Eye on the Future
Two preachers were handing out tracts in England recently when a police officer threatened to throw them in jail for committing a hate crime. “They were warned that if they came back and were beaten up [by Muslims], it would be their fault, not that of the thugs who beat them,” wrote Michael Reagan.
Reagan, eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is a conservative Christian radio-talk-show host whose June 4 column, “Is This Our Future?” is making its way around the world. And for good reason. The implications of England’s actions are staggering. “Remember,” wrote Reagan on his Web site, Reagan.com, “this was not in the Middle East. It was a neighborhood in Birmingham, England, a nation whose official church is the Church of England, a Christian denomination.”
Although proponents of hate-crime legislation claim the laws are meant to protect minorities from violence, they are primarily being used—even in America—to stop Christians from preaching the gospel and sharing their Christian values.
In Boston in 2005, a large, violent mob tried to silence a Focus on the Family rally at a church. The police did nothing to stop the mayhem that resulted. But in Philadelphia in 2004, 11 Christians were arrested and thrown in jail for singing hymns and holding signs. Apparently, there is “no ‘hate’ when Christians are on the receiving end” of the trouble, wrote Concerned Women for America (CWA).
Ultimately, said CWA, hate-crime laws are designed to punish beliefs and thoughts. “All totalitarian countries employ ‘thought crime’ laws that criminalize the conscience. Now, under ‘hate crime’ laws…even Western nations with long traditions of freedom, such as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Sweden, are experiencing more and more challenges to basic freedoms.”
Michael Reagan said the situation in England is worse than most people realize. Muslims are repeatedly smashing church windows, and the parishioners are too scared to do anything about it:
British columnist Melanie Phillips reported an attack on the Rev. Michael Ainsworth by three Muslim youths in his own East London churchyard. She wrote that it was far from the first such attack in the area. Indeed, she wrote, “There appear to have been many attacks on vicars or churches by Muslims who are clearly intent on turning east London into a no-go area for Christians.”
“On one occasion,” wrote Reagan, “youths shouted: ‘This should not be a church, this should be a mosque, you should not be here.’”
England fails to stop Muslim hate crimes that are actually violent, but police threaten two Christian preachers with jail for handing out tracts that teach the love of God.
Unfortunately, what is happening in Europe is coming to America. Reagan sounded the alarm:
The real tragedy lies in the fact that governments all over the western world are not only turning a blind eye to Muslim efforts to establish communities ruled by Sharia—Muslim law—in defiance of established national law, but are enacting laws that would punish those who place their nation’s traditional interests above those of a foreign faith….The more you see the Muslim influence coming into the United States the more you are going to see Muslims demanding and getting laws defining the promotion of Christianity to Islamists as a hate crime that will get you tossed in the slammer. Don’t tell me what happened in London can’t happen here. It can and it will. It’s called Jihad, and it’s world-wide.
