A Grand Mufti was approved to read from the Quran at Westminster Abbey last Tuesday during a memorial service for a British politician.
According to columnist Rev Dr Jules Gomes, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Husein Kavazović, was invited to read a portion of the Quran from the cathedral lectern during a Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Paddy Ashdown, a diplomat who served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1988 to 1999.
Rev Dr Gavin Ashenden, the former chaplain to the Queen, said the reading repudiates Jesus by validating Islam and asserting the legitimacy of Mohammad.
Reading the Koran in cathedrals is sometimes seen as a sign of civility, hospitality or inclusion. Instead, it validates Islam’s teaching that is predicated on the claim that the resurrection was a fraud and Jesus lied to his followers and the world.
When this happens, it is a sign that the hosts misunderstand the ambition of the Koran and the assertions of Mohammad. In this epistemological conflict between Jesus and Mohammad, the Gospels and the Koran, the core contradiction signified is that one source is authentic and the other is bogus.
By welcoming an uncritical reading of the Koran, Westminster Abbey asserts the legitimacy of Mohammad and in so doing repudiates Jesus. One has to wonder what their claim to be a Christian cathedral rests on at that point?
Rev Dr Ashenden was the Honorary Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II from 2008 until his resignation in 2017 after objecting to a reading of the Quran in St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow.
We shouldn’t be surprised, really. It was Peter Hitchens, who back in 2016 warned, those who drive Christianity out of society are preparing the way for Islam.
In an interview on Conversations with Vicky Warren, Hitchens said: “When they drive Christianity out of Europe, as they’re rapidly succeeding in doing, they will not create an atheist paradise. They will leave a space for Islam.”
Hitchens went on to warn that material prosperity, military force and anti-terror laws are not a reliable or sufficient defence against Islamic take-over. With Christianity out of the picture, the spread of Islam will be near impossible to resist.
“Those people who now campaign for Christianity to be driven, more or less, out of public life, out of education, and out of government, to become a purely private thing may be very unpleasantly surprised when, having succeeded doing that, they simply cleared a space for Islam to take over,” Hitchens said.
The West needs to think carefully and choose wisely. Do we want our societies to be predominantly Islamic or predominately Christian?
