Latest / The Catholic Current / The Islamification of Britain (Joanna Williams) 7/9/26

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The Islamification of Britain (Joanna Williams) 7/9/26 · The Catholic Current

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Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, through the intercession of
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of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
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Well, friends, you may have heard if you're a long-time listener that I lived in London
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for a few years.
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Britain is dear to my heart.
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Some of my best friends are British, and what happens there always concerns me.
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And I want to talk about the growing influence and presence and effects of Islam in Britain.
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And of course, I'm obliged to say I don't hate anyone, etc., etc.
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But I happened upon an interesting article in a city journal called The Islamification
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of Britain.
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And I said, well, let's talk to the author.
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She's been on the show before.
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She's currently a visiting fellow of Matthias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, and she's
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author of How Woke One and several other books.
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Joana Williams, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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It's wonderful to be back with you.
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Thank you for having me.
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Joana, I want to make a distinction.
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There's a difference between having a growing number of Muslims in a population and the
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Islamification of a culture.
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You seem to be making a case that both are taking place right now in Britain.
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Can you tell us about that, please?
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Yeah, certainly.
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And I do think that that is an important distinction to make, but I think both things are happening.
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In parallel, so Britain has always had, or for a very, very long time, had a Muslim population.
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Certainly when I was a child in the 1970s, 1980s, the town I lived in, I would say the
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secondary school I went to was roughly about 50% between white English children and Muslim
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children of mainly Pakistani heritage.
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But I think numbers have increased, numbers have increased because of just natural population
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growth, but also because of high levels of migration.
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And the Muslim population across the country as a whole today stands, I would say, somewhere
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around between about 7% and 10%.
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But that is a little bit unrepresentative because the Muslim community tends to congregate
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in certain particular areas, places like Middlesbrough, where I grew up, but also cities like Bradford,
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Manchester, Birmingham, and parts of London, where some areas where there will be close
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to 60, 70% Muslim population, a very divided community then between white English and Pakistani
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heritage, Bangladeshi heritage, Muslim people.
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But I think alongside that population control, there's what I would term Islamification,
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which I see really is much more of a political identity, a very assertive, I would want to
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even go so far as to use the word aggressive political identity.
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And to give just one example, which may seem quite trivial, but I think is a good illustration
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of a point I'm making.
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When I was at school, when I was growing up as a child, I never saw one woman wearing
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a hijab or a niqab.
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So that's the full face veil where you see nothing other than a little slit for a woman's
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eyes.
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I never saw that once.
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That's something which has become much more aggressively associated, I think, with being
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Muslim as a political identity in more recent years.
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Right.
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And I know, politically speaking, isn't it the case that Muslims tend to vote as a very
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reliable and therefore weighty bloc?
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Yes, that's absolutely true.
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Again, because we have a first-past-the-post political system and because Muslims tend
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to, like I say, live in particular areas, concentrated in particular areas, they're
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able to wield considerable political power.
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Traditionally, this has gone to the Labour Party.
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The Muslim community has been very strongly associated with the Labour Party.
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And I think for this reason, Labour, which is currently our party of government, is very
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loathe to upset the Muslim community politically.
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So we've seen things even in recent months, like a call for almost for a blasphemy law
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against free speech that would protect criticism of Islam in the law in a way that we don't
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have protections for Christianity.
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But MPs are able to make those demands precisely because of the associations with the Labour
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Party.
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More recently, politically, the Muslim community are moving away a little bit in some areas
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from the Labour Party, going towards what we might call pro-Gaza MPs, who, rather than
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representing the interests of the local community, seem to be far more interested in what's happening
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in Palestine, thousands of miles away.
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Right.
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So it seems to me that you've got effectively a very large, cohesive voting bloc, the ten
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to get politicians' attention.
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I know that.
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And how long has London had a Muslim mayor?
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And he was knighted, wasn't he?
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He absolutely was.
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That's Sadiq Khan.
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He's been mayor of London, I think, for over 10 years now.
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I'm going to say over a decade.
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I can't remember the exact date, I'm afraid, but a considerable length of time.
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And mayors of many of the largest cities in Britain are also Muslim mayors?
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No.
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I think it's just Sadiq Khan, who is the main Muslim mayor.
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We did have, well, Scotland, we also did have the first minister of Scotland, which is devolved
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part of Britain, used to be, until fairly recently, Muslim Hamza Yusuf, but that's
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not the case anymore.
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But through local parliament, through our national, through local government, sorry,
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and through our national parliament.
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But I think the influence perhaps is not so much having a considerable number of Muslim
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MPs, but being able to influence MPs who are not necessarily Muslim.
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So you look at things like, maybe we'll come on to talk about it later, but one of the
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major issues in recent years has been, it's known as the grooming gang scandal, rape and
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sexual assault of thousands of white working class girls over many years.
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You have to ask the question, I think, why this hasn't been a much, much bigger political
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scandal.
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And I think that's because there are people in the Labour Party who are very concerned
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about not upsetting Muslim voters, so don't want to ask those awkward questions.
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Well, you know, I just read the report, I've been doing some writing about it and made
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some videos about it as well.
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I, you know, I said, I've been to hell and back innumerable times, but that was one of
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the most difficult things that I'd ever read.
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And the human cost, the carnage is absolutely staggering.
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And it seems to me that nearly every institution failed and turned a blind eye for decades.
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And it seemed the canard that was used was that if you raise this issue, that somehow
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you were racist.
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And that was the magic word that would make everyone cower in fear, because no one would
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ever, ever, ever want to be called a racist.
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We got about two and a half minutes left in this segment.
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What is this present circumstances?
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What has it done to the possibility of having an honest conversation about real issues in
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the public forum in Britain?
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Well, I would say that was near impossible, unfortunately.
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And I appreciate fully, but that's a very dramatic sounding statement to make to describe
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something as almost impossible.
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But I'm choosing my words carefully there, and I'm not using that phrase lightly.
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I think if you were to go to any mainstream media channel, it's just impossible for these
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kind of conversations to take place with any degree of honesty.
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People are far too afraid, with good reason, of being accused, not just of racism, but
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of Islamophobia.
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And this comes from two ways, I mean, one, you might think of just the pressure of almost
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like name calling.
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And in some ways, it's easy to shrug that off.
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I don't honestly care if when it comes to defending the interests of young girls, for
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example, I don't care if somebody calls me racist, I would defend those girls, I would
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like to think to my dying day.
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But there are also, again, it comes to the political power of Islamism.
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We have a schoolteacher, for example, in Batley in Yorkshire, who was deemed to have
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blasphemed in an incident in his classroom, who has now been in hiding with his family
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for five years, has had to assume a new identity and move with his family to a different part
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of the country, because essentially, he's in fear of his life.
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So I think it's not simply a question of people not wanting to offend as to why these conversations
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or not wanting to be called racist, as to why these conversations are not happening.
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There is a genuine fear of violent repercussions as well.
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Well, you know, I think that gives the lie to the idea that, you know, diversity is our
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strength.
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I think historically, we can say that a community has moved into Britain that really doesn't
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have a strong interest and less of an incentive to assimilate into British culture, and to
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live Britishly with native Britons, with indigenous Britons.
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And I know it's considered impolite to talk about that, but since my program is rooted
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in the United States, we do get to talk about that.
10:52
Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with author Joanna Williams.
10:56
We're talking about the Islamification of Britain and why that should concern us all.
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We are talking today about the Islamification of Britain.
12:59
Our returning guest is author Joanna Williams.
13:02
Joanna, I know that one of the hallmarks of Muslim life is halal foods.
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If you will, it's an analog to kosher foods.
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And one of the things that really stands out for me, and I think this would be something
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that our vegan friends would want to take note of, is how animals are slaughtered, that
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an animal has its throat cut and is allowed to bleed out, simply to bleed to death, which
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doesn't strike me as humane.
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I'm not an expert on these things.
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But it seems to me that halal foods are becoming more and more common in markets, not only
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as an option, but it's advertised.
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You know, break your fast for Ramadan with our special treats, because I know you've
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got links to advertisements in Sainsbury's and other markets.
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But also in school cafeterias as well, where halal foods is becoming the primary option
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or the only option.
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What have you seen in this matter?
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Yeah, well, I think it's very much as you say, and I think there are a couple of things
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worth noting here.
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I mean, the first really thing that strikes me, actually, even just as you were speaking,
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is that the British people, it seems to me, are known around the world, actually, as being
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a nation of animal lovers, often were considered to be very sentimental when it comes to animals.
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And yet, clearly, you see this hierarchy, almost, where the diversity is our strength
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mantra and the need to show respect to Muslim people means that we put to one side our love
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for animals and animal rights in this particular instance.
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And as you say, halal food has become pretty much ubiquitous again, across the public sector,
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public institutions, hospital, canteens, school canteens, but also widely available
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in fast food restaurants on the high street and in many supermarkets.
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But I think the other point that's really worth making is that this is often out of
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all proportion to the local Muslim community.
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So the example I use in my City Journal article that really shocked me when I discovered it
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was that you have a school in a rural Welsh community, for example, has switched its canteen
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over to serving only halal food.
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But then you look at the local population census, and you discover that in that part
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of rural Wales, only something like 0.2% of the population are actually Muslim.
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So a decision has been taken to change the diet of the entire population of the school
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children for perhaps one child in that school, two children in that school.
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And that just seems that it seems very odd to me.
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And it shows to me that really, when I talk about Islamification, in part, you're talking
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about the strength of the Muslim minority, the political strength of the Muslim minority.
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But you're also talking about the acquiescence of the British cultural and political elite,
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the fact that they will go out of their way to make these changes, even in the absence
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of any vocal demand for these changes to be made.
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I want to talk about this a little bit, and maybe we might have to engage in some speculation.
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I understand why politicians crave the appreciation of cohesive voting blocs.
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I understand how that works.
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But there seems to be an enthusiasm in British education, politics, economics, really across
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the cultural spectrum, to be enthusiastic in Britain about things that are definitely
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not British, maybe even antithetical to British identity, and a terrible reluctance to say
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this is British and that is not, even before you get to the idea of evaluation, just to
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say this is British and that is not.
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I imagine you've noticed that too.
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Do you have any reason for why Britons are hesitant to speak up about what it means to
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be British?
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Yeah, I think these are really, really important points that you're making.
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And they absolutely ring true with my experience, being based here in England right now.
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The first thing I would say is that the majority of Britons, I don't think they do have a problem
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saying that we are proud to be British and we love Britain.
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I think the problem is that the people who do say that are considered to be quite, how
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can I put it, low status, are considered to be a bit uncouth, a bit beyond the pale, or
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even I would go so far as to say it's considered to be a right wing thing to say that you're
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proud to be British.
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And if you want to be respectable.
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And what could be worse than being right wing, because if you're right wing, you can only
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be far.
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I've never heard anyone being described as moderately right wing.
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There's only far right wing as well.
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So again, I just find it surpassing strange that it's considered beyond the pale for Britons
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to talk about, it's good to be British and it must be good to be British at some level
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or people wouldn't be trying to get there as well, unless it's just to be enrolled in
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benefits as well.
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So would you say this is primarily an elitist thing?
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Is this what they talk about in the staff rooms at Oxbridge?
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Can you help me to understand this, please?
19:10
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
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I think this loathing of Britain is, let's be honest, it's a contempt for those British
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people, the British people who like to fly the flag, the British people who like to say
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they're proud to be British, our political elite, our cultural elite, hate those people.
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And I really, again, I'm using strong words, but I really believe that that's the case.
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So if you look at areas like this, this school in Wales, where they're going to provide halal
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food, despite there not being a Muslim population of any significant size whatsoever.
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To me, it seems that this is actually a way of bashing over the head, the local white
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community, the white working class community that lives in that area.
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It's a way of saying to them, diversity is our strength.
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So you will eat this halal food and you will not complain about it because we know what's
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best and we want to introduce multiculturalism to you, whether you like it or not.
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I have an old friend from my London days who happens to be Welsh.
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And a couple of years ago, he moved out of London and he relocated to an obscure island
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off the coast of Scotland.
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And he would remind me that being American, I don't fully quite understand the role of
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class in these matters and that the people who talk about being British and it's good
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to be British, et cetera, et cetera.
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And to talk about what is distinctively British, those are considered the lower classes.
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And so therefore, they don't count and therefore, they ought to be right roughshod by the elites.
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Is a big part of it a class thing as well?
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And again, I'm an American, so I don't entirely get this.
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Could you help us understand, please?
21:01
Again, I think you're absolutely right.
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I think class does play a major, major part of this, where white working class communities
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are frankly, economically considered useless nowadays.
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We've industrialized large parts of Britain.
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The area I grew up in, again, Middlesbrough and northeast of England was famous at one
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point for steel making and go further beyond that in the region, coal mining and ship building.
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And all of those industries have been closed down.
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So you're left with a large population that is considered by the elite to be economically
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surplus to requirement.
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Politically, not on board with the latest trends in political correctness and doesn't
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have the right vocabulary, doesn't vote in the right way.
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It complains about policies such as net zero and mass migration and feels nostalgic for
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a past when Britain looked familiar to them and they had jobs and a neighborhood that
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they recognized, that they recognized from their childhood and for many years now, many
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decades, I mean, I would go back to at least the Tony Blair era, so late 1990s.
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It's been quite acceptable amongst the political and cultural elite to refer to these working
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class communities as bigoted people, prejudiced, backward people, people who are just not politically
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deemed to be acceptable and to really speak with contempt about them.
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And I really do think that that is the flip side of a problem that we're dealing with
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when we talk about Islamification.
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To me, it's two sides of the same coin.
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It's a politically strong, aggressive Muslim community.
22:58
But the only reason they're able to assert that power is because we have a political
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elite who hates white people, essentially white working class people who would prefer
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to deal with diverse communities and to use their euphemism than to have to actually deal
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with working class communities in Britain.
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I find that staggering.
23:23
You know, a lot of mischief comes from universities.
23:27
And I say that because I spent most of my adult life on college campuses first as a
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student and then as a professor.
23:34
And I describe myself as a recovering academic.
23:38
And I think part of the tragedy is that trendy ideas, sometimes called luxury ideas, trickle
23:48
down into society in very practical ways.
23:52
And I think there is a contempt.
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And the contempt is kind of ironic because if you want to get a group of liberals, social
24:00
liberals, very misty eyed, talk about the rights of indigenous peoples.
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But when you start to talk about the rights of indigenous peoples who are European, then
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you're not allowed to talk about that anymore.
24:14
So you've got kind of this gaslighting that what you're perceiving isn't happening.
24:18
Well, it is happening, but it's good for you.
24:21
Well, it's not good for you, but it's not a big deal.
24:24
Well, actually, it's bad for you, but you deserve it.
24:28
And I think that we have to say out loud that there are people in the elites who hate
24:34
just ordinary folks, ordinary Europeans or ordinary Britons, ordinary Christians.
24:40
And they have turned a blind eye to tragedy and violence and horror.
24:45
And I think it's a mugs game.
24:48
And I think eventually the elites are going to find they can only ride the tiger for so
24:54
long.
24:55
And the tiger is going to devour them as well.
24:58
Friends, when we come back, I'm going to continue our conversation with our returning guest,
25:01
author Joanna Williams.
25:03
We are talking about the Islamification of Britain.
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We're talking about the Islamification of Britain.
26:56
My returning guest is author Joanna Williams.
26:59
We're going to be talking about a very sensitive, painful topic.
27:03
Listener discretion is advised.
27:04
And if you're listening with young ears with an earshot, you might want to wait and grab
27:08
us on the podcast.
27:10
First, briefly, Joanna, I want to talk about there seems to be a double standard for the
27:14
religious in Britain.
27:16
If you're a Christian grandmother who wants to pray silently across the street from an
27:22
abortion clinic, you're arrested.
27:25
But if you're in East London and want to block traffic for Muslim prayer times, is that okay?
27:31
Am I reading that right?
27:32
Is that what's been happening?
27:33
Joanna Williams Yeah, that certainly seems to be my reading
27:36
of the situation as well.
27:37
And some of the double standards here, as you illustrate, are really, really quite shocking.
27:43
So we have much discussion in the UK about Islamophobia and attempts to define what this
27:50
concept of Islamophobia might be.
27:53
I mean, to my mind, this is a made up thing.
27:56
This is a name for a prejudice or a dislike.
28:00
But we've got words like prejudice and bigotry.
28:03
And we can use those words if we want to.
28:07
So an attempt to specify something quite distinct as Islamophobia or a fear of Islam.
28:14
Well, I've never ever heard anybody talk about Christianophobia or Catholicophobia or anything
28:21
like that.
28:22
We don't make up words like that.
28:24
And yet there seems to be an attempt to, again, reintroduce blasphemy laws.
28:30
We haven't had blasphemy laws in the UK since the 1970s.
28:35
All religions are supposed to be fair game for criticism.
28:39
And yet, in more recent years, we're still saying Christianity is fair game for criticism.
28:45
And Christianity can be laughed at, mocked, derided, criticised.
28:53
But we seem to be saying more and more that there is just one religion that must be treated
28:59
as an exception.
29:01
One religion where you cannot criticise.
29:04
You cannot share pictures of the Prophet Muhammad.
29:08
You have to treat just one religion with respect.
29:11
And that is Islam.
29:13
And I think that really does introduce a double standard into our political and religious
29:18
life.
29:18
Well, I will point out that classically understood, a phobia is an irrational fear.
29:24
And I do think there are such things as rational fears.
29:28
And I just wonder whether or not phobia is the right word.
29:31
I think it's a manipulation of language.
29:33
I want to shift to a really grim topic.
29:37
Recently, Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe released the Rape Gang Inquiry Report.
29:45
It's 259 pages.
29:47
It is devastating to read.
29:50
I hope to be publishing something about it soon.
29:52
I've spoken about it on the air very recently.
29:56
And I look at it and I said, I'm not reading about riots in the streets.
30:00
I'm not reading about the government calling snap elections.
30:05
I'm not reading about churchmen asking for a profound examination of conscience.
30:10
No one's talking about collecting reparations for rape victims.
30:15
I'm not aware of feminist scholars marching in the street and saying, take back the night.
30:21
Can you tell me what the response has?
30:24
I mean, they've documented over 250,000 girls being subject to the most horrific,
30:30
vile abuse imaginable.
30:33
The scope staggers me.
30:36
What is the public response been or has it been swept under the rug?
30:40
Oh, well, I think you're absolutely right that the public response to this particular report
30:45
has been fairly muted, I would say.
30:49
In some ways, I think that's because a lot of what has been published in this report,
30:55
which I have to say, I've read most of it.
30:58
I actually, I have to confess, couldn't bring myself to read all of it.
31:01
But I've read substantial parts of it.
31:04
And you're right.
31:05
It's the most upsetting, devastating thing.
31:09
And I had to stop because I just could not bear to carry on.
31:14
In many respects, much of it has been known about.
31:19
Unfortunately, for British readers, there's nothing shockingly new in this report other
31:26
than the fact that it's all been put together.
31:28
But much of this has been in the public domain and has been known about.
31:34
But I think there's a couple of reasons why this report in particular hasn't
31:37
made more of an impact.
31:39
It's very much associated with one particular, very, very small minority political party
31:46
in the UK, which, as you've said, is the MP Rupert Lowe and his Restore Party,
31:52
which is not really a national party.
31:54
I think the point I would make is that what's an interesting question to ask really is why
32:01
did it fall to Rupert Lowe?
32:03
Why has it taken one essentially independent MP to finance privately himself largely and
32:12
through private contributions this inquiry?
32:15
Well, that's because none of the mainstream political parties, neither the Labour Party
32:19
now or the Conservative Party when they were in office, have stepped up to the plate and
32:25
instigated a full national inquiry of their own.
32:30
For too long, far, far too long, successive governments have completely shied away from
32:35
this.
32:36
I'm embarrassed to admit that it was Elon Musk's intervention via X at the beginning
32:42
of this year that prompted the national conversation.
32:46
I mean, that in and of itself seems an absolutely unbelievable thing, even as I'm saying it
32:51
out loud.
32:52
But I promise this is true.
32:54
And for a long time, Keir Starmer, senior figures in the Labour government would refer
33:00
to this as a dog whistle issue, which is insulting not just to the victims, but to the British
33:06
public as a whole who are concerned about this.
33:11
I'm concerned about it.
33:12
I don't consider myself to be a dog and I don't consider myself to be responding to
33:16
a whistle.
33:17
I'm just genuinely concerned to hear about these experiences of these women.
33:22
It's considered to be a right wing.
33:24
A right wing bandwagon was another phrase that was used to deride calls for an investigation.
33:32
It truly, truly is.
33:33
It's shocking.
33:35
I mean, as I read through it and, you know, gosh, where to begin with this.
33:41
But you were told that we have to keep quiet because of, you know, community cohesion.
33:48
Sometimes the girls who were plied with drugs, you know, were raped by many men, went to
33:56
the police and the girls themselves were arrested.
34:00
Families were threatened and warned not to intervene.
34:03
There seemed to be a very conservative effort for decades, for decades to turn a blind eye.
34:13
Someone who started in the police force 50 years ago had a 20 year career and trained
34:19
two generations of police officers succeeding him to turn a blind eye to a fellow human
34:26
being, to little girls.
34:28
These were husbands and fathers and grandfathers.
34:34
And I suppose in a certain sense, it's politically tainted because, you know, Rupert Lowe has
34:39
his own small party, which is considered fringe.
34:42
Is there any discussion in the press and academia or by churchmen?
34:48
Because I've looked.
34:49
I haven't seen it.
34:50
Well, I'm ashamed and embarrassed to admit that the Church of England in particular,
34:55
as far as I'm aware, has said nothing on this issue.
34:58
Or if it has, it's been something so small and insignificant that it's made no impact
35:04
on me and I follow these news stories.
35:08
It seems to me that there are really, again, two things going on in tandem.
35:12
I mean, first of all, as you've noted, there's the fear of being accused of Islamophobia,
35:17
the fear accused of racism, of stirring up community tensions, of challenging the lie
35:26
that diversity is our strength.
35:28
But there's also a sense that the girls who were abused were, to put it bluntly, the wrong
35:34
kind of victims.
35:36
These were white working class girls who often were very vulnerable themselves, perhaps came
35:42
from broken homes, didn't have a powerful voice.
35:47
And so they were treated with contempt.
35:50
They were not seen as being victims.
35:53
I think if, to be horribly blunt, if well-spoken middle class girls went to the police with
36:01
similar stories, they might have been taken more seriously.
36:05
But white girls from working class communities, often in children's homes, in local authority
36:11
care, were just not treated.
36:15
They were seen as being, well, to use a horrible expression, these 13, 12, 13 year old girls
36:21
were considered to have consented to have sex with these Muslim men, which is obviously
36:28
not true if you're 12 or 13.
36:30
That's rape.
36:30
That's not consensual.
36:32
That's rape.
36:33
Or they were considered to be prostitutes, having sex essentially in return for drink
36:39
and drugs, again, knowing what they were doing.
36:42
These girls, they were not seen as being vulnerable girls.
36:46
They were seen as being, knowing young women who deserved contempt almost.
36:53
And this is such a horrible thing to say.
36:55
It's so shocking and so horrible to even contemplate.
36:58
I have a daughter myself, and I would hate to think that anybody would treat her in that
37:04
way.
37:04
But often the girls were arrested.
37:07
The girls were treated badly by the police.
37:10
And the girls were punished rather than the perpetrators of the rape and abuse being punished
37:16
themselves.
37:17
Right.
37:17
And I'm aware of the fact that educational institutions, social workers, group homes
37:24
that were designed to protect vulnerable girls facilitated, facilitated this, not just
37:34
turned a blind eye.
37:37
If you're a medical doctor working in an emergency room and you see a 12-year-old girl who's
37:42
pregnant and has a sexually transmitted disease, that's prima facie evidence of statutory rape.
37:50
He's morally and legally obliged to report it.
37:54
And they chose not to.
37:56
And then they turned to the interns in their care under their tutelage and taught them
38:03
not to report it as well.
38:05
I don't know how British society goes forward without a profound examination of conscience.
38:14
We got about two minutes left in this segment.
38:17
Has anyone in academia, anyone who has described themselves as a feminist scholar, Emma Watson,
38:26
who was a spokesperson for the United Nations, he for she, who wept bitter tears when, as
38:32
a girl, she was called bossy.
38:34
Have any of them spoken up?
38:36
No, not as far as I'm aware.
38:38
I mean, there's a journalist called Julie Bindel, who has done some, a feminist journalist
38:42
who's done some important work in this area.
38:44
They've been one or two voices.
38:46
But for the most part, I would say no, and certainly none of the celebrity feminists
38:50
such as Emma Watson.
38:52
And I have to say, this was what first drew my attention to this issue of the rape gangs.
39:00
Because if you go back, I think about seven or eight years now, when the Me Too movement
39:05
first took off, you had middle class feminists and journalists kind of getting a fit of the
39:11
vapors because a man might have once touched their knee in a restaurant 10 years previously.
39:17
And this would make front page news.
39:19
And yet young girls being raped from working class communities, nothing was being said
39:26
about that at all.
39:26
And the hypocrisy, the double standards, I just found absolutely sickening.
39:31
Right.
39:32
And this was by the hundreds of thousands.
39:36
And this is not in dispute.
39:38
And we know who the perpetrators are, because before Keir Starmer was prime minister and
39:41
he worked for Crown Prosecution, he sent at least 13,000 strongly worded letters to the
39:49
perpetrators.
39:50
So this is all documented.
39:52
This is beyond dispute.
39:54
And I find it an outrage beyond my comprehension.
39:57
Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with author Joanna Williams.
40:01
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40:04
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41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ.
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41:22
Robert McTague of The Society of Jesus.
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41:53
My returning guest is author Geronimo Williams.
41:55
We are talking about the Islamification of Britain.
41:59
Joanna, we've talked about some very hard things, some very ugly yet entrenched realities.
42:05
Where do we go from here?
42:07
Do you encourage your fellow citizens to vote harder?
42:12
Is this a cultural problem?
42:14
Is this a religious problem?
42:15
What do you recommend?
42:17
Yeah, I think it's all of those things, cultural, religious, political.
42:21
I think this is a very, very big problem that will take a long time for us to recover from.
42:27
I mean, I think three things really are needed.
42:31
The first, specifically in relation to the rape gangs that we've been talking about,
42:37
I think we need a proper national inquiry that leaves no stone unturned,
42:42
that is not undertaken by one political party, but has a degree of objectivity,
42:49
is beyond reproach, but importantly, has the power to call key witnesses
42:53
and really gets to the bottom of who knew what, where and when.
42:58
And we need to see consequences of that as well.
43:02
I think we need to see police officers, teachers,
43:05
social workers who turned a blind eye to this, they should be punished.
43:10
I think people at the very top of society who knew this was happening,
43:15
who did not protect those young girls, as far as I'm concerned, should be in prison,
43:20
should be punished for a very long time.
43:21
I have to say I'm sceptical.
43:24
I can't see this happening.
43:26
We're about to have our seventh prime minister in 10 years, Andy Burnham,
43:31
who was mayor of Manchester until very, very recently.
43:35
Manchester was one of the areas, Oldham near Manchester,
43:38
was one of the areas where the rape gangs were operating.
43:42
Most, I can't even think of the word, but were operating for a very, very long time.
43:50
And so the idea that Andy Burnham will be the man to instigate this inquiry,
43:56
I can't see that happening.
43:58
But I think that's absolutely one of the things that does need to take place.
44:03
Right.
44:03
And I can't believe that, you know, all these mayors and all, you know,
44:08
these police chiefs, et cetera, et cetera, the higher up the Scotland Yard,
44:13
are we to believe that none of them knew this?
44:16
The National Health Service was completely unaware.
44:21
I find that not plausible at all.
44:24
I think, you know, we also have to come to terms with the fact that
44:28
a lot of, if there was sentencing at all, it was oftentimes very, very derisory.
44:33
There needs to be, as I said, a profound, profound examination of conscience.
44:40
And I just, I don't know, I don't have a ready solution for Britain in this.
44:47
But I think Britain is at a crossroads and they have to ask what kind of country
44:53
do we want to be?
44:55
Do we want, what kind of nation do we want for our children?
44:59
And also, I think somebody needs to ask, do we want Britain to become an Islamic Republic?
45:06
Because if indigenous Britons are only victims and the British are supine in defense of the
45:15
working classes, then I think it's almost inevitable that Britain will become more and
45:22
more Islamified.
45:25
And it won't be Britain anymore.
45:28
I think that's true.
45:29
And that brings me on to the second thing that I think really needs to happen going
45:34
forward.
45:34
And that's a pause on migration, a stop on legal and mostly the illegal migration that
45:44
we see happening almost every day with people crossing the Channel in small boats, not so
45:50
small boats now, sometimes carrying over 100 people at a time.
45:54
It's essentially an invasion in the English Channel that we let happen, that we send our
46:00
lifeboats out to rescue people and bring people to Britain.
46:04
And then we put them up in hotels and find houses for them, provide them with money and
46:11
grant them British citizenship.
46:14
And I think we have allowed very, very high levels of migration from countries where the
46:20
population is majority Muslim.
46:24
They understandably come here and want to practice their religion.
46:28
They're often far, far more hardline about their religious practices than Muslims who
46:33
have been living here for many decades, who are well-established here.
46:38
The newcomers, if you like, the migrants, bring a lot, I'm going to say the word backward,
46:44
bring a lot more backward cultural and religious practices with them.
46:49
And I think we have to put a stop to that.
46:51
Again, I'm not remotely confident this will happen.
46:54
But if I was in charge, I think a complete pause for at least a few years until we know
47:01
who is here and what they're about, I think is one solution as well.
47:07
I agree with you.
47:09
And gosh, the idea of even pausing migration for a while, I think is going to unfortunately
47:18
be very hard.
47:18
I know there's a movement on the continent for re-migration, for sending people back.
47:24
There are so many statistics flying about.
47:26
It's hard for me to get it sorted.
47:28
And I'm an army of one.
47:30
I do my own research.
47:31
But I just saw a datum recently.
47:33
I don't know if you've seen it too.
47:35
There are 50 million relatively recent Muslim new arrivals throughout Europe, and 40 million
47:42
of them are in welfare.
47:44
They're collecting benefits, and they're making very, very significant increases to
47:50
violent crime, et cetera, et cetera.
47:52
If there is a net gain, that is not apparent to me.
47:57
On your view, if symptoms persist, if it's just business as usual, what does Britain
48:04
look like in 10 or 15 years?
48:06
I think the real fear is that it becomes essentially a balkanized state with very
48:11
divided communities living in fear of one another, fear of racially motivated attacks,
48:22
and essentially almost a situation akin to a civil war where you have people, like I
48:30
say, living side by side, but parallel lives, parallel communities.
48:36
And I think that's not a country I want to live in, to be very honest with you.
48:42
And that's why I would say, after pausing migration, we really, really must have a focus
48:49
on, I would say, on integration or assimilation.
48:53
It shouldn't be possible that political parties are producing electoral materials in Arabic,
48:59
for example, in languages other than English.
49:06
Should be assumed that if you want to come and live in Britain, if you want to be a British
49:10
citizen, that you should learn to speak English.
49:13
You know, obviously people can speak second, third, fourth languages as well, but the working
49:18
language of Britain is English, and we should make sure that people are integrated enough
49:25
to be able to live in British society by speaking the language and knowing and respecting the
49:32
customs and traditions of Britain.
49:34
You know, if one were the suspicious type, one would almost begin to suspect that efforts
49:41
were being made to replace the native population.
49:44
I know some people would find that a scurrilous suggestion.
49:47
Joanna Williams, thank you for a fascinating conversation.
49:51
God bless your very good work.
49:52
I'm grateful for your time today, and I do look forward to next time.
49:55
Thank you very much indeed.
49:57
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
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