The following is an article I wrote for Evangelicals Now regarding the July-August 2024 UK riots.
It is always paramount, no less in moments of extreme grief and inconsolable anguish, that we labour to appropriately respond rather than aggressively react. If we lose sobriety of mind and self-control in body, then we may lose all respectability in our actions. The alleged perpetrator was captured and arrested, alive, and has now been charged. The community should have been allowed to grieve in peace, and the justice system permitted to follow usual due process.
But embers of distrust towards the government, dissatisfaction with inequities in community policing and law enforcement, and divisions of religion and race, were quickly whipped into flame by the accelerating convergence of rage baiting social media, the dissident Right, and alcoholic hooligans. Virtual calls to arms went out: ‘Rise up, English lads!’ A name and backstory for the murderer was circulated: Ali Al-Shakati, an adult illegal Muslim immigrant who got off a boat on the English south coast last year.
Nothing to do with any mosque anywhere
It was a lie. The alleged murderer, who has been charged, was none of those things. The mob did not know nor care. ‘It was the Muslims' fault,’ they said. In medieval fashion, they marched on and besieged a Southport mosque over something that had absolutely nothing to do with any mosque anywhere, all the while chanting the name of English Defence League founder and anti-Muslim provocateur ‘Tommy Robinson’ repeatedly. Fifty police officers were injured at this particular attack. The mob began assaulting Muslims in the street. As days passed and the violence spread, they began blocking exits and setting fire to hotels housing asylum seekers (not all of whom are even Muslim, not that it matters).
The essence of racism
It is of course part of the essence of racism to blame a whole group of people for the actions of one person… worse still to carry on, plundering your town along the way, when it is revealed that that one person wasn’t even part of the group you are attacking. And to what end? Instead of making things better, it is making things far worse, provoking Islamic extremists and gangs, fuelling radicalisation on all sides, and distracting the police and the barely-in-office government from sorting things out.
For clarity and the avoidance of doubt... I am against Islam, because Jesus is the only way. I am not against law-abiding Muslims. I am against different standards of policing: criminal conduct, whatever the source, should be met with the appropriate force of the law. I am against illegal immigration. I am not against legitimate asylum seeking or asylum seekers. I am against the exploitation of the system. I believe mass immigration may be unhealthy for a nation (especially one as small and under strain as ours), but realise God's providence in it, and note that it is the primary means by which London is becoming the first de-secularised city in the West. I believe in freedom of religion, free speech, and peaceful protest, yes – even those I strongly disagree with. Perhaps then, as someone with uncompromisingly Christian beliefs, and personal opinions that at least in recent memory would have been called ‘conservative,’ it is particularly incumbent upon me to say something.
For 21 years, I have lived in a 'minority majority' London borough, and consequently my work and ministry have been primarily in 'minority majority' spaces. ('Minority majority' is a term used to refer to a subdivision in which one or more racial, ethnic, and/or religious minorities - relative to the whole country's population- make up a majority of the local population). The church I pastor reflects the area in which I live, with most of us being immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Asylum seekers
Over the years, I have befriended, helped, and pastored asylum seekers particularly (but not only) from the Muslim world without reference to their nationality, ethnicity, or religion but rather our shared humanity with the added personal motivations of my own Christianity.
I have – not out of any intentional advocacy, but during community leadership and pastoral ministry – written letters, provided crisis accommodation, worked with charities and solicitors, visited asylum seeker accommodations, and offered a listening ear and helping hand.
I have seen friends repeatedly denied asylum for years, held back from work and opportunity (and so social integration), and displaced after settling and building vital relationships. A couple I know recently suffered the torment of being granted their asylum and receiving their papers, only for them to be told it was in error and to have their newfound status (awaited for around 10 years) retracted.
Now neighbours like these, whom I have loved, are under attack. The alleged perpetrator turned a dance class into a bloodbath and xenophobic propaganda circulated claiming that the person responsible was an adult illegal Muslim immigrant who arrived on a boat last year. So, mobs of angry and dysfunctional men now besiege mosques and set asylum seeker hotels alight. Some appeal to a ‘Christian’ identity. Most are utter pagans. Their Word is Tommy Robinson's (or worse!), and they take their sacrament down the pub. They hate Christ and oppose his Word.
Moral clarity
Moral clarity demands that we not prevaricate in this moment. Our nation has major problems at multiple levels. Whatever their grievances, those problems cannot and will not be addressed by prejudiced mobs riding waves of fear-mongering propaganda and lies.
Christ's church has a better message. Jesus threw over the tables of idolatry, immorality, and injustice to say, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Whatever is going on in our cities, we dare not make common cause with those who would set the tables back up and tell Him: 'No.'
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