Newsline 3 April 2015

Newsline 3 April 2015

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News, Blogs & Opinion

Charlie Hebdo awarded Secularist of the Year prize for response to Paris attacks

News | Sat, 28th Mar 2015

The National Secular Society has awarded Charlie Hebdo the annual Secularist of the Year prize, for its courageous response to the terror attack on its Paris office.

Just one week after the attack on 7 January 2015, in which 12 people were killed, the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo published an edition of the magazine featuring a depiction of Mohammed and an editorial making a passionate defence of secularism and the right to free expression.

NSS president Terry Sanderson said: "Since the events of 7 January in Paris, Charlie Hebdo has become more than a magazine – it has become an ideal, a symbol of democracy, a rallying cry to those who value freedom and openness in public debate.

"The Charlie Hebdo horror has now joined the endless stream of other outrages committed in the name of Islam. The difference is that it prompted a commitment to free speech and secularism on the part of millions of people.

"Looked at objectively, blasphemy is a ridiculous concept, transparently invented to protect eminently arguable ideas from challenge.

"Ridiculous it may be, but it is also lethal.

"From the forty or so nominations that we received, there was one that could not be ignored, that was the obvious and only possible winner."

The award was presented at the annual Secularist of the Year event, hosted by the NSS at a lunch event in central London. The lunch was attended by members, supporters and honorary associates of the National Secular Society, including Professors Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. Also present were a number of progressive Muslim campaigners and representatives of organisations working to combat Islamic extremism.

Martin Rowson, the Guardian cartoonist, accepted the award on behalf of the staff of Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo said it would donate the £5000 prize money for the award to the fund supporting the families of the murdered cartoonists.

In addition to the main Secularist of the Year award, the NSS also acknowledged a number of others for their work in the past year.

Lord Avebury was recognised with a special award for his invaluable support of the NSS, and for being a tireless advocate for secularism. He recently tabled a Bill to abolish chancel repair liability and has spoken out in Parliament against collective worship in schools and new legislation allowing prayers to be held as part of council meetings. The Lib Dem peer was also instrumental in the successful campaign to repeal the British blasphemy laws in 2008.

Maajid Nawaz, who couldn't attend the event, was recognised for his work at Quilliam, countering Islamic extremism and promoting secularism.

Helen Bailey and Elaine Hession were acknowledged for their efforts in helping the National Secular Society campaign to abolish chancel repair liability.

A number of previous Secularist of the Year winners attended the event, including Peter Tatchell, who was awarded the prize in 2012, and Safak Pavey, the Turkish opposition MP who was named Secularist of the Year in 2014.

Priest criticises Catholics-only school bus policy for faith school pupils

News | Tue, 31st Mar 2015

Flintshire Council has come under attack from a priest over its policy of only funding school bus travel to faith schools for pupils who can provide evidence of their religious affiliation.

Canon Joseph Stewart has described the school bus policy of Flintshire Council as discriminatory.

Currently, free transport to faith schools is only provided by Flintshire Council to pupils who are of their same faith as the school's religious ethos. This means that free buses to Catholic faith schools are only provided for Catholic pupils, and non-Catholic pupils are not given free transport.

Stewart said: "These are children who live in the same streets. There's one policy for Catholics and another entirely for the others."

Seemingly unaware of the fact that most Catholic schools discriminate in their admissions policies, he said, "discrimination in this day and age is unacceptable."

Under the policy, students must have proof of their denomination, such as a note from a Catholic Priest or a baptism certificate for the Council to fund their transport to school.

Stewart said "I feel very strongly they shouldn't be asking me to perform that sort of policing."

News North Wales reports that Stewart has written to the Council on behalf of an 11 year-old pupil who is not entitled to free transport, because he was not christened.

National Secular Society campaigns manager, Stephen Evans, commented: "We certainly agree that the policy is discriminatory. We have raised concerns about this case with the Welsh Education Minister and are strongly critical of any policy which uses the faith of a child's parents to determine whether children can use a school bus.

"However, what Fr Stewart is arguing for is for the local authority to fund every parent's decision to send their children to a religious school rather than schools closer to home. It still seems unfair that parents who choose to send their children to more distant faith schools are financially supported, when parents who may choose more distant schools for other reasons receive no such support.

"But rather than looking at this from a position of self-interest, Fr Stewart should perhaps realise that, particularly in the current economic climate, local authorities have more pressing things to spend their money on than assisting parents to send their children to faith schools when other schools are available more locally."

Even the chief architect of the expansion of religious schools is now having doubts

Opinion | Wed, 1st Apr 2015

With the public, of all faiths and none, increasingly recognising the problems caused by faith schools, NSS president Terry Sanderson calls out politicians who complain about religious separatism on one hand while deliberately promoting it on the other.

Tony Blair, who was the chief architect of Britain's dangerous "faith school" experiment when he was Labour Prime Minister, now appears to be having doubts about it.

Speaking at a session on world education at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai in March, Mr Blair said that intolerance must be "confronted" wherever it is found. And school is a good place to do it.

Asked whether, in general, faith schools can lead to greater segregation, Mr Blair replied: "That's a very good question, and it's one I ask myself often because faith schools are a big part of the UK system, a lot of people like to educate their children in those schools because sometimes they have a stronger ethos, a stronger kind of grounding in values and so on.

"I think what I would say is faith schools only work if they're also integrated in the education system, it's very important that young people, even if they're taught in a school of a particular faith, are taught about other faiths, are taught in what I would say is a constructive way".

He went on: "This question of what I call education for the open mind, is really, really important now".

So, there we have it: Mr Blair thinks that "faith schools" only work if they are integrated into the education system". The problem with this is that they are integrated into the education system and, as far as community cohesion is concerned, they are a disaster.

Even in community schools, that are supposedly free from a particular single religious influence, it isn't difficult for religious zealots to gain influence. We've seen it happen in some Muslim areas when determined Islamists have overwhelmed community schools and tried to impose a "religious ethos" that wouldn't be out of place in Saudi Arabia.

We are told that these schools are now returned to their original purpose of giving children a balanced education – indeed, a committee of MPs is now saying that there was no problem in the first place. But can we really dismiss the testimony of parents at these schools who were interviewed at the time and expressed their alarm at what was happening? Were the newspaper investigations that found evidence for the plot all made up? Were those teachers who were fired to make way for more Islamically pure replacements telling lies? And if there was no problem, why was the whole board of governors fired?

But it isn't only in Muslim-dominated schools that abuses are taking place.

Now that they've got so many schools under their control, and the Government has granted them carte blanche in academies and free schools, religious groups are taking full advantage of proselytising opportunities.

Walk into almost any state-funded "faith school" and the first thing that will face you is a large religious symbol. The branding is impossible to miss and endlessly reinforced.

I visited a local Church of England school recently to attend a concert. It confirmed for me just how the churches are abusing their access to these schools.

Walking through the main entrance, the first thing to greet the visitor is a biblical verse painted in huge letters over an enormous cross. Walking down the corridor, the first room you come to is the chapel, an expensively appointed space where children are clearly not expected to escape religious indoctrination.

The first result when Googling "school chaplain role" was the Sacred Heart RC School in Southwark. The first five of their 13 roles were religious as were four out of five areas of focus.

We know schools are having more and more difficulty getting staff, particular of the "right" denomination to take collective worship. So it seems likely that in at least some cases, and increasingly, the chaplain is on hand to make sure that when teachers are reluctant to do the inculcating — or are more likely that they are incapable of doing it — they will do it for them. The chaplain's salary comes from the school budget. In most cases she/he is not there to teach the children, they are there to inculcate their religious beliefs into them. In a CofE survey, only 12 out of 58 chaplains had teaching roles, and the allocation of them to teaching roles was described in the survey as being "It's the only way we can fund chaplaincy."

Mr Blair says he wants children given "constructive" religious education that will result in an open mind. But why would a single-faith school want to do that? It is single-faith because it has a bias.

The Church of England is quite open about its "mission" in schools. It has stated categorically that the school will be an extension of the church, sometimes quite literally so.

If parents choose to send their children to such a school, says the Church, then they are consenting for them to have religion imposed on them from arriving in the morning to going home at night.

It is quite possible that the parents have already compromised their own principles anyway by going to a church they don't believe in, just to get the vicar's letter that is an entrée into the school.

Parents frequently feel they have no option but to go to these dishonest extremes in the knowledge that that they will be enrolling their children into a school that has selected (overtly and covertly) other well-supported children from middle class homes. They know the school will perform well because the low-achieving, unsupported and possibly disruptive children who would push it down the league tables can't get anywhere near it.

And in some areas — especially in rural parts — there are so many "faith schools" that parents who don't particularly want their children to be taught in them have no choice but to send them there, and run a greater chance of their children being indoctrinated by chaplains and pious teachers.

The Church of England's own website makes no bones about it: "CofE schools stand at the heart of the mission of the Church to the nation". And - tellingly - under "Going for Growth" … "work towards every child and young person having a life enhancing encounter with the Christian faith and the person of Jesus Christ. … All members of the school community should experience Christianity through the life of the schools, as well as through the taught curriculum".

Note the words "every child" and "all members".Similarly, in the Church's school strategy document The Way Ahead a major objective is to "Challenge those [pupils] who have no faith". I would not support a community school challenging pupils with faith to think again, but imagine the furore that would ensue if one tried, but we are all supposed to sit back and wave on the opposite.

It seems the more children desert the Church, and they are doing so in even greater proportions than the total congregation, the greater the proselytising in schools. There were 24% more pupils in CofE secondary schools in 2013 than there were in 2000. And let's not forget that the running costs of these schools is totally from the public purse.

It would be a much more efficient use of public money for schools to be secular so everyone could go to them. The greater the proportion of religious schools, the greater the inefficiency, and this inefficiency has reached a new level of absurdity. The pressure on school places is increasingly leading to children from non-religious or Christian families being sent to minority "faith schools", such as those non-Sikh children being sent to a Sikh school in Stoke Poges.

The parents are upset and complain, which has led to resentment and suggestions of racism. The aforementioned "conservative Muslim parents" want their children to have a madrassa style education in a state-funded school and aren't concerned that their kids will hardly ever meet anyone from the mainstream community. In fact, some of them actually want that.

And that brings us back to Tony Blair's increasing worries about racial and religious isolationism that these schools promote.

They must teach about religions other than their own, he says.

Is he joking? I would be interested to learn what proportion of Muslim and very "Orthodox" Jewish schools are teaching about other faiths and even teaching science properly. Pupils might get to hear a bit about Islam in a Church of England school, but they will still be pressured to become a Christian.

If you have a Muslim school with a "conservative religious ethos" — and, let's face it, they all have a conservative religious ethos — which underneath the veneer believes that all other religions are heretical and inferior, then what contribution can this possibly make to community cohesion? The pupils will hear about other religions alright – but what will they hear?

The result can only be more separatism, suspicion and, eventually, in some cases extremism.

And the taxpayer is funding it.

The Government wrings its hands endlessly about separation in communities and lack of integration and yet it permits this ridiculously dangerous situation to continue to develop. Not just that, it actually encourages it and expands it.

Let's be honest about this – many of these schools, Catholic, Seventh-Day Adventist, Baptist, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu are in the hands of religious proselytisers of varying degrees.

The free school system invites such people to get their hands on schools. A bit of dishonesty at the application stage, a modicum of restraint and pretended reasonableness when the inspector calls, can all aid the zealots in their work.

Sometimes, of course, it's just well-meaning people who haven't understood that our schools are not simply platforms for them to spread their own beliefs, whether that is creationism, anti-abortion or disapproval of homosexuality. Religious enthusiasts who are compelled by their religion to "spread the word" are uncomprehending when people object. How can anyone not want to hear the good news about Jesus?

Catholic schools insist all the time that their purpose is to support and promote the teachings of the Catholic Church – teachings that are out of step with the reality of this country. The education minister says she wants schools to promote "British values", but how British are the values of Catholicism? In this country we have reached a democratic decision to legalise abortion and contraception and homosexuality – all things that are contrary to the Catholic Church's doctrine.

This Government has encouraged and assisted the proliferation of religion in our schools – in faith schools and community schools. It has cheered the Church of England's determination to revive itself through its recruitment in schools.

The argument has been made that the continued decline in the Church of England's fortunes indicates that it isn't very good at persuading pupils to embrace the faith. But this daily process of inculcation and normalisation of particular religious ideas leaves a mark on pupils. It denies them the opportunity to make a real, unimpeded, independent choice about what they believe if, indeed, they want to believe any religious idea.

Tony Blair says that children are exposed to many influences outside school and not all of them are savoury. He thinks it's the school's job to counter this.

But there are some of us who think that far too many faith schools in this country are now promoting separatism and even ideas and ideologies that are very unpleasant indeed.

The foolish direction of the British Government has taken (and apparently all the opposition parties, too, except the Greens) in relation to religion in schools negates all its whinging about the lack of unity in our nation.

You cannot complain about religious separatism on one hand while deliberately promoting it on the other.

Why we should stop saying ‘Islamophobia’

Opinion | Thu, 2nd Apr 2015

The bigoted views of Islamists and anti-Muslim demagogues must be challenged, but the term 'Islamophobia' only serves to confuse the issues and shut down debate, argues Benjamin Jones.

The NUS Women's Conference made headlines recently after the organisers asked delegates to start using "jazz hands" instead of clapping, out of fear that clapping was "triggering" anxiety. What was not as widely reported was their decision to outlaw "Islamophobia."

A motion was pushed through which aimed to "end transphobia, biphobia and Islamophobia on Campus." The motion stated that "the NUS Women's' Officers and members of the NUS Women's committee shall not offer a platform to any transphobic speaker, biphobic or Islamophobic speaker, nor shall it officially support any event that does."

Worryingly, the phrase 'Islamophobia' was not defined in the motion: in fact, the word is not truly defined in society generally. The word 'Islamophobia' has long-since entered common usage, but it describes two completely different things.

We need to separate anti-Muslim bigotry, which we might call 'Muslimphobia', from criticism of Islam, both of which are maddeningly labelled as 'Islamophobic'. At present, Islamists and their apologists use this single term to shut down reform of Islam by labelling critics of (and within) the faith with the same neologism used to describe bigoted thugs. The word is repeatedly used to try and taint people by association; thus (for example) Ayaan Hirsi Ali is accused of the same 'Islamophobia' that motivated a man to attack a pregnant Muslim woman.

We must stop equating these two completely separate phenomena, and object loudly when others try to make this spurious connection. To do this, we need to sort out our terminology.

The NUS example (which is sadly one among many) is illustrative. It is difficult to gauge exactly how censorious their policy is without knowing to which of the two meanings of 'Islamophobia' the NUS refers. If, as I suspect, the NUS is referring to both anti-Muslim bigotry and dislike of Islam, or views them as in some way inter-related, the policy is intolerably restrictive.

The trouble arises when society generally does not distinguish, in its language, between these two concepts (bigotry and criticism) – both are grouped together under this one term. Language alters thought; and we now use a single Newspeak term to describe two entirely different things. This constriction of language is restricting debate, and even thought.

As for the practical implications of the censorship the NUS now routinely undertakes, it is unclear what their view would be of an Islamist speaker invited to a university debating society, who said that (for example) it was absolutely fundamental to Islam that homosexuality was not tolerable. 'Left-wing' journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote an article paradoxically entitled, "As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia". What then is the view of our would-be censors about such a Muslim? Is Mehdi Hasan to be no-platformed for his homophobic views? Or would that be Islamophobic, because (according to Islamists) homophobia is innate to Islamic teaching and must therefore be protected? As Hasan puts it; "Orthodox Islam, like orthodox interpretations of the other Abrahamic faiths, views homosexuality as sinful."

This is the irreconcilable conflict at the heart of the foolish motion the NUS passed: are we to defend this entirely credible interpretation of Islam from critique by shouting 'Islamophobe' at its attackers, or are we to guard the rights of bisexual people not to have biphobic speakers on campus by censoring this evidently mainstream interpretation of Islam? This muddle is just another consequence of the obsession with policing speech to create 'safe' spaces. It is insoluble: censorship is always iniquitous, and can never be fair.

By using one word to categorise both bigotry and the critique of an idea, the idea is given institutionalised defence and insulation.

For some reason the situation is made a little less clear for Islamists than it would be for say, Christians. It goes without saying that homophobic attitudes would be considered abhorrent by the NUS if espoused by a white, conservative, Christian.

The recent debacle at the NUS is a microcosm of the issues playing out in society at large. This recent example is not the only one.

In October 2014 the NUS refused to condemn the Islamic State, because the motion was 'Islamophobic'.

In November 2014, Left Unity voted on (and rejected) a motion which claimed that concepts like "sharia" or "jihad" were simply misunderstood because of the West's "Islamophobic cultural baggage".

Just last month other cases have emerged, many of them from university campuses and from those calling themselves 'left-wing'. Nick Cohen in particular, among others, is trying to prize these elements of the 'left' away from this appeasement.

It is not simply that violence against Muslims and criticism of Islam become conflated; the corollary is also true. Muslims become conflated, by these censors, with Islamist views.

Maajid Nawaz is co-founder and chair of Quilliam – a UK-based think tank which promotes integration, citizenship, religious freedom, and anti-extremism. Yet he, like many other secular and progressive Muslims, faces erroneous accusations of 'Islamophobia' from the Islamist far-right, who wish to present themselves as the only authentic representation of British Muslims.

Maryam Namazie, of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, fell victim to the student censors and the spurious equivalence made between Muslims and Islamism when a talk she had been invited to give on "apostasy and the rise of Islamism" at Trinity College Dublin was effectively cancelled- through the imposition of unfair and intolerable conditions placed upon her, and her alone.

University 'leaders' feared "antagonising" Muslim students. Above all else, this seems like a capitulation to an 'angry Muslim' stereotype, and the bigotry of low expectations. It is another case of ideas (Islam and Islamism) being conflated with people (Muslim students in this case).

Another example of the dangerous 'Islamophobia' charge comes from those trying very hard to discredit Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is routinely called 'Islamophobic', and even "racist."

For a long time, elements on the 'left' have been conflating Islamism with Muslims; thus granting Islamist ideology the same type of protection afforded by "protected characteristics" like race or sexual orientation.

The question of what language we use is not 'merely' a rhetorical point – it cuts to the heart and reality of the matter. The word 'Islamophobia' was memorably described as "a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons" and it is succeeding very well in manipulating discussion about Islam.

Only today, the Muslim Council of Britain called upon Muslims to urge parliamentary candidates to fight against 'Islamophobia' and said "for many Muslims, religion – and not ethnicity – forms the basis of their primary identity." This is a more-or-less open affirmation that they seek protections for their religion as though it were a race. The implication then, is that criticising Islam is 'racist', or at least as bad as racism.

The real pity is that actual victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes may well come to be ignored – as people tire of hearing charges of 'Islamophobia' labelled at everyone, from people who write books urging a reform within Islam, to the man who attacked a pregnant Muslim woman because she was Muslim.

At the moment, 'Islamophobia' tends to appear in inverted commas, pointing to its contested status. I expect that before long it will become normalised to the point that it is accepted and the commas are dropped. Language is not irrelevant here: it is essential.

Anti-Muslim bigotry is real; for the good of its victims if nothing else, it absolutely must not be categorised under the tiresome and false label of 'Islamophobia'.

Benjamin Jones is the NSS communications officer.The views expressed in our blogs are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the NSS.

Putin continues promotion of “traditional values” and crackdown on blasphemy

News | Tue, 31st Mar 2015

The head of the Novosibirsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre has been fired by the Russian Culture Minister over a 'blasphemous' opera, prompting further fears about free speech and religious freedom in Russia.

Boris Mezdrich staged his own interpretation of Wagner's 1845 Tannhäuser opera, which featured what is described as a "controversial" view of Jesus. Posters which promoted the opera featured an image of a crucifixion between a naked woman's legs.

The Russian Orthodox Church said the opera was a "desecration of a symbol revered by Christians."

Mezdrich has now been fired by the Culture Minister, in a move backed by President Vladimir Putin. The Culture Ministry said: "The feelings of believers have the right to respect."

The ministry warned the "deliberate mockery" of religion could result in "people's deaths, as we have seen recently", in an apparent reference to the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

A spokesman for the Russian government commented: "The state has the right to expect appropriate [performances]... that do not provoke such a sharp public reaction."

He claimed that Mezdrich's dismissal "should not be seen in any way as [an attempt] to bring in any censorship."

Mezdrich has been replaced with Vladimir Kekhman, who described the opera as blasphemous and said it had been staged by "militant atheists."

Aleksandr Kalyagin, the chairman of the Union of Theatre Workers of Russia, has said the sacking was even more severe than some of the repression against artists under the USSR.

Kalyagin said: "even in Soviet times there was a procedure known as the last warning from the party" before artists were fired.

A court case against the production was dismissed on 10 March. After the case was thrown out, activists associated with the Russian Orthodox Church began campaigning for Mezdrich to lose his job.

The New York Times reports that "President Vladimir Putin has made the protection of 'traditional values,' including religious values, a pillar of his third term. In this case, Mr. Putin made his opinion known on March 23 when he awarded a state medal for 'service to the homeland' to Aleksandr Novopashin, a priest in the Novosibirsk diocese who helped to lead the campaign against 'Tannhauser.'"

In 2013 the Russian Duma passed a blasphemy law which made it a criminal offense to offend "religious feelings". Blasphemy is punishable in Russia by a jail sentence of up to three years.

There are growing concerns that the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin's regime are increasingly entangled, despite Russian's nominal separation of church and state. Last year Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said European secularisation had reached "apocalyptic dimensions" and called for a return to "Christian values."