Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of 20 books, including "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone Institute and Die Weltwoche. He is also a Middle East Forum Writing Fellow.
Looking at England today, Paul Verlaine would rewrite: “Je suis l’Empire à la fin de la décadence”.
The great Jewish historian David Abulafia writes in The Telegraph that the “survival of the United Kingdom as a beacon of freedom” is at risk. The warning of one of the leading experts on the Middle Ages should not go unnoticed.
After 14 years of Conservative flop, Labour's long flop begins.
Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, lost many sitting Labor MPs and potential cabinet ministers to “pro-Gaza independents”: Shockat Adam (Leicester), Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) and Iqbal Hussain Mohamed (Dewsbury). We are witnessing the emergence of an explicitly Islamic internal politics, with members elected on explicitly Islamic lists. The pro-Hamas are now the sixth largest political bloc in Parliament.
In the new Parliament, a considerable number of MPs will sit at the behest of a particular ethnic or religious community and will live to serve the perceived interest of those same communities.
In Birmingham, Labour's shadow justice minister, Muslim Shabana Mahmood, rejected a challenge from Akhmed Yakoob, a pro-Gaza independence activist. “It is never acceptable to deny someone their faith, to brand them as an infidel,” said Shabana. “I know what a Muslim looks like. A Muslim looks like me. I know what Muslim values are. Muslim values are mine."
Earlier, a video appeared on social media in which Yakoob claimed that British Muslims would "feel the wrath of Allah" if they invited Labor politicians into their homes or posed for a photo with them.
This is where England ends up, with a left-wing Islamic politician having to fight for a seat against an Islamic independence activist.
In the days before the elections, Angela Rayner, "the red queen of Labour", number two in Starmer's party and new deputy PM, went to Muslims to ask for their vote. Indeed, she does not ask: she implores. Only males in qamis, the typical Pakistani dress. “I know people are angry about what's happening in the Middle East,” Angela told them. “If my resignation as MP now led to a ceasefire, I would do it. I would do it".
The future is now!
Ayaan Hirsi Ali explained that Labor will introduce a law to protect Islam from criticism. “Under pressure from the Islamic lobby, which is growing in power, the new Labor government contemplates introducing legislation that would irreversibly damage free speech and stifle any ability to criticize radical Islam.”
After Brexit, England under the fake Conservatives gave up the Polish plumber and the Romanian carpenter to have absolutely ridiculous non-European immigration numbers. So ridiculous that even Labor pretended to want to do something about it.
Let's look at the three cities where Islamic parliamentarians won: Leicester, Blackburn and Dewsbury.
“In Leicester everyone is a minority”, headlined The Guardian, rejoicing in “the end of the city's white and Christian majority”. Christianity replaced by Islam: “In Leicester, a Deobandi mosque, built in 2000, overlooks the Edwardian church of St Philip, begun in 1909. The church congregation is 30 strong, a mix of white, Indian and African; the mosque across the street holds 500 people.”
The Independent announced in triumphalist tones: “Leicester, the first city where whites are a minority”. The city has Islamized so rapidly that today the Muslim population is 20 percent (in 2001 Muslims were 11 percent). Today, Islam is the majority among children in the city.
In Blackburn there are more than 40 mosques and a quarter of the population is already Muslim, as well as areas that are 95 per cent made up of ethnic minorities.
And Dewsbury? To write “Among the mosques”, Ed Husain visits a mosque in Dewsbury: “There is a 'Sharia department' in the mosque which deals with divorces and marriages. The mosque was a church...".
New posters appeared at London bus stops this week: “Allah”. And invitations to donate zakat in mosques.
This will be what we will see coming from the country that was, for a long time, a beacon of freedom and dignity, the country that alone called other Europeans to fight on the seas, in the air and on the beaches.