Politicians and the naked emperors; Terry Sanderson on the relationship between faith leaders and the State
You can tell an election is approaching when politicians start ladling praise on to “faith groups” presumably in the hope that they’ll reciprocate with votes. The Sunday Telegraph reported this week that Communities Secretary John Denham is setting up a panel of religious advisors to give input on policy-making.
Mr Denham has declared himself an unbeliever and doesn’t think that religion is the sole source of ethics. And yet he feels that religion needs to be consulted to ensure that the Government’s policies are moral. Surely some contradiction there? Doesn’t he have the courage of his own convictions? Well, he is a politician, and convictions go to the wall when there are elections to be won. (Of course, you could have read about this in Newsline on 23 October.)
The Sunday Telegraph story contained a very small quote from the NSS which didn’t give the essence of our objections. We didn’t expect it would – the Sunday Telegraph is not in the business of being fair to the NSS. So we’ll have to use our own platform to make our case clear. So here goes:
We do not object to individual religious people lobbying on the same basis as everyone else. But we object very much to unrepresentative ‘faith leaders’ being given privileged access to the machinery of state. Often these “faith leaders” don’t even represent their own congregations and are driven by dogma rather than debate. There is no way that any fresh information or new knowledge can change their minds, and so consultation is useless. We know what they are going to say, because it is dictated for them already in their holy books.
However, we shouldn’t get too excited about this new faith committee. The Department of Communities sets up a “faith consultation committee” on average once every two years; see here and here.
These committees waste a great deal of everyone’s time, they cost the taxpayer a fortune to run and have no effect on anything. Their only purpose is to make the “interfaith” brigade feel important – but better still it quietens their whingeing for a few minutes. (Don’t worry, Christmas is just around the corner so the moaning can start up again in earnest now).
Then we have Tory leader David Cameron telling us on Songs of Praise (“a shot of instant nostalgia; religion without the difficult bits. Comforting and anodyne” – Belfast Telegraph) that he has “faith.” It’s a pretty wishy-washy affair, nothing in it to frighten the horses or get the Evangelical Alliance happy-clapping. It was best summed up by a headline in the Scotsman: “Cameron’s faith won’t wear his knees out.” Or as Gail Walker put it in the Belfast Telegraph: “He believes in the Big Fella but he doesn’t chew the pew either”.
Mr Cameron sounds very much like the average Briton – still not able to quite cast off his childhood religious indoctrination and, therefore, not quite daring to say that, actually, Church-going bores him stiff.
More worrying still is an event in the London Borough of Waltham Forest this week, in which an Islamic “think tank” called Noor Ul Islam launched a document, Vision 2020, which set out “the five key areas” namely, crime, education, family, finance, the place of mosques in the community that they claim can be sorted out “using Islamic principles”. The launch of the report was attended by Waltham Forest council leader Chris Robbins and Leyton and Wanstead Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate Ed Northover. Cllr Robbins pledged to take the report back to the council with a view to implementing some of its recommendations. He is reported to have said: “Muslims have already made positive changes in Waltham Forest and make up a major part of the community. I want to support all the objectives within the report.”
Looking at Noor Ul Islam’s website, I am very pleased that I am not a resident of Waltham Forest which will soon be run on Islamic principles of a rather alarming nature.
As the election approaches, we will surely see ever more pandering to the “faith communities”. I predict that within weeks there will be some new initiative — with a budget of tens of millions — aimed at the “Muslim Community”. After all, some of Labour’s key people have constituencies with large Muslim populations and vulnerable majorities (don’t they, Mr Straw?).
All this will be filtered through the “faith leaders” who assure politicians that they have a great deal of influence over their “communities”. Politicians think this means that “faith leaders” can deliver them the votes of a whole demographic group at the snap of a finger, and therefore the “faith leaders” have to be pandered to and bribed.
One day the politicos will realise that this simply isn’t true and that the bishops and imams and rabbis don’t have the power and influence that they claim. They are naked emperors.
See also:
And John (“I’m a secularist who doesn’t like secularism”) Denham’s response