Secular Education Forum
The Secular Education Forum (SEF) provides expert and professional advice and opinion to the National Secular Society (NSS) on issues related to education and provides a forum for anyone with expertise in the intersection of education and secularism.
The SEF's main objective is to advocate the value of secularism/religious neutrality as a professional standard in education. The SEF welcomes supporters of all faiths and none. It provides expert support for the NSS working towards a secular education system free from religious privilege, proselytization, partisanship or discrimination.
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Education blogs and commentary
A selection of blogs and comment pieces on education and secularism. For education news from the NSS, please click here.
Heads of state shouldn’t have to swear religious oaths
Posted: Fri, 13th Aug 2021
A challenge to Ireland's religious presidential oath should be supported – and prompt questions across the Irish Sea, says Chris Sloggett.
Over the last few years Ireland has made several steps in a secularist direction.
Same-sex marriage has been legalised. Abortion and blasphemy have been decriminalised. Politicians have made efforts – albeit questionably handled – to divest religious patronage from schools, in a country where around 90% of primary schools are Catholic. The government has declared its intention to support inclusive education on relationships and sexuality, creating tension with the Catholic Church.
Three years ago Leo Varadkar – who was then the prime minister, is currently deputy PM and is set to return to the top job next year – gave an explicit statement of intent. During a visit from the pope, and amid continuing revelations about the Catholic Church's mishandling of sexual abuse, he called for "a new, more mature relationship between church and state in Ireland – a new covenant for the 21st century".
But the commitment to secularist principles only appears to go so far. Disappointingly, the government has decided to oppose a challenge to Ireland's religious presidential oath.
On taking up the office, Ireland's president – and members of the council of state, a presidential advisory body – are constitutionally required to swear an oath "in the presence of almighty God". Earlier this year Ireland's current president Michael Higgins (pictured) expressed support for replacing this oath with an affirmation. Now the co-leader of the Social Democrats and four other public figures have taken a case to the European Court of Human Rights. They note that they, along with plenty of people in Ireland, would have "a conscientious objection" to swearing the current oath.
In response the government is arguing that the case should be thrown out, on the grounds that the claimants shouldn't be regarded as "victims" and therefore their rights haven't been violated. It also says the oath is "necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others".
But that's an unconvincing reason for an oath to be religious. The idea that religion is a precondition for morality isn't just open to debate; it's often actively damaging. Consider the Catholic Church's continuing child abuse scandals, or the recent report which highlighted the devastating impact of church-controlled mother and baby homes in Ireland. As Ciara Kelly, a presenter for the Irish radio station Newstalk, said in a discussion on the subject last week: "We do not need the presence of 'almighty God' for us to be moral or ethical."
The government's submission also says: "In line with the court's case law, pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness – including respect for religious diversity – must be regarded as conducive to public order in a democratic society." But that's part of the problem which the litigants have with the current oath. The religious requirement sends the message that an office holder's suitability for public office is dependent on their personal beliefs.
The claimants will need to clear a high bar to convince the ECHR that the oath violates their human rights. And even if the court rules that the current oaths breach the rights of non-believers, a referendum will be needed to change them. But in recent days both The Irish Times and The Sunday Times have argued for change. The claimants' arguments are worth noting and supporting. And the case should raise questions across the Irish Sea too.
Parliamentarians at Westminster have had the right to make a secular affirmation since the passing of the Oaths Act in 1888. This followed National Secular Society founder Charles Bradlaugh's struggle to enter parliament, where he was effectively barred from taking his seat after being elected four times. But a row over the oath which the UK's head of state swears may now be looming.
As things stand, Prince Charles is set to swear three oaths when he becomes king. He will promise to be a true and faithful Protestant; to uphold the Presbyterian Church of Scotland; and to uphold the rights and privileges of the Church of England.
In 2018 a paper from UCL's Constitution Unit outlined several ways these oaths could evolve. It noted that the current oaths date from the period after the 'glorious revolution' of 1688, when Catholic Europe was still considered to be an "existential threat", and said they should be revised or dropped in a more secular and pluralistic society. The authors suggested several possible reformulations. The boldest of these would involve an oath about the union; an oath to uphold the constitution and laws; and an oath to the people.
Both the UCL paper and the case in Ireland show there are alternatives to the status quo. If policy makers view British citizens as equals, regardless of their religious identity or lack of it, they should consider them. And they should end the arrangement which requires our head of state to swear to promote particular religious institutions, or to practise – or pretend to practise – a particular religion.
Image: Michael Higgins, © Irish Defence Forces, via Flickr [CC BY 2.0; cropped to fit]
The C of E has serious questions to answer over the death of a gay priest
Posted: Wed, 28th Jul 2021
A coroner's report has laid bare the Church of England's cruel and scandalous handling of the case of Alan Griffin, who killed himself following unfounded accusations of child exploitation, says Keith Porteous Wood.
Last week a coroner issued a damning report into the tragic case of Anglican priest Alan Griffin (pictured), who killed himself in November 2020.
The report made clear that Griffin died as he couldn't cope with a Church of England investigation into his conduct. It said the investigation had dragged on for over a year, before he ended his life "without ever having the allegations and their source plainly set out for him".
The church's basis for investigating Griffin was "concerns of possible child exploitation". The coroner highlighted confusion and a lack of care in the church's safeguarding team over the way this allegation was registered. There were neither complainants, witnesses nor accusers. And the "source" was the casually collected verbal memoirs (described as a "brain dump") of a retiring head of operations (HOO).
The principal basis of the "concerns" was that Alan Griffin had supposedly admitted he had "used rent boys". C of E staff reported that the head of operations had used this phrase "from start to finish" in meetings and emphasised that these were "Father Griffin's own words". But under questioning from the coroner, it became clear that Alan Griffin "had not actually said this".
The HOO also told the coroner his understanding of rent boys was that these were "adult male prostitutes". Yet this alone became the pretext for the investigation into "child exploitation".
The coroner's report has now shown how groundless even the initial suspicions against Griffin were. The coroner ruled Alan Griffin: "did not abuse children"; "did not have sex with young people under the age of 18; "did not visit prostitutes"; and "did not endanger the lives of others by having sex with people whilst an HIV risk". She added: "No person said they had been the subject of or had witnessed any concerning behaviour, save that Father Griffin had been seen to have dinner with men in an Italian restaurant, for which he might have paid the bill."
The report has also highlighted further serious missteps from the church. The team of senior professionals who handled the case failed to "check the source of the information the HOO gave", or to "take responsibility for the adoption of most basic evidence-taking protocols".
In relation to sensitive data disclosed by the church to the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), to which Alan Griffin converted and became a priest, the coroner observed that "there seemed almost to be a lack of recognition that the RCC was a different organisation", seemingly raising data protection concerns. A complaint along these lines has been made by one of Alan Griffin's long-standing close friends.
The C of E's safeguarding officer shared the church's groundless suspicions by email with the RCC, even though they did not properly represent her view of the allegations; she did not believe that there was any evidence of sexual activity with a minor, nor any reason to investigate. She also gratuitously disclosed that Alan Griffin was HIV positive, but not that he "was being bullied by parishioners [and …] had "attempted suicide when diagnosed as HIV+"; nor that his HIV status was "viral load undetectable". The email was seen by the archdeacon and the safeguarding manager before it was sent.
The coroner also highlighted the risk that something similar could happen again, not least because output from the HOO's "brain dump" had become the subject of a report mentioning 42 members of the clergy of the London & Westminster Diocese.
The coroner noted that the C of E had not been fully engaged in the inquest process until last month. She said she often encountered organisations which had undertaken "meaningful attempts at improvement by the time of the inquest", but this was "not the case" with the church. The church only decided a review to learn lessons would be worthwhile once its staff had been called to the inquest as witnesses.
The coroner also found that C of E witnesses had undertaken a "lack of appropriately meaningful reflection", with the "notable exception" of a safeguarding adviser. And the coroner added that she had "received submissions on behalf of the Church of England regarding any prevention of future deaths report". These submissions – note the plural – had "impressed upon me that referrals to child protection and safeguarding professionals must not be reduced" and "urged me not to include any concerns that may be taken as a criticism of clerics or staff for not filtering or verifying allegations".
This last observation is by far the most concerning: the established church appears to have felt sufficiently entitled to attempt to interfere with the judicial process. And as the coroner noted, "a duty of care and competence in a situation such as this one is not in any way incompatible with the moral duty we all have, and the legal duty that bodies such as the church have, to try to keep children and the vulnerable safe".
The archbishop of Canterbury is now required in law to respond by 3 September. It will be significant to see whether he addresses questions including:
- The long-standing friend is convinced that the behaviour of both churches can only be explained by their homophobia. How far is it credible that what is described above is solely incompetence rather than victimisation? Did Alan Griffin's sexuality have any bearing on this? And if so, what does this say about the C of E's ongoing attitude to homosexuality?
- Will the church subject those whose conduct has been seriously called into question to a disciplinary process? We understand that some in the church are determined this be done.
- Have years of inquiries, lessons-learned and criticism from the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse had any significant positive impact on the church's culture?
The Church of England's disregard for the safety of this priest, and the many serious errors it made in its reporting, were cruel. Its utter disregard for the duty of confidentiality that it owed Father Griffin when it passed these unfounded allegations to the Catholic Church – even when it knew they were untrue – was scandalous.
Once again, the church's conduct has highlighted a culture of entitlement, with devastating effects. Often when the C of E faces serious criticism, particularly over its conduct on abuse, it pays lip service to the need for lessons to be learned before reverting to protecting its reputation and continuing as before.
Last year, Archbishop Welby described the findings of the first public abuse inquiry as "profoundly and deeply shocking". Now, for the first time ever, a coroner has personally called him to account. Will anything change this time?
Schools aren’t there to save the church
Posted: Thu, 22nd Jul 2021
The Church of England's new evangelical missional strategy should lead us to question its entitlement to proselytise in schools, argues Stephen Evans.
This article is available in audio format, as part of our Opinion Out Loud series.
In a bid to reverse the precipitous decline in Anglican affiliation, archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell has come up with a plan to "revitalise" the ailing Church of England.
Cottrell's "Vision and Strategy" paper proposes setting up tens of thousands of 'worshipping communities', essentially led by the evangelical laity. The plans reflect the growing influence of evangelicalism within the church under Justin Welby's tenure as archbishop of Canterbury.
The plans have caused considerable consternation amongst the clergy. Much of this stems from the apparent desire to deprioritise the parish system in favour of 'groovy' house churches led by lay people rather than priests. Writing in Church Times, Andrew Brown called the plan a "suicide note", likening the proposals to the church "tearing off its buildings and its priests, and rushing stark naked into a world that couldn't care less".
But given the church's privileged and prominent public role, it isn't only the Anglican faithful that should be perturbed. The new evangelical surge will ring alarm bells for anyone concerned about religion's propensity to impose itself where it isn't wanted.
Speaking in the Synod, Prudence Dailey, a lay member for Oxford Diocese, said the church needed to "reach people where they are".
One place where impressionable people are, of course, is in school.
Unsurprisingly, the Church of England's vision is very much focused on children and young people. According to the archbishop of York, his strategy will involve a "bolder commitment to Christian education and ministry with children, young people and students". He says he want to "double the number of children and young active disciples in the Church of England by 2030". To achieve this there will be a "particular emphasis on work with children and young people" and full utilisation of "the resource and opportunity of our church schools."
But the church's ambitions extend beyond church schools. The C of E's 'Vision for Education' document from 2016 makes clear its intention to influence the education of children and young people in community schools, independent schools, sixth form colleges, FE colleges and universities.
Utilising state-funded education for evangelical purposes is educationally inappropriate and insensitive to the diversity of religion and belief in modern Britain. But a combination of desperation and missionary zeal within the church means it will stop at nothing in trying to save itself.
The church does of course have every right to "spread the good news" or "make Christ known", as Cottrell puts it, but it shouldn't have the right to do this via state-funded education. Unfortunately, politicians' bias towards the status quo and their seemingly unshakable deference to religious interests means they lack the backbone to stand up for this important principle.
Despite church attendance falling 40% in the last 30 years, the Church of England's role in state education has increased. In part thanks to Anglican bishops' unique ability to shape legislation, and parliament's and the government's unwillingness to challenge the church on anything, the legal framework that underpins England's schools is ill-equipped to stand up to inappropriate evangelism. In fact, it positively supports it.
For a start, the government continues to fund faith schools, which are run by religious groups to advance their own interests whilst providing state education. The Church of England controls over four and a half thousand state-funded schools in England. So many in fact that almost three in ten families have little or no option other than a church school. Academisation has also allowed churches to expand their reach beyond faith schools and increase their influence over all schools, including those with no religious character.
Religious education, once the only compulsory subject, remains mandatory for all pupils in state-funded schools, despite being unpopular and having an unclear educational purpose. Controlled by religious interest groups, the subject provides yet more space for the promotion of faith. Schools with a religious character still teach RE confessionally, with little pretence of it being objective, critical or pluralistic.
And, inexplicably, the law still requires schools to provide a daily act of broadly Christian collective worship, providing evangelicals with yet another platform to impose Christian faith and practice on pupils.
Despite all of the above, just one per cent of 18–24-year-olds say they identify with the C of E.
Nevertheless, undeterred, the Church of England is placing young people right at the centre of its new missionary offensive in a last-ditch attempt to resurrect itself. Cottrell insists his vision is not motivated by the "downward sloping graphs" but by a desire to share "the abundant life we have in Christ" with "everyone". Either way, he apparently sees easy access to children and young people through state-funded schools as a God-given right.
An institutionally homophobic organisation with a missionary zeal is hardly an ideal provider of state education in one of the world's most secular and religiously diverse nations.
Children, like adults, should be afforded freedom of religion or belief – a right protected by article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Allowing schools to be used as mission fields undermines young people's freedom of thought, conscience and religion. That's why the National Secular Society will continue to lobby for an inclusive, secular education system that protects pupils from evangelicals of all religious stripes.
And as an increasingly influential evangelical strand of Anglicanism takes hold, the time is right to rethink the Church of England's privileged role in state education, not to mention its established status as the national church.
Picture: Justin Welby (left) and Stephen Cottrell, fourthandfifteen, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Will the government protect the ethos of secular schools?
Posted: Tue, 13th Jul 2021
The Department for Education's protections for the secular community ethos of non-faith academies are inadequate. This enables a consolidation of religious control and undermines accountability, argues Alastair Lichten.
Religious privilege is built into England's school system, with around a third of state schools having a formal religious designation. But as the National Secular Society's 2020 report Power grab: Academisation and the threat to secular education found, religious control of education is also extending beyond these faith schools into those which are nominally secular. As the government seeks to turn all schools into academies, the community ethos of non-faith schools risks being eroded.
Among our findings in Power grab, we revealed that more than 2,600 former community schools are now in multi-academy trusts (MATs) with religious ethos and governance. Across the country, schools which supposedly have no religious designation are facing pressure to promote religious groups' interests. And in April, the education secretary announced a new pilot scheme to increase the number of C of E and Catholic multi academy trusts. This will risk exacerbating these problems.
We have raised these issues with the Department for Education for the last decade, but ministers and officials have not been responsive. They point to clauses in the funding agreements of mixed-MATs (which contain faith and non-faith schools) requiring that a community ethos formally be protected through the local governing body. These may protect against the introduction of direct religious discrimination or an openly denominational curriculum, but time and again we have seen religious MATs impose an informal ethos on non-faith schools under their control. This can include changes to extra-curricular activities, worship policies, or the selection of resources or training from faith-based organisations.
Theoretically you can complain to the Education and Schools Funding Agency (ESFA), as a trust failing to protect a school's community ethos could be in breach of its funding agreement. But given the limited official interpretation of those clauses, this would be a difficult case to make. To our knowledge, the ESFA has not upheld any such complaints. Part of the problem is the perception – encouraged by the C of E, our laws on collective worship and the structure of RE – that a community ethos should mean a school is generically Christian by default.
So, this month I wrote to Baroness Berridge, minister for the school system, asking her to set out meaningful protections for the community ethos of secular schools entering MATs. We're calling on the DfE to take three tangible steps to genuinely protect non-faith academies.
Firstly, we've made specific suggestions for changes to guidance for mixed-MATs and the model funding agreements mentioned above, so that a community ethos is properly defined and protected. Internal guidance may go further. But it's difficult for civil society to hold schools or the DfE accountable to standards which aren't made public. Making the protection of a community ethos more explicit should preclude the imposition of a faith ethos in such schools. Local governing bodies should report on and act to ensure all policies are consistent with the community ethos, including raising concerns where trust-wide policies may impact this.
Secondly, a school's community ethos should be inspected as part of its overall assessment. Faith bodies receive public funding to inspect 'their' schools to ensure they are promoting a rigorous religious ethos. The C of E and Catholic Church even have special arrangements with the DfE meaning they can force a re-brokering if they are unhappy with the protection for the ethos. Earlier this year we published research into the costs and impacts of these inspections in our report Religiosity inspections: the case against faith-based reviews of state schools There is no sectoral body representing community-ethos schools in the same way as the C of E's National Society or the Catholic Education Service, but ministers could require Ofsted inspections to ensure schools are promoting an inclusive community ethos. In 2010 the government removed a duty on Ofsted to inspect schools' promotion of community cohesion; this could help to address the gap this has left.
Thirdly, the DfE should work with appropriate partners to ensure that teacher, governor and senior leadership training provides advice and support on maintaining and developing a community ethos. If you want to take on almost any position in a publicly funded faith school, you will be required to support the ethos. This is reinforced throughout ongoing professional development organised by faith groups. Teacher training covers the importance of an inclusive ethos, but we're not aware of any comparable focus specifically on a community ethos.
These comparatively simple changes could make an immediate difference. In Power grab, we also called for more wide-ranging changes to remove the special privileges given to faith groups, to the detriment of community schools, during academisation.
Ultimately, we need a cultural change to ensure a community ethos is valued by officials and developed in all non-faith schools. While schools have a faith ethos, we also need to ensure this is not used as a free pass to do whatever they like. It's not just about protecting secular schools today, it's about showing how community schools can educate children from all religious backgrounds together, without pushing religious worldviews on them. This could help provide a model for the positive transition we need away from faith-based schooling altogether.
If you have concerns about academisation introducing or strengthening religious control over your school, please get in touch
Image: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com.
Defending Muslim women’s rights requires a willingness to criticise Islam
Posted: Tue, 13th Jul 2021
Islamic scripture is being used to justify attacks on women's rights in many countries. Secular law is a crucial defence – and shielding Islam from criticism undermines efforts to assert it, says Kunwar Khuldune Shahid.
On Saturday, the Taliban issued a decree in Afghanistan's provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar demanding that all local unmarried females above 15, and widows, be 'handed over' to jihadists 'fighting in the path of Allah'. As the Taliban hope to return to power amid withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, they're preparing ground to reestablish their grotesque 'Islamic emirate', asking women not to leave houses without a hijab or without a mehram (a male relative or guardian approved by Islamic scriptures). The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, insist that women should only be allowed to live within Islamic mandates, which in turn reduces them to male-owned property that can be in the shape of sex slaves for jihadists, subordinated wives, and a general embodiment of male 'honour' in a violently patriarchal society.
The Taliban's gory implementation of Islamic scriptures, thankfully, isn't a reality in a vast majority of Muslim-majority countries. However, in many of these states Islam continues to be used to subjugate women and deny them their universal rights, resulting in Muslim-majority countries often dominating the bottom of most gender equality indices. Where the theocratic Islamic states like Saudi Arabia and Iran have long suppressed women with impunity owing to their undiluted upholding of sharia, many of the seemingly democratic Muslim countries have also piggybacked on Islam as a rationale to deny basic human rights.
Afghanistan's neighbour Pakistan, for instance, is currently deliberating over whether or not Islam allows domestic violence. Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology, which maintains Islam gives men the right to 'lightly beat' wives or marry girls as young as nine years of age, will decide if it is 'un-Islamic' to penalise violence against women perpetrated by mehrams. Meanwhile, former playboy and cricketer Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, continues to brazenly blame women for sexual violence, endorsing his rape apologia through the Islamic "concept of purdah". In April, Pakistan's women's rights marchers were booked for 'blasphemy', in a country where sacrilege against Islam is punishable by death.
From Bangladesh to Malaysia to Nigeria, sharia clauses continue to clash with civil law even in Muslim-majority democracies. On June 28, a woman was given 100 lashes for sex outside of marriage in the officially secular Indonesia's Aceh province, which enforces Islamic law. Even women from Muslim minorities in the UK, the US, India and other states can face large scale discrimination in personal matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance, if courts allow rulings using sharia.
Some of the Islamic clauses used to deny women's rights come from the fourth chapter of the Quran an-Nisa (The Women), which establishes female inheritance as half of men, upholds male supremacy, and allows husbands to beat 'disobedient' wives. The Quran's Chapter 24 an-Nur (The Light) mandates lashes as punishment for sex outside of marriage, allows female sex slaves, and establishes sexist modesty codes by asking women to cover up — including their hair — in front of those who aren't mehrams, so as to not be harassed.
Child marriage is often justified using the example of Muhammad's marriage to six-year-old Aisha, as narrated by Aisha herself in Sahih al-Bukhari, a compilation of the sayings of Islam's prophet. Jihadist groups like Isis or the Taliban cite hadiths on forced sexual intercourse with war captives and slaves to recreate the horrors of sexual violence against women arguing that they're at war with the west or local regimes.
Of course, Islamic scriptures are far from being the only misogynistic religious sources. Orthodox Jews and Christians, or indeed Hindus and Buddhists, can quote their texts brimming over with ghastly misogyny. In fact, gender equality—and its offshoot ideas like sexual consent—is barely a few decades old concept and hence is gapingly missing across scriptures written millennia ago. However, other religious communities have tended to progress further towards making clear distinctions between orthodox religionists and the rest, along with, more crucially, subordinating religious law to secular civic codes.
As a result, while other religions have gradually evolved into a wide gamut of adherents treating the scripture from literal divine commandment to a now outmoded guidebook, Muslims across the ideological divide are expected to endorse the Quran as Allah's unadulterated word valid till the end of time. Therefore, while the progressives from other religions can shun verses contradicting modern day values as obsolete or irrelevant, their Muslim counterparts are often left with an unenviable task of arguing that the fast-evolving humankind actually received its complete moral code 14 centuries ago which — much like claims over 'scientific discoveries' — can result in today's progress being predated, and attributed, to seventh century Arabia.
On the women rights front, this can mean arguing that Islam is a 'feminist religion', which only allows polygamy for men if all wives are 'treated equally', teaches unprecedented 'treatment of slaves', and asks men to 'lower their gaze' just as it asks women to cover-up. Any argument that these ideas represent a step forward for equality between the sexes wouldn't hold a droplet of water in a secular setting.
While progressive Muslims face difficulties circumventing the literalism often attached to Quranic verses, hadiths offer an escape route through the hierarchy of Muhammad's sayings based on how credible they are. The predicament with this line of thought is that much of what is known as Islam stems from the hadiths and the biography of Muhammad, the earliest original form of which—Ibn Hisham's As-Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah— was written two centuries after the death of Islam's prophet, leaving everything about the religion up to conjecture, and more critically, shaped entirely by blind faith.
Hence, addressing women's suppression via Islam needs a Muslim reorientation of the religion as a faith system — one can that be incorporated to the desired extent, or as a source of inspiration for an individual's life — not as an unquestionable code that has to be uniformly implemented on society. In this regard, Muslim feminist re-interpreters of scriptures, from Amina Wadud to Irshad Manji, reiterate that Islamic verses be subordinated to gender equality regardless of their original contexts or intents. That requires willingness, nay encouragement, to critique Islam, especially from a Muslim perspective so as to not attribute the most problematic texts sweepingly to the entire religious community.
In addition to violent blasphemy laws upheld by Islamists — whose interests obviously align against female emancipation — the resistance towards a critical treatment of Islam today comes from western liberals who have blatantly abandoned Muslim dissenters. As a result those who otherwise tout absolute gender equality, and rightly argue that men shouldn't tell women what to do, are seen glorifying modesty codes for women that were enforced by seventh century men.
But if Muslim liberals refuse to unapologetically condemn regressive Islamic commandments, and western liberals paradoxically endorse for Muslims what they flagrantly shun in their own communities, Islamists will be emboldened, and their stranglehold over Muslim communities along with their vulnerable sections strengthened. And for Afghan women, these Islamists come in the form of the Taliban, legitimised today by the peddling of an indisputable Islam in Muslim-majority countries, and the promotion of a hypocritically calamitous cultural relativism in the west.
Image: Satur/Shutterstock.com.
