Newsline 1 August 2014

Newsline 1 August 2014

Newsline is a weekly round-up of news and opinion from the NSS website. If you're not already a member, becoming one is the most tangible way of supporting our work. Our campaigning is wholly supported by our members, people like you who share our belief that secularism is an essential element in promoting equality between all citizens. Please join today.

News, Blogs & Opinion

There should be no embarrassment over challenging Muslim treatment of women, says Justice Minister

News | Thu, 31st Jul 2014

Justice Minister Simon Hughes has said Britain should not be "culturally embarrassed" about challenging Muslims over the wearing of the veil or the segregation of women.

Simon Hughes, the Minister of State for Justice and Civil Liberties, said women and men must be allowed to sit together to "challenge people's beliefs and practices" and take on Muslim "hardliners and fanatics" who oppose equality.

His comments came in a speech to the Girl Summit, an event dedicated to ending female genital mutilation (FGM) and child, early and forced marriage (CEFM) within a generation.

Mr Hughes said schools had been nervous to challenge communities on issues of FGM or forced marriage in fear that they were "tresspassing on a cultural space that was inappropriate" but that had changed in the last four years.

He said the shift was in part down to political leaders making a "personal commitment" to challenge communities publicly about FGM.

Mr Hughes said there was a "cultural shift" amongst Britain's Muslim communities in favour of equality. Those unwilling to accept examples of such parity, such as men and women worshipping together in mosques, were now "losing the battle", he said.

The Liberal Democrat minister also appeared to welcome a debate on the veil. Mr Hughes said there had been a "nervousness" about discussing what veils people can wear, face coverings at school, or whether Muslim women should be required to lift the veil when giving evidence in a court, but "we have broken though that now", he said.

Sara Khan, Director and Co-founder of Inspire, a counter-extremism and human rights organisation seeking to address the inequalities facing British Muslim women, welcomed Mr Hughes's comments. She said: "For years, organisations like mine have been at the forefront of fighting discrimination experienced by Muslim women not only in wider society but also within Muslim communities. We have consistently opposed the argument of "religious or cultural differences" which has often been used to ignore, deny or prevent women from receiving the same level of protection from human rights and equalities legislation which is afforded to other British women. Universal human rights belong to all British citizens.

"A cultural shift is indeed beginning to slowly take place within British Muslim communities, but we cannot be complacent. Our work within Muslim communities highlights to us that the fight against hardliners and fundamentalists who oppose equality is still a huge battle and will not change overnight. It is a generational battle. We therefore welcome the support of all those in British society who believe in equality and human rights for all."

Stephen Evans, campaigns manager at the National Secular Society, said: "There is no doubt that a fear of upsetting cultural and religious sensitivities has prevented FGM from being tackled effectively – despite such abuse being illegal in the UK since 1985. Whilst this is thankfully now changing, there is still a long way to go before the violence and inequality faced by Muslim women in Britain is adequately addressed.

"The treatment of Muslim women in Britain's unregulated and inherently discriminatory 'sharia courts' is undermining their legal equality, but little is being done to remedy this. Meanwhile, through its guidance on inheritance and succession rules, the Law Society is advising solicitors on how to implement the most regressive and misogynist interpretation of sharia available.

"Secularists, human rights activists and liberal Muslims must continue to work together to ensure Muslim women enjoy the same rights and level of legal protection as all other UK citizens."

Kerry County Council crucifix a challenge to religious diversity

Opinion | Tue, 29th Jul 2014

Following the erection of a crucifix in the newly renovated Kerry County Council chambers, Dr Ronan McCrea argues that the values of a particular faith should not be given predominance in State institutions.

The decision to erect a crucifix in Kerry County Council's chamber recently should worry all concerned about the future of Irish public life.

Supporters of councillor John-Joe Culloty's move argued that they were "tired of apologising" for their religion and passed a motion that called for the erection of the crucifix "in light of our Christian faith and the strong Christian values contained within our Constitution".

Has serious harm has been done? After all, no objections have yet been received from council employees and some suggest local Muslims are actually in favour.

No one has the right to go about their business shielded from any symbol with which they may disagree, and the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Lautsi v Italy in 2011 that the presence of a crucifix in a state school does not violate the European Convention, provided its overall effect is not oppressive.

However, this decision raises broader issues about the relationship between religion and public life. The problem of enabling diverse religious believers to share a single political system is centuries old. In Europe, the destruction caused by the wars of religion following the reformation brought about what American historian Mark Lilla called "the great separation" involving recognition of political matters as distinct from religious questions, which allowed states to avoid highly-destructive religious contests for political power.

That requires a degree of self-discipline – individuals must differentiate between what their faith and the law may require. In western liberal democracies we are well accustomed to this habit and can treat it as inevitable and universal. It is anything but.

In large parts of the world, notably but not exclusively in many Muslim-majority societies, religion exercises a dominant influence and obedience to religious commands in matters such as sex, free speech or apostasy is enforced by law.

Subservient State

For decades following independence the Irish State had an unhealthily subservient relationship to the predominant religion. A high degree of religious homogeneity meant the arrangement did not produce political instability though it had large costs in terms of individual rights.

Immigration and the rapid rise in the number of those of no religion has meant that in the future our institutions will have to obtain the allegiance of a religiously diverse population. They cannot be seen, symbolically or substantively, to be the preserve of one faith.

The republican tradition of Wolfe Tone means that when we enter the political arena we are not Catholic, Protestant or dissenter (or Jew, Muslim or Hindu) but citizens exercising collective democratic self-government for a population that will always be divided on religious matters.

Recognising that life in such a society means we must all refrain from seeking to use politics and law to promote our particular faith will be difficult for some – and particularly for those with origins in parts of the world where religion dominates political life.

It would be entirely unreasonable to ask Muslim citizens to place religious teachings advocating criminalisation of alcohol, apostasy or homosexuality to one side when they participate in public life when Christian fellow citizens refuse to separate their religious claims from their political activities.

Culture and history

This does not mean losing contact with our culture or history. Christianity's long influence means that, inevitably, some communal arrangements will bear its marks.

The status of Christmas and Saint Patrick's Day as national holidays is a case in point, an inevitable consequence of the need to have holidays and festivals that have historical resonance.

Indeed, in the Lautsi case the ECHR upheld the display of the cross in Italian schools because the decision was merely perpetuating a pre-existing cultural tradition. Kerry County Council's decision is different. It decided to erect for the first time in its history a religious symbol in its chamber to ensure that the values of a particular faith would have predominance in an institution meant to make rules for all the people of Kerry.

This has nothing to do with tradition or identity, but with the promotion of a particular faith by a State institution.

State bodies should not promote Catholicism, Islam or atheism, but be committed to co-existence and equal respect for those of all faiths and none.

Culloty's move undermines this. It is utterly inconsistent with the republican ethos his party claims to espouse and a threat to the development of a stable political order that can command the loyalty of all in diversifying Ireland.

Dr Ronan McCrea is an an Irish barrister and lectures in constitutional and European law at University College London. This article was originally published in the Irish Times and is reproduced here with kind permission of the author.

Judge rules seriously ill teenager should receive treatment involving “blood products” against mother’s religious objections

News | Fri, 1st Aug 2014

A High Court Judge has ruled that doctors can administer "plasma exchange treatment" to a seriously ill teenager after the boy's mother – a Jehovah's Witness – objected on religious grounds.

Following a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court, Mr Justice Cobb ruled in favour of specialists treating the 13 year old boy after concluding that he faced "potentially catastrophic ill health" following a rapid decline caused by a disease which affected his central nervous system.

Justice Cobb said: "In my judgment, and taking account of the risks advised, and the views of his mother, I am nonetheless clearly of the view that it is in (his) best interests that he should receive this treatment and should receive it immediately in order to give him the best possible prospects of recovery."

According to a report in the Telegraph, the mother was said to be "unhappy" with the ruling.

Based on their interpretation of biblical commandments against ingesting blood, Jehovah's Witnesses reject blood transfusions and the use of other products derived from blood.

Justice Cobb's ruling follows a similar ruling by Justice Keehan in February that a seriously ill new-born should receive surgery, including any necessary blood transfusions, at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire. In this case the parents – both Jehovah's Witnesses – refused to consent to the treatment on religious grounds but did not take any active steps to prevent the ruling.

Dr Antony Lempert, Chair of the Secular Medical Forum (SMF), said: "This case is another example of the serious risks faced by some children born into families where religious dogma is given greater respect than essential medical care for the children in the family. The judge was quite right to overrule the religious objection raised by this boy's mother but wrong to collude with the myth that the mother was 'unable' to give her consent. The lack of consent was a choice made by the mother; a choice for which she should be held as accountable as other parents who choose to harm their children for whatever reason. The fact that religion may sometimes be seen as an excuse for allowing harm to one's children has been recognised by the doctors' regulatory body, the GMC in its 2012 guidance. This GMC guidance states that: 'In some cases it may be difficult to identify where parents' freedom to bring up their children in line with their religious and cultural practices or beliefs becomes a cause for concern about a child's or young person's physical or emotional well-being'.

"The SMF supports parents who wish to make reasonable decisions about their child's upbringing and supports competent adults who wish to make major decisions about their own treatment. However, there should be no confusion that adults should not have the right to procure dangerous treatments for, or to withhold necessary treatments from children, including their own. Irrespective of culture of origin, all children should be appropriately protected from the dangerous expression of other people's beliefs until such time as they are old enough to make their own decisions. From reports it appears that this 13 year-old child was able to indicate that he wanted active treatment to save his life. It is very sad that his own mother refused to give consent to his potentially life-saving treatment and justified that refusal on the basis of her own religious beliefs and dogma."

Labour party equality statement excludes non-religious people

News | Thu, 31st Jul 2014

Labour's policy making body – the National Policy Forum – has come under fire for adopting an equality statement that appears not to cover non-religious people.

The equality statement, adopted as a commitment to the way the party will implement policies and its manifesto states 'religion' but omits 'or belief'.

Both the Equality Act 2010 and human rights law use the term 'religion or belief' to cover both non-religious and religious people.

Labour Humanists, who campaign for a more secularist and rationalist approach to policy making within the party, say the statement needs "urgent amendment" and have written to representatives at Labour's policy making body asking for it to be changed to state 'religion or belief'.

A spokesperson for Labour Humanists said: "'Religion' clearly should not be used as shorthand or a catch-all for 'religion or belief' – few non-religious people would be happy to have their beliefs described under the banner of religion when they are atheistic, humanist or philosophical but distinctly not religious."

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: "The omission runs the risk of leaving non-religious citizens feeling that they are less worthy of protection from discrimination than the religious. Equality means non-believers and those with other philosophical beliefs have the same rights and protection as those who identify with a religion. Clearly this should be reflected in the Labour Party's statement."

Talking to God: the corporate religious challenge to a pluralist, progressive Europe

Opinion | Fri, 1st Aug 2014

EU and UN 'dialogue' with civil society gives disproportionate weight to conservative religious voices at the expense of moderate and secular opinion, argues Kenneth Houston.

Corporate religion needs to hear the word 'no' more often from our politicians.

An erroneous and damaging assumption has taken root within late modern democracy. It is the notion that close and regular consultation with religious associations and interests invariably contributes to the benefit of society as a whole. Increasingly, however, where corporate religion has exerted an influence over policy decisions, it has tended to result in controversy at best and, at worst, a regressive policy decision.

In 2006 an article in the UK Lancet highlighted stalled progress in achieving greater empowerment for women, particularly those identified as the Millennium Development Goals. The authors, outlining the impact on women's health, pointed to the resurgence of conservative religious forces as the primary reason behind this flagging progress.

In November 2013, the UN General Assembly Third Committee passed an anaemic resolution on violence against women, which was but a shadow of its original self. Religious forces had mobilised to push back against full equality for women. The Vatican, majority Muslim countries and African nations cooperated to reduce the force and potency of the resolution on the basis that it undermined women's 'traditional' familial and societal role.

Also in 2013, at the heart of twenty first century Europe, conservative religious forces successfully undermined European-wide efforts to entrench greater gender equality and a framework for reproductive health policy. A European Parliamentary report and resolution on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights was voted down after strenuous lobbying efforts by the religious right.

Paralleling the increasing density of interstate cooperation in Europe, the EU dramatically increased the role of civil society associations – including religious organizations – in supranational governance. They did so principally on the basis that such inclusion would help narrow the so-called 'democratic deficit' between Brussels and the elusive European citizen. Through various phases from 1997 onwards, from the Amsterdam Treaty through to the abandoned Draft Constitution, the EU gradually institutionalised a formal church-EU dialogue mechanism, which finds its ultimate formulation in article 17.3 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). This treaty provision compels the EU, through its various institutions, to hold "open, regular and transparent dialogue" with religious and non-confessional bodies

Lending weight to this structured dialogue between political decision-makers and corporate religious elites was the expanding influence of various strains of communitarian thinking fashionable within political thought. The idea, grounded in the post-Rawlsian assumption that we are all members of 'groups', was that in order to reach the citizen, Europe's institutions should engage more openly with religious 'leaders' in order to bring the spiritual dimension into politics and connect the European project with its distant citizenry.

A former President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, went so far as to invoke a quasi-Habermasian justification for this dialogue provision: "true dialogue means each component of society is able to express its point of view with respect for the other. Consensus can then emerge from the truth about particular values or goals." It was a nice idea, but it never reflected reality. After nearly a decade of this dialogue interesting patterns have emerged which reveal how this process is actually executed.

The arrangement quickly morphed into a highly fragmented and largely bilateral engagement framework between the EU's main political institutions and conventional corporate religious bodies. It does not embody the plenary format of its nascent beginnings before 2005. This has resulted in the consolidation of the privileged position of the two main Christian traditions (Roman Catholic and Reformist) that have always had a strong connection to the European Commission since the time of Jacques Delors. Only very recently, and ironically after the intervention of humanist groups, did the Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist representatives actually get included in the main dialogue event held every spring. The fate of the secular humanist groups, who had originally chaired informal events in the late 1990s, was a salutary lesson in lobby politics. The humanists were completely relegated to a separate discussion forum, held on a separate date and only with officials, not the Presidents of the main EU institutions.

There is, in short, a two-tier system in operation: one is an effective lobbying platform for high profile and institutionalized monotheistic religious interest groups and the other a far from satisfactory arrangement for less traditional voices, which are in reality granted only token status. This should be concerning, given that significant chunks of the European populace profess no religion, and even more profess only a weak faith at best. What is more concerning is the deviation of the dialogue praxis from the principles of fairness and equality supposedly underpinning it, particularly in the areas of mutual interaction, mutual respect and transparency. In sum, transparency is in relatively short supply and mutual interaction is a chimera. The decisions made about who is selected for dialogue events and what is to be discussed at them is largely opaque.

Other problems that emerge include question marks over how the agenda for discussion is decided. Issues that would actually be useful discussion points with corporate religious bodies have not appeared on the agenda thus far. As far back as 2007 a European Parliamentary Working Group on religion and politics proposed to the presidents of the main institutions that issues such as intolerance of minorities, intolerance of LGBT citizens, gender equality, and freedom of speech, expression and conscience among others should all be up for discussion. None of these issues ever formed the basis of the high level talks between religious groups and political actors. In fact, what emerges on the agenda for discussion is decidedly tame and does not confront conservative religious voices with the real consequences of their ideological commitments.

This state of affairs may well be perfectly legitimate in the world of lobbying, but it does not reflect the spirit of inclusive dialogue between the EU and civil society mooted by the religious leaders. It has not been expanded to be more inclusive, and more meaningful. The result of the failure to embody real dialogue, and the result of this lack of vigilance on the part of many observers, is now clearly visible in the emasculation of international organizations such as the UN and the EU as forces for progressive social policy relative to gender issues. It is not just that religious lobbyists are pushing an anti-secular and anti-progressive agenda. It is that politicians appear to be listening.

Dr Kenneth Houston is Head of the Department of Arts and Sciences at Webster University Thailand. He has published on the subjects of religion, politics and power sharing. This article first appeared on Open Democracy and is reproduced here under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial 3.0 licence.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the NSS.

Talking to God: the corporate religious challenge to a pluralist, progressive Europe

German newspaper forced to apologise over criticism of Islam piece

News | Mon, 28th Jul 2014

Germany's biggest selling newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, has had to apologise for an editorial comment piece which has sparked debate and controversy in the country for its criticism of Islam, the Local has reported.

In his brief piece, the tabloid's vice editor in chief, Nicolaus Fest, accused Islam of having a "murderous contempt for women and homosexuals".

He said, "I don't believe in God, but at the same time Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism don't bother me. Only Islam bothers me more and more".

Fest said he was "bothered" by the "considerably disproportionate criminality of youths from Muslim backgrounds", by forced marriages and 'honour killings'.

Mr Fest's comment piece was widely shared on social media, and quickly drew harsh criticism from many - including politicians - who called it racist and demanded an apology to all German Muslims – of which there are an estimated 4.3 million in the country.

In response to the outcry, Bild's editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann wrote an online editorial article rejecting Fest's arguments for not having drawn a line between Islam as a religion and the political beliefs of Islamism.

He said, "For Bild and Axel Springer there has been a clear, unshakeable dividing line between Islam as a world religion and the degrading ideology of Islamism.

"That's why in Bild and Axel Springer [publications] there is no room for generalized, depreciating comments against Islam and the people who believe in Allah".

Mr Diekmann stated that, "We don't want such a debate along religious lines. We don't want to lead it, take it up or conjure it. For they always end in disaster - history has shown that to us often enough."

Mr Diekmann has been Bild's editor-in-chief since 2001 and is also an executive board member of the Turkish daily Hürriyet.

Mr Fests's comment piece was published in the wake of number of anti-Semitic incidents which have occurred over the past few weeks in Germany and beyond, in the context of protests against Israel's Gaza operation. During a demonstration in Paris, chants of "Jews to the gas chambers", were heard.

There has been shock at the tenor of the anti-Israel chants at some of the demonstrations.

In Germany, incitement to racial hatred, which includes the chanting of anti-Semitic slogans, is forbidden under anti-racism laws.

The German Government sought to reassure Jewish people living in the country that they should feel safe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesperson, Georg Streiter, condemned the threats made at the protests, arguing that they constituted an "attack on freedom and tolerance, and an attempt to destroy Germany's democracy".