Britain: Battle of the True Faiths; It's Islam vs. Christianity at Ye Olde Speakers Corner.

Byline: Sarah Sennott

Jay Smith is a Christian on a mission, and he has the scars to prove it. Earlier this year, he says, two Muslim men attacked him in London's Hyde Park, nearly throttling him. A couple of years ago he was beaten up at the same spot. Yet every Sunday, as he has for the past decade, he picks up his Bible and heads back to Speakers Corner, London's famous outpost of free speech and protest. With a master's degree in Islamic studies and an evangelical gleam in his eye, Smith doesn't have much good to say about Islam. But no one disputes his right to mount a soapbox and shout out his opinions--except, perhaps, a few of the Muslims he regularly offends. They rough him up from time to time, he says, "to get me to shut up."

Welcome to Speakers Corner, a new battleground in the struggle between militant Islam and evangelical Christianity. Each Sunday morning Christians and Muslims gather there to debate, preach, proselytize and, increasingly, fight. Usually the exchanges are merely rhetorical, however heated. Bibles and Qur'ans, their pages worn from intense scrutiny, are shaken in the air. The corner's traditional melange of Marxists, Buddhists, professional cranks and tourists is there, too. But make no mistake: seasoned goers say tensions have never been higher. "This is a war zone," says Steve Same, 40, a missionary from Florida who's been coming to Speakers Corner for years.

Speakers Corner is no stranger to controversy. It was, after all, established in an act of Parliament in 1872, after a series of riots in the mid-1800s. Karl Marx's speeches there during the late 19th century provoked intense debate, if not blows. Several times over the past century the place has been shut down ...