Blind Christian in Pakistan acquitted of blasphemy
A court in Pakistan has acquitted a blind Catholic man who spent 10 months in prison on a blasphemy charge carrying a mandatory death sentence, ruling that prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence to prove the allegation, his lawyer said. CD.
Last week, a group called Restore Britain released a summary report of an inquiry into the widespread and systematic sexual exploitation of vulnerable working-class women and children across the nation. At least a quarter of a million girls were sexually assaulted, trafficked, tortured, and even killed, mostly by gangs of Pakistani Muslims. The details in the report are so horrifying that it is difficult to believe they are true.
As shocking as the reports of abuse are, the descriptions of the response by British authorities, including police, teachers, social workers, doctors, and politicians. Evidence of the abuse and reports by victims were downplayed and ignored. When Prime Minister Kier Starmer, who resigned Monday, was Director of Public Prosecutions and the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, he dismissed 13,000 cases of suspected child sexual offenders with a warning letter rather than attempting to prosecute.
According to the report, the fear of being labeled racist, the fear of losing votes, the fear of rioting if prosecutions happened, and the fear of accusations of classism all contributed to a culture in which “community cohesion” became more important than protecting women and children.
British citizens who spoke out about the abuse or expressed criticism of mass migration were often prosecuted, especially if the criticisms were directed at Pakistani or Muslim communities. In some cases, fathers attempting to rescue their daughters from abusers were even arrested. Last year alone in Great Britain, approximately 12,000 people were prosecuted for social media posts, some for longer periods than those who committed the crimes they were protesting.
Underlying the British response and the silence by media outlets both in Britain and in the U.S. is a cultural mood common among elites and shaped by Critical Theory. Western culture is assumed to be oppressive, and minorities, especially immigrants, are assumed to be victims of Western oppression. Thus, minorities cannot be expected to be held to the same standards. Their behavior results from their oppression, and identifying criminals within a minority group, it is assumed, will foster even deeper racism and Islamophobia — a term coined by the Muslim Brotherhood to shut down criticism of Islam. In this morally upside-down world, racism and Islamophobia are worse crimes than the sexual exploitation of children.
The gangs that have been operating in Britain have deep ideological and cultural roots shaped by Islam, including Sharia law. While most Muslims are law-abiding and many imams have condemned these gangs, the scale of abuse is so widespread that it must have been known. And yet, it was allowed and even enabled in some communities.
Many Muslims believe that, under Sharia, the same behavior is permitted with children today, and that Muslims are permitted to take non-Muslim women, married or not, as slaves. They are also permitted to abuse and humiliate them, including prostituting them for the benefit of their owners. All this is part of Sharia.
What these gangs have done to at least 250,000 women and children in Britain is allowed by these extreme interpretations of Sharia. Many of the young men responsible for these atrocities believe they are answerable to Sharia, rather than to British law. They believe what they are doing is approved by Allah, especially when done to an enemy who is oppressing them. This is something radical Islam has in common with Critical Theory.
This terrible story reveals why it is foolish to suggest that all cultures and religions are morally equal. They are not. Though every person is made in the image of God and has fallen into sin, some cultures and religions encourage sin and fallenness, including the abuse of other image bearers.
Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. In Great Britain alone, the victims of Islam and Critical Theory number in the hundreds of thousands.
Originally published at BreakPoint.
CP.
This nonsensical defence of adding VAT to school fees suggests they simply haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.
Kemi Badenoch says that Labour added VAT to school fees purely out of spite. Well, maybe. In fairness, though, I do think there’s an alternative possibility that the Tory leader should consider.
Labour MPs aren’t spiteful. They’re just cataclysmically dim.
I’d love to be proved wrong, but sadly I fear that the evidence is becoming hard to ignore. Especially in light of the reason some of them give for supporting the policy.
Earlier this month, Lola McEvoy – the Labour MP for Darlington – told the BBC that it was right to add VAT to school fees, because the state shouldn’t be “subsidising” private schools. And this week, Anna Turley – the Labour MP for Redcar – tweeted: “Note to all the pearl-clutching Tories out in force today… You don’t HAVE to send your kids to private school. We have universal education provision in this country. If you choose to do so, the rest of us shouldn’t pay for you to have a tax break for the privilege.”
These poor confused MPs have of course managed to get it precisely the wrong way round. The state doesn’t “subsidise” the parents of private school pupils. The parents of private school pupils subsidise the state.
This is because, through the taxes they pay, those parents are funding state schools – without receiving anything in return. In fact, by not sending their children to state schools, they’re actually saving the state money. If all those parents were to take their children out of private schools – because, for example, some clueless dolts in Westminster have added VAT to the fees – this would inevitably add to the state’s burden, because the sudden massive influx of extra pupils would require its budget to be spread more thinly.
Labour MPs may not be able to grasp this simple concept. But their counterparts in Malta evidently can. Because in 2024, that country’s own Labour government announced that it was trebling the tax credits given to parents of private school pupils – to thank them for saving the state money.
I wonder whether Andy Burnham will be bold enough to adopt this admirably progressive policy. If not, I hope he will at least try to explain to his MPs that not taxing something isn’t the same as subsidising it. If they think it is, this implies that they think literally every penny you earn belongs to the state. And that if the state lets you keep any of the money you’ve earned, it’s being extremely generous, and you should be grateful.
Surely they don’t think that, do they?
During the heatwave, families across the country have been desperately trying to cool their homes. Some people, however, have resorted to measures that are possibly a little extreme.
For example: the woman in Hitchin who decided to paint her windows with yoghurt.
“Having painted her windows on Wednesday morning,” reported the BBC News website, “Emma says her home is now 1.5C cooler than it was at the same time on Tuesday.” A remarkable scientific breakthrough. None the less, I’m a touch reluctant to follow her lead. For one thing, imagine what the neighbours would think.
“Afternoon, Mr Deacon. Doing a spot of DIY?”
“That’s right. Just painting my windows with yoghurt.”
“Er… I see.”
“Bit of a fiddly job, though. It’s not easy, squeezing a paint roller into a Müller Fruit Corner.”
“Any particular reason why you’re doing this?”
“It’s to stop me coming down with heat stroke.”
“Are you sure you haven’t come down with it already?”
Anyway, I don’t know whether Ed Miliband has been reading the BBC website. But if he has, we can no doubt expect a major announcement on Monday.
“Amid the growing climate emergency, this Government has a radical and far-reaching strategy to protect British families from the dangers of extreme heat. And that’s why we will be providing every household in the country with a free four-pack of Strawberry & Banana Munch Bunch.”
Christians called to 'gracious' engagement on abortion.
Today's political class appears to be leaving behind the strict ‘we don’t do God’ ethos of the 2000s.
(Photo: Getty/iStock)While it is not unprecedented for the widely-read political website Guido Fawkes to feature articles by conservative Christians, it was a pleasant surprise to find a piece by evangelical theologian Carl Trueman in its ‘Seen Elsewhere’ section last week.
Guido Fawkes, which in the week ending June 13 attracted over one million visitors to its site, highlighted a piece by Trueman in the American religion and public life journal First Things, headed ‘What is the Church of England for?’
Trueman, a British professor in the department of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College, Pennsylvania, US, described his experience of walking past a ‘progressive’ C of E church during a visit to central London in early June.
The church was not merely celebrating LGBT Pride Month this June but was promoting a “whole year’s worth” of Pride-affirming events.
These included a Q&A with “the next generation of queer priests” in March; a “queer movie night” in April; an evening of LGBTQ questions for clergy in May, followed by a screening of the film Pride; a Pride service in June; a “drag performance and then another queer service” in July; a “Drag Sports Day” in August; another Pride service in September; an evening denouncing conversion therapy in October; another “queer movie night” in November; and in December, a “queer Christmas Carol Service” where the public is invited to join the congregation to “celebrate the Nativity through song, blending its beauty with iconic queer anthems -from Cher to Ariana, Bowie to Gaga - for a truly unforgettable night”.
Trueman commented: “A month is clearly not enough for this parish as it hijacks the rainbow from God’s promise to Noah and attaches it to human confusion for a whole year.
“This is a dramatic but tragic example of what happens when Christianity loses sight of its transcendent purpose. It is one of the ironies of progressive theology that however sophisticated its intellectual articulation, its liturgical expression tends toward childishness.”
It turns out that Trueman is one of the Christian inspirations for Reform UK MP Danny Kruger. Kruger has just given an interview to the Church Times.
Kruger was speaking to former Spectator editor Matthew D’Ancona who commented that if he had been interviewing “an ambitious and cerebral politician of the Right 20 years ago”, they would have cited economists such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, or Joseph Schumpeter as their philosophical influences.
But for Kruger “the reference points are very different”. Among his inspirations he cites the philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre and Roger Scruton, whose thought was heavily influenced by Christianity, and includes Trueman in his list. Kruger “is an emphatically post-secular conservative”, D’Ancona declares.
Kruger attributes his conversion to Christianity in his twenties to the prayers of his future wife, Emma, and to CS Lewis’s 1952 book, Mere Christianity.
“Between starting and ending it, I sort of switched my identity. And I don’t know what it was but suspect reading it was - correlation and causation - an act of submission, just to open the book. And I kind of gave in,” he told D’Ancona.
Whilst the supposed "Quiet Revival" is not producing an upturn in church attendance in Britain, these two examples in the media surely show the shift away from the strict ‘we don’t do God’ ethos of the political class back in the 2000s.
This was epitomised in 2003 when the then Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair gave an interview to the American magazine Vanity Fair. Writer David Margolick described what happened when the conversation turned to religion:
“As he always does, Alastair Campbell, the former London newsman who is Blair’s director of communications, political strategist, and protector, hovers nearby, ostensibly involved in a separate conversation. But when the topic turns to religion, his ever sensitive antennae home in.
“Campbell, who worships a soccer team more than any church, has never forgotten the 1996 article (in which Mr Blair, then Leader of the Opposition, wrote about his faith) and how it was construed to mean that Tories were too selfish to be good Christians. Ever since, he has tried to steer Blair clear of the topic. ‘Is he on to God?’ Campbell asks Blair—the ‘he’ being me. ‘We don’t do God,’ Campbell declares. ‘I’m sorry. We don’t do God’.”
Danny Kruger’s Church Times interview concludes with him declaring: “We’ve tested to destruction the idea that we can all get along happily in a godless world.”
“And then he is off to Lambeth Palace, for dinner with the Archbishop of Canterbury”, D’Ancona reports.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
4) Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5) Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6) Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7) And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. NIV.
Killers and rapists to be freed early.
‘Reckless’ scheme could see up to 6,000 serious criminals released to tackle prisons overcrowding crisis
I could not earn the favour of the King,
Fri 26 Jun at 17:00
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SIR – The full extent of the folly of Ed Miliband’s net zero zealotry was laid bare this week.
Despite enormous capital expenditure, wind farms generated low amounts of energy because the wind didn’t blow, and solar infrastructure turned out to be less efficient in hot weather.
That left us importing power at more than six times the normal price (“Heatwave Britain forced to rely on EU to avoid power cuts”, report, June 25). So much for energy security.
Roger Gentry
Weavering, Kent.
A Christian artist who was removed from her own exhibition after expressing opposition to childhood gender transition has reached a legal settlement with Watford Borough Council. CT.
14) Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15) so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky 16) as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour in vain.
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Michael Deacon writes the satirical “Way of the World” column twice a week (published at 6am every Tuesday and Saturday), plus a weekly Features column. See more Published 27 June 2026 6:00am BST