The Catholic Herald: Interview with Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali
Interesting interview in the Catholic Hearld with my old Bish Naz:-
‘One has to speak the truth regardless’
Rory Fitzgerald meets the controversial former Bishop of Rochester and unofficial leader of conservative Anglicans
In the August heat of Karachi in 1949 a little boy was born in to a Shia Muslim family. Pakistan was only two years old, a fledgling and chaotic nation, trying to find its way in the world without British rule. Michael Nazir-Ali’s mother cannot then have imagined that her baby boy would one day sit in that most British of chambers, the House of Lords. Nor that he would become a prominent Anglican bishop and an eminent Christian thinker.
Nine years before Michael Nazir-Ali was born, London was under attack by the Luftwaffe and Britain was fighting for its life. In 1940, Churchill spoke these immortal words:”I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.
Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation… Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all of Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”
The vicar’s house on Giltspur Street in central London was one of many London buildings destroyed by a Nazi bomb during that earlier effort to eradicate Christian civilisation. Perhaps appositely, this is where I met Bishop Nazir-Ali last month.
Standing on Giltspur Street you are waist-deep in history. A vicar of this very church sang the Psalm Miserere in February 1555 as he was led around the corner to Smithfield, where he was burned alive for heresy. During the Crusades this ancient church was re-named in honour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. How little things change in 1,000 years: in 2010 our conversation was to be dominated by the ongoing tensions with Islam, and schisms in the Christian Church.
Dr Nazir-Ali was Bishop of Rochester until March last year, when he retired. He still lives in Kent with his wife and two children and now ministers to persecuted Christian minorities abroad.
“Christians in this country are becoming aware of the persecutions of Christians abroad. I think partly because they are experiencing something of it themselves,” he says.
We salute you sir
Tags: Church Life
March 6th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
It is encoruaging to hear the brave stand made by Bishop Nazir ali. However, two things struck me on reading the article. Firstly, the god of Islam is not the God of the Bible, although the Bishop is right to point to a general sense of some form of the Divine in humankind. Islam is a construct of deceit, although many Muslims are earnestly seeking the Way. It is right to opppose Islam while at the same time loving Muslims as human beings created by God.
Secondly, the author of the article admires the colourful veil worn by a Muslim girl. The veil is a symbol of oppression, and ,in its most exreme form, turns women into non-beings. This is contrary to the teaching of Scripture. The veil has become the sign of an upsurge in an increasingly militant and oppressive expression of Islam and is to be deplored not admired!