Remember when Prince Charles said he wanted to be "defender of faith" rather than "defender of the faith"? I found that merely annoying back when he said it but now it sounds downright ominous for the future of Britain as a Christian land.

And of course--given the Kilroy-Silk affair--no one will, publicly anyway, have the cajones to stand up in public in defense of tradition or simple "Britishness;" that would be politically incorrect and "racist."

Lousy ideas beget lousy behaviors. In this case, egalitarianism coming from epistemological relativism came home to roost in England (and Europe, and to a lesser extent thusfar, in the USA). Islam is not just another religion; it is an evil spreading into a philosophical vacuum over the world. Islamists do not assimilate; they behave like cancer in a host.

As long as the Anglican church continues to be given special privileges in the UK government, I cannot see any flaw in what the muslims are requesting. I think the solution is to completely disassociate state and church. Politicians in the UK should be democratically elected rather than get awarded a position of power on grounds of belonging to a particular religion. It is like saying that X per cent of UK citizens are vegetarian - therefore the UK government should contain X per cent vegetarians. Or X per cent of UK citizens are gay - therefore the UK government should contain X per cent gays. That's not how a democracy works.

If they have to give seats to the Muslims then they will have to give them to all the other religions as well, including the Catholics, the non-Anglican protestants, the Hindus, Jews and Sikhs.

At that point the Muslims will definitely be outnumbered and may regret forcing the issue after all.

I don't see Why this is getting so much attention? Survey's methodology is questionable as mosques don't keep registers and Mulim attendance numbers anre just extrapolated from population based on some hypothetical attendance percentage. Even if numbers are accurate, It only shows far larger proportion of Muslims are attending mosques than angligans attending church. It does not reflect total population numbers. This also not taking in to account other religions growing in UK Susan has rightly noted. Though really insignificant report, It does pump some air in Islamist's collective heads though.

I would say that the point is not that the numbers are correct but that Muslims are using them, accurate or not, to push for greater representation in the House of Lords. Such pressure will only increase in the coming years.

Mr. Spencer I agree fully with you that Muslims are using what is obviously an inaccurate number derived with flawed methodology for further political gains. However to me more serious concern is not only that they are demanding more political seats but they are also insisting on starting an entirely novel basis for it; namely allocating political power divided on basis of religious lines and allocated based on attendance to weekly religious services rather than popular vote or relative total population. Dire implications such ideology should be obvious to any thinking person and any free nation with rising Muslim population.

Whether Methodology is accurate or not, the fact that Muslims are asking, possibly demanding, seats in the House of Lords is merely the beginning of infiltrating the British Political System.

The number of seats requested probably out numbers the number of seats that would be gained through Democratic elections. In a way, it is getting in "through the backdoor."

A comment was made when an Archbishop from Turkey was meeting with Muslim representatives in there. The Muslim representative stated that the Laws of the Democracy will allow them to invade quietly and that their laws will enable them to dominate us.

If seats are granted, it would motivate other Muslims in Western and Eastern Europe to demand more political representation.

With the declining birthrates of Europeans and the increasing birthrates of Muslims, the political system(s) of European Nations with slowly be taken over and within 25 to 30 years, there will a Muslim Nation in Western Europe

For the non-Brits here, I should point out that people are not elected to our Upper Chamber, the House of Lords, but appointed (it used to be hereditary). Thus it is unfair to criticise the Muslim request and set it against "democracy" --- the House of Lords is not and has never been democratic.

A better line of argument is that which says Church and State should be separate; thus one could give no seats to the Muslims but, at the same time, remove the Bishops.

The fastest growing Churches are the pentecostal or charismatic Churches, so C of E attendance may not be representative of the state of Christianity as a whole.

Interested: it isn't accurate to match this survey against the number of total practicing Christians in the UK. As I read it, they only surveyed two religious groups: Muslims and Anglicans (and I am wondering now if they included sects like Shiite and Ahmadiya in the Muslim figures -- if so the survey is definitely unfair, as then all the Christian different sects should be counted as well. There is a very large number of Ahmadiyahs in the UK.)

A recent survey in Britain showed that 75 percent of the population identifies themselves as Christian. And this article plainly states that Catholics were not included in the survey.

Dave, allocating political power on religious lines is exactly how Muslims think. As Bernard Lewis noted once, Muslims see religions divided by nations, while Westerners tend to see nations divided by religions.

This difference in viewing political organization is at the heart of the Muslim-Western divide, I believe. I believe it is also an intractable divide. The West has too much invested in the concept of the nation state and the Muslims have too much invested in the concept of the Ummah.

That said, this demand also follows the current trend in leftist-multicultural political and judicial theory, toward granting group human rights rather than the modern Western ideal of investing rights with the individual. We have already had politics organized by group rights in our past; it was called "tribalism." Not a pretty picture awaits us unless we return to our modern Western tradition of honoring the rights of the individual, rather than granting and honoring group rights.

LoL. Merry ol England sees Islam as a threat to one of their earliest and prominent institutions: the church. Quite simply the church today is becoming a dying creed. The church is so desperate these days, that they resort to rock bands just to attract a crowd. On top of that it has gone as far as to appoint a gay bishop, just to keep itself inexistence. To many people in so called christian lands, christianity is becoming a side show. Which is kind of sad in a way.

As muslim popoulations continue to increase they will have to be given a piece of the pie, becuase they are such a huge part of your society. Not just muslims, but other minorities should also be given a right to have not just a say, but an influence in government policy. Britain can no longer denie that it has benefited from multiculturalism; technologically,economically, socially, you name it. So in short no taxation without representation.