British bishop: Muslims vulnerable to radicalism

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A Church of England bishop said in an interview published Sunday that radical Islam is being taught in mosque schools across Britain. The Pakistani-born bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, also said he believes Muslims are sometimes vulnerable to such teachings because they have developed a victim mentality. "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," Nazir-Ali said in an interview with The Sunday Times of London. "Given the world view that has given rise to such grievances, there can never be sufficient appeasement, and new demands will continue to be made," he said. He said that a failure to counter these beliefs had allowed radical Islam to flourish in Britain and that stricter checks should be introduced to exclude extremist clerics from the country. "The two main causes of the present situation (rising extremism) are fundamentalist imams and material on the Internet," he said.