Two press items in the last week of April demonstrated that our government bows to pressure from Saudi Arabia.
Clearly this is a finance-driven control (as effectively admitted by the politicians), but it means we are now under the influence of Muslim principles rather than Christian, or even, at a basic level, traditional British moral values. This raises a serious question of who influences British policy.
Islamic banking
The first item reported concerned the issue of shari’a-compliant bonds. Britain is the first Western country to issue these and reflects the Chancellor (soon to be PM) Gordon Brown’s desire to make London the centre of Islamic finance. Writing to The Financial Times, Andrea Williams of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship pointed out that the implication of this action is far-reaching as it stipulates a number of areas in which this money cannot be used.
