Bishop: Many Muslims have victim mentality
Last updated at 14:40pm on 5th November 2006
Controversial: The Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali
The Church of England's only Asian bishop has criticised many Muslims in Britain for having a victim mentality.
The Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali, whose father converted from Islam, told The Sunday Times that he believed that some Muslims had a "dual psychology" in which they desired both "victimhood and domination".
He said: "Their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims, as in Bosnia or Kosovo, and always wrong when the Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists, as with the Taliban or in Iraq."
He said that failure to counter these beliefs had allowed radical Islam to flourish in Britain and stricter checks should be made to exclude extremist clerics from the country.
He said: "The two main causes of the present situation [rising extremism] are fundamentalist imams and material on the internet."
He proposed checks on qualifications, knowledge of the English language and an understanding of British life and culture should be made to filter out extremist imams.
The 57-year-old, who was born a Catholic in Karachi but converted to Protestantism at the age of 20, said that he believed the Christian faith was intermingled with British values.
Nazir-Ali, who moved to Britain in the 1980s and became the youngest Bishop in the world at 35, also joined in the argument surrounding women wearing full-face veils and said that in some circumstances they were not suitable.
He said: "I can see nothing in Islam that prescribes the wearing of a full-face veil. In the supermarket those at the cash tills need to be recognised. Teaching is another context in which society requires recognition and identification."
Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, told the newspaper that the bishop's comments were not "very helpful for community relationships". |
