Christians are now the most despised minority in Britain, says Tom Harris in the Telegraph, with the Left in particular showing itself unable to tolerate any Christian who actually believes in the teachings of his or her faith – an animus that oddly disappears where Islam is concerned. Here’s an excerpt.
The Liberal Democrats, for example, have tied themselves in knots, and even provoked a formal complaint to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, over local activists’ decision to remove David Campanale as its parliamentary candidate in Sutton and Cheam. His crime? He is a Christian. Worse than that: he is a Christian who actually believes in biblical teaching – an unforgivable sin for the Lib Dems.
Campanale is not the first to have suffered at the hands of illiberal members of his party. In 2019, former Labour MP, Rob Flello, was chosen as the LibDem candidate for as its parliamentary candidate for Stoke-on-Trent South, which he had represented as a Labour MP between 2005 and 2017. Within 36 hours he was deselected, his socially conservative views as a committed Roman Catholic having come to light.
Tim Farron, who made it all the way to the leadership of the Lib Dems, was hounded by the media – and resigned shortly after polling day – because he was an evangelical Christian. In Scotland, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes has been criticised by many, including newspaper columnists and SNP activists, for belonging to the Free Presbyterian Church. As with Campanale, Flello and Farron, Forbes’s crime is not in being a Christian per se, but in being an evangelical Christian and publicly stating that she accepts biblical teaching.
But religious intolerance is not equally applied across the Left. When Mothin Ali won a council seat in Leeds as a Green Party candidate, he shouted “Allahu Akbar!”, proclaimed his victory a “win for the people of Gaza”, then described critics of this outburst as Islamophobic. It later emerged that he had claimed Israel had “control” of the mainstream media and had recorded himself chanting “from the river to the sea” at a pro-Gaza rally.
No one doubts that Councillor Ali sincerely believes in the teachings of Islam, yet no one has suggested that that faith’s condemnation of homosexuality should prevent him from representing the most Left wing – indeed, most “progressive” – party in the country. …
Muslim candidates and elected representatives… need make no excuses for their personal faith. To criticise a Muslim, or any other minority, for the illiberal tenets of their faith would be prejudicial. But Christians? They’re fair game.
Worth reading in full.
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