U.K. Is Europe’s Most Tolerant Country

Sarah Joseph, the editor of British magazine Emel, said Britain allows an ample room for religious freedom and free speech, asserting the importance of building bridges with the British people, Bahrain’s English-language Gulf Daily News reported Wednesday, March10 .

“The actions of the British government are not a reflection of the people of that nation,” she said in statements made during her four-day visit to Bahrain, where she delivered a series of lectures on Muslims’ burning issues.

She said the some two million people who took to the streets of London to demonstrate against the war in Iraq was a case in point.

“The vast majority of anti-war protesters were non-Muslim. They do care about the Israel and Palestine conflict, about issues that we care about,” she was quoted by the Bahraini daily as saying.

‘Most Practiced’

Joseph predicted that Islam would be the most widely practiced religion in the United Kingdom by2020 .

“We are the second largest faith in Britain and will be the largest practicing faith in Britain by 2020 if you use church and mosque attendance as a measure,” she said.

She says mosque attendance is expected to outstrip church attendance over the next 16 years.

Britain’s The Sunday Times reported last January that the number of British Muslims praying at mosques had outstripped the number of regular worshippers in the Church of England, the mother church of the Anglican communion.

British reports also revealed last month that some14 , 000British elite have converted to Islam.

The Gulf Daily News cited estimates as suggesting that anywhere between 10 , 000and50 , 000people a year convert to Islam in the U.K., which is currently home to approximately1 . 8million Muslims.