Christians told to unite with Moderate Muslims against Mega-Mosque
Christians at this year's Keswick Convention urged to unite with moderate Muslims in opposition to East London mega-mosque plans.
by Maria Mackay
Posted: Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 6:39 (BST)
Christians gathered for this year's Keswick Convention have been urged to unite with the "fair-minded" Muslim community of East London in opposing plans to build a mega-mosque there.
This was the call of Steve Bell of Urban Vision, one of the main speakers at the three-week event that got underway in the Lake District last Saturday.
"I would stand with the Muslim community in the East End who have protested," he said. "Three thousand Muslims, at the last count, have actually signed a petition against the mosque. The sentiment seems to be, 'If we have such a huge mosque in our locality, we want it to be for the whole of our community.'"
The proposed mosque has been linked to the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat movement, which Bell said "are struggling to prove they are not directly linked to terrorism", as the FBI and MI5 continue to monitor its members and activities.
The group's theology, meanwhile, is rooted in a branch of Saudi Arabian Islam known as Wahhabism not widely supported in the Muslim communities of the UK.
A petition to oppose the mega-mosque on the Downing Street website has accumulated more than 45,000 signatures.
An email campaign encouraging people to vote against the mega-mosque in an online poll by the Evening Standard, meanwhile, sparked controversy recently for citing what London Mayor Ken Livingstone called "false claims". These included the claim that the Mayor's office would spend £100m of public money on the mega-mosque, something he has refuted.
Partly in response to the email campaign, Bell challenged his audience to relate to the Muslims in their communities with grace.
"Grace is responding to others the way God responds to me; with patience, kindness and without rudeness ... Jesus touched our lives by his grace - we must extend the same courtesy to Muslims," he said.
"Some prominent Christians are sounding more like the BNP. I believe it is possible to respond to Muslims in a Christ-like way without being politically naïve or theologically liberal, and I haven't found a better way than the way of grace."
The Keswick Convention runs until 3 August and is expected to attract around 12,000 people of all ages over its three weeks.
World renowned evangelist the Rev John Stott will make what is expected to be his final public address at the Keswick Convention tonight.
Copyright © 2007 Christian Today. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Have your say on this article
The comments below are readers' personal opinions and are in no way intended to reflect the editorial opinion of Christian Today.
Added: Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 9:46 (BST)
The issue of mega Mosque to some might be a very big problem ,why not let us realise that God is allowing this to be able to rouse us from our slumber .This is a challenge to evangelism,do you think that this could have come up if aggressive evangelism has captured most of these advocate of Mega Mosque in East London?It is a pointer to the fact that the day is far spent and night is near,our master will soon come.
However,God cannot fail,he will again win as we join hand and form a TEAM.
ADEEKO M.O, NIGERIA
Added: Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 8:27 (BST)
I have gone into this scare about the mega-mosque with some care since I received the email to sign the petition. I commend to people the answer from the Evangelical Alliance, which I paste below:
From: EA Information and Resources Centre
Dear Gill,
Thank you for your enquiry about the proposed mosque in east London. Although it does not mean that a new application may not be forthcoming at some point in the future, as you said, it was recently announced that that there is no current planning permission or application for a mosque and Newham Council does not expect a planning application in the near future.
For these, and other reasons, we appreciate anything you can do to discourage people from forwarding what we believe to be scare-mongering in an email doing the rounds.
The Alliance has been watching developments relating to the proposed mega-mosque in East Ham for some time and has participated in a number of meetings and discussions on this issue. Many of these have involved Alan Craig, the Christian Peoples' Alliance councillor in Newham. He has undertaken extensive research and been heavily involved in canvassing local opinion from across a number of different religious and non-religious perspectives. The work he has done convinced him that there is a strong and reasoned case against the construction of the mosque for a range of local, national and security reasons.
We believe that it is these arguments that will carry - or may even already carried - the day and that whilst we do not want to discourage people from participating in online newspaper polls on this issue, ultimately they are extremely unlikely to carry any weight in the final decision.
We are also concerned that mention has been made in emails of tax-payer's money going towards the mosque. This is totally untrue as statements on the Mayor of London's site have made clear. Part of the statement referring to the emails currently circulating on this which quotes Ken Livingstone at http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=11471 reads:
The allegations in these emails are clearly designed to deliberately whip up communal hatred and contain content that is entirely untrue. They are clearly being spread in an organised way for unscrupulous political reasons.
Factually there is no proposal to use any public money at all for such a mosque; there is no link between plans for a mosque and the Olympics; and, as widely reported, there are actually no plans for a mosque on the scale claimed in the email.
This email campaign is a disgrace and should be clearly condemned as such. Besides the lies it is spreading for political purposes it aims to stir up hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The Mayor has written today to Veronica Wadley, Editor of the Evening Standard, asking her to clarify that the paper repudiates the content of the mass email, and asking the Standard to clarify to readers and visitors to the website that the poll will be disregarded as totally unrepresentative.
It has also emerged today that similar false claims about the mosque relating to the online poll are being promoted by the British National Party on their website, describing it as 'the biggest symbol so far of the Islamic colonisation of England' and urging readers to 'Please go to the Standard website and add your own 'No' vote. And please forward this email on to everyone in your address book' .
For those who wish to get some trustworthy background on the issues, and some of the objections (many of which have also been voiced by others) we suggest you visit http://www.cpalliance.net/news.asp?ID=229.
You will also find some helpful articles at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/programmes/politics_show/6040892.stm and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/25/do2502.xml
The Alliance is committed to constructive engagement and strongly recommends that people first look into the issues and the arguments on both sides before contemplating participating in petitions or other forms of campaign. We will not be issuing our own analysis of the situation but are happy to commend the work and conclusions of the CPA to members and others and to also solicit prayer on their behalf.
Kind regards
Maggie Harding
Information & Research Officer
Evangelical Alliance
Gill Kimber, Alba Iulia, Romania
Added: Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 8:20 (BST)
"Christians gathered for this year’s Keswick Convention have been urged to unite with the “fair-minded” Muslim community of East London in opposing plans to build a mega-mosque there."
Would you be kind enough to show me in the Holy Scriptures where The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of being "fair minded"?
Great Britain once was a Christian country and being Christian is what made it great. This means all of Great Britain is Holy Ground and all mosques and temples are a blasphemy to The Father God and The Lord Jesus Christ.
To you I say repent of your Laodicean condition forthwith before God spews you from His mouth.
Charles Crosby, Bournemouth UK
