Is there another Islamic agenda behind the national Muslim war memorial to the brave soldiers who died for us during two world wars?
By Gavin Ashenden, Catholic Herald.
Timing is everything.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that the government will fund a national war memorial to those Muslim soldiers who fought on our side during the two world wars and in subsequent conflicts. We have also been reminded that other religions have similar memorials.
And that is true. But is there anything more that this particular commemoration might represent? To try and parse that, it is worth first considering the other memorials that do indeed exist.
I remember my surprise when I was in Brighton, having been invited to a World War I memorial service, to discover a memorial to the Sikh soldiers who, as part of the British Empire, fought in that war and died. The memorial is situated just a few miles north of Patcham on the South Downs.
I wondered how it came to be there? The answer turned out to be quite a simple and pragmatic one. Wounded soldiers were put on the train and brought back to be cared for in England, and a number of Indian Sikh soldiers were amongst those brought to hospital in Brighton. Some recovered, and others died.
Immediately after the war ended, it was decided as a mark of respect to build a memorial to those Sikh soldiers who died from their wounds. It’s true that the memorial helps mitigate the fact that very few people know about these soldiers that were brought from a distant part of the British Empire to fight against the UK’s foe in Europe.
But while multiculturalists will suggest that the provision of an Muslim memorial is a similar expression of the cultural diversity that existed in the armed forces during the two world wars, and is thus worthy of that recognition represented by the Sikh memorial, the truth may be a little bit more complex and multi-layered. Islam is not just an alternative religion to Buddhism or Hinduism or Christianity.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
