The Challenge of Islam: Understanding and Responding to Islam’s Increasing Influence in the UK
Tim DieppeWilberforce Publications
Published February 6, 2025
I have found the reviews —and the commendations from leading Christian scholars on Islam— very positive. However, one evangelical expert on Islam told me he wouldn't recommend the book unless it was accompanied with more about how we should respond to Muslims. That friend got me thinking.
My view is that it is an excellent book in many ways, and I have been recommending it to others. I've met Tim once, and I asked him if people claim he is exaggerating the extent of the Islamification of Britain. He quietly responded 'no, no one says I'm exaggerating the case', and that was a memorable comment at the end of our brief conversation at a busy conference. This suggests to me that he has done his homework; and though I might quibble with a few things, his case stands. If you do feel there are exaggerations or misrepresentations, feel free to add them in the comments.
I won't summarise the contents here (this is ably done by a scholar from the Latimer Trust: see pp2-4). What this article will do is explore the impact the book had on me emotionally. I found it a very troubling book to read.
Probably the most upsetting episode mentioned in the book is the Batley Grammar School incident:
"In 2021, a teacher at Batley Grammar School [the head of Religious Education] decided to teach a lesson about blasphemy and free speech. He illustrated the lesson by showing a cartoon of Muhammad. Crowds gathered outside the school to protest, forcing the school to shut for two days in a row. The teacher was subsequently suspended and was forced to go into hiding for his own safety. He remains in hiding to this day [with his partner and four children, using an assumed name, outside of Yorkshire]. This is certainly the most effective lesson he ever taught. The whole school and the rest of the country learned that we do not have free speech when it comes to Islam. There is a de-facto Islamic blasphemy law in place."
By the way, if you don't have the book or don't have time to read it, listen to this webinar where Tim talks you through his material (mainly chapter one).
I almost want to say it's a heart-breaking read. And yet that's where I don't want to leave readers: left broken-hearted about the state of our nation. And feeling somewhat alone. That's how I felt. I knew that if I shared what I'd been discovering about the extent of Islamic takeover in Britain some people would think I was being conspiratorial or 'far right'.
Tim Dieppe's personal journey into engagement with Islam is fascinating. He is an Oxford Mathematics graduate and former investment banker. It was while researching whether he could manage a Sharia fund at his bank that he began to see what a malign influence Islam was having on the UK. Perhaps the first anecdote in his webinar is the most compelling, where HSBC bank, for whom Tim Dieppe worked, decided to sack the Islamist chairman* of their Sharia fund advisory board because he had written in defence of killing unbelievers in the UK until they pay the jizya (which is what Qu'ran 9:29 says).
Now, Tim the former financier and Maths graduate, kind of looks and speaks the part: he's not the wild-eyed prophet with a biker beard you might expect to be the one to take on Islam! Now, I'm actually thankful he is prosaic and mathematical: this no doubt has dampened the gunpowder of those who might like to write him off as a rednecked, red-state conspiracy theorist. But there is a point to consider amongst the high praise of his work: though I have no reason to doubt Tim is a committed member of a local church, he is a religious scholar and social analyst, and not a pastor. I don't want to overstate the case: in his chapter on Salman Rushdie which details the UK's move 'from fatwa to fear', he appeals to us like a preacher (with some alliteration to boot) to move "from fear to faith and freedom". But he says all this in five lines, and this simply isn't enough to pastor fearful believers through the coming storms.
In ch 1 he gives his his manifesto for responding to Islam's growth in the UK. These 'Five Pillars of Responding to Islam' are as follows:
- Pray
- Love
- Confront
- Expose
- Resist
Let me give you an example. Tim tells us that by 2050, according to Pew research, 17% of Britain will be Muslim and he quotes from Ed Husain to point out there are no go areas for whites in the UK. But there are Psalms that help me really make sense of that shocking prospect. Psalm 60:3 says "You have shown your people desperate times; you have given us wine that makes us stagger."
Immediately, that sounds problematic. Do churches want to hear that the Christian God is the one, through bringing Islam in great power to the UK, is causing this Islamification of northern towns like Bradford, Blackburn and Dewsbury? Worse, is it right they think of this change as God making us drunk, something elsewhere denounced as a sin? Well, here is poetry. It knocks us, it shocks us —but it has the power to shape us too: into the bold envoys of Christ, like the fearless apostles in Acts. That Psalm leads us into singing with conviction the petition "Give us aid against the enemy, for human help is worthless." And then David concludes "With God we shall gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies." (With the proviso that texts like this need to read and sung with an understanding that we fight a spiritual war with the word of God, leaving the 'trampling of our enemies' to the just judgment of the Last Day: we're not talking the vigilante justice of some anti-Islam militants)
Some in UK Christian circles are clearly getting this point about the value of the Psalms. I hear of 'Psalm shouts' being held at different gatherings in the UK. Selden College, a Christian university starting up in Oxford, state that Psalm-singing is an integral part of their education of students. But we need this in our churches too: to replace some of the fizz and pop of our more superficial happy-clappy songs with solid meat for the soul.
Try Psalm 102** sung to the tune of My Song is Love Unknown. We need to express our sorrow and our loneliness and then proceed to sing triumphantly of our Saviour. When I preached on sharing the Good News with Muslims this year I led our congregation into a singing of Psalm 87 to the tune of Come Thou Fount, which I thought worked well (video clip here)— and I was moved to tears singing it.
There's a couple of other ways to process Tim's book biblically. I will try to expand on these in further posts if I have time.
a) There is a striking biblical precedent for the take-over of a country by an idolatrous religion (the north of a country, as it happens —which has an eerie likeness to the growing strength of Islam in the former mill towns of the north of England). It comes in 1 Kings 11-12. Note that these events, in which Israel turns to a counterfeit version of the worship of Yahweh and make a golden calf, happen according to the word of the LORD. Note 11:31;12:15. Now I do know that Tim Dieppe agrees that the progress of Islam is not a victory for Allah but rather the judgment of God on the apostate churches of the West. That's clear in the Q&A of the webinar linked above. But this needs to be written on our hearts through drinking deeply of the wells of God's salvation.
b) Tim's book can serve as a 'ten fearful scouts' report. Remember the ten who reported that Canaan couldn't be taken by the Israelites because there were giants there? "We looked like grasshoppers in their eyes", they tell the people. "We even saw the Nephilim there". If read in the wrong spirit, the book is a long, detailed account of Nephilim and the descendants of Anak! To be honest, that's the effect it had on me at times. Hear the key quote in full:
"The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them" (Numbers 13:32-33)
We naturally are swayed by the ten. But we need to listen to the minority voice within the church, those who say along with Joshua and Caleb:
"If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.’" Numbers 13:8-9
Tim trifurcates the challenge of Islam in this way in that webinar:
I think he sells his own work a little short with that trifurcation! In the book he deals with the educational challenge, the economic challenge and the political challenge, like the killing of Sir David Amess MP in 2021 by a jihadist who said in court "If you encourage someone to an act of Jihad it is a good thing". But my point is, in conclusion, that we need to face up also to the emotional challenge of Islam. That's what this article has majored on. Even the cover of the book looks 'scary', and Islam does present a very bold face, in such way that even the most faithful Christians can indeed feel 'like grasshoppers' before their large and well-attended mosques. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus if we are to run the race with perseverance, and whilst it would be churlish to be over-critical of the book on this point, it must nevertheless be said that this book says very little about Jesus Christ. That's where pastors, and indeed every Christian speaking into this area, need to provide spiritual food that will strengthen weak knees for the spiritual marathon. To borrow from Robert Murray M'Cheyne: "For every one look at Islam, take ten looks at Christ"***
*A prominent Islamic scholar called Taqi Usmani, whose career is well-documented on Wikipedia
** using Sing Psalms' metrical version, posted freely online and via their app
*** Here's the original M'Cheyne quote:
"Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely... Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams. Feel his all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and repose in his almighty arms."
Bonar, Andrew. Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1844). This quote appears in the "Letters" section, often in editions published in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
