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Okay, here’s what happened:

Sunday Telegraph - Extremism flourished as UK lost Christianity. By Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester

[The arrival of large numbers of people of other faiths] has coincided with the end of the Empire which brought about a widespread questioning of Britain’s role.

On the one hand, the British were losing confidence in the Christian vision which underlay most of the achievements and values of the culture and, on the other, they sought to accommodate the newer arrivals on the basis of a novel philosophy of “multiculturalism”.

This required that people should be facilitated in living as separate communities, continuing to communicate in their own languages and having minimum need for building healthy relationships with the majority.

Alongside these developments, there has been a worldwide resurgence of the ideology of Islamic extremism. One of the results of this has been to further alienate the young from the nation in which they were growing up and also to turn already separate communities into “no-go” areas where adherence to this ideology has become a mark of acceptability.

Those of a different faith or race may find it difficult to live or work there because of hostility to them. In many ways, this is but the other side of the coin to far-Right intimidation. Attempts have been made to impose an “Islamic” character on certain areas, for example, by insisting on artificial amplification for the Adhan, the call to prayer.

Such amplification was, of course, unknown throughout most of history and its use raises all sorts of questions about noise levels and whether non-Muslims wish to be told the creed of a particular faith five times a day on the loudspeaker.

This is happening here even though some Muslim-majority communities are trying to reduce noise levels from multiple mosques announcing this call, one after the other, over quite a small geographical area.

There is pressure already to relate aspects of the sharia to civil law in Britain. To some extent this is already true of arrangements for sharia-compliant banking but have the far-reaching implications of this been fully considered?

It is now less possible for Christianity to be the public faith in Britain.

Telegraph (Monday) - Multiculturalism is breeding intolerance. By Philip Johnston

In truth, the bishop has simply articulated what many in the Government and in the race relations world have already come to realise (and which most of the rest of us understood years ago), and that is the baleful consequences of three decades of multiculturalism. Last year, even the Commission for Racial Equality, once a cheerleader for the concept, recanted with a report that depicted Britain as an unequal and segregated nation in danger of breaking up.

Like Bishop Nazir-Ali, it feared that extremism was being fostered by the retreat of different groups behind their ethnic walls. For many years, those who wanted Britain to be recognised as a multicultural society which needed to revise, or even jettison, five centuries of Protestant hegemony held centre stage. Anyone who questioned it had their reputations trashed. The multiculturalists even coined an insult - Islamophobia - to try to close down the debate. Some of them yesterday accused the bishop of “scaremongering”.

But while multiculturalism began as a facet of Britain’s characteristic toleration of other people’s ways, religions, cuisines, languages and dress, it metamorphosed into a political creed that held that ethnic minority groups should be allowed to do what they like. It became a guiding principle of governance.

The Telegraph - Bishop of Rochester leads the way

There is a fair chance that the sort of comments that attract criticism, not only from the political establishment but also from the self-appointed spokesmen of the Muslim community are worth hearing.

So it is with the weekend’s unvarnished warning from the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, of the perils of multiculturalism. His claim that Islamic radicalism is turning parts of this country into “no go” areas for non-Muslims may be overstated but will resonate with many. …

Yet Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems have responded with knee-jerk predictability, desperate as ever not to offend Muslim sensibilities. It shows once again how difficult it is to engage in a mature debate about the damaging impact of multiculturalism in this country in general, and the threat posed by Islamic radicalism to our way of life in particular.

It is six years since the Cantle Inquiry into race disturbances in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley exposed the “parallel lives” being lived by white and ethnic groups in Britain today.

Since then, little has been done to make those lives converge. Is that a surprise when a serious attempt to foster public discourse of such profound issues draws such squeals of synthetic outrage?

The Joy of Curmudgeonry - The Bishop and the Wordmonger

The Bishop of Rochester is a “vicious bulldog” who has used “unholy tactics”, the effect of which has been “to suffuse toxic fear through the land” — or so says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, foreigner to understatement and perennial foe of moderate language. “Whatever his psychological flaws”, says she, “his latest rant in a right-wing newspaper cannot and should not be forgiven.” His great offence: — to speak of no-go areas “where adherence to [Islamic] ideology has become a mark of acceptability” and where “[t]hose of a different faith or race may find it difficult to live or work”, a state of affairs to which Ms Alibhai-Brown herself as much as admits: “There are indeed some localities where Wahabi Islam has taken a hold and imposed cultural separatism between those believers and the rest”. Perhaps then the offence is that the bishop took to speaking of this matter without the leave or consultation of mediators such as Ms Alibhai-Brown, professionals who might always be trusted to find the right words.

And there you have it.