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England's Alienated Immigrants
by Keith Carey
Historically, England has been an example of the principle that if you don't go with the gospel, people will come to you and get it. In the fifth century, as the Roman Empire crumbled, the strongly Christian Celts were pushed into what is now Wales by Anglo, Saxon, and Jute invaders. It took centuries, but these invaders eventually became believers. The Norman Invasion that brought Scandinavian peoples to their land meant that there were new neighbors to hear the gospel. In time, these war-like Scandinavian invaders heard and responded to the gospel of peace.
During the days of the powerful British Empire, England led the way in sending missionaries throughout the world. But after World War II, the Church in England became less actively evangelistic. Church attendance dwindled as secularism clouded their people's minds. Fewer Brits were willing to go as missionaries. But in the midst of this spiritual downturn, something unusual has happened. The people groups that the British missionaries did not reach overseas came to Britain. Today if you were to line up 100 residents of the U.K., 93 of them would be white, and seven would be people of color.
The Muslims of the UK
In the late 19th century, more Muslims went to England, but it wasn't until the years following World War II when there was a labor shortage that many from Bangladesh and Pakistan immigrated. Most of these people were unskilled workers who had little education. They were not well versed in Islam. Initially, they tried to adapt to British culture, and quietly prayed in their own homes. As they settled down and more families arrived, they found that they needed mosques and imams more than ever. There were marriages, births, and funerals, which called for the revival of traditional customs.
Now this English nation of 59 million has about one and a half million Muslims. If current trends continue, the number of Muslims who attend mosque may surpass the number of Anglicans who attend church in the U.K. by 2013, and all Christians put together by 2039, according to a Christian research organization. Already, many well-known churches in the U.K. have been converted into mosques. Some Muslims have called for the Islamic evangelization of England, a call that has alarmed Christians and secularists alike.
Muslim evangelization of secular Brits is highly unlikely given the hostile race relations in the U.K. A government report issued in late 2001 said that whites and ethnic minorities are deeply divided and that they are leading separate lives with no social contact and no sense of belonging to the same nation. The writer said, "Many communities operate on the basis of parallel lives. These lives often do not seem to touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote any meaningful interchanges.… There is little wonder that the ignorance about each other's communities can easily grow into fear, especially when this is exploited by extremist groups."
In the summer of 2001, this dismal situation resulted in England's worst race riots in 20 years. The children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants that came after WWII to work in industrial cities now find that jobs are scarce. They have a high unemployment rate, and they are natural competitors to Britain's white underclass. Even in cities where white and brown people live, they have segregated neighborhoods. All it takes are some violent extremists from one group to provoke the other. And the result two summers ago was 15 million dollars in damage and 300 injured police officers.
Even the lower class Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who try to fit in with mainline English ways are still derisively called "Pakis," by the whites. Some turn to heavy drinking. Others find even more destructive outlets for their frustration.
An article in the April 24, 2002 edition of the New York Times explains how such frustrated youth are easy recruits for militant Muslim clerics who believe that hatred and killing are spiritual virtues. Being unemployed, looked down upon, and having no future, were conditions which made anything look good to people like Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, both infamous terrorists who received at least some of their training in the U.K. The article points out that there are many Muslims with a rebellious streak who find their way to this land where freedom of speech is protected. Some are critics of their home government, while others are clerics who favor violence in the name of Islam. One second-generation Pakistani immigrant who joined a jihad movement in England explains it like this: "We were lured by the secular non-Muslim world, but we were always outsiders. While our parents wanted us to remain traditional…we had no depth of knowledge about our religion. Then some of us found the true way."
England's Hindu and Sikh Communities
Today, 83 percent of the Indians own their own homes. By contrast, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are at 40 and 36 percent respectively. Even those Indian nationals who do not make their fortune in the U.K. have hope that their children will be able to afford what they could only dream of possessing.
Ethnically, most of these immigrants are either from Gujarat (250,000) or Punjab (125,000). There are even more Punjabi Sikhs than there are Punjabi Hindus.
One of the things for which Punjabis are famous is their cuisine. Many restaurants boast of serving Punjabi food throughout the subcontinent of India. Opening a restaurant is a good way to make a living in today's U.K. There are more than 8,000 Indian restaurants in the U.K. That's more than the number that are in Delhi and Bombay combined! Though the number of Indian restaurants in India may be depressed because Indians don't usually go to restaurants in their own country, that number is still impressive.
Many of the Indian Hindus in England are more prosperous than the whites. A June 2001 article written by an English Hindu said, "The way Asians dominate the scene in the U.K. makes you feel that they are the core section of the society. Their integrity and resourcefulness have made a lot of British jealous. Jealousy would have been productive had it pushed the whites to do a spot of hard work. But they appear to sit back and fret and fume over the high standard of living Asians are increasingly enjoying. Some Indians chuckle at the very thought of being richer than most Britishers." Does this sound a bit smug?
The writer goes on to say, however, that South Asians in the U.K. told him, "Tension is so raw that we can taste it. Polarization has increased. We are tolerated, not accepted. Many of them remarked that after some years they would like to go back home-if for nothing else, at least to die in their own country."
With these attitudes, it seems as if it might be difficult for British Christians to reach out to their South Asian neighbors. Who is going to reach them? Fortunately, there are groups like Operation Mobilization, Christar and Gospel Missionary Union that send workers to reach these people for Christ.
Will you pray?
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