Newsline 24 May 2013

Statistics show massive loss of interest in Catholicism in England and Wales

News | Mon, 20th May 2013

Following the bad news for Christian leaders generally from the census figures, new research by the Latin Mass Society illustrates a catastrophic decline in Catholicism in Britain.

The statistics show that the 1960s were peak for Catholic baptisms (138,000) and marriages (47,000) and these have dropped to 64,000 and 10,000 respectively. Most of the figures in the study go back as far as 1913, giving an overarching view of the state of the Catholic Church in England and Wales over a century.

Receptions into the Church (adult conversions) peaked in 1959 at 16,000 but since 1997 have been below 6,000.

The ordination of new priests has shown the most dramatic fall, to only a sixteenth of the 1965 figure.

Dr Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society, who led the research, said the figures "show unambiguously that something went seriously wrong in the Church in England and Wales in the 1960s and 1970s. Catholics ceased quite suddenly to see the value of getting married, having large families, and having their children baptised. Non-Catholics no longer perceived the Church as the ark of salvation, and ceased to seek admission. Young men no longer offered themselves for the priesthood in the same numbers as before."

The number of priests in England and Wales rose steadily from 3,838 in 1912 to a peak of 7,887 in 1965, before beginning to tail off. It recovered for a while in the mid-1990s, but fell to 5,264 in 2011. "In this respect we are still living on our capital, and this capital is about to run out," he said.

In 1965 there were 233 ordinations but since then there has been a steady fall, reaching double figures by 1981. The lowest point was reached in 2009, with only 14 ordinations. 2010 showed a marked improvement, with 23, only to drop again to 16 in 2011.

Other statistics released show an increase in men becoming monks and women becoming nuns, but from a very low base. In 2012, 30 men joined priestly orders, a rise from 19 in each of the three previous years, and the most since 1996. There has also been a significant rise in women joining active orders, from six in 2009 to 23 in 2012.

Because the number of Catholics in England and Wales has increased (mainly due to immigration), the number of priests per 100,000 Catholics has halved since 1947, from 268 to 135 in 2010.

The estimated number of Catholics in England and Wales has increased from 1.8 million in 1912 (when the population was 36.1 million, or 5% of the population) to just over four million in 2010 (when the population was 56.1 million 7% of the population). The Catholic population has been largely inflated by immigration from Eastern Europe.

Women wake up – your dignity is negotiable

Opinion | Tue, 21st May 2013

This morning I read about a man in Sydney who was accused of rioting last year. Mohammad Issai Issaka, accused of riot, assaulting police, and resisting arrest during the infamous Sydney riots of 2012, refused to stand up in court claiming it was against his religion. He would not stand because the Magistrate was a woman.

In the end, according to the report, a ludicrous "compromise" was reached "whereby Issaka would walk into the courtroom after the Magistrate and leave before her, so he didn't have to technically stand up for her".

I am almost lost for words.

A woman works to achieve the position of Magistrate – a position generally viewed with respect – but she is humiliated and degraded because some misogynist little twerp refuses to acknowledge her authority.

Guess what happens? A "compromise". Not contempt of court as it should have been, but a tacit approval of his "beliefs" - regardless of how humiliating it may be for the Magistrate - and a lesson to all women; no matter who you are or what you achieve, you're still just a woman and if a man doesn't want to recognise your authority, well that is his prerogative and it will be respected.

This is not the first time.

In Italy, a 5-star hotel in Venice also reached a "compromise" when a Muslim employee refused to take orders from the female boss. Instead of being fired as he should have been, the hotel hired a man to take orders from the female boss and relay them to the employee. The woman's dignity went out the window.

In Spain, female parking metre enforcement officers were withdrawn from an area in Palma de Mallorca following harassment from members of a local mosque who insisted that only men should work there. The women were moved on and replaced with an exclusively male team.

Sharia law is thriving in Britain– and elsewhere – even though it treats women as property (property with beating rights afforded to owners). FGM goes on with such impunity in the UK that people are even coming here from other European countries to have it performed under the nose of our authorities; knowing full well it will go unpunished because it is their 'culture'.

The lesson? When there is a clash between the rights and dignity of women and religious or cultural sensitivities, women lose – every single time.

It is time to wake up. This will only get worse if we don't.

Report into experiences of female converts to Islam

News | Thu, 23rd May 2013

A ground-breaking report examining the experiences of nearly 50 British women of all ages, ethnicities, backgrounds and faiths (or no faith) – who have all converted to Islam - was launched in London yesterday by the University of Cambridge.

The report, produced by the University's Centre of Islamic Studies (CIS), in association with the New Muslims Project, Markfield, is a fascinating dissection of the conversion experience of women in Britain in the 21st Century.

The first forum of its kind held in the UK, the study concludes with a series of recommendations for the convert, heritage Muslim, and wider British communities. The 129-page report also outlines the social, emotional and sometimes economic costs of conversion, and the context and reasons for women converting to Islam in a society with pervasive negative stereotypes about the faith.

Project Leader and Director of CIS, Yasir Suleiman, said: "The consistent themes flowing through the report is the need for increased levels of support for the convert community – and the converts' own potential to be a powerful and transformative influence on both the heritage Muslim community and wider British society.

"Another of the recurring themes was the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the UK media and what role the convert community might have to play in helping to redress the balance.

This report seeks to dispel misapprehensions and misrepresentations of female converts to Islam."

A key revelation of the study was the heavily disproportionate attention, bordering on obsession in some cases, given to white, female converts to Islam by both the Muslim and non-Muslim communities alike.

This is often to the detriment of African-Caribbean converts, thought to be the largest ethnic group of converts to Islam, who are often ignored and left feeling isolated by both the Muslim and non-Muslim communities.

Added Suleiman: "White converts can be regarded as 'trophy' Muslims and used in a tokenistic fashion by various sections of society, including the media. African-Caribbean converts remain largely invisible, uncelebrated and frequently unacknowledged. They can feel like a minority within a minority and this is something that must be addressed. I found this part of the conversion narratives hardest to bear."

New "safe campus" website - radical silence on religious radicalism?

Opinion | Wed, 22nd May 2013

A new website, Safe Campus Communities, aimed at helping universities handle radicalisation and extremism on campuses was launched at a Universities UK conference in London this week.

The website, which has been welcomed by the Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, has been described as providing those involved in higher education with "a range of information to help them with issues including external speaker protocols, effective community and police engagement, and inter-faith relations on campus."

Commenting on the new site, Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK - which runs the site - said: "This new website creates an invaluable resource for universities. It will enable them to share information as to how they have addressed the challenge of ensuring that their campuses are open, while also providing a safe environment for all staff, students and visitors.

The website's launch follows a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Homeland Security, published in April 2011, which described campus extremism as a "serious problem". The report advised the government to "finally tackle the serious problem of radicalisation on university campuses with utmost urgency".

The "utmost urgency" advised is understandable; extremism within the university arena, particularly in its religious form, is a well-documented phenomenon, and an increasingly terrifying one.

Student Rights, a group dedicated to tackling extremism on campus, has highlighted the many forms through which religious extremism is being inculcated on campuses. A report compiled by the group, along with the Henry Jackson Society, shows the ways in which student societies, particularly Islamic ones, distribute information on, and links to, extremist lectures and information. Its research shows how Islamic Societies encourage the ideology of groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, and invite external speakers who promote ideas of a Western war against Islam, support for paramilitary violence in Israel, encourage intolerance of non-believers and obligate Islam as a political system for law and governance.

It is within this context that the insidious practice of gender segregation has also become an increasingly common issue on campuses, with 180 events in the period March 2012 to March 2013 being investigated for evidence of segregation.

Of course, there have also been a number of well-known cases linking terrorist activity to universities; one of the most high-profile of which was the former University College London student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who attempted to blow up a plane flying to the United States on Christmas Day in 2009.

Despite these recent cases of religious extremism on campuses however, the press release about the launch of the new website made no mention of religious extremism as something to combat specifically. Instead, it contained only a vague phrase about "inter-faith relations". That is not to say that a press release about a new website seeking to tackle extremism on campus is the appropriate forum in which to highlight the many dimensions of religious extremism. Rather, the point is, through its use of opaque language and absence of any reference to religion, Safe Campus Communities gives the worrying impression it is reluctant to confront one of the core elements of extremism in universities: that is, religious extremism.

Any group serious about promoting the equality, safety and freedom of students, needs to have the courage to acknowledge publicly the central role that religious extremism plays. It needs to acknowledge the central role religious extremism plays in marginalising and manipulating the vulnerable. It needs to acknowledge the central role religious extremism plays in consistently undermining women's rights and intimidating women on campus. And it needs to acknowledge the central role religious extremism plays in helping develop a generation of segregated, radicalised and, potentially, very dangerous individuals.