Newsline 6 May 2016

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News, Blogs & Opinion

	Anniversary conference to celebrate 150 years of the National Secular Society News \| Thu, 5th May 2016 The National Secular Society is pleased to announce a special conference to mark 150 years since the Society's founding and to debate the vital role of secularism in modern Britain and beyond. The conference, Secularism 2016: Living better together, will be held in central London on 3 September, and will offer a wide variety of discussions about secularism's role in ensuring citizens of all faiths and none can live together fairly and more cohesively. The conference will look back what progress has been made, celebrate the triumphs of the secular movement in the past 150 years and consider what still needs to be done. NSS President Terry Sanderson said: "We've come a long way since 1866. For 150 years the NSS has campaigned for a secular democracy based upon the principles of equality and fairness. "To mark our 150^th anniversary, we're thrilled to offer everyone an exciting opportunity to participate in this unique one-day conference. "A distinguished panel of thinkers, including Jacques Berlinerblau, author of the internationally acclaimed How to be Secular, will come together to share their knowledge and passion for secularism. It promises to be a memorable occasion." Other confirmed speakers include Paul Rowe of Educate Together, the education charity awarded Secularist of the Year 2016 for their work opening inclusive schools. Our honorary associate Maajid Nawaz will speak on a panel discussing Islam and secularism, along with Tehmina Kazi, the director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Historian Devorah Lavin will join us to discuss the life of NSS founder Charles Bradlaugh MP, including the years-long battle he fought to take up the parliamentary seat he rightfully won in 1880 but was barred from taking on account of his atheism. Mr Sanderson added: "We're all very excited about this event. It will be an excellent opportunity for our members and supporters to get together and hear from a fantastic and perhaps challenging range of commentators. With more speakers due to be confirmed in the coming weeks and months, we're guaranteed high calibre discussions on a variety of fascinating and controversial subjects – all packed into a single day." The conference will take place on Saturday 3 September 2016, 09:30 to 17:30, Central London (the venue is just a short walk from Russell Square Station).
	NSS: Religious Education must be reformed before ending parental opt-out News \| Tue, 3rd May 2016 Religious education must be reformed before parents lose the option to remove their children from the subject, the NSS has said, after head teachers voted to make RE compulsory. Concerns about some parents withdrawing their children from lessons about other religions prompted headteachers to vote at their annual conference in favour of ending the opt-out which currently allows children to be withdrawn from RE classes. Stephen Evans, National Secular Society campaigns director, said that whist he agreed in principle that parents shouldn't be allowed to pick and choose what subjects their children learn in school, the "unique, outdated and wholly unsatisfactory arrangements" for RE mean that the current opt-out is necessary to protect religious freedom. The motion against the parental opt-out was passed "almost unanimously", the Telegraph reported, and it asks the leadership of the NAHT "to negotiate with the Department for Education to revoke the existing legal framework which entitles parents to be able to withdraw their children from Religious Education". All state-funded schools are currently required by law to teach religious education. Maintained schools without a religious character must follow a syllabus agreed by local committees, often heavily influenced by religious groups. Schools with a religious character, commonly known as 'faith schools', can teach their own curriculum and are free to teach exclusively about their own religion. But head teachers warned that the opt-out was an "extremely divisive mechanism" as some parents were using it selectively to stop their children from learning about specific religions. Mr Evans added: "There may well be a place on the curriculum for an academic subject that enables all pupils to learn objectively about the diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews, but we're a long way off that at the moment – with many schools prioritising a particular religion and using the subject as a platform to proselytise. "There needs to be a thorough review of RE so that it can be reformed as a subject and taught impartially before the opt-out can be ended. "Faith schools should lose the ability to teach about religion from their own exclusive viewpoint, RE should be comprehensively reformed into a new academic subject that covers a variety of religious and non-religious worldviews, and religious representatives should not have undue influence over the subject content. "Until this is done and all vestiges of confessionalism are removed, we'll campaign to keep the opt-out to ensure parental rights and pupils' religious freedoms are protected." The Government has said that it will "continue to respect the right of parents to withdraw their children from religious education if they choose." In 2012 it was reported that schools in Scotland were failing to notify parents that they had a right to withdraw their children from religious education. A YouGov poll found that only 20% said they were made aware of this right by the school.
	EHRC to investigate gender segregation at Islamic faith school News \| Fri, 6th May 2016 The Equality and Human Rights Commission has been asked by the Department for Education to investigate an independent Islamic school that segregated its staff by gender. The Rabia Girls' and Boys' School in Luton was found by Ofsted inspectors to be segregating staff during meetings, with women forced to sit in a separate room during staff training with sessions then broadcast to them. During a meeting with inspectors the school "insisted" on using a dividing screen to separate male and female staff. Commenting on the school after the case was referred to the EHRC by the Department for Education, the Commission's Chief Executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said that "Gender segregation of school staff is totally unacceptable in modern Britain." She added that "All schools have a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 to prevent discrimination against their staff and students. "Outside of acts of religious worship, segregating male and female staff at school meetings or training sessions is likely to amount to unlawful discrimination because it puts individuals at a disadvantage because of their sex." The Commission will now decide "what action to take to ensure this Luton school ends its practice of segregating male and female staff." In light of the Commission's investigation into segregation at the Rabia school the National Secular Society has written to the EHRC asking it to also consider the conduct of the London School of Economics (LSE) after learning that the university failed to properly investigate gender segregation at a recent university Islamic Society event. In their response to the Luton school controversy the Equality Commission said that their "guidance to universities on gender segregation makes it clear that gender segregation, such as seating men and women separately at an event, is not permitted outside of religious worship." The LSE Islamic Society's gala dinner featured a 7 foot barrier across the room to separate men and women. They claimed that it was a religious event and therefore did not fall foul of equality laws. The National Secular Society rejected this argument and asked the Equality Commission's view on whether the addition of a religious element to a social event makes the imposition of gender segregation at a social event beyond reproach. One LSE student told the Daily Mail that gender segregation has "been going on for quite a while" at the LSE. They added that some students were "really intimidated" because they don't "believe in gender segregation at all". This was putting students off attending events, the student added. In a letter to the EHRC's chief executive the NSS said that the LSE did not appear to have taken steps to prevent further incidents of gender segregation and questioned whether LSE had fulfilled its responsibilities under the Public Sector Equality Duty.
	Muddled-thinking on counter-extremism threatens free speech Opinion \| Wed, 4th May 2016 Leaks ahead of the Government's latest counter-extremism drive show that they have failed to balance freedom of speech with the impossible objective set out to legally challenge Islamist ideas in the "pre-criminal space." The latest offensive against 'extremism' has seen "internal Home Office discussion" about criminalising "hate messages" against the military and, according to The Times, "calls for the wholesale adoption of Sharia in the UK." As Peter Hitchens wrote of an earlier counter-extremism push, the Government's language this time round sounds like something "out of the Soviet penal code of 1936." Should calling for sharia law in the UK be criminalised? Many on the hard left still call for the overthrow of democracy. Universities will play host to all kinds of idle conversations about how societies should be organised – not all of them will reach democratic conclusions. What level of criticism of democracy should be tolerated in the "pre-criminal" space? In London and Birmingham purveyors of our apocalyptic future under the law of Allah find little purchase for their views among the great British public. That is where the best challenge to this activity originates; not the clumsy arm of the law. When this hopeless campaigning moves to the advocacy of violence, a new threshold has been met, with which the law is already adequately equipped to deal. As for the Armed Forces, I can think of no swifter way of destroying a movement's chances for popular success than it sending hate messages against the British military by, for instance, burning poppies. Vile though that activity is, in past conflicts war-weary veterans have burnt uniforms, discarded medals and protestors have torched draft papers in acts of political dissent. Hard to stomach as it is, if a hard-line Sunni cleric wants to burn poppies, they must be free to do so. This is highly unlikely to be a politically winning strategy for the cleric. There are far more effective challenges to this hatefulness than the law; methods which do not run counter to our values and lay the free world open to easily substantiated charges of hypocrisy. We have to put up with an awful lot of things that are 'offensive', hateful and vile: on May Day people march quite openly with banners of Stalin. Glorification of a mass murderer is at least as bad as burning poppies; neither activity should be prohibited – though both should be vigorously contested in every other way, through every recourse available to those lucky enough to live in free and open places. Laws on prohibiting the evil of Holocaust denial are another example. These laws are frequently exhibited to defenders of free speech as examples of western hypocrisy. We should always defend the right of bigots to out and embarrass themselves and their causes. A Home Office source said that, "Getting agreement about the thresholds for what constitutes extremism and what needs to be protected as free speech is not going to be easy or straightforward." From what we have seen so far of the Government's latest attempts, ahead of the Queen's Speech, that is something of an understatement. The Government is earnestly trying to force a reckoning with a deadly threat and to confront it. But some aspects of this danger are best challenged by the public, by individuals, by civil society, than by the law or an over-reaching state that will, surely, through the morass of political correctness, encompass far more than the Islamist hate-preachers that this strategy seeks to ensnare with its vague 'extremism disruption orders'. Show your support for the Defend Free Speech campaign. Benjamin Jones is the communications officer of the National Secular Society. Follow him on Twitter: @BenJones1707. The views expressed in our blogs are those of the author and may not represent the views of the NSS.
	Turkey sentences opposition journalists to prison over Muhammad cartoon News \| Fri, 29th Apr 2016 Two Turkish journalists have been sentenced to two years in prison for republishing a cover of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with a cartoon of Muhammad, amid rising concerns about freedom of expression in Turkey. The court in Istanbul convicted Cumhuriyet newspaper columnists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya of inciting "hatred and enmity." The pair were however acquitted of the separate charges of "insulting religious values." The journalists' lawyers immediately appealed the verdict. The pair went on trial in July 2015 after featuring the cover image of Charlie Hebdo's survivors' edition – which featured an image of a weeping Muhammad – in their columns for the secular, opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper in an act of support for freedom of expression. The verdict was met with cries of "Allahu Akbar" in court, according to Cumhuriyet reports. When the edition was published Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned the publication of cartoons of the Muslim prophet as an "open provocation". The convictions come amid fears of a worsening government crackdown on press freedom in Turkey with an alarming number of journalists facing criminal sanctions or violence and opposition news outlets being officially harassed or obstructed. Meanwhile, Index on Censorship has warned of a "stark deterioration" of press freedom' across Europe. The group's Mapping Media Freedom project has identified a 30% rise in incidents involving journalists, voicing particular concern about Turkey and Ukraine. Earlier this week the Turkish Prime Minister sought to calm fears that the country's secular constitution is under threat after parliamentary speaker Ismail Kahraman, who is overseeing the redrafting the country's constitution, said the Muslim-majority country needed a new "religious constitution".

NSS Speaks Out

In the past week the NSS has spoken to the BBC and LBC about protecting the right of parents to withdraw children from Religious Education classes. Our joint Defend Free Speech campaign was mentioned in Christian Today along with our concerns about elements of the Government's counter-extremism strategy. Our executive director Keith Porteous Wood was quoted in the Telegraph on reports that a Muslim group had said women could not travel more than 48 miles without a male chaperone.

Quotes of the Week

"Mr. Erdoğan's definition of secularism is simple and good enough: That the state should be at an equal distance to all religious faiths including no faith. That's fine. But the trouble is, the state is NOT at an equal distance to all religious faith or no faith. What Turkey has gone through since 2002 is a de facto violation of constitutional principles often through the executive, including police powers of the state, its legislative majority and control over the judiciary."
Burak Bekdil, Turkish journalist.

"While radicalization and extremism have rightly been identified as troubling, bigotry cannot be banned. Instead, it should be subject to robust challenge."
Haras Rafiq, Managing Director of the Quilliam Foundation, @HarasRafiq.

Essays of the Week

British Muslim women don't need male chaperones - this isn't 7th century Arabia.
Radhika Sanghani, Telegraph.

Why should religious order wield more power in hospitals than Minister for Health?
Colette Browne, Irish Independent.

Upcoming Events

Stand up for choice - abortion rights protest, Birmingham

Sat, 14th May 2016

NSS 150th anniversary conference - Secularism 2016: living better together

Sat, 3rd Sep 2016

	Anniversary conference to celebrate 150 years of the National Secular Society News \| Thu, 5th May 2016 The National Secular Society is pleased to announce a special conference to mark 150 years since the Society's founding and to debate the vital role of secularism in modern Britain and beyond. The conference, Secularism 2016: Living better together, will be held in central London on 3 September, and will offer a wide variety of discussions about secularism's role in ensuring citizens of all faiths and none can live together fairly and more cohesively. The conference will look back what progress has been made, celebrate the triumphs of the secular movement in the past 150 years and consider what still needs to be done. NSS President Terry Sanderson said: "We've come a long way since 1866. For 150 years the NSS has campaigned for a secular democracy based upon the principles of equality and fairness. "To mark our 150^th anniversary, we're thrilled to offer everyone an exciting opportunity to participate in this unique one-day conference. "A distinguished panel of thinkers, including Jacques Berlinerblau, author of the internationally acclaimed How to be Secular, will come together to share their knowledge and passion for secularism. It promises to be a memorable occasion." Other confirmed speakers include Paul Rowe of Educate Together, the education charity awarded Secularist of the Year 2016 for their work opening inclusive schools. Our honorary associate Maajid Nawaz will speak on a panel discussing Islam and secularism, along with Tehmina Kazi, the director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Historian Devorah Lavin will join us to discuss the life of NSS founder Charles Bradlaugh MP, including the years-long battle he fought to take up the parliamentary seat he rightfully won in 1880 but was barred from taking on account of his atheism. Mr Sanderson added: "We're all very excited about this event. It will be an excellent opportunity for our members and supporters to get together and hear from a fantastic and perhaps challenging range of commentators. With more speakers due to be confirmed in the coming weeks and months, we're guaranteed high calibre discussions on a variety of fascinating and controversial subjects – all packed into a single day." The conference will take place on Saturday 3 September 2016, 09:30 to 17:30, Central London (the venue is just a short walk from Russell Square Station).
	NSS: Religious Education must be reformed before ending parental opt-out News \| Tue, 3rd May 2016 Religious education must be reformed before parents lose the option to remove their children from the subject, the NSS has said, after head teachers voted to make RE compulsory. Concerns about some parents withdrawing their children from lessons about other religions prompted headteachers to vote at their annual conference in favour of ending the opt-out which currently allows children to be withdrawn from RE classes. Stephen Evans, National Secular Society campaigns director, said that whist he agreed in principle that parents shouldn't be allowed to pick and choose what subjects their children learn in school, the "unique, outdated and wholly unsatisfactory arrangements" for RE mean that the current opt-out is necessary to protect religious freedom. The motion against the parental opt-out was passed "almost unanimously", the Telegraph reported, and it asks the leadership of the NAHT "to negotiate with the Department for Education to revoke the existing legal framework which entitles parents to be able to withdraw their children from Religious Education". All state-funded schools are currently required by law to teach religious education. Maintained schools without a religious character must follow a syllabus agreed by local committees, often heavily influenced by religious groups. Schools with a religious character, commonly known as 'faith schools', can teach their own curriculum and are free to teach exclusively about their own religion. But head teachers warned that the opt-out was an "extremely divisive mechanism" as some parents were using it selectively to stop their children from learning about specific religions. Mr Evans added: "There may well be a place on the curriculum for an academic subject that enables all pupils to learn objectively about the diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews, but we're a long way off that at the moment – with many schools prioritising a particular religion and using the subject as a platform to proselytise. "There needs to be a thorough review of RE so that it can be reformed as a subject and taught impartially before the opt-out can be ended. "Faith schools should lose the ability to teach about religion from their own exclusive viewpoint, RE should be comprehensively reformed into a new academic subject that covers a variety of religious and non-religious worldviews, and religious representatives should not have undue influence over the subject content. "Until this is done and all vestiges of confessionalism are removed, we'll campaign to keep the opt-out to ensure parental rights and pupils' religious freedoms are protected." The Government has said that it will "continue to respect the right of parents to withdraw their children from religious education if they choose." In 2012 it was reported that schools in Scotland were failing to notify parents that they had a right to withdraw their children from religious education. A YouGov poll found that only 20% said they were made aware of this right by the school.
	EHRC to investigate gender segregation at Islamic faith school News \| Fri, 6th May 2016 The Equality and Human Rights Commission has been asked by the Department for Education to investigate an independent Islamic school that segregated its staff by gender. The Rabia Girls' and Boys' School in Luton was found by Ofsted inspectors to be segregating staff during meetings, with women forced to sit in a separate room during staff training with sessions then broadcast to them. During a meeting with inspectors the school "insisted" on using a dividing screen to separate male and female staff. Commenting on the school after the case was referred to the EHRC by the Department for Education, the Commission's Chief Executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said that "Gender segregation of school staff is totally unacceptable in modern Britain." She added that "All schools have a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 to prevent discrimination against their staff and students. "Outside of acts of religious worship, segregating male and female staff at school meetings or training sessions is likely to amount to unlawful discrimination because it puts individuals at a disadvantage because of their sex." The Commission will now decide "what action to take to ensure this Luton school ends its practice of segregating male and female staff." In light of the Commission's investigation into segregation at the Rabia school the National Secular Society has written to the EHRC asking it to also consider the conduct of the London School of Economics (LSE) after learning that the university failed to properly investigate gender segregation at a recent university Islamic Society event. In their response to the Luton school controversy the Equality Commission said that their "guidance to universities on gender segregation makes it clear that gender segregation, such as seating men and women separately at an event, is not permitted outside of religious worship." The LSE Islamic Society's gala dinner featured a 7 foot barrier across the room to separate men and women. They claimed that it was a religious event and therefore did not fall foul of equality laws. The National Secular Society rejected this argument and asked the Equality Commission's view on whether the addition of a religious element to a social event makes the imposition of gender segregation at a social event beyond reproach. One LSE student told the Daily Mail that gender segregation has "been going on for quite a while" at the LSE. They added that some students were "really intimidated" because they don't "believe in gender segregation at all". This was putting students off attending events, the student added. In a letter to the EHRC's chief executive the NSS said that the LSE did not appear to have taken steps to prevent further incidents of gender segregation and questioned whether LSE had fulfilled its responsibilities under the Public Sector Equality Duty.
	Muddled-thinking on counter-extremism threatens free speech Opinion \| Wed, 4th May 2016 Leaks ahead of the Government's latest counter-extremism drive show that they have failed to balance freedom of speech with the impossible objective set out to legally challenge Islamist ideas in the "pre-criminal space." The latest offensive against 'extremism' has seen "internal Home Office discussion" about criminalising "hate messages" against the military and, according to The Times, "calls for the wholesale adoption of Sharia in the UK." As Peter Hitchens wrote of an earlier counter-extremism push, the Government's language this time round sounds like something "out of the Soviet penal code of 1936." Should calling for sharia law in the UK be criminalised? Many on the hard left still call for the overthrow of democracy. Universities will play host to all kinds of idle conversations about how societies should be organised – not all of them will reach democratic conclusions. What level of criticism of democracy should be tolerated in the "pre-criminal" space? In London and Birmingham purveyors of our apocalyptic future under the law of Allah find little purchase for their views among the great British public. That is where the best challenge to this activity originates; not the clumsy arm of the law. When this hopeless campaigning moves to the advocacy of violence, a new threshold has been met, with which the law is already adequately equipped to deal. As for the Armed Forces, I can think of no swifter way of destroying a movement's chances for popular success than it sending hate messages against the British military by, for instance, burning poppies. Vile though that activity is, in past conflicts war-weary veterans have burnt uniforms, discarded medals and protestors have torched draft papers in acts of political dissent. Hard to stomach as it is, if a hard-line Sunni cleric wants to burn poppies, they must be free to do so. This is highly unlikely to be a politically winning strategy for the cleric. There are far more effective challenges to this hatefulness than the law; methods which do not run counter to our values and lay the free world open to easily substantiated charges of hypocrisy. We have to put up with an awful lot of things that are 'offensive', hateful and vile: on May Day people march quite openly with banners of Stalin. Glorification of a mass murderer is at least as bad as burning poppies; neither activity should be prohibited – though both should be vigorously contested in every other way, through every recourse available to those lucky enough to live in free and open places. Laws on prohibiting the evil of Holocaust denial are another example. These laws are frequently exhibited to defenders of free speech as examples of western hypocrisy. We should always defend the right of bigots to out and embarrass themselves and their causes. A Home Office source said that, "Getting agreement about the thresholds for what constitutes extremism and what needs to be protected as free speech is not going to be easy or straightforward." From what we have seen so far of the Government's latest attempts, ahead of the Queen's Speech, that is something of an understatement. The Government is earnestly trying to force a reckoning with a deadly threat and to confront it. But some aspects of this danger are best challenged by the public, by individuals, by civil society, than by the law or an over-reaching state that will, surely, through the morass of political correctness, encompass far more than the Islamist hate-preachers that this strategy seeks to ensnare with its vague 'extremism disruption orders'. Show your support for the Defend Free Speech campaign. Benjamin Jones is the communications officer of the National Secular Society. Follow him on Twitter: @BenJones1707. The views expressed in our blogs are those of the author and may not represent the views of the NSS.
	Turkey sentences opposition journalists to prison over Muhammad cartoon News \| Fri, 29th Apr 2016 Two Turkish journalists have been sentenced to two years in prison for republishing a cover of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with a cartoon of Muhammad, amid rising concerns about freedom of expression in Turkey. The court in Istanbul convicted Cumhuriyet newspaper columnists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya of inciting "hatred and enmity." The pair were however acquitted of the separate charges of "insulting religious values." The journalists' lawyers immediately appealed the verdict. The pair went on trial in July 2015 after featuring the cover image of Charlie Hebdo's survivors' edition – which featured an image of a weeping Muhammad – in their columns for the secular, opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper in an act of support for freedom of expression. The verdict was met with cries of "Allahu Akbar" in court, according to Cumhuriyet reports. When the edition was published Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned the publication of cartoons of the Muslim prophet as an "open provocation". The convictions come amid fears of a worsening government crackdown on press freedom in Turkey with an alarming number of journalists facing criminal sanctions or violence and opposition news outlets being officially harassed or obstructed. Meanwhile, Index on Censorship has warned of a "stark deterioration" of press freedom' across Europe. The group's Mapping Media Freedom project has identified a 30% rise in incidents involving journalists, voicing particular concern about Turkey and Ukraine. Earlier this week the Turkish Prime Minister sought to calm fears that the country's secular constitution is under threat after parliamentary speaker Ismail Kahraman, who is overseeing the redrafting the country's constitution, said the Muslim-majority country needed a new "religious constitution".

Newsline 6 May 2016

News, Blogs & Opinion

Anniversary conference to celebrate 150 years of the National Secular Society

NSS: Religious Education must be reformed before ending parental opt-out

EHRC to investigate gender segregation at Islamic faith school

Muddled-thinking on counter-extremism threatens free speech

Turkey sentences opposition journalists to prison over Muhammad cartoon