Posted on 03/13/2004 2:31:26 AM PST by Doctor13
Jonathan Birt, the son of Lord Birt, and Emma Clark, the granddaughter of former liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, are only two of 14,000 mostly-elite white Britons having reverted to Islam, reports said.
According to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon, carried by the Sunday Times on February 22, some of the country’s top landowners, celebrities and the offspring of senior Establishment figures have embraced Islam after being disillusioned with Western values.
The new study by Yahya (formerly Jonathan) Birt, son of Lord Birt, former director-general of the BBC, provides the first reliable data on the sensitive subject of Christians’ reversion to Islam.
He uses a breakdown of the latest census figures to conclude that there are now 14,200 white converts in Britain.
Speaking publicly for the first time about his faith, Birt argued that an inspirational figure, similar to the American convert Malcolm X for Afro-Caribbeans, would first have to emerge if the next stage, a mass conversion among white Britons, were to happen.
"You need great transitional figures to translate something alien (like Islam) into the vernacular," Birt, whose doctorate at Oxford University is on young British Muslims, was quoted by the Times.
"The image of Islam projected by political Islamic movements is not very attractive," he said.
Initially, Birt said he had no coherent reasons for converting, but "in the longer term I think it was the overall profundity, balance and coherence and spirituality of the Muslim way of life which convinced me," he said.
Meanwhile, it emerged last weekend that Emma Clark, the great-granddaughter of a British prime minister has converted. She said: "We’re all the rage, I hope it’s not a passing fashion."
Clark, who helped design an Islamic garden for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home, is now helping create a similar garden for a mosque in Woking, Surrey, on the site of a car park, said the British newspaper.
Furthermore, fresh evidence came last weekend that Islam has received formal acceptance at the heart of the Establishment. The Queen has approved new arrangements to allow Muslim staff at Buckingham Palace time off to attend Friday prayers at a mosque. A member of staff in the finance department is the first to take advantage of it, said the British paper.
Many converts have been inspired by the writings of Charles Le Gai Eaton, a former Foreign Office diplomat, it added.
"I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world," said Eaton, author of Islam and the Destiny of Man
What is Radiance ViewsWeekly? A link?
The epitome of idiocy.
Is there a particular reason you chose to post the same crap, over and over?
And your point is?
You posted the same thing at least three times.
It is more efficient to address multiple people in one post.
Takes up less space and is less annoying.
Welcome to FR.
What brings you to a year old dead thread?
"What would you call a religion whose beliefs, practices and followers are being bashed and bad-mouthed in practically every sphere of activity, in almost every corner of the globe, yet it attracts ever-increasing numbers of people? "
Any religion that promotes rape and murder the way Islam does isn't worth a cup of hog spit.
I detect the piquant odor of troll.
In my life, I've known three female converts to Islam (one Irish, the other two white Americans). In their cases, they did it to make their Muslim-by-birth husbands happy. I understand that this is true of many female Brits who convert as well. It will be interesting to see how this phenomenom plays out as the Islamic population grows and intermarriage becomes more common.
It is no myth: There are now more practicing Muslims than Anglicans in the London area.
Yes, he is a troll.
An Allaha worshipping troll.
Oh drats, he went all 'splodey.
Very, very, very scary.
If they wanted God and traditions, they should have become Traditionalist Anglicans or Catholics. Unfortunately, having been taught to hate Britain and the West and to revere foreign cultures, they seek enlightenment and trancedence elsewhere.
The people who should have led a new Great Awakening have turned on the decadent west.
Antonio Gramsci may have sought to spread an updated Marx, but his ideas have become a tool for Mohammedans.
Can you imagine if Colin Powell had been elected president, as some were urging? A darker Jimmy Carter.
This is propaganda....and a load of old cobblers. If he thinks the average bloke is going to be separated from his pint and Page 3 girls, he's out of his mind.
Regards, Ivan
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