One in 67 Muslims is apparently transgender. This is the rather startling claim that could be made based on recent figures released by the Office for National Statistics, which recorded that 262,000 people in England and Wales identify as transgender – 0.2% of the population – with the highest numbers being recorded in Newham and Brent - which is how the improbable finding that one in 67 Muslims is transgender has emerged, because Newham and Brent have officially the highest percentage of non-White British residents in the UK!
Some 42.2% of whom in Newham identify as Asian, British Asian, or Welsh Asian, and 32.85% in Brent. But far from the figures being an accurate record of gender orientation across England and Wales, it would appear that many of the respondents to the survey in these two boroughs – for whom English is a second language – were simply flummoxed by what appeared an incomprehensible question, and put down the wrong response.
The precise wording for the question was, "is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?". Now it might be said, with some justification, that even with English as your first language, the convoluted wording is rather confusing, but this apparently was the form agreed in consultation with Stonewall, so that it might accurately reflect the charity's definition of cisgender (persons whose gender identity corresponds with the sex registered for them at birth).
This is the same inaccurately classified 'charity' that supports children as young as three being taught that they're not defined by biology – which may have got it wrong – and that they can choose their gender for themselves. The same 'charity' working so hard politically to smash heteronormative culture and embed gender fluidity.
Is this just misguided but well-meaning insanity, aimed at championing a downtrodden and stigmatised group that has suffered centuries of oppression? Or is there something more insidious at work?
Well, to try and unpick this Gordian knot of attempted reconfiguration and understand what's really going on, it's perhaps instructive to take a look at the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto, published in London back in 1971, in the wake of the Stonewall riots in New York a couple of years before.
Pumped by the euphoria of resistance, gay rights activists in the US had banded together with the express aim of challenging and ultimately destroying "heteronormative, conservative norms of family and gender roles" (emphasis added), which they identified as the instruments of their centuries old, sexual oppression.
This call was enthusiastically taken up by UK activists, present at that initial confrontation and the debate that followed, and who subsequently returned to Britain intent on forming a British chapter of the new Gay Liberation Front. Like their American counterparts, they were set on challenging the mainstream institutions in UK society, which, as they saw it, had led to their oppression. Their avowed aim was to overturn what they labelled decaying and restrictive ideology, and to put in its place a new order, built round what they openly said would be revolutionary change.
The movement then took off across the world as a civil rights movement, demanding gay and lesbian recognition and equality, with activists designedly presenting themselves as downtrodden victims, oppressed by a patriarchal capitalist system that was built on Christianity and preservation of the status quo. Lined up as principal targets for destruction were Christianity, heteronormativity, all forms of 'family' ... and gender identity.
It has taken 50 years, but the architects of this planned sexual and cultural rebranding have been quite startlingly successful – all the more so because, by and large, Joe Public has been totally ignorant of the carefully orchestrated campaign of manipulation and reconfiguration that lies at the heart of this so-called battle for equality.
What is at stake is not, and never has been, simply the right to have sex whenever and wherever you want, with whomever you want, but the structure and values that hold together, and up to now have given strength to, Western society - those same forces that keep chaos at bay.
Let us make no mistake, what we are witnessing is at heart a fundamental and visceral battle for spiritual control. Which is not to say that LGBT+ activists are knowingly 'anti-God' or card-carrying satanists – the majority indeed will have not the slightest inkling what it is they are supporting. But this is what is at stake, and which makes the battle so chilling.
The frightening truth is that we are all, in different ways, victims in this latest manifestation of the ancient war between good and evil. The war between the devil, seeking to promote chaos and impose his own control, and God.
To return, however, to the numbers of people identifying as transgender in England and Wales, it perhaps goes without saying that LGBTQ+ activists will celebrate what appears to be an increase in trans numbers, but for the wellbeing and even continuance of society, such normalisation and promotion must be resisted.
The announcement that the statistics are being examined is to be welcomed, but of greater importance is stopping the determined campaign to promote and embed gender fluidity across society - for women, for children ... and for the health of society as a whole.
Rev Lynda Rose is founder of Voice for Justice UK, a group which works to uphold the moral values of the Bible in society.
