[Editor's Note: This article is part one in a three part series by S. Michael Craven]

While Britons may think of America as its juvenile and impetuous offspring, Great Britain has surely become our senile grandmother. Through repeated acts of self-condemnation and political correctness, the British are systematically capitulating to all things Islamic. In essence, our British forbearers are committing cultural suicide.

In what may appear to be deferential considerations to their growing Muslim population, British authorities are slowly conforming to the demands of an increasingly outspoken and violent minority.

Already in Britain, Muslim men with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long government review. Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by British authorities means that polygamous marriages can now be recognized formally (not to mentioned subsidized) by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal. And yes, polygamy remains a norm in the Muslim world.

In other another act of mindless irony, the Research, Information and Communication Unit, a division of the British Home Office, established for the purpose of countering al-Qaeda’s influence in the UK, is actually instructing civil servants not to use terms such as “Islamist extremism” or “jihadi fundamentalist.” Instead, they are to use phrases such as “violent extremism” or “criminal murderers” or “thugs” to avoid any implication that there is connection between Islam and terrorism.
Closer to home, the US government also issued guidelines earlier this year for the Department of Homeland Security suggesting such terms as “jihad” and “Islamic terrorism” not be used. (Where is the Ronald Reagan of our generation who is willing to call evil evil?)

So ridiculous have British concessions to Muslim demands become that Fortis Bank “stopped giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims,” according to The Times of London. (Pigs are an offensive, unclean animal to Muslims.) There are also accounts of Muslim nurses refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms.

And in September, Fox News reported that “Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.” According to news reports, “The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.” Adding that “rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system…”

In an astonishing statement, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, said there was no reason why sharia law, derived from several sources including the Qur´an, could not be used for contractual agreements and marital disputes. The first question that comes to my mind: How does British society plan to mitigate between the Western and Muslim views relative to the rights of women?

The first public signs of appeasement emerged in the wake of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa (death edict) against British author Salman Rushdie in 1989. Thousands of British Muslims marched in the streets calling for Rushdie to be killed while the British authorities thought it best to “play it cool,” according to Mark Steyn, author of America Alone. Of the more than 100 demonstrators arrested for violent assaults on the police that day, all were released without charges. British non-Muslims held a (much smaller) counter-demonstration shortly thereafter to uphold the right to free speech—meaning the free speech of Salman Rushdie—only to be attacked and beaten by Muslims.

Playing it cool has only emboldened Muslim radicals and the calls for blood and violence increase. Today there are sections of London in which no non-Muslim dare venture for fear of being killed.

And the same is occurring across the rest of Europe. Recall the French riots in 2005 in which thousands of young Muslims, armed with clubs and sticks and shouting, “Allah Akbar!” stormed the streets. Windows were smashed; stores looted and cars were torched. Europeans trapped by the mob were viciously attacked, and some killed. The trouble in France finally ended only when various levels of French authorities quietly accepted that there were de facto no-go areas within the country, mini-Islamistans run by the dominant local Muslim majority. Shortly after, riots in Denmark featured Muslims taunting authorities, saying, “This territory belongs to Islam; you don’t belong here.” In a growing number of Western European nations there are now territories that have been effectively occupied by Islamic fundamentalists determined to subdue their host countries. 

Iman Abdelali Hamdoune revealed the goal of Islam when he urged the Muslim faithful: