Eye of the Storm

Melanie Phillips’s new book “The World Turned Upside Down”   is a worthy sequel to “Londonistan. How Britain is creating a Terror State Within”. It looks very much like a Jewish plumbline held up to a system on the brink of chaos.  She doesn't pull her punches and writes “Christianity is under direct and unremitting cultural assault from those who want to destroy the bedrock values of Western civilization.” which most of us agree with but dare not say so publicly. In the West, we have unwittingly become participants in a war of worldviews. On the one side is the Judeo-Christian worldview. In opposition are two main rivals: radical secularism, including leftism, whose champions in Britain are people like Christopher Hitchen and Richard Dawkins, and radical Islam, who place the masses like Napoleonic cannon-fodder in their front lines. Indeed, Phillips notes quite appalling similarities between Western progressives and the Islamists but in addition there are many interwoven theological, political, moral and ideological issues. Terrorism is simply one facet of a multilateral approach to achieving "Ummah"

Both are a threat to the free West and to Judeo-Christian values because both are involved in coercive utopianism; both demonise dissent and both have declared war against Israel and the Jewish people. Against their better judgements, both find themselves uneasy allies as they lay siege to their enemy's cultural high ground. Protestant evangelicals are often “passionately supportive of Israel” while the liberal progressive churches are mainly hostile, citing Palestinian repression as the lever for their argument. She sees the established Church of England as especially tainted by leftist, pagan and secular nostrums and values, including contempt for Israel.

Britain has largely allowed the development of a culture which provides fertile breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism. British authorities have done very little to discourage it, and in many ways have inadvertently facilitated home-grown varieties, citing tolerance and inclusivism as the reasons.

Indeed, “London has become the epicentre of Islamic militancy in Europe”. That is, it has “become the major European centre for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism”. She offers two main reasons in “Londonistan”. First, Britain no longer believes in itself and, political posturing notwithstanding,  no longer thinks it has a major role to play in the world. Second, British authorities have seriously misjudged the threat of Islamic terrorism in terms of its global impact. Therefore Britain’s policy has been one of denial, appeasement, self-blame and hiding its head in the sand. It is still to some extent true that when Britain sneezes, the rest of Europe catches a cold and ripples created in London, wash up on the shores of Brussels, Paris and Rome who have their own bush fires to deal with..

The Scripture from Revelation 4:6 springs to mind… “and before the Throne there was a sea (as) of glass, like crystal…” The metaphor of a body of water, calm as a millpond, is in stark contrast to the cultural maelstrom and assault with and by which we are surrounded. In the eye of the storm, however, there is peace and God is well able to make his voice heard at the appropriate time.