A Muslim Voice for European Christianity

[Valin]

Religion and Other Curiosities:

Peter Berger

3/14/12

 

The Tablet is an international Catholic weekly published in Britain. It was founded in 1840, a time when British Catholics still suffered from various civil disabilities. Today it is a very useful source of information about events and ideas in the world of the Roman faith. In its issue of February 18, 2012, it published two separate but related stories that captured my attention.

 

The first story deals with Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who is the first Muslim woman to be a cabinet minister (in the government of David Cameron); she is also a co-chairman of the Conservative Party, with Basil Feldman. (The name suggests that he is Jewish. Googling him did not divulge his religious identity. I cannot help hoping that he is Jewish: I love the idea that the old party of Colonel Blimp may now be headed by a Jew and a Muslim.) Warsi, who was elevated to the peerage as a true and trusted Tory, is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants. She was raised in Yorkshire (whose distinctive accents still echo in her speech).

 

(Snip)

 

The story of Sayeeda Warsi embracing the Christian heritage of Europe has important implications for the much-discussed issue of the Muslim presence in Europe. She has been attacked as “un-Islamic” by some of her co-religionists (she shrugs off these attacks). But survey data from Britain and from other European countries indicate that far more Muslims would side with her, not with her critics. (A recent survey of Muslims in France spoke of “the republican majority”.) This is not to minimize the danger from the minority addicted to radical versions of Islam and in some instances ready to express the radicalism in acts of violence. To be sure, even a small minority with such ideas can cause a lot of trouble. But these people are a minority. Most Muslims in Europe want to become an integral part of their several societies. The notion of “Eurabia”, an Islamized continent, is at this point an improbable dystopia.