Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change

The time has come to rethink religion's public role in order to ensure equality and fairness for believers and non-believers alike, says a major new report launched by the National Secular Society.

The report says that Britain's "drift away from Christianity" coupled with the rise in minority religions and increasing non-religiosity demands a "long term, sustainable settlement on the relationship between religion and the state".

Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change has been sent to all MPs as part of a major drive by the Society to encourage policymakers and citizens of all faiths and none to find common cause in promoting principles of secularism.

It calls for Britain to evolve into a secular democracy with a clear separation between religion and state and criticises the prevailing multi-faithist approach as being "at odds with the increasing religious indifference" in Britain.

Terry Sanderson, National Secular Society president, said: "Vast swathes of the population are simply not interested in religion, it doesn't play a part in their lives, but the state refuses to recognise this.

"Britain is now one of the most religiously diverse and, at the same time, non-religious nations in the world. Rather than burying its head in the sand, the state needs to respond to these fundamental cultural changes. Our report sets out constructive and specific proposals to fundamentally reform the role of religion in public life to ensure that every citizen can be treated fairly and valued equally, irrespective of their religious outlook."

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Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change

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Complete list of recommendations

Our changing society – Multiculturalism, secularism and group identity

1. The Government should continue to move away from multiculturalism and instead emphasise individual rights and social cohesion. A multi-faith approach should be avoided.

2. The UK is a secularised society which upholds freedom of and from religion. We urge politicians to consider this, and refrain from using "Christian country" rhetoric.

The role of religion in schools

Faith schools

3. There should be a moratorium on the opening of any new publicly funded faith schools.

4. Government policy should ultimately move towards a truly inclusive secular education system in which religious organisations play no formal role in the state education system.

5. Religion should be approached in schools like politics: with neutrality, in a way that informs impartially and does not teach views.

6. Ultimately, no publicly funded school should be statutorily permitted, as they currently are, to promote a particular religious position or seek to inculcate pupils into a particular faith.

7. In the meantime, pupils should have a statutory entitlement to education in a non-religiously affiliated school.

8. No publicly funded school should be permitted to prioritise pupils in admissions on the basis of baptism, religious affiliation or the religious activities of a child's parent(s).

9. Schools should not be able to discriminate against staff on the basis of religion or belief, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristics.

Religious education

10. Faith schools should lose their ability to teach about religion from their own exclusive viewpoint and the law should be amended to reflect this.

11. The Government should undertake a review of Religious Education with a view to reforming the way religion and belief is taught in all schools.

12. The teaching of religion should not be prioritised over the teaching of non-religious worldviews, and secular philosophical approaches.

13. The Government should consider making religion and belief education a constituent part of another area of the curriculum or consider a new national subject for all pupils that ensures all pupils study of a broad range of religious and non-religious worldviews, possibly including basic philosophy.

14. The way in which the RE curriculum is constructed by Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACREs) is unique, and seriously outdated. The construction and content of any subject covering religion or belief should be determined by the same process as other subjects after consultation with teachers, subject communities, academics, employers, higher education institutions and other interested parties (who should have no undue influence or veto).

Sex and relationships education

15. All children and young people, including pupils at faith schools, should have a statutory entitlement to impartial and age-appropriate sex and relationships education, from which they cannot be withdrawn.

Collective worship

16. The legal requirement on schools to provide Collective Worship should be abolished.

17. The Equality Act exception related to school worship should be repealed. Schools should be under a duty to ensure that all aspects of the school day are inclusive.

18. Both the law and guidance should be clear that under no circumstances should pupils be compelled to worship and children's right to religious freedom should be fully respected by all schools.

19. Where schools do hold acts of worship pupils should themselves be free to choose not to take part.

20. If there are concerns that the abolition of the duty to provide collective worship would signal the end of assemblies, the Government may wish to consider replacing the requirement to provide worship with a requirement to hold inclusive assemblies that further pupils' 'spiritual, moral, social and cultural education'.

Independent schooling

21. All schools should be registered with the Department for Education and as a condition of registration must meet standards set out in regulations.

22. Government must ensure that councils are identifying suspected illegal, unregistered religious schools so that Ofsted can inspect them. The state must have an accurate register of where every child is being educated.

Freedom of expression - Freedom of expression, blasphemy and the media

23. Any judicial or administrative attempt to further restrict free expression on the grounds of 'combatting extremism' should be resisted. Threatening behaviour and incitement to violence is already prohibited by law. Further measures would be an illiberal restriction of others' right to freedom of expression. They are also likely to be counterproductive by insulating extremist views from the most effective deterrents: counterargument and criticism.

24. Proscriptions of "blasphemy" must not be introduced by stealth, legislation, fear or on the spurious grounds of 'offence'. There can be no right to be protected from offence in an open and free secular society.

25. The fundamental value of free speech should be instilled throughout the education system and in all schools.

26. Universities and other further education bodies should be reminded of their statutory obligations to protect freedom of expression under the Education (No 2) Act 1986.

Religion and the law

Civil rights, 'conscience clauses' and religious freedom

27. We are opposed in principle to the creation of a 'conscience clause' which would permit discrimination against (primarily) LGBT people. This is of particular concern in Northern Ireland.

28. Religious freedom must not be taken to mean or include a right to discriminate. Businesses providing goods and services, regardless of owners' religious views, must obey the law.

29. Equality legislation must not be rolled back in order to appease a minority of religious believers whose views are out-of-touch with the majority of the general public and their co-religionists.

30. The UK Government should impose changes on the rest of the UK in order to comply with Human Rights obligations. Every endeavour should be made by to extend same sex marriage and abortion access to Northern Ireland.

Conscience 'opt-outs' in healthcare

31. Efforts to unreasonably extend the legal concept of 'reasonable accommodation' and conscience to give greater protection in healthcare to those expressing a (normally religious) objection should be resisted.

32. Conscience opt-outs should not be granted where their operation impinges adversely on the rights of others.

33. Pharmacists' codes should not permit conscience opts out for pharmacists that result in denial of service, as this may cause harm. NHS contracts should reflect this.

34. Consideration should be given to legislative changes to enforce the changes to pharmacists codes recommended above.

The use of tribunals by religious minorities

35. The legal system must not be undermined. Action must be taken to ensure that none of the councils currently in operation misrepresent themselves as sources of legal authority.

36. Work should be undertaken by local authorities to identify sharia councils, and official figures should be made available to measure the number of sharia councils in the UK to help understand the extent of their influence.

37. There needs to be a continuing review by the Government of the extent to which religious 'law', including religious marriage without civil marriage, is undermining human rights and/or becoming de facto law. The Government must be proactive in proposing solutions to ensure all citizens are able to access their legal rights.

38. All schools should promote understanding of citizenship and legal rights under UK law so that people – particularly Muslim women and girls – are aware of and able to access their legal rights and do not regard religious 'courts' as sources of genuine legal authority.

Religious exemptions from animal welfare laws

39. Laws intended to minimise animal suffering should not be the subject of religious exemptions. Non-stun slaughter should be prohibited and existing welfare at slaughter legislation should apply without exception.

40. For as long as non-stun slaughter is permitted, all meat and meat products derived from animals killed under the religious exemption should be obliged to show the method of slaughter.

41. In public institutions it should be unlawful not to provide a stunned alternative to non-stun meat produce.

Religion and public services

Social action by religious organisations

42. The Equality Act should be amended to suspend the exemptions for religious groups when they are working under public contract on behalf of the state.

43. Legislation should be introduced so that contractors delivering general public services on behalf of a public authority are defined as public authorities explicitly for those activities, making them subject to the Human Rights Act legislation.

44. It should be mandatory for all contracts with religious providers of publicly-funded services to have unambiguous equality, non-discrimination and non-proselytising clauses in them.

45. Public records of contracts with religious groups should be maintained and appropriate measures for monitoring their compliance with equality and human rights legislation should be put in place.

46. There should be an enforcement mechanism for the above, which would for example receive and adjudicate on complaints without complainants having to take legal action.

Hospital chaplaincy

47. Religious care should not be funded through NHS budgets.

48. No NHS post should be conditional on the patronage of religious authorities, nor subject directly or indirectly to discriminatory provisions, for example on sexual orientation or marital status.

49. Alternative funding, such as via a charitable trust, could be explored if religions wish to retain their representation in hospitals.

50. Hospitals wishing to employ staff to provide pastoral, emotional and spiritual care for patients, families and staff should do so within a secular context.

Institutions and public ceremonies

Disestablishment

51. The Church of England should be disestablished

52. The Bishops' Bench should be removed from the House of Lords. Any future Second Chamber should have no representation for religion whether ex-officio or appointed, whether of Christian denominations or any other faith. This does not amount to a ban on clerics; they would eligible for selection on the same basis as others.

Remembrance

53. The Remembrance Day commemoration ceremony at the Cenotaph should become secular in character. Ceremonies should be led by national or civic leaders and there should be a period of silence for participants to remember the fallen in their own way, be that religious or not.

Monarchy and religion

54. The ceremony to mark the accession of a new head of state should take place in the seat of representative secular democracy, such as in Westminster Hall and should not be religious.

55. The monarch should no longer be required to be in communion with the Church of England nor ex officio be Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the title "Defender of the Faith" should not be retained.

Parliamentary prayers

56. We believe Parliament should reflect the country as it is today and remove acts of worship from the formal business of the House.

Local democracy and religious observance

57. Acts of religious worship should play no part in the formal business of parliamentary or local authority meetings.

Public broadcasting, the BBC and religion

58. The BBC should rename Thought for the Day 'Religious thought for the day' and move it away from Radio 4's flagship news programme and into a more suitable timeslot reflecting its niche status. Alternatively it could reform it and open it up to non-religious contributors.

59. The extent and nature of religious programming should reflect the religion and belief demographics of the UK.

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The 2017 General Election

A homophobic church shouldn’t be an arm of the state

Anglican bishops' stance on same-sex marriage shows Church and state have drifted apart. Formal separation should follow, say Stephen Evans.

After a six year process of "listening and learning" Church of England bishops have decided their stance on same sex marriage will not change.

In a sop to Anglicans who want a more inclusive church, bishops are proposing to allow 'prayers' and 'blessings' for same-sex couples in civil partnerships. Bishops will also apologise to LGBT+ people for the "rejection, exclusion and hostility" they have faced in churches. The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said bishops were "deeply sorry and ashamed". But they're not changing their position.

The issue of same sex marriage has caused decades of deep division within the Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the latest plans "will appear to go too far for some and not nearly far enough for others."

Initial reactions suggest he's not wrong. Equality campaign group Changing Attitude England said bishops had chosen to "continue the practice that systemically abuses LGBTQIA+ people" and called their apology a "hollow gesture".

Jayne Ozanne, a prominent LGBT+ campaigner and a member of the synod, said the bishops' decision was "utterly despicable".

She said: "I cannot believe that five years of pain and trauma has got us here. We have had countless apologies over the years but no action to stop the harmful discrimination".

Meanwhile, conservatives are livid at what they see as the Church's "capitulation". Christian Concern said the decision to bless gay couples (or "sexual immorality", as they put it) will "go down in history as a turning point in the decline and fall of the Church of England."

There may be those who think the Church is being principled in upholding its theology on marriage. I'm not a theologian so I can't comment on that, other than to say theology often seems to be in the eye of the beholder. When societal attitudes shift, churches often find themselves behind the curve, but eventually catch up. On issues such as contraception, divorce and women priests, the theology seems to shift when it suits.

One also wonders to what extent the bishops' resistance to same sex marriage is driven by an eagerness not to cause further schism by upsetting the deeply homophobic churches in the global Anglican Communion. Kieran Bohan, co-ordinator of the Open Table Network, expressed concern that "the pressure of being an international denomination, with thousands of Anglican churches around the world, has influenced the Church of England in delaying doing the right thing."

The Church of England's position on this issue matters to everyone, including the non-Anglican majority, because it's the state church. It runs publicly funded schools; its bishops are granted seats as of right in our parliament; it plays a leading role in state occasions. Our head of state is tasked with defending its doctrine.

Parliamentarians keen for the Church to change its stance have used its established status as leverage.

Labour's Ben Bradshaw has accused the Church of "actively pursuing a campaign of discrimination against lesbian and gay people". He warned that without change the Church's "extraordinary and unique privileges in its role in the nation's life" are "unsustainable."

Following this week's announcement, he predicted the Church was heading for a "major constitutional clash with parliament".

He said: "It's a very dark day for the C of E. I'm confident that parliament will want to take a very close look at this. The overwhelming view of MPs on both sides of the house is that it is not sustainable for our established church to be institutionally homophobic and to actively exclude a portion of the population, whom they have a duty to serve."

Tony Baldry, a former Conservative MP, government minister and Second Church Estates Commissioner, has echoed this: "I have little doubt that if the church cannot find a way forward that enables clergy either to marry same-sex couples or to bless their weddings, MPs will soon feel the need to intervene."

Steve Reed, MP for Croydon North and the Shadow Secretary for Justice, said it was "unacceptable for the established church to continue pandering to ancient bigotry".

Conservative MP and leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt also weighed in this week, applying pressure with an open letter expressing hope that the bishops would "back reform".

As a secularist, I find the spectacle of politicians trying to force a church to change its doctrine all somewhat unedifying. But given the CofE's established status, external meddling is inevitable and perhaps justifiable.

The ideal solution is for the Church and state to go their separate ways. The union is no longer a marriage made in heaven. We've simply grown apart. While British society has become increasingly secular and liberal in its outlook, the Church leadership remains several steps behind.

In 2016 Justin Welby described the Church's bishops in the House of Lords as the "most orthodox since WW2". Last year he said there was "unanimity" on the bishops' bench against assisted dying and affirmed the validity of a declaration that gay sex is a sin.

The Church of England has shown itself to be institutionally homophobic. Its doctrine is its own affair, but this minority religion has no business being an arm of the state.

Disestablishment would mean the CofE could no longer enjoy privileged links to the state; but also, that parliament would have no legitimacy in wading into its internal affairs. This is right in principle. A religiously impartial state would better suit the reality of modern Britain – and the Church would be free to determine its direction without undue interference. Separation of church and state would be best for both.

The NSS is hosting a free online discussion on February 15th on the future of Church and state with Anglicans who support disestablishment. Find out more and book your place.

Happy Christmas, secular Britain

2022 was the year which made the case for secularism stronger than ever – not only in the UK but across the world, says Stephen Evans.

Claims that striking unions have declared 'war on Christmas' have at least taken the heat off secularists this year.

Previous Decembers have seen a steady slew of tall stories about 'militant' secularists wanting to take the 'Christ out of Christmas' or replace it entirely with some sort of godless Winterval. The claims were usually nonsense but batting them away became something of a Christmas tradition at NSS HQ. Things have been quieter this year. Perhaps our message is getting though?

Christmas has never been the target of secularists. Like almost everyone else, we see it for the inclusive religious/secular mash up that it is – and welcome the chance for a bit of a midwinter break.

In truth, nobody can claim Christmas as their own. The same should be said of our state and its intuitions.

Prime ministers and political leaders have in the past used this time of year to claim Britain is a 'Christian country'. Such claims have never been accurate, but this year's census figures should ensure that claim is retired for good.

The number of people identifying as Christian falling below half of the population is a watershed moment. Church of England Sunday attendance figures being at just 0.9% of the English population tell an even starker story. Christianity being a minority interest provides a real opportunity now to rethink and reform our political settlement to reflect reality. The census figures paint a picture of growing irreligiosity and religious pluralism. An inclusive secular state, not a Christian country, is the best way to manage that diversity.

Next year's coronation in which King Charles will be anointed by a bishop and swear to defend the Anglican faith will serve as a glaring reminder of the archaic religious privilege at the heart of our constitution. It's a privilege that makes every sensible secular reform a herculean task.

Nevertheless, throughout 2022 we've been working tirelessly to achieve a secularist influence over public policy. Our proposals for updating marriage law were reflected in the Law Commission's recommendations for reform. In the face of religious opposition, we've successfully lobbied to improve women's access to abortion services and for a review of assisted dying laws. We've promoted the rights of children to live, learn and develop their beliefs free from religious coercion and control. And we've stepped up whenever necessary to remind religious offence takers that free speech is a positive value we're unwilling to surrender.

Next year will mark the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Secularism's role in allowing equality and human rights to flourish is too often unrecognised and hugely underappreciated. In a world where polarisation, authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism are gaining ground, the secular liberal democratic ideals that underpin human rights can't be taken for granted.

This year's US Supreme Court ruling in Roe v Wade was a wakeup call to remind us all that conservative religious views threaten women's reproductive rights globally. Closer to home an ascendant religious right is eroding reproductive freedoms in Italy and Poland.

Meanwhile, women and religious and sexual minorities living under Islamic regimes have continued to feel the full force of a complete absence of secularism. The Iranian women leading protests and risking their lives to overthrow their despised theocratic rulers know better than most that a state separated from religious institutions is necessary to protect everyone's rights and freedoms.

Secularism's time has come.

Our mission now is to bring people together to build a freer, fairer and more tolerant society. A secular state is the best means of achieving this.

So, enjoy the festive break – and make it your mission to make a stand for secularism. Join us as a member today, and we'll put your principles to work, championing freedom of belief, expression and choice.

It’s not just the Census. Everywhere you look, the CofE is withering.

By every measure membership figures for Church of England are in freefall – and the church's increasingly outdated values are partly to blame. There is no justification for it to remain the established church, says NSS president Keith Porteous Wood.

The 2021 Census showed the proportion of people of England and Wales identifying as Christians dropped to 46% from 59% just a decade earlier. In effect 6 – 7 million have moved from defining themselves as "Christian" to "no religion". That's around a fifth of Christians and 12% of the whole population.

The Bible Society believes the shift away from Christianity happened some time before the past decade, but few continue to claim a faith they do not hold simply to court social approval.

This first Christian minority in the Census prompted numerous calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England – including, of course, from ourselves at the National Secular Society. But another perhaps even more compelling case for disestablishment came hot on its heels in the CofE statistics on mission 2021. Normal Sunday CofE attendance for all ages represents just 0.9% of the English population, some way short of the 46% of Christians in the Census.

The Church's accelerating decline in attendance, a decline which has continued for well over a century, poses an existential threat. The archbishop of Canterbury told the BBC's Sunday Programme that CofE attendance had been declining "at a rate of about 1.5% since the 1950s …. and inevitably you drop below 50% at some point", seemingly conflating the very low CofE church attendance with the population's Christian affiliation. By my calculations, the compound decrease in the decade from 2009 to 2019, approximately Dr Welby's tenure, was nearer 2.5% per annum.

Extending that to twelve years, 2009 to 2021, during which period CofE attendance dropped from 895.000 to 509,000, the compound annual decrease reached around 4.5%. Covid is largely to blame for this. Or put another way, Covid accelerated that decline by a decade, as at 2.5% per annum the decline to 509,000 (the figure in 2021) would not have been reached for a further ten years.

(These calculations rely on the only published figures available and assume that few who stopped attending over Covid will have returned in 2022, although the CofE – and doubtless Dr Welby – are expecting "further bouncing back".)

It does not seem to have occurred to Dr Welby that some of his actions could have contributed to the decline. The NSS would fight for the Church's freedom to determine its own doctrine, however unpopular, provided it did not impinge on human rights. However, in my opinion the Church continues to pay a heavy price in reduced attendance and affiliation for metaphorically marching the Lords Spiritual through the "nay" lobby in the Lords on popular human rights measures.

The Church was not alone in opposing the assisted dying bill, but its forced abandonment will have caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering and indignity. It will also have boosted the market for single tickets to Dignitas in Zürich for those going prematurely, while they still have the strength.

And on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, the bishops did not just unanimously oppose it despite it imposing no obligations on the Church whatsoever: they unforgivably abused their parliamentary positions, and indeed democracy itself, by attempting what the Church Times described as a "wrecking amendment" that if successful would have prevented parliament from even debating the issue.

The average age of congregations, and the speed with which any increase in age takes place, is also crucial to long term sustainability. Significant long term rapid rises in age result in a decrease in energetic helpers and disproportionately greater declines through mortality.

In 1979 the average age of congregants was 36; younger than that of the population. Over the next 19 years, it rose a further nine years, then in the following nearly quarter century, it rose a further 16 years. The archbishop of York recently stated that it was "61 — that is 21 years older than the average age in the population".

Given the Church's acknowledgement of congregations being 21 years older on average than the population, the over 75s will obviously be significantly over represented too, as the many white hairs testify. Many play or have played key roles such as churchwardens and contributed generously to the church. But of those who survived Covid and have returned to church, for how much longer?

They are not being replaced by the young or even middle aged. NatCen found "the sharpest decline … has come among the middle-aged…. the percentage of 45 to 54-year-olds who told the researchers that they were C of E in has fallen from 35 to 11 per cent". Only 1% of 18 to 24 year-olds regard themselves as belonging to the CofE, and only a small proportion of them actually attend.

So it is little surprise that in 2021 the median sized church had an average attendance of 22 adults and one child, and over the whole year two baptisms, one marriage and four funerals.

When the interviewer asked Dr Welby whether his Church "is facing irreversible decline" he emphatically retorted "absolutely not". Yet, six months ago, the Church Times published the predications of a statistician who had analysed attendance data from 2000 - 2020. He concluded that "the Church of England faces extinction within 40 years because the faith it proclaims is not "contagious" enough. … "[it] will cease to be a national Church, and the Churches of Scotland and Wales will disappear by the middle of this century."

How many of could now argue in good conscience that the rapidly declining CofE so at odds with British values still deserves (if it ever did) to be England's established church and hence that of the British State? The bishops must be removed from the House of Lords, and then the process of disestablishment must be completed as soon as possible.

Photo by Jay Chen on Unsplash

Secularism has never been so relevant and necessary – unlike the established church

The Census 2021 results reveal that for the first time, most people in England and Wales aren't Christian. Megan Manson says the case for a secular state has never been stronger.

It's official: Britain can no longer be called a 'Christian country'.

The 2021 Census figures published today reveal Christians are now a minority in England and Wales, making up 46% of the population. The nonreligious are now the largest religion or belief group in Wales and the second largest in England. Non-Christian religions have generally seen an increase in their adherents.

It should be a humbling moment for the UK's churches – not least the Church of England. Christianity has been in decline for decades, but rather than relinquish its disproportionate privileges, the Church has clung on to them for dear life. It continues to use its 26 bishops in the House of Lords as a voting block to support its agendas. It resists calls to remove Christian prayers from parliament and from all state-funded schools. And it refuses to let go of the thousands of state schools under its control. Faced with rising competition from a myriad of other religions, and of course nonreligious worldviews, the Church no doubt sees these privileges as the final aces in its hand.

And yet, the number of Christians continues to fall.

The decline of Christianity and the rise of nonreligious identity can be seen throughout the UK. In Northern Ireland, those without a stated religion are the second largest group according to its Census results published in September. Scotland's Census data won't be published until 2023, but 2018 survey data found 59% of Scots are not religious.

Explaining the shrinking Christian percentage isn't difficult. Migration fuels a steady stream of non-Christian religions from Asia and Africa into the country, diluting Christianity's overall market share. Meanwhile, Brits who are descended from Christians are turning away from their ancestral religion as its ideology no longer fits the 21^st century world they now inhabit. Science has replaced creationism. Equality has replaced biblically endorsed patriarchy. Tolerance has replaced condemning those who aren't in an opposite-sex marriage. And the stigma of being a non-believer has almost completely vanished.

Within this picture of religious diversity and irreligiosity, the established church and its web of institutions and influence across the state look increasingly incongruous. And that's something to bear in mind for the upcoming inauguration of our head of state next year.

Our monarchy's ties to the church run deep – indeed, the monarch's authority is supposed to be divinely ordained. As well as being our official head of state, King Charles is Supreme Governor of the Church of England and 'Defender of the Faith'. While Charles has stated he wants to be defender of all faiths, his coronation will be an explicitly Anglican rite. He and his wife will be anointed and blessed by the archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster Abbey. And he will take an oath to "maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England".

For many the ceremony will be a fascinating view. Fascinating because, for most Brits, it will be inscrutable and exotic. We'll be watching an ancient quasi-shamanic initiation ritual of a largely unfamiliar tribal religion, complete with elaborate costumes and esoteric songs and chants. But is that how a nation should be viewing its leader? As an otherworldly and outlandish religious figure with little to nothing in common with the people he leads? As Monty Python and the Holy Grail put it, "strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government". Neither are strange men invoking a god only a minority believe in to crown the head of state.

For the Church to continue to cleave to its constitutional privileges in a country where Christians are now the minority is embarrassing at best, imperious at worst. Never before has it been clearer why a secular state is really the only settlement that can meet the British public where it's at: a largely irreligious, diverse hodgepodge of people with a broadly liberal outlook on life. It's time for state and church to go their separate ways, for the best for both.

Photo by Heidi Fin on Unsplash

Time for an Islamophobia self-awareness month

Recent incidents reveal pushing the term 'Islamophobia' is less to do with challenging genuine anti-Muslim bigotry, and more to do with controlling speech around Islam – including excusing extremist behaviour, says Jack Rivington.

November has seen a noticeable increase in the use of the expression 'Islamophobia' by politicians and public figures. Afzal Khan MP described it as an "insidious hatred" in a parliamentary point of order, Labour party chair Annelise Dodds wrote to her opposite number Nadhim Zahawi demanding the government take greater action to address it, and Baroness Warsi accused the Conservative Party of being in denial over the extent of the issue.

This extra attention coincides with the annual observance of 'Islamophobia Awareness Month' (IAM) campaign, the stated intention of which is to bring about a "society free from Islamophobia in all its forms". However, what IAM considers to be amongst those forms should be of concern to all, especially those within the political establishment who have lent the campaign, and concept, their support.

In one respect, a call to address anti-Muslim discrimination is justified. In the year ending March 2022, 42% of religious hate crimes involved Muslims as the perceived target group, with an increase of 28% in the total number of cases over the previous year. This makes Muslims the largest group by some margin, though it should also be noted that in 23% of cases British Jews were the target, despite their population being approximately one tenth that of Muslims.

No matter the numbers, freedom of religion and belief is a fundamental human right that must be maintained and fought for in a secular and democratic society. This is as much the responsibility of citizens as it is of government, and it is therefore right that we all remain mindful of the abuse faced by British Muslims. A campaign with this as its goal would be uncontroversial.

However, it is clear that some advocating for IAM do not have this as their sole purpose and are instead using the campaign to promote a concept of Islamophobia which reclassifies legitimate discussion and critique as racism or hate speech.

One such organisation is the pressure group 'Muslim Engagement and Development' or MEND, which has been accused of supporting an Islamist agenda. A co-founding organisation of the awareness month campaign, many of its employees, including members of the senior leadership, have faced accusations of extremism, including legitimising the killing of British troops in Iraq, promoting antisemitic conspiracies, and downplaying acts of terrorism.

MEND has also sought to undermine the Prevent counter-extremism strategy – which it has described as 'Islamophobic' – by spreading misinformation that the program deliberately targets Muslims. They have been joined in this effort by the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP), another supporter of the IAM campaign which recently claimed "institutional Islamophobia" was an issue within counter-terrorism policing. The association further called for the term 'Islamist' to be scrapped due to its unfair stigmatisation of Islam, a ridiculous demand which demonstrates a startling instance of mistaken priorities. The association's capacity for offense would be far better redirected towards the extremists themselves – if anyone, it is they who are giving the religion a bad name, not those who record and monitor their activities.

Concerningly, the sentiments expressed by NAMP are also to be found in All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims' report setting out its definition of Islamophobia. In a section setting out why instances of Islamophobia are not confined to hate crimes, but also include more general behaviours or attitudes, the report approvingly quotes a claim that opposition to Islamism can be a constitutive part of Islamophobia. According to that view, as Islamism can be viewed as the advancement of Islam as a political system, secular opposition to such religious interference is Islamophobic.

It is this APPG definition which advocates of the IAM wish to see adopted by all organisations and government bodies as the proper understanding of 'Islamophobia' – and indeed, many local governments and political parties already have.

Other instances of 'Islamophobia' as identified by MEND include criticising those who protested against the film 'The Lady of Heaven' in June. Despite the anti-Shia sentiment reported at many of these protests, as well as the implied threat towards cinemas and their staff, MEND said that those who described protests as "dangerous and harmful" exemplified "structural Islamophobia". According to MEND, it isn't those who chant sectarian slogans targeting other Muslims who are guilty of a hate crime, just those who are concerned by it.

Another set of protests MEND was keen to support were those in Batley, which last year saw demonstrations outside a local school after a teacher used cartoons from the Charlie Hebdo magazine depicting Muhammed to teach about the issue of blasphemy. MEND described the cartoon as both "Islamophobic" and "extremely offensive", with the school eventually pressured into suspending the teacher before making a frightened apology. Although MEND said they condemned threats to both the staff and school, the teacher was ultimately driven into hiding and remains unable to resume a normal life.

Whilst it would be nice to know whether members of parliament such as Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner – who were photographed alongside Khan with a 'Labour against Islamophobia' placard in hand – agree with groups such as MEND on what constitutes Islamophobia, such clarifications are now irrelevant. 'Islamophobia' is irretrievably linked to the suppression of entirely legitimate speech and is unsalvageable as a useful term.

This is unsurprising given the historical origins of the idea of 'Islamophobia'. Between 1999 and 2010, a series of resolutions regarding the 'defamation of religion' were presented at the United Nations which introduced the term for the first time. Originating with the Islamist organisation the Muslim Brotherhood, these resolutions were pushed by a coalition of 57 Islamic nations known as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and constituted an attempt to introduce a blasphemy law on an international scale. The campaign was opposed at the time by western democratic nations on the grounds such resolutions were incompatible with the human rights to freedom of speech, belief, and religion.

It is therefore strange to see members of parliament for one of those western democratic nations getting onboard with a campaign promoting the idea. This understanding, that 'defamation' of the religion of Islam is itself Islamophobic, has never gone away, as evidenced by its continued usage in that context by organisations such as MEND.

Furthermore, the term is now not only being deployed to suppress criticism of Islam as a religion, but also as a cover for hateful actions perpetrated by individual Muslims. This month, the president of the National Union of Students, Shaima Dallali, was dismissed from the role following an investigation into accusations of antisemitism. Despite admitting to making a number of antisemitic posts on Twitter, for which she has apologised, Dallali attributed her dismissal to 'Islamophobia', which rather seems to undermine her apology. A number of organisations echoed her claim including the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain. Both are listed as supporters on the IAM website.

This accusation, presented without any evidence, that Dallali is herself a victim of discrimination when she is simply facing the consequences of her own conduct, is an outrageous attempt on the part of all involved to excuse her actions. The involvement of organisations central to IAM in such allegations should be sufficient to discredit the entire campaign, as well as any notion they are concerned with anti-racism or improving community relations.

The important work to tackle genuine instances of anti-Muslim discrimination and abuse is also tarnished by these poorly disguised attempts to deflect criticism from a religious and political agenda by designating such critiques bigoted or racist. Those involved should be ashamed.

The time is long overdue for those who have lent their support to the concept of Islamophobia to issue a clarification. Do they agree with the organisations behind IAM on what constitutes Islamophobia or not, and will they distance themselves from the term or continue to act as useful idiots?

Update 14/12/2022: After being contacted by the NSS regarding the National Association of Muslim Police's proposed changes to counter-terrorism terminology, the Home Office and College of Policing have confirmed that there are "no plans" to make any such changes and that current terminology is both "accurate" and "fit for purpose".

When it comes to religion, the BBC is showing its age

Radio 4's discriminatory 'Thought for the Day' slot is totemic of religious privilege at the BBC and should be the starting point for reform, says Megan Manson.

The BBC is celebrating 100 years since its founding, making it the oldest national broadcaster in the world. This is a remarkable achievement and is testament to the BBC's consistent effort to keep ahead with the times. As director of BBC content Charlotte Moore says: "The BBC's future depends on remaining relevant to all our licence fee payers and reflecting modern Britain in an authentic way."

The BBC's commitment to staying relevant is typified by its increasingly ambitious diversity targets. In 2017 it had no targets regarding women and LGBT people. In 2020 it aimed for 50% women in its recruitment and on screen portrayal, and 8% for LGBT. It also aimed for 15% Black, Asian and ethnic minorities and 8% people with a disability in its workforce and on screen portrayal.

But there's one dark, dusty corner of the BBC which has remained stubbornly resistant to all attempts at modernisation and inclusion. And that's the 'Thought for the Day' slot of Radio 4's Today programme.

Described by the former Today presenter John Humphrys as "discriminatory", "inappropriate" and "deeply, deeply boring", TftD is perhaps the only part of the BBC that takes pride in cleaving to exclusivity and increasingly abandoned worldviews. The slot gives nearly three minutes' airtime during Radio 4's flagship programme to prominent religious public figures to bestow their godly wisdom unto the nation. And it's only given to religious public figures. Not once in its 40+ year history has a nonreligious person delivered TftD.

Understandably, many nonreligious listeners feel insulted and excluded by TftD's policy of only inviting religious speakers. The policy implies religious voices offer some sort of unique wisdom that would be inappropriate to challenge and should be treated with deference.

The nonreligious likely comprise the largest religion or belief group in the UK. NatCen's British Social Attitudes surveys consistently find the percentage of nonreligious in the UK to be above 50%. It's hard to see how TftD lives up to "reflecting modern Britain in an authentic way" when it alienates over half the population by excluding people who have something to say from a nonreligious perspective.

And it's not just nonreligious thinkers who are discriminated against by TftD. Is your religion not considered one of the 'major faiths' by the BBC? Bad news, your thoughts are not welcome either. Over the years, Pagans have tried multiple times to get a representative on TftD, only to be told that their religion isn't big enough (although some estimate the number of Pagans in the UK to be similar to the number of Hindus, who are allowed on TftD).

The idea of barring religious minorities from TftD seems completely at odds with the BBC's wider policies of actively ensuring minority ethnicities and sexualities are represented in its broadcasting.

It's no accident that TftD is so unbalanced. It's one of the legacies of the BBC's first general manager, John Reith, a hardline Calvinist who took the role after feeling a "divine calling" to do so. Under Reith, the BBC did not broadcast on Sunday before 12:30pm to give listeners time to attend church, and for the rest of the day it only broadcast religious services, classical music and other 'non-frivolous' programming.

Religious privilege was baked into the Beeb from the outset. This is reflected in the words of the BBC's fifth director general William Haley in 1948: "We are citizens of a Christian country, and the BBC - an institution set up by the state - bases its policy upon a positive attitude towards the Christian values. It seeks to safeguard those values and to foster acceptance of them. The whole preponderant weight of its programmes is directed to this end".

That same religious privilege is mirrored by the state at large. Echoing TftD's soft proselytism that greets morning listeners as they commute to work, sittings in both chambers in parliament begin with Anglican prayers, while millions of children across the country will be compelled to sit through some form of Christian prayer every day enforced by collective worship laws. For a largely irreligious country, waking up to some form of call to prayer is strangely inescapable.

The symptoms of systemic deference to religion at the BBC extend beyond TftD. For the really early birds, Radio 4 has 'Prayer for the Day' at 5:43am, and Radio 2's breakfast show includes its own TftD entitled 'Pause for Thought'. On TV we have 'Songs of Praise', a show which only features Christian worship and has a strongly evangelising approach.

And then there's the BBC's cringing coverage of religious affairs which regularly seems at pains to play up positive perspectives of religion while whitewashing the negatives. In 2010, BBC 1 and BBC 2's coverage of the pope's visit to the UK clocked up to over 12 hours. There was also coverage on Radio 4, Radio 5 Live and other BBC TV, radio and online services, in addition to Catholic-themed current affairs programmes and documentaries.

During this visit, the NSS and others organised the biggest protest against a papal visit in history, with over 20,000 taking part. The protest aimed to highlight the Vatican's role in the concealment of child abuse and its denial of justice for victims. There were also protests about the Vatican's damaging stance on social issues such as women's rights and LGBT equality.

The protest received a few minutes' coverage on the BBC, much of it critical.

While it may be short slot, TftD is totemic of the spectre of religious privilege haunting the BBC. That's why it attracts such ire and frustration from those who object to its discriminatory premise and its consequential irrelevance and dreariness for growing numbers of people.

Perhaps the BBC needs to listen to one of the many oft-repeated platitudes on TftD, and 'take time to reflect'. The centenary is a great opportunity for our national broadcaster to take time to reflect on how it can age gracefully. It may be 100 years old but it needn't look it. A fresher, more critical, and more inclusive approach to religion and belief would keep it relevant to the increasingly irreligious and religiously-diverse country it serves. And ensuring all thoughts, not just those from the religious elites, are welcome on Thought for the Day would be a good place to start.

Show FIFA’s moral relativism the red card

Human rights defenders are perfectly entitled to ignore FIFA's plea to 'focus on the football' and use the World Cup to shine a spotlight on Qatar's regressive regime, says Stephen Evans.

"Please, let's now focus on the football!".

That was the desperate plea of FIFA president Gianni Infantino and general secretary Fatma Samoura, who last week sent a letter to all 32 nations participating in the forthcoming World Cup, asking them not to lecture Qatar about moral values.

The usual excitement that precedes the world's foremost festival of football has been noticeably absent this time. Instead, the build-up has been dominated by discussion of serious human rights abuses, including Qatar's criminalisation of homosexuality, the limited rights of women in the country and the plight of migrant workers.

At a time when many people are campaigning for greater LGBT inclusion in the sport, the men's World Cup is about to be hosted by a country in which homosexual acts are illegal, considered haram under sharia law. Under the Qatar constitution, Islam is the state religion and sharia shall be "a main source" of legislation. Punishments for same-sex sexual activity can include fines, prison sentences of up to seven years, and even death by stoning. One might have hoped that the awarding of the World Cup might help shift attitudes in the country. But there's no evidence of that yet. Just this week, Qatari World Cup Ambassador Khalid Salman described homosexuality as "damage in the mind."

The country has a terrible record on women's human rights, too. Qatar's male guardianship rules severly restrict women's freedom of movement. Women need a male guardian's permission to marry. Once married, a woman can be deemed "disobedient" if she does not obtain her husband's permission before working, travelling, or if she leaves her home or refuses to have sex with him, without a "legitimate" reason. Men can marry up to four women at a time without needing permission from a guardian or even from their current wife or wives.

Women can't even be primary guardians of their own children, and discriminatory laws relating to divorce can leave women trapped in abusive relationships.

Earlier this year, a female World Cup official fled Qatar due to the threat of facing 100 lashes and a seven-year jail term for 'extramarital sex', despite reporting she was raped.

Meanwhile, flogging is used as a punishment for alcohol consumption or illicit sexual relations and its penal code criminalises 'blasphemy'. Conversion to another religion from Islam is defined by the law as apostasy – and is illegal.

But never mind all that, say FIFA, let's focus on the football! According to the letter, "One of the great strengths of the world is indeed its very diversity, and if inclusion means anything, it means having respect for that diversity. No one people or culture or nation is 'better' than any other."

Pass me the bucket.

Diversity isn't about tolerating the intolerable. 'Respect for diversity' here is code for turning a blind eye to human rights abuses. The idea that no culture is "better" than any other asks us to put aside our disdain for cruel, harmful, discriminatory, and degrading practices and simply accept that some cultures 'just do things differently'.

This cultural relativist approach may be expedient with a world cup on the way, but in rejecting the universality of civil and political rights, FIFA are throwing LGBT people, religious minorities, and women under the bus.

Such relativism downplays common values. It suggests that human rights, equality, liberty, democracy, and the separation of religion and state aren't for everyone. Tell that to the Iranian women risking their lives to rid themselves of the tyranny of the misogynistic theocracy they've been living under.

One may wonder why this tiny desert sheikhdom, with little in the way of football pedigree, stadiums or the necessary infrastructure was chosen to host the tournament in the first place. Many suspect shady deals. The fact that eleven of the 22 committee members who voted on awarding the tournament to Qatar have been fined, suspended, banned for life or prosecuted for corruption tells its own story.

The infrastructure it was lacking has been hastily assembled by migrant labourers who have endured miserable conditions, including low wages, non-payment of salaries and unsafe workplaces. Last year the Guardian reported 6,500 migrant workers had died in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded, although the exact figure is disputed.

As Norway's Football Association president Lise Klaveness told FIFA's Congress in Doha earlier this year, this was a tournament "awarded in an unacceptable way, with unacceptable consequences…Human rights, equality, democracy, the core interests of football, were not in the starting XI."

FIFA's shameless letter asks nations not to "allow football to be dragged into every ideological or political battle that exists."

If football has been dragged anywhere, it's into the gutter, by FIFA.

Human rights defenders and rights respecting nations are perfectly entitled to use the forthcoming tournament to shine a spotlight on Qatar's Wahhabi inspired regressive regime. Those who value liberal democracy should show FIFA's moral relativism the red card.

Salman Rushdie and the women’s revolution in Iran are linked

There is a direct link between the threats and violence faced by Salman Rushdie and that faced by generations of women and men in Iran, says Maryam Namazie.

Salman Rushdie's agent has confirmed that the courageous writer has lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand after a brutal attack whilst he was preparing to speak at an event on asylum for writers.

The attack in New York state on August 12th has been a stark reminder that even decades after Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie and his book The Satanic Verses, the writer remains unsafe to write and to speak.

After all these years, it is still unimaginable that someone, somewhere, can be attacked or killed for their words and expression. And that for many, accusations of causing offence, hurting fragile sensibilities and of 'Islamophobia' are enough to justify loss of life and limb.

In this topsy turvy worldview, words are harmful, violence justifiable. It's the age-old victim blaming in defence of the powerful at the expense of those who challenge the sacred and taboo, and dare to dissent.

Infuriatingly, after all these years, those issuing or supporting threats of violence face little consequence even though incitement to murder is a crime.

To give an example from Britain, Iqbal Sacranie, who had said "death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for [Rushdie]," was knighted by the British government in 2005.

Meanwhile, officials of the Islamic regime of Iran continue to travel with ease and without fear of prosecution. Only a few days after its morality police reportedly beat Mahsa Amini to death for 'improper' hijab, Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi was given a visa to address the United Nations General Assembly – in New York, no less. The Iranian regime, a regime of femicide, even sits on the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Since Raisi's UN visit, many more protestors have been beaten, disappeared and killed using weapons of war. According to human rights groups, over 300 protestors have been killed, many of them children. The real numbers are higher. Over 14,000 have been arrested, including two women journalists who first broke the news of Mahsa Amini's death. An official of the regime has stated that the average age of those arrested is 15. A thousand have already been charged in summary kangaroo courts. Some have been issued death sentences for 'enmity against god.'

Clearly, there is a direct link between the decades of threats and violence faced by Salman Rushdie and that faced by generations of women and men in Iran. It is the Islamic regime of Iran which today is faced with a women's revolution that aims to end theocracy once and for all.

The veil, which since its imposition has been the most visible symbol of Islamic rule, is now the target and symbol of a women's revolution, led by a brave Generation Z that refuses to back down and has no illusions about Islamic rule. Their main slogans are: 'Woman, Life, Freedom,' 'We don't want an Islamic state,' and 'We don't want an anti-woman state.'

Just as the rise of the Islamic regime in Iran saw a corresponding rise of fundamentalism everywhere, the end of this regime via a women's revolution would herald a new dawn in Iran, the Middle East and the world. This regime came in by imposing the veil with acid attacks and violence. It will come to an end with free women burning and removing their veils.

Despite the ongoing protests in the streets of Iran and across the globe, western governments continue with business as usual, making only empty condemnations.

Pressure on western governments to stop relations with the regime of sex apartheid is one of the important ways in which secularists and freethinkers can defend the women's revolution as well as brave dissenters like Rushdie.

A banner at one of the protests in support of Iran's revolution sums it up perfectly:

"To the world leaders. Iranian women do not need you to save them. They only need you to stop saving their murderers."

In 2006, 12 writers (including Rushdie and I) signed a Manifesto against Totalitarianism, which says:

"We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", a wretched concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatisation of those who believe in it.

"We defend the universality of the freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit can exist in every continent, towards each and every maltreatment and dogma.

"We appeal to democrats and free spirits in every country that our century may be one of light and not dark.'

The women's revolution in Iran has allowed us all to fathom another Iran and world free from fundamentalism.

Supporting it, defending it, and safeguarding its gains can help make this century 'one of light and not dark.'

Image: Maryam Namazie (left) and fellow activist Rana Ahmad by Ayman Ghoujal.

This piece was written for MIZ to be published in German.

IICSA and clerical abuse: the devil in the detail

Richard Scorer unpacks the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and finds that while they appear promising at first glance, they may not be enough to protect children from abuse in religious settings.

Last month the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) published its final report. Much of the inquiry's work concerned religious settings, including minority religions alongside the Catholic and Anglican churches. Ahead of the report I set out what survivors were looking for. Now the dust has settled, we can start to assess how the report's recommendations measure up.

Mandatory reporting: a flawed model

Throughout the inquiry survivors argued strongly for mandatory reporting. Headlines on the day of the report's release suggested a big win on this issue, with the inquiry recommending mandatory reporting both for known abuse and for 'signs' of child sexual abuse.

However, on this subject, the devil is in the detail. Mandatory reporting laws across the world vary considerably in terms of who is covered by the reporting duty, what has to be reported and the extent of criminal sanctions for non-compliance.

Design is all; badly designed laws are ineffective. As the campaign group Mandate Now argue, the mandatory reporting law proposed by IICSA has several flaws.

A key issue is criminal penalties for non-reporting. IICSA's law would require mandated reporters to report direct knowledge of abuse, acquired via a child victim's disclosure or a perpetrator's admission to the reporter, or the reporter witnessing the abuse itself. It would also require reporting of "signs of abuse" – in other words, situations where abuse is reasonably suspected. But a criminal penalty for non-reporting would only operate in respect of the first category, i.e. direct knowledge.

For those unfamiliar with the evidence actually heard by the inquiry, this approach has a superficial plausibility. Nobody wants to send mandated reporters to jail. But the reality is that situations in which a child or perpetrator discloses, or abuse is witnessed, are rare.

In the fundamentalist religious settings which are such reliable petri dishes for abuse, these things are rarer still. As my client Yehudis Goldsobel, the former CEO of the charity Migdal Emunah which supports victims of sexual abuse within the Jewish community, explained: "Children in my Haredi community have no language to disclose. On the rare occasion - as an adult - they do disclose, it is too late".

As IICSA's case studies demonstrated, most situations where abuse is covered up institutionally are situations in which personnel suspect that something untoward is happening, but turn a blind eye because of reputational and other pressures. For mandatory reporting to work effectively, a law needs to ensure reporting of reasonable suspicions. But the lack of any criminal penalty for non-reporting undermines both the impetus to do so, and the cover for those who want to report. IICSA's proposal may actually create a positive incentive for a recalcitrant organisation to ensure that a child never gets to the point of direct disclosure. I will be lobbying MPs on this as the report's recommendations go through parliament.

I agree wholeheartedly with the inquiry's approach on one issue associated with mandatory reporting. The report is categorical that there can be no religious exemption to mandatory reporting due to the seal of the confessional. This unequivocal rejection of a religious "get out" is very reassuring. But if this becomes law no doubt the Catholic Church in England and Wales will instruct priests to break the law, as it has done in Ireland and Australia, rather than engaging constructively with the inquiry's recommendation.

An over-reliance on public shaming

The inadequacies of regulatory and inspection systems operated by Ofsted and other oversight bodies such as the Charity Commission were very apparent from the IICSA hearings. Achieving effective regulation of religious settings is a major challenge – even mapping the thousands of settings is difficult, let alone regulating them.

Regrettably, the report takes us little further. IICSA recommends new "Child Protection Authorities" (CPAs) - one for England and one for Wales. This is welcome but the CPAs would have no enforcement power and so would be largely toothless. These paragraphs from the report sum up IICSA's approach:

"The CPAs should have the power to inspect institutions and settings that are already inspected by statutory inspectorates. This power would be deployed on the rare occasions when the institution in question has persistently failed to respond effectively to previous inspection reports or the state of child protection was so poor that the public interest and concern demanded further scrutiny by an inspectorate unconnected with a particular sector.

"It is not intended that the CPAs will have the powers to regulate an institution by, for example, imposing a sanction for failure to implement improvements, though other bodies with appropriate powers could take action. This would not preclude the CPAs referring an institution to other bodies with appropriate regulatory functions. The public exposure of failings in any report is envisaged to be sufficient to bring about the necessary changes."

The premise here seems to be that the existing inspection regime is largely working so the CPA need only act on "rare occasions". But we know from IICSA hearings that the existing regime is failing and needs a complete overhaul.

The idea that public shaming will guarantee change is extraordinarily naive. Public shaming is inherently random: the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales Cardinal Vincent Nichols was rebuked again in IICSA's final report, becoming the only public figure to have been criticised in three separate reports from a major public inquiry. But this 'public shaming' got completely buried as the prime minister's resignation pushed IICSA to the margins of news coverage. The Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham has been publicly shamed for years because of a succession of clerical sex abuse scandals, yet when IICSA examined the Archdiocese's safeguarding in 2018 it found it to be inadequate and shambolic; no amount of public shaming had been enough.

Public shaming has little impact on fundamentalist religious groups who reject secular authority. IICSA's approach here is misconceived, and I fear an opportunity for more thoroughgoing reform has been missed.

Redress for survivors: who pays?

The civil claims process can be distressing and adversarial. A redress scheme might make things easier for survivors. The final report recommends the establishment of a national redress scheme. In the abstract this sounds like a good idea, but as we know from Ireland, this begs a question: who pays?

A national redress scheme has to be established and administered by the state. So either the state pays for it, or the funding comes wholly or partly from the organisations where the abuse occurred (including religious organisations such as the Catholic Church).

If the state pays, then the taxpayer picks up the bill for abuse caused by private institutions, and why should the taxpayer pay for the grotesque and decades long clerical sex abuse scandal? The alternative –the scheme being funded by those organisations responsible for the abuse – might be more complex, but at least puts the funding burden on those responsible.

The inquiry's proposed solution – state funding, but with "voluntary contributions" from organisations implicated in abuse – feels like the worst of both worlds. Under this proposal the taxpayer has to pick up the tab, and rely on the goodwill of organisations like the Catholic Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses to defray some of the cost voluntarily. These are the very same organisations which fight survivors tooth and nail through the courts to avoid paying just compensation, so this seems a rather implausible scenario.

The taxpayer already subsidises religious organisations through charitable status - a racket long in need of reform. Under this proposal, I fear the taxpayer may end up paying again, for child sex abuse caused by criminal culpability and cover up in religious settings.

And, most importantly, the more that the scheme relies on state funding, the paltrier the compensation amounts are likelier to be, especially given the state of the public purse. So survivors will lose out.

This is wrong. IICSA could have recommended that organisations implicated in abuse should be required to contribute, and suggested a formula for assessing contributions. Another approach would have been to look at what institutions themselves should do by way of redress. The Church of England has already promised a redress scheme for survivors, but its implementation keeps getting pushed back. The Church of England is an established church subject to parliamentary legislation. IICSA could have specified a deadline for this scheme to be up and running, which the survivors waiting on it desperately need, and recommended legislative intervention to enforce this.

Regarding other religious organisations such as the Catholic Church, the inquiry could have recommended that they take responsibility for past failings by using their vast wealth to establish redress schemes on similar lines. It could also have recommended, if thought necessary, that charities law be amended to facilitate the use of charitable funds for this purpose.

A positive note: abolition of time limits for child abuse civil claims

I have long argued for the abolition of the unfair and antiquated time limits for civil claims. To recap, the law in England and Wales requires that a civil claim for childhood sexual abuse should be brought within three years of the victim turning 18. Although the courts have the power to set aside this time limit, given that the average time delay between abuse and a survivor's disclosure is 22 years, the time limit is simply unfair. It should not exist in the first place. Scotland already abolished the three year time limit in 2017.

On this point at least, the report delivered, recommending that the three year rule be abolished and that cases should then proceed irrespective of time delay unless the defendant can prove that the delay means that a fair trial is impossible (a reasonable proviso; fairness of trial is a fundamental precept of the rule of law). This is an important win.

How should we assess the IICSA report overall? The headline recommendations – mandatory reporting with no religious exception, a new oversight body, abolition of the time bar, and redress for survivors – are exactly the things I hoped for ahead of the report.

But frustratingly the design of some of these proposals is flawed, which means survivors will have to fight for improvements as the report is debated and legislated on by parliament. IICSA could, and should, have done better.

Our health system is failing to protect children from ritual circumcision

While UK medical bodies tie themselves in knots on ritual male infant circumcision, untold numbers of boys are being subjected to a painful, risky and irreversible procedure, says Dr Alejandro Sanchez.

In 2008, the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland wrote to health executives informing them that ritual circumcision was to be provided on the NHS. "[I]n the interest of the wellbeing of the child", he wrote, the procedure would be carried out under general anaesthetic by a paediatric surgeon in one of four specialist paediatric centres.

Hospital guidelines added "doctors agree that a surgical circumcision should always be carried out under a general anaesthetic. This is safer and less painful for your child".

In September, the NSS sought clarification from the Chief Medical Officer: what were the implications of these rigorous strictures for religious circumcisions performed outside of the NHS? The CMO would not be drawn.

In the face of inconvenient questions regarding ritual circumcision, such intellectual and ethical contortion is all too common. UK medical bodies maintain that children subjected to ritual circumcision in clinical settings must be 'protected' by strict safeguards. Those circumcised in the community, however, are on their own.

We should, of course, be gravely concerned that ritual male circumcision is permitted on medical premises at all. The practice is non-consensual; not medically indicated; constitutes 'significant harm' under the Children Act 1989 and is deferrable until the age of consent.

The notion that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) would be permissible if carried out in an operating theatre is, naturally, repellent. Medicalised ritual circumcision deserves equal disapprobation and contempt.

The physical harm of ritual circumcision is now incontrovertible: eleven boys were admitted to Birmingham Children's Hospital in just one year with life threatening haemorrhage, shock or sepsis post-circumcision. Three baby boys, Celian Noumbiwe, Angelo Ofori-Mintah, and Goodluck Caubergs, have bled to death post-circumcision in recent years. And the evidence of psychological impacts is also growing.

British Medical Association (BMA)

Nonetheless, UK medical bodies have set out their stalls on circumcision. The British Medical Association's 2019 guidance advises that circumcision can be used to treat medical conditions such as pathological phimosis (overly tight foreskin) but only when less invasive measures such as steroid creams or stretching would prove ineffective. To act otherwise would be "unethical and inappropriate." This, by itself, would be sound clinical and ethical advice.

The BMA, however, provides one caveat: an otherwise "unethical and inappropriate" circumcision may proceed if there are "relevant social and cultural interests". Thus, the circumcision is somehow morally transformed by the coincidence of the parents' religion.

Such doublethink is beneath the BMA and represents a dereliction of duty. All children, including those born to Jewish or Muslim parents, deserve equal protection from ritual circumcision. If, upon reaching the age of consent, that child still wishes to undergo the procedure, that remains their prerogative.

Care Quality Commission (CQC)

Let us turn now to the mental gymnastics of the Care Quality Commission, the organisation tasked with inspecting healthcare facilities in England. Their recommendations are, superficially, robust: "we would expect providers to ensure that the provision of non-therapeutic male infant circumcision services is safe and appropriate."

But when pressed in a Freedom of Information request, the CQC was unable to confirm if ritual circumcision without general anaesthetic was "safe". Likewise, it was silent on the safety of physically pinning down children undergoing circumcision.

Both these practices were described in a dossier submitted to the CQC by whistle-blower paediatric surgeon Mr Shiban Ahmed. The state of UK circumcision practice was "barbaric and amateurish", he said, adding that "the NHS is allowing babies to be maimed". How the CQC responded, if at all, remains unclear.

General Medical Council (GMC)

Perhaps the General Medical Council, the professional regulator of doctors, might have the moral courage to speak up? After all, it has a statutory obligation under the Medical Act 1983 to "protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and well-being of the public".

Would that it were. "You should usually provide" procedures for "mainly religious or cultural reasons", states their 2013 'Personal beliefs and medical practice' guidance. A seemingly more pressing concern was relayed to Dr Antony Lempert, head of the Secular Medical Forum: "You have no idea how offended the chief rabbi would be if we were to change our guidance."

Where does this leave the state of circumcision in the UK? It must be carried out under general anaesthetic by a paediatric surgeon, except where it need not be. It can only be carried out where conservative measures have failed, except where they haven't. It can only be carried out when it is safe, except we don't know what safe means. And the status quo must be upheld lest we offend religious authorities.

This tortuous entanglement is morally unsustainable. It is this gordian knot, not the foreskin, that should be cut.

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay