On Sunday at the famed Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, Hatun Tash, a convert from Islam to Christianity who frequently engages in debates with Muslims, was stabbedabove her right eye and on her hand by a Muslim who objected to her preaching, as well as, apparently, her Charlie Hebdo t-shirt.

Hatun Tash was there because Speakers’ Corner has over the past century and a half gained a reputation as a place where anyone can say anything, aside from calling for criminal behavior, and freedom of speech is respected and protected. But in today’s Britain, where mass migration, largely of Muslims from North Africa, continues at a greater rate than ever with virtually nothing being done to stop it, those days appear to be drawing to a close.

Britain’s Royal Parks website still says it: “Speakers’ Corner is a traditional site for public speeches and debates since the mid 1800’s when protests and demonstrations took place in Hyde Park….Anyone can turn up unannounced to speak on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful.”

Nowadays, however, Speakers’ Corner has come to be dominated by Muslim preachers who try to convert people to Islam, which is fair enough, and physically intimidate those who challenge them, which isn’t. Longtime London resident and Jihad Watch correspondent Joshua Winston observes: “Speakers’ Corner in 2000 hosted a variety of speakers. Everything from gay rights to vegans through to New World Order people.”

Englandistan

However, “the past couple of years has seen the variety of topics and speakers diminish. In the last year, Islam has begun to dominate Speakers’ Corner. I would estimate that the speakers and attendees there are about 80% Muslim, 10% Christian, with the remaining 10% spread across a variety of other denominations and political activists.”

The change in demographics has led to a change in the atmosphere of the place. Winston explains: “What I have witnessed in my 18 years of attending Speakers’ Corner is the rise of intimidation tactics accompany the increase in the number of Muslim speakers. The Muslims seek to intimidate other speakers, and they appear to want to claim the place or settle the piece of land as their own. They lay their prayer mats down on the grass and they leave them there all day, essentially blocking parts of the park off to other people. They have loud calls to prayer. All of it against park laws.” Winston has experienced this personally: “I myself have had loads of physical violence heaped upon me. I’ve been chased out of the park. I’ve been smacked in the face by an Algerian. I’ve witnessed people being pushed off of ladders and punched and kicked, all because their opinion differed from the teachings of Islam.”

As all this happens, London police generally turn a blind eye. They seem anxious above all not to offend members of the country’s growing and restive Muslim community and thus have been slow to act against those who commit assault and traffic in intimidation at Speakers’ Corner. This is one manifestation of a larger phenomenon: As rape gangs made up almost entirely of Muslims destroyed the lives of thousands of British non-Muslim girls, authorities in numerous cases did nothing to stop the perpetrators, for fear that acting against them would open them up to charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia.”

There is more.