As historian Tom Holland has shown more clearly than anyone else, so lots of the essentially good things in our culture derive from Christian vision. Asylum is one in all those things.
In the First Covenant or Old Testament, unlike the practices of the encircling cultures, the essential humanity of individuals was recognised and guarded. The Babylonians, Assyrians and Egyptians favoured the concept and practice of slavery – ‘might was right’.
Cultures that worshipped different gods saw people as expendable commodities; very very similar to each communism and fascism have done in our context. The God of Israel created a special anthropology. All human beings were made in his image. It provided the muse for Christendom.
So refugees were indeed welcomed in Israel. Jewish culture under the First Covenant provided some extraordinary touches of compassion that reflected the dignity and value of humans at their most vulnerable. Not only were refugees to not be enslaved or abused, but there have been cities of refuge for people fleeing the results of accidental manslaughter. And there was the 12 months of the jubilee to save lots of families from perpetual debt stretching with no end in sight down the generations.
But all this was conditional. It was conditional on the keeping of the law and covenant. Only the entire covenant kept this vision from being abused or diluted.
Fast track to today.
Still, gratifyingly and surprisingly, our culture holds to this Judaeo-Christian vision that individuals usually are not expendable commodities, or meaningless components within the marketplace, but only just – we would be the last generation.
None of the competing philosophies share this view. Islam prioritises submission to Allah, reinforces group identity over the person conscience, and punishes apostasy ruthlessly. Wokery, or because it is becoming ‘woke-alitarianism’, sees only the collective into which the person is subsumed; it dis-allows forgiveness. The nationalistic right has long been swept off the board, but before it did, it also subjugated individuals to the collective of nationhood in its extreme iterations.
It is entirely right and good that refugees have their humanity recognised by a Christian culture and be given a likelihood to search out protection.
But the entire process will not be automatic and never value-free. For this to work there have to be conditions which can be observed. And in our own day, removed from being observed they’re being abused.
What we face in the intervening time is the gap opening up between beliefs and values. The secular society of the late twentieth century liked the values of Christianity, but refused the beliefs from which they originated.
The first and most evident problem with asylum is that the shape that ancient Israel practised required those being given state hospitality to evolve to the faith and values of the host state. One can see why. If the character and beliefs of the state are altered by the sheer variety of incomers, the very concept of asylum is threatened by alternative value systems.
The same thing applies today. Migration Watch has estimated that if net migration continues at present record level of 606,000 a 12 months, Britain’s population will rise to between 83 and 87 million by 2046. This would represent a rise of greater than 15 million in Britain’s population – comparable to fifteen recent cities the dimensions of Birmingham. And only a few of this 15 million will share either the beliefs or the values of recent Britain.
Already the pressures of migration have modified the best way we exercise freedom and the rights of the person on this country. We are faced with the paradox that the culture of the very people for whom immigration has allowed entry to this country (as either political or economic refugees – our state makes no practical distinction) denies the identical freedom to people just like the teacher in Batley who was forced into hiding and given a recent identity after showing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad at school. Or the Jewish MP for Finchley, Mike Freer, who’s being forced out of Parliament and right into a type of hiding from public life after repeated threats.
We might ask who’s going to make sure or provide ‘asylum’ in their very own community and culture for either the Batley teacher or the Finchley MP?
If our society had retained its belief in Christianity, and prioritised Christian ethics and values over progressive multi-culturalism, this contradiction might need been mitigated.
Already we discover that in practice certain sorts of asylum seekers are prioritised over others. During the Syrian refugee crisis the Home Office discriminated against Christian asylum seekers, allowing in just 2 per cent of Christians. This presumably implies that the vast majority of the 98 per cent given asylum were Muslim. The implications of Islamic immigration are too obvious to want comment.
One obvious consequence that may follow the present trajectory of presidency immigration, refugee and asylum practice is that the demographic balance of this country goes to be permanently and increasingly altered. This is prone to make the availability of human rights in our own society – rights that already elude the Batley teacher and Finchley MP – much more problematic. And this represents yet one more element consequent on the growing gap between values and belief that the repudiation or diminishment of Christianity in our society has created.
While the outrage that followed the horrific attack by Abdul Shokoor Ezedi in Clapham was comprehensible, there isn’t a agreement on who ought to be in charge for the situation (beyond Ezedi himself). Except that as a substitute of examining the deeper reason for the values or belief gap, commentators have as a substitute been on the lookout for scapegoats and so they appear to have found them within the Christian churches.
The try and evangelise immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers is after all precisely the strategy to address the diminishment of Christian faith.
We may additionally discover three forms of Christian or ecclesial community who’re reaching out to asylum seekers – Catholic, Baptist and Anglican. Both the Catholics and the Baptists (who tell us that they’re engaging with over forty of the refugees on the Bibi Stockholm) take membership of the Church very seriously.
Inevitably the culture of a longtime church where the fluidity of membership is a characteristic of the Church goes to make it rather more difficult to oversee the post-conversion commitment. Additionally the interest in refuges within the liberal churches is commonly more politically motivated than spiritually.
Perhaps all that may be concluded at this point is that political motivation will do nothing to assist change or ameliorate the growing gap between Christian belief and values.
The real failure demonstrated by the ‘bogus conversion phenomenon’Â is that of the secular authorities. They are those who introduced the category of faith as a basis for in search of refuge with no idea of the best way to evaluate it. It is nearly beyond belief that the asylum tribunal ignored Ezidi’s conviction for 2 sexual assaults in Newcastle, and selected to grant his application on the idea of what seems to be a fake conversion.
It mustn’t need saying that if Ezidi had really encountered the love of Christ, the girl and youngsters he took revenge on would have been permanently shielded from his rage and revenge.
Perhaps the churches on this country might have the ability to search out the arrogance not simply to defend themselves against the costs of naivety of their coping with asylum seekers, but additionally to remind the remainder of our society that should you desire a community characterised by good neighbours, love of the stranger, the honouring of the rule of law, protection of conscience, the treasuring of the person, and on this case particularly, the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation, it may possibly be found through conversion to Christ.
