[Editor’s note: You may not agree with everything in this Londoner’s personal account, but there his glimpse into how drastically London has changed and continues to change ought to give even the most hardened multiculturalist pause.]

The problem with London is that it has too much Islam. Vast areas of London are now cultural wastelands, thanks to Islam. London as a city is shrinking in terms of where one can go for fun things to do. Wherever Islam settles, fun things cease to exist. Pubs close down, nightclubs close, cinemas close. Walk through any Muslim-majority area in any part of the UK, and their high streets look like Third World bazaars. There are shops, but they are mainly market-stalls from which to do business. These clutter up the streets, and there are empty boxes lying everywhere. The produce on offer is of a very poor grade, and what the typical Muslim high-street has to offer is shops or stalls that sell rotting fruit and vegetables, hijabs or burqas. There are Islamic bookstores, and invariably there will be a mosque and a halal butcher shop — not much else. Oh, yes, there will also be some shops selling refurbished phones and SIM cards. These shops are filled with sun-bleached items that have lain in the windows for years. A lot of the shop-owners have been done for money-laundering, which would explain the rank odours upon entering and the worthless junk and outdated merchandise on display.

Walk through these areas as a non-Muslim man or woman, and you will be in the minority. If English is your native tongue, it will be the last thing you will hear being spoken on the street. If you’re a woman and not wearing at least a hijab you will stand out (Kilburn used to be wonderfully Irish; now it looks like the worst part of Turkey, with Dawah stalls set up everywhere). Likewise with men, if you’re not wearing some sort of religious garb or tribal outfit, you will be looked upon by suspicious eyes. Right here in London in the UK. You won’t find any arts centres, theatres, or cinemas. No Islamic dance clubs. The most you’ll get, by way of Islamic culture, is a curry on Brick Lane prior to a night spent dancing somewhere else.

Today I am a 50-year-old man living in London. I was once a runaway teen to the city, hitchhiking there with £1 in my pocket, believing the streets to be paved with gold. This was back in the late 70’s early 80’s. London seemed exciting back then. It also seemed English. I saw lots of bowler hats and lots of outrageous hairstyles and fashion thanks to the punk-rock movement. London seemed to be the place to come and be whoever and whatever you wanted to be. There didn’t seem to be any limits to what a person could say, do and get away with. And then after punk came the New Romantic movement and gender-bending by way of Boy George and Annie Lennox. London forever seemed synonymous with creativity and self-expression. At no point could I ever have imagined London becoming the centre-point for censorship of speech, as it has become today.

I was not a political person at this point in my life. I had never voted, never had a political conversation, and to cut a long story short, I moved to New York, lived there for six years, and then moved to Glasgow in order to study religion. I had been raised in a very strict and devout Catholic household. I carried with me Jesus’ guilt and shame. It was my thinking that I could deconstruct the religious nonsense that had been put into my head, that I could free myself from religious constraints and live and think as an autonomous person, if I studied religion at a university level. I went looking for answers as to who and what and where God was. I found no answers. Instead I found more and more questions to be asked, which was in itself incredibly liberating. I was also fascinated by the fact that no matter what part of the globe a person grows up in, aspects of the resident deity always shapes part of each person’s character, whether they are aware of it or not and whether they are willing to admit it or not. Compare the West’s attitude of brotherhood, forgiveness, inclusion, compassion, etc, with Islam’s intolerance, supremacy and misogyny.

I found New York in the late 80’s to be remarkable. Such fond memories of the East Village, the clubs in the meat-packing district, and also the community around Tompkins Square Park. I was living next to it on 7th between Avenues B and C. The park was filled with tents. Wounded vets and the mentally ill lived there, having been expelled from the hospitals. I lived all over, from South Street Seaport to East and West Villages, to just below the 59th Street Bridge. I lived in Jackson Heights and Long Island City. NYC in the 80s and 90s for sure was divided into areas – Irish, Spanish, Puerto Rican, etc., but they were all areas were all races and colours and creeds could go to have fun and partake of other cultural habits. Areas where we could learn about new food or literature or dance. This, to me, seemed like true multiculturalism – every culture being open, and every culture having something to offer.

At age 35, I decided it was time to get an education, and so I moved to Glasgow in Scotland to study religion. I started off studying English Literature and Language, but found the department to be too full of academic snobs, so for my honours years I switched to my third subject, which was Theology. The department was amazing, and I whizzed through my course, exhausted Glasgow and was restless again (I’ve never been a “stay in the one place” kind of guy) and then at age 40, ten years ago, I returned to a London that I did not recognize. I simply thought to myself, “What the hell?” the minute I arrived here. Most borough consensuses are from 2011, the next ones can be expected in 2021. They’re compiled every ten years and are broken down into demographics of race, religion, age, identity, etc. At this current point in time, most London borough are hovering around the 34% mark for residents who identify as white British. One borough, Newham, has only 10% white people in it. And it’s not just the outlying regions. If you go to Kensington and Harrods, you’ll find all the wealthy Arabs, the women wearing their niqabs but with golden designer glasses, handbags and shoes. It’s not hard to guess what’s lurking underneath all that “modesty.” In Soho (sin city), hijabs and niqabs walk around carrying their designer Agent Provocateur bags – the sexiest lingerie in London.

For sure, there are still people going around in the central areas self-expressing, but London has shrunk as a city. Too many of its areas and boroughs have been taken over by religious bigots and Third World tribes. Let me be perfectly clear. I am a fan of cultures, no matter how barbaric. I think every culture has the right to survive, but not all cultures belong on the same piece of land. What’s happening in London just now will end up in a land grab and a divide. If you have so many people wanting to live under sharia law and so many Muslim mayors and MPs, as we currently do, then the country can only look forward to a divided future. The East End of London (Shadwell, Stepney Green, Whitechapel, all the way out to Bromley by Bow) looks like Bangladesh meets Pakistan. If you head northwest, you will think you are in first Turkey and then Somalia. The self expression, the autonomy of movement, sexuality, and dress are disappearing fast and are being replaced with religious and tribal garb.

London is a political hotbed. Every weekend, some group of people are shutting down Central London for one reason or another, from anything to opposing Brexit to “Tories Out” to “Trump not allowed.” I also discovered in my researching that the punk movement wasn’t about self-expression. They were a political hard-left movement instigated, in part, by Vivienne Westwood. Very quickly they became the Brownshirts of their day. People who wanted to be different all ended up looking the same – mohawks and tartan bondage trousers became their uniforms. There was no individuality. Today’s equivalent are Antifa – black jeans, black hoodies. No individualization. I had mistakenly thought punk was nothing more than a kick in the teeth to a suited, 9-5 existence, but it wasn’t. They were the Antifa of the 70s, and every bit as moronic and illogical.

I had also thought that astronomy and science had turned Britain into an irreligious society. These fields had pushed God out even further into space and had forced us to reevaluate our notion of what and who God is. But now we have imported religious bigots who are force-fed the Quran and believe every word of it. There’s no disputing with them the merits of hermeneutics or literary criticism. No informing them of literary tropes, intertextuality and devices. They look at the Quran and that’s it. End of story. It must be true

I wouldn’t mind being replaced by a superior culture, one who could teach us new things about evolution. But we are being dragged backwards into the seventh century by allowing Islam any foothold in our land. Islam has no place in the West.