UK Riots: Archbishop Of Canterbury Warns Against Far-Right, Misinformation

 

The archbishop of Canterbury has warned Christians they should not be part of any far-right groups, criticising the use of Christian imagery in this summer’s riots as “an offence to our faith”.

Writing in the Guardian, Justin Welby condemned the violent unrest, which he described as “racist”, “anti-Muslim, anti-refugee and anti-asylum seeker”. His intervention follows a week of disorder that began after a mass stabbing of children at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last month.

The unrest, during which rioters attacked mosques, police officers and a hotel housing asylum seekers, was whipped up by far-right activists online who falsely claimed that a Muslim immigrant was behind the Southport attack.

Police across the country remain on high alert for further violence. Keir Starmer cancelled a planned holiday this weekend to lead the response to the unrest. Ministers believe the increased police presence and the speedy prosecution and sentencing of rioters have acted as a deterrent. More people are due to appear in court on Monday.

Thousands of anti-racism protesters rallied in towns and cities including Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow and London over the weekend. Hundreds of mourners gathered on Sunday for the funeral of nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar, one of three children who was killed in Southport.

The archbishop said the riots had been “detonated by lies and fuelled by deliberate misinformation, spread quickly online by bad actors with malignant motivations”. He said that that disinformation had “flourished in fertile ground cultivated by years of rhetoric from some of our press and politicians”.

Welby decried the use of Christian iconography by far-right rioters. “The Christian iconography that has been exploited by the far right is an offence to our faith, and all that Jesus was and is,” he said.

“Let me say clearly now to Christians that they should not be associated with any far-right group – because those groups are unchristian. Let me say clearly now to other faiths, especially Muslims, that we denounce people misusing such imagery as fundamentally anti-Christian.”

- Author: Eleni Courea, The Guardian