy – even though nobody asked for it or voted for it.”

It is to be asked how they’ve reached the conclusion that people living in our plural society ignore each other? Is multiculturalism the sole cause of changes to our sense of community? What of anomie and  changes to social attitudes of individuals and society in a globalised, highly industrialised, urbane  environment that has been the subject of study of sociologists for a good many years? And has there not been something of a wider consensus, not confined to the much derided ‘liberal establishment’, that we are and should be a pluralistic nation of many cultures living side by side? Would the alternative, a society that is intolerant and hostile toward minorities, better suit the Mail on Sunday?