Islamophobia Watch

After years of searching for a place to worship, Muslims in the northern English town of Clitheroe have won planning permission to transform a former Methodist chapel into a mosque.

Local Methodists and other faith groups have been among the mosque's supporters, standing alongside their Muslim neighbors as they faced vocal opposition and even racial abuse from those who campaigned against the proposed mosque.

"This is a basic issue of human rights," said the Rev. Christopher Cheeseman, superintendent minister of the Clitheroe Methodist Circuit. "These are people of faith who wish to find a place to worship."

United Methodist Church news report, 1 May 2007

Mark D. Tooley is not happy: "the Christian clerics who promoted the mosque sometimes seemed blissfully unaware of the demographic trends that prophesy their own potential demise in Britain and in an increasingly Islamicized Europe. Amid their quickness in painting mosque opponents as semi-fascist, they showed little sadness over a once vibrant Christian church becoming a place of worship for Allah..... do Christian leaders who celebrate the removal of the cross from a church in favor of the Islamic crescent really honor their own faith? Or have they succombed to a new religion in which politically correct multiculturalism has displaced the Deity?"

Front Page Magazine, 3 May 2007