Newsline 3 October 2014

Newsline 3 October 2014

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News, Blogs & Opinion

Tower Hamlets denies 'Trojan Horse 2' claims

News | Tue, 30th Sep 2014

Tower Hamlets has denied newspaper claims that a Trojan Horse '2' is soon to be uncovered in the East London Borough.

According to The Sunday Times, as many as a dozen schools in face investigation after claims they have fallen under the influence of Islamic fundamentalists.

The newspaper said officials at the Department for Education (DfE) are increasingly concerned that the situation may be worse than that uncovered in the original "Trojan Horse" scandal earlier this year, in which Islamic fundamentalists attempted to infiltrate secular schools in Birmingham.

"Tower Hamlets is expected to be the next Birmingham, but even worse, because the problems surrounding Muslim fundamentalists imposing their views on education seem to be more embedded," a senior Whitehall source told the Newspaper.

According to the report, non-Muslim teachers are staying silent for fear of losing their jobs. The DfE source said potential whistleblowers fear they may be "bullied, further sidelined or fired" if they raise concerns.

The report claims both community schools and private Islamic schools are under suspicion.

However, in a statement, Tower Hamlets said it had "no evidence" of such practices in its maintained schools.

The Council insisted that no concerns were identified at Marner Primary School which was the subject of a recent unannounced visit by Ofsted under new spot inspection powers.

A council spokesperson said: "Tower Hamlets council has some of the best urban schools in the world due in part to an unrivalled partnership between headteachers, parents, governors, local politicians and the local education authority over a 20 year period. For instance 17 out of 18 secondary schools are rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding.

"The model we have adopted is based on early intervention and where problems have arisen in terms of performance or standards we have acted swiftly to address any concerns."

Muslims are the largest single religious group in the borough with an estimated 35% of the population practising Islam, compared with 4.4% across the country according to the 2011 census.

Schools in the borough, like all maintained schools in England, are required to hold acts of collective worship which must be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character".

Schools without a religious character may apply for a 'determination' to replace the 'broadly Christian' requirement with an alternative form of worship. However, according to a freedom of information response obtained by the National Secular Society, no determinations are currently in place for any maintained schools in Tower Hamlets to hold Islamic, or any other, acts of collective worship.

The National Secular Society has called for a new duty on all state schools to ensure that all aspects of their curriculum, including assemblies, are respectful and inclusive of all pupils, regardless of their religion or belief, including non-belief.

Source: Sunday Times

Also see: NSS responds to Government consultation on school standards and 'British values'

A ‘New Magna Carta’: time for a codified constitution?

News | Thu, 2nd Oct 2014

As the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta approaches, has the time come for the UK to have a codified constitution? And if so, what form should it take?

These issues will be discussed at a public event at Conway Hall on Thursday 4 December, by Graham Allen MP, chair of the Parliamentary Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee, and Bob Morris, from the UCL Constitution Unit.

The speakers will set out the pros and cons and consider the possible implications for secularism.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee has launched a major consultation into the UK's current and future democratic settlement, which could potentially lead to the constitution being codified in what is being called a 'New Magna Carta'. The committee have recommended three possible ways forward:

  • Constitutional Code – a document that doesn't have legal force, but which would set out the existing principles of the constitution and the workings of government.
  • Constitutional Consolidation Act – a document which would consolidate existing constitutional laws in one place.
  • Written Constitution – a document of basic law by which the UK would be governed, setting out the relationship between the state and its citizens.

Graham Alan, the Labour MP for Nottingham North, is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, and a high profile supporter of constitutional reform.

Bob Morris is a former Home Office civil servant, now working at the UCL Constitution Unit. Bob has worked on a number of ecclesiastical and royal issues, including their 2009 report on Church and State in 21st century Britain.

The event will be hosted by the National Secular Society, which campaigns for the separation of religion and state. Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said:

"This welcome consultation raises vital questions for secularists – and indeed everyone else in the country. Our two distinguished speakers will be well-placed to discuss them and answer questions about where this might lead.

"While many see codified constitutional law as the best way to protect secularism and equality, others are concerned at the possibility that current inequalities and religious privileges could become entrenched in a written constitution, which could not be easily amended.

"We would like to see a new Constitution incorporating principles in Human Rights instruments, equality law and the NSS's Secular Charter could usefully be incorporated in a new constitution."

The event is free and open to all but attendees must either register online or reserve places by calling 020 7404 3126.

If you'd like to take part in the consultation, you can submitted your comments via the Committee's website or by post to the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.

Judges' religious service criticised by secular lawyers

News | Wed, 1st Oct 2014

Secular lawyers have called for a separation of the Church of England from judicial affairs after judges marked the start of the legal year with an Anglican service.

The annual Judges' Service, held today (1 October) at Westminster Abbey, was attended by the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the Lord Chief Justice, judges and other members of the legal profession.

The Lawyers' Secular Society (LSS) criticised the ceremony, calling it an "inappropriate reinforcement of the link between the Church and the state" and have called on the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, to discontinue the annual ritual.

LSS members Peter Fisher, a retired Ministry of Justice civil servant, and John Butcher, a Surrey councillor, say the service has a potential impact on the impartiality, or perceived impartiality of judges attending it and warn that the service runs the risk of undermining public confidence in the judiciary.

The service has its roots in the religious practice of judges praying for guidance at the beginning of the legal term. The custom dates back to the Middle Ages when the High Court was held in Westminster Hall and judges would walk over to Westminster Abbey for the service.

Members of judiciary attending the service do so in their official capacity, during working hours, wearing their judicial robes. The service itself is held in private; and is not open to the public and the media.

Charlie Klendjian, secretary of the Lawyers' Secular Society, said: "Democracy is an ever-evolving and ever-improving process. The machinery of democracy, which most certainly includes its legal system, must keep up with that drumbeat and we have every right to expect a fully secular legal system. It is high time this archaic service was abolished."

Apostasy and blasphemy laws: an affront to human rights

Opinion | Wed, 1st Oct 2014

Iran's execution of Mohsen Amir-Aslani on apostasy charges illustrates the injustices caused by such laws in the Middle East and around the world, argues Alastair Lichten.

This week, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported the state execution of Mohsen Amir-Aslani. Mr Amir-Aslani was hung on apostasy charges of spreading "corruption on earth" and making "innovations in religion".

Mohsen, a member of the Gonabadi Dervish community, considered himself a Muslim. His remains have reportedly not been released to the family for religious burial. Unfortunately his studies of the Quran led him to an understanding at odds with that of the Islamic Republic's theocratic authorities. He was first arrested 8 years ago when discussion classes he held in his own house came to the attention of local authorities.

Amnesty International are also reporting that nine members of the Gonabadi Dervish community on hunger strike in prison are "critically ill".

Though Mohsen's case is tragic it is also tragically unsurprising. Scroll through the archive of the National Secular Society's media round-up from the last year or even the last month and you will find many other equally tragic stories. Lives cut short by state or vigilante violence after charges related to blasphemy or apostasy.

In 13 countries, all of them majority Muslim, people who openly espouse atheism or reject the official state religion can face the death penalty. Explicit or implicit legal restrictions on atheistic expression are evident in many other counties. In some cases vigilante violence is tacitly endorsed by state authorities, unwilling to offend religious sensibilities by taking action.

This year Saudi Arabia has been cracking down on small Christian gatherings, know as house churches, which they fear may lure Muslims into apostasy. The Government, worried about both liberal and conservative challenges to its preferred form of Islam, has said atheists will receive equivalent legal punishment as terrorists.

In taking over large swathes of Iraq and Syria, Isis has killed untold numbers, from religious minorities and other Muslim groups, whom its members consider to be apostates. Last week Samira Saleh al-Naimi, a human rights activist, was abducted from her home, tortured and executed on charges of apostasy levelled by a sharia court. Ms Al-Nuaimi was accused of abandoning her Muslim faith by criticising the actions of Isis militants.

Pakistan is a hotbed of blasphemy accusations and violence. 17 people are on death row and 18 are serving life sentences following blasphemy convictions. The blasphemy law also legitimises widespread vigilante violence against those accused. For the sake of space I'll restrict my examples to just the last month.

Dr Muhammad Shakeel Auj, an Islamic scholar known for his liberal views, was shot dead while driving in the port city of Karachi. The professor had been accused of apostasy by a predecessor at the University of Karachi.

Mohammad Asghar, a 70 year old Briton, suffers from severe paranoid schizophrenia. While in prison after being convicted of blasphemy Mr Asghar was shot and seriously wounded by a police officer.

31 villagers in Faisalabad were accused of blasphemy in a dispute over the placement of a new Christian cemetery.

The blasphemy law is routinely used to persecute members of the Ahmadiyya Community – a Muslim sect considered to be apostates by many Muslims. Ahmadis who identify as Muslims or call their places of worship "mosques" face charges of blasphemy.

For every case picked up by English language media there are many more that are not. It's impossible to judge the effects of the threat of blasphemy accusations. When someone can remove a local business, personal or sexual rival with a well-timed blasphemy accusation others will be too scared to step out of line. Others will be afraid to express their thoughts for fear that they too may be the next victim.

One opinion poll suggest that 68% of Pakistanis want to see the law repealed. But politicians who support reform are regularly assassinated.

In India, a secular federal democracy, state level laws against apostasy and blasphemy – in the form of anti-conversion laws – are justified on the grounds of protecting religion. An individual's ability to choose their own religion or religious interpretation, or to advocate for a religious position, is regarded as a threat.

Western secularists have a moral duty to show solidarity with the victims of apostasy and blasphemy laws in the Middle East and elsewhere. However we must not be complacent about threats to free speech and freedom of religion closer to home. Most western liberal democracies have rolled back legal restrictions on 'blasphemy'. However these laws have often been replaced by alternatives which restrict expressions deemed 'offensive' to religion.

In their forward to the 2013 Freedom of Thought Report Kacem El Ghazzali and Alber Saber, themselves victims of anti-blasphemy laws in Morocco and Egypt, wrote:

"Laws against "insulting" religion in relatively secure, relatively secular countries, for example, are not only analogues of the most vicious blasphemy laws anywhere in the world, but help to sustain the global norm under which thought is policed and punished."

The same report raised concerns over religious freedom in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Malta and Poland. Countries where blasphemy style laws allow for jail sentences up to three years on charges of offending a religion or its believers.

This week, Ireland's Justice Minister presented a memo to the Cabinet based on the Constitution Convention's recommendation to hold a referendum on scrapping the country's blasphemy law.

Political observers predict that the referendum, likely in spring 2015, will be successful. However some secularists are worried that restrictions on blasphemy or other expressions deemed offensive to religion could be reintroduced through alternative legislative routes.

The Justice Minister's memo to Cabinet recommends replacing the offence of blasphemy with "a general provision to include incitement to religious hatred; and the introduction of a new set of detailed legislative provisions to include incitement to religious hatred".

Atheist Ireland, who are backing the campaign to repeal the blasphemy law, point out that there are already legal restrictions on incitement to hatred against a range of protected characteristics. They worry about the effect that a separate law for religion could have.

The Constitutional Convention heard from Michael Nugent, chairperson of Atheist Ireland, that: "It is also important to remember that blasphemy laws, as well as being discriminatory against atheists, affect religious people too. We in Atheist Ireland campaign for many Christians and Muslims who are victims of blasphemy laws in mostly Islamic states."

Professor David Nash, from Oxford Brookes University, told the Convention: "Although there have been no prosecutions in Ireland, it is clear that this law has victims beyond these shores, as other countries actively cite and view Ireland's law as a precedent to persecute both the religious and non-religious in their own societies."

Self-professed liberals who defend such laws on the grounds of religious freedom or protecting minority groups are dangerously confused. Blasphemy laws disproportionately victimise already marginal groups. Whether they are Gonabadi Dervish Muslims in Iran, Christians in Sudan or atheists in Saudi Arabia. In rural Pakistan allegations of blasphemy can be used to settle family or business feuds – most effective when the victim is illiterate, has no access to lawyers or is accused from the pulpit.

There is not, and never has been, a single denomination of Christianity, branch of Islam or school of philosophy which has not been considered blasphemous or offensive by someone.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises that human beings, born free and equal in dignity, are endowed with 'reason and conscience'. Every time someone finds, changes, develops or loses their religion they are committing apostasy against the beliefs of their past self. To criminalise this is to criminalise human nature.

Blasphemy and apostasy laws are a gross affront to human rights, a totalitarian denial of religious freedom and a grave threat to human beings of all nationalities and religions.

Secularism and religious intolerance - an Ex-Muslim perspective on Karen Armstrong's essay

Opinion | Mon, 29th Sep 2014

In an essay written to coincide with the publication of her new book, Karen Armstrong diagnoses the secular impulse as a cause of religious intolerance and extremism. Ex-Muslim al-Razi argues that the secular movement is in-fact responsible for the good things that religions now claim to be their intrinsic values, and says Armstrong's critique of secularism is a form of apologetics for fundamentalism and bigotry.

In an essay titled 'The Myth of Religious Violence' Karen Armstrong illuminates her own contradictory and ethically confused thinking on matters of secularism and religious intemperance. At the end of the essay she says: "When secularisation has been applied by force, it has provoked a fundamentalist reaction".

But Armstrong's soft critique of secularism is very useful to those whose critique of secularism is less benign than hers seems at first glance.

Ex-Muslims can attest to how, too often, any kind of critical scrutiny of Islam, and any kind of secular impulse, indeed any kind of refusal to submit to religious authority 'provokes' a fundamentalist reaction. And so we are told that it is our own fault for being abused. We 'provoked' our beating, because we refused to submit, we refused to obey, we wanted to create a free safe space, to think, to question, to escape Islam, because we asked questions like – "why does Islam teach that those who leave and criticise it deserve to be persecuted and even killed?"

Essentially, Armstrong presents, in the politest terms, a path by which moderate religious people can endorse the 'logic' by which the extremists play the game.

In a recent review of "Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy" by Jonathan AC Brown, Armstrong says:

"He shows how western criticism has been one of the many factors that has radicalised contemporary Muslim thought. Much of our modern discourse is inappropriately omniscient and aggressive: it is not enough for us — in politics, the media or academia — to seek the truth; we want also to defeat our opponents. If we wish to heal our perilously divided world, we need a dialogue with the Muslim world guided by Socrates, the founder of western rationalism, who believed it was pointless to enter into a debate with the objective of forcing our dialogue-partner to accept our own convictions; rather, he insisted, true exchange began only when we realised how little we know."

Essentially, Armstrong says that mere critical scrutiny, exchange of ideas, and ethical judgment is directly responsible for 'radicalising' Islam. This is not a physically violent aggression 'applied by force' by an outsider that results in religious fundamentalism as a response. This is Karen Armstrong complaining that consideration, critique and free conscience towards Islam is responsible for Islamic thought becoming radicalised.

The fact that criticism exists, is the offence.

Armstrong neglects to mention how Islam itself asserts omniscient ideas about truth and how human affairs should be ordered, not to mention assumptions of superiority and absolutist positions. But more importantly, Armstrong is laying the foundation of a blasphemy taboo, applied with passive-aggressive manners. It says "If you critique religion in a way that people predisposed to react radically in response to it respond radically, you are to blame for the consequences". So to be 'tolerant', and have 'peace', don't be critical of religion, in particular, don't be critical of Islam.

This could be viewed simply as being a case of philosophical / ethical masochism and cultural relativism, and summarily dismissed, were it not of such good use as a weapon in the armoury of those who would silence critique of Islam by Muslim dissenters and apostates. It exemplifies the very sinister nature of cultural relativism, and how some critiques of secularism so often strengthen the most reactionary of forces within religious communities.

It is often little things said by apostates, liberals and secularists within a religion that 'provoke' a response from the conservatives and reactionaries. When non-Muslims who dislike secularism empathise with those who wish to silence dissenters, for emotional reasons, because of a kinship of instinct with those who are full of disquiet of the questioning of power and assumption that secularism enables, they collude with, and provide cover for those who wish to mete out divine responses to those who 'provoke' them. The 'moderate' believer enables the intolerance they claim to not be a part of 'true' 'compassionate' religion.

We must also ask in response to this, when will believers acknowledge that the compassionate, pluralistic, tolerant religion they claim to be the 'true' form of their faith has been imagined because of the processes of secularism and the questions that secularisation asked of religious authority and bigotry?

The reaction of silencing and coercion in response to questions that we 'provoke' from the religious often doesn't come from the fundamentalists, but from the 'moderates' who don't want these questions asked at all.

It is hard to find any evidence of self-awareness by Armstrong about how her argument segues into apologetics for bad religious ideas, abuse of authority and oppression. Instead, the logic of her argument ultimately leads to the idea that to oppose atrocity and oppression is to create atrocity and oppression, and so silence of conscience, and a retreat of secularism is the ideal response to religious intolerance. Dissenters, critics and apostates are thus positioned as the cause of the problem. The victims are blamed for their victimisation.

The existence of the secular space empowers us to ask questions of Islam, to break taboos and oppose oppressive and bigoted ideas that hold divine authority to be absolute. The idea of secularism liberates us. The solidarity of secular minded people everywhere strengthens us. This is why many people critique the existence of the secular space. This is why reactionaries and their apologists would seek to stigmatise solidarity between secularists.

The secular space allows all of us to ask questions that need to be asked, to allow no special privilege to divine authority, and to support free conscience. Vigilance in its defence is what strengthens its virtues. And we are aware that it is not just violent fundamentalists who are full of disquiet and resentment that the secular space exists at all.

al-Razi is a member of the Ex-Muslims Forum, an online group for secularism, freedom of conscience and free speech. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the NSS.

See also: Is religion to blame for war? A discussion between Karen Armstrong and Peter Tatchell.