Bless me father, for I have sinned. I’ve been reading The Guardian again…

“Muhammad has become the most popular name for baby boys in the UK. The list of the top 100 baby names of 2014 showed Muhammad has risen 27 places from last year to claim the number one spot for boys. There is a surge in Arabic names generally, with Nur a new entry in the girls’ top 100, jumping straight to number 29, and Maryam rising 59 places to number 35. Omar, Ali, and Ibrahim are new to the boys’ top 100.”

The 2001 UK census showed a population of 1.6 million Muslims. In April 2008, the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that the government estimated the Muslim population at 2 million or 3.3% of the UK population. This represented an increase of 400,000 in seven years. The 1951 census showed the number of Muslims at less than 22,000. Therefore, between 1951 and 2001 there had been an annualized increase of 31,500 Muslims in the UK; but in the seven year period between 2001 and 2008 there was an actual annualized increase of 57,000.

There are 44 million Muslims in Europe, excluding Turkey; 1.7 million in Paris; 1 million in London.

In the interests of “balance,” I turned from The Guardain to the Daily Telegraph: “Census figures reveal a startling shift in Britain’s demographic trend with almost a tenth of babies and toddlers born in England and Wales being Muslim. The percentage of Muslims among the under-fives is almost twice as high as in the general population. Less than one in 200 over 85s are Muslims – an indication of the extent to which birth rate is changing the UK’s religious demographic.”

As I noted yesterday, the former Bishop of Oxford wants Islamic prayers to be included in the Coronation service so that Muslims will feel “embraced.”

If the Queen lives for another twenty years, will the Muslim Council of Great Britain – founded 1997, motto “Islam is Peace” – let us have any Christian prayers in the Coronation of the Queen’s successor?