Egyptiskfødte konvertit og journalist Magdi Allam er blandt meget andet europaparlamentariker for Italien.

In a profoundly symbolic gesture (hat tip Tundra Tabloids), which epitomizes the Catholic Church’s abject dhimmitude, high-profile Muslim convert to Christianity Magdi Christiano Allam, has renounced his Catholicism because of what he terms the Church’s weakness toward, and legitimation of, Islam.

Allam, who will remain a Christian, reiterated his belief that Islam is inherently violent, to both its own votaries, and non-Muslims, and criticized The Church for lacking “the vision and courage to denounce the incompatibility of Islam with our [Western] civilization and fundamental rights of the person.”

When Benedict XVI himself oversaw Magdi Allam’s public Easter 2008 conversion from Islam to Christianity, in St. Peter’s Basilica, the intrepid Mr. Allam clearly enunciated Islam’s defining bellicose intolerance, while extolling the Pope’s moral courage. Andrew Bostom. Magdi Allam: “Lascio la Chiesa, che legittima Islam e protegge immigrati”. Magdi Allam, baptisé par Benoît XVI en 2005, quitte l’Église catholique, A prominent Muslim convert leaves the Catholic Church.

Man kan høre den tale, Magdi Allam holdt i EU parlamentet 2012, som jeg videofilmede.

»I’ve changed my mind, public opinion was right«

David Goodhart: Among Left-leaning ‘Hampstead’ liberals like me, there has long been what you might call a ‘discrimination assumption’ when it comes to the highly charged issue of immigration.

Our instinctive reaction has been that Britain is a relentlessly racist country bent on thwarting the lives of ethnic minorities, that the only decent policy is to throw open our doors to all and that those with doubts about how we run our multi-racial society are guilty of prejudice. And that view — echoed in Whitehall, Westminster and town halls around the country — has been the prevailing ideology, setting the tone for the immigration debate.

But for some years, this has troubled me and, gradually, I have changed my mind. Over 18 months of touring the country to talk to people about their lives for a new book, I have discovered minority Britons thriving more than many liberals suppose possible. But I also saw the mess of division and conflict we have got ourselves into in other places.

Goodhart is now convinced that public opinion is right and Britain has had too much immigration too quickly.The fault lies with our leaders, not with the people who came for a better life. There has been a huge gap between our ruling elite’s views and those of ordinary people on the street. SATURDAY ESSAY: Why we on the Left made an epic mistake on immigration By DAVID GOODHART

Et uddrag af The British Dream af  David Goodhart tidligere redaktør af Prospect Magazine og korrespondent for Financial Times. Den udkommer 1 april

“The mosque in Merton, which dominates its neighbourhood, replaced an Express Dairies bottling plant which provided a few hundred jobs for local people and lots of milk bottles — an icon of an earlier, more homogenised age.

The symbolism is not lost on the mainly white older residents, who, when I was there researching the effects of mass immigration on British society, did not seem to be embracing diversity with as much enthusiasm as the proponents of multiculturalism think they should.

They are not unusual. Thanks to over-rapid immigration in recent years, Britain is heading for an ethnic minority population of around 25 per cent by the end of this decade.

And in Merton in South-West London, and too many places like it, a polite apartheid reigns: an accommodation rather than an integration. The white population has more or less reluctantly shuffled along the bench and allowed others to sit down.

There is no dominant minority in Merton, which helps to make the changes feel less threatening; but there is not much evidence of a common life being built together either. London is not the happily colour-blind multi-racial city that many people like to imagine.

You can see it in action at weekends in a small park close to Morden station. On a sunny day, the place is usually full but divided along ethnic lines: large groups of Pakistani women picnicking with children, Polish guys drinking beer, young Indian men playing cricket, Africans playing basketball.

But to many locals, that’s not the point. As one man — described as White Heritage Elder Male in the jargon of race relations — told a Merton council focus group: ‘We’ve lost this place to other cultures. It’s not English any more.’

Local political leaders will often privately admit to the same concern — though, as in all areas of high minority settlement, they have no choice but to celebrate the new diversity.

And from their vantage point, things do often look more integrated than they really are. For at the gatherings they attend, there will usually be a cross-section of the local minority elites mingling happily together and sharing the same interests and concerns.

(Some cynics note that the places where the deepest common life is being forged between the new and the old tribes of urban England is in the local political class and the drug gangs.)A mega mosque in a suburb that was 90 per cent white 30 years ago and the polite apartheid dividing Britain- Adapted from The British Dream by David Goodhart, to be published by Atlantic Books on April 1, 2013 at £20. © David Goodhart.

Se også Telegraph i dag:

Britain will have the ‘toughest immigration rules in world’ after reforms, says minister.