Newsline 9 December 2016

Sabbatarians have imposed their dogma on islanders for long enough, help them put a stop to it

Opinion | Thu, 8th Dec 2016

The National Secular Society is helping campaigners on the Isle of Lewis open a sports centre on a Sunday, currently blocked by a council who won't allow it on the Sabbath. It's hardly the first time Sabbatarians on Lewis have played this game.

The attempt by religious fundamentalists on the Western Isles of Scotland to stop families using a swimming pool on the Sabbath is not the first time the local council, the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, has imposed its religious dogmatism on the whole community.

For many years public services on Lewis – no matter how much they are required or supported by local residents – have closed down on the Sabbath, all to enforce observance of an obscure and fundamentalist form of Calvinist Christianity.

As the Isle of Lewis' website notes, "The Western Isles culture remains very strong, particularly in its religious beliefs. Sundays remain a very special day, and many people observe strict compliance to the 'Free Church' traditional values." This is understating just how strict this 'compliance' is, and dramatically overstating how many people on Lewis actually observe the Sabbath in this way (or at all).

Historically, playpark swings were chained up on the Sabbath and no business opened, while more recently this century there have been battles in Stornoway over ferries arriving on Sundays and the start of flights to and from the mainland. These Sunday public transport services saw members of the Lord's Day Observance Society protesting vigorously on quayside and runway and prophesying doom and gloom for the islands. Reverend Alasdair Smith told the BBC two years ago that he could remember islanders used to be "horrified" if somebody was even riding a bicycle on a Sunday, and there are plentiful tales of people being scolded for performing simple household tasks such as hanging washing out to dry, or for wanting to play a leisurely round of golf.

One time journalist Peter May who as well as writing two prime time drama series for the BBC wrote the best-selling Hebrides, a trilogy of works set on the Western Isles of Scotland. In one of the books (Page 60) he describes an epiphany on his first Sunday on Lewis:

"My first Sunday in Stornoway was spent walking the streets in a fruitless search for lunch. Although, to our frustration, we would hear voices and laughter coming from behind the locked doors of several of the public houses in town. It was only later that we learned that the faithful would emerge from their church services at midday to slip straight into the pubs via the back door. You live and learn!"

But times have changed. A survey in 2015 by Families into Sport for Health (FiSH) found that 71% of respondents wanted the sports centre open on Sundays – as an earlier survey found in 2011.

FiSH say they have nine councillors who are supportive, but the rest of the council are putting up spurious concerns about the cost of Sunday opening. FiSH are now raising the funds themselves to donate to the Council, so if they reach their target the Council will have run out of excuses not to make this public facility available to all, regardless of some councillors' religious beliefs.

Behind the smokescreen of lack of funds lies the real objection from the remainder of the Council: religious belief. Sunday is their Sabbath and the staunch Presbyterians want to impose their fundamentalist interpretation of that Sabbath observance on the whole island. The same Council however permits similar facilities to be opened further south, on Barra and South Uist. As well as illustrating the difference between the more Catholic and less dogmatic south and the fiercely dogmatic Calvinist north of the Western Isles, this demonstrates the iron grip the Sabbatarians try to maintain in 'their' patch, in pursuit of their own sectarian interests.

In 2009 a small group of protestors demonstrated against the first Sunday ferry to the Scottish mainland with signs warning of the intrusion of "secular society" and admonishing "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy". But they were countered by "200 islanders who gathered to cheer the vessel out of port."

Professor Donald MacLeod of the Free Church College said having a ferry on Sundays would "have a domino effect on church attendance and will change the community from a Christian civilisation to a secular, humanist society."

Reverend Dr James Tallach of the Free Presbyterian Church said, "We will not be tried at the end of the day, when all of us stand before the judgment seat of Christ, on the basis of EU law."

Another reverend warned that the consequences would "terrify parents".

This is what local people have had to put up with, believers or not. They have long since had enough and won't be bullied by other members of the Lewis community to observe their religious rules.

The battle over the public sports centre has been going on for many years, despite some private businesses now opening on Sunday. The Council, through the beliefs of many of its councillors, has no business imposing religious views on the whole island, and people across the UK can help the FiSH campaign to stand up to this religious bullying and intolerance.

Please join the crowdfunding effort to make sure families on Lewis can go swimming on Sundays.

The Casey Review lays bare the failure to integrate Muslim minorities

Opinion | Mon, 5th Dec 2016

Dame Louise Casey offers a damning critique of mass immigration undertaken without serious efforts to integrate new arrivals, but she shies away from properly tackling faith schools, and the problems she identifies may be intractable.

The Casey Review is a profound and thorough demolition of decades of laissez-faire immigration policies, and an official culture which demonised as racist those who spoke out about the problems that exist in many Muslim communities.

Britain's cultural relativism and moral blindness reached its apogee with the appalling revelations about the Rotherham rape gangs. Casey writes that it was "a catastrophic example of authorities turning a blind eye to harm in order to avoid the need to confront a particular community." More than 1,400 children paid the price.

Progress integrating Britain's myriad Muslim communities has been slow, complicated by the arrival of new "first generation in every generation" foreign wives who often don't speak English, and a growing "sense of identification" among UK Muslims "with the plight of the 'Ummah', or global Muslim community."

Every few months we have a new poll, survey or official report warning that the blind pursuit of multi-culturalism is leading us to catastrophe and urging the Government to take action.

Back in January Trevor Phillips warned that it was delusional to pretend "a group is somehow eventually going to become like the rest of us" "simply because we are constantly telling them that basically they should be like us".

Casey is right to emphasise (again) the need to promote British values, history and law in schools, but Trevor Phillips posed a more fundamental challenge; what if Muslims just "see the world differently from the rest of us"?

Promoting our values is necessary, of course, but it may not be sufficient.

As with other official reports and documents, the Casey Review rests on the assumption that something can be done and that the experiment in multi-faith (and multi-civilisational) societies will end in success given enough tinkering and state action. I do not see any reason to make such a presumption.

Self-segregation of communities now seems endemic, and this is particularly true of certain Muslim communities: "Compared to other minority faith groups, Muslims tend to live in higher residential concentrations at ward level," Casey notes.

There are now wards, in Blackburn, Birmingham, Burnley and Bradford with between 70% and 85% Muslim populations. At one school the review team visited, pupils estimated that 50 to 90 per cent of the UK's population was Asian, such was the segregation of their area.

Higher density Muslim populations create more social problems, and obviously reduces contacts between people from different backgrounds, adversely effecting wider society. A Policy Exchange survey published just last week found that those who lived in areas of more highly concentrated Muslim populations were more likely to oppose the teaching of art and music in schools than those who live in more diverse (or less Muslim-dominated) areas.

The review is hard-hitting in terms of the problems it finds, but the increasingly untenable faith schools project seems to be off-limits, even for a report that is unafraid of speaking in refreshingly frank language about everything else.

"Segregation appears to be at its most acute in minority ethnic and minority faith communities and schools, so ending state support for all faith schools would be disproportionate," the report says, yet surely in this age of equality for all it is absolutely impossible for the Government to grant faith schools to some and not to others.

And so rather than call for all faith schools to be phased out, Casey chooses to accept the segregation minority faith schools cause as the price for keeping 'popular' faith schools provided "integration tests" are imposed on them. It is a shame that even in this formidable report that faith schools are insulated from calls for serious reform.

The problems Casey describes, sharia 'courts', forced marriage, FGM, child rape gangs operating with impunity, would have been unimaginable to previous generations. But parallel lives are now turning into parallel civilisations, living in each other's shadows, with entirely separate social, educational, religious, moral and political mores.

Government action is desperately needed – a moratorium on faith schools would be a good start, and reducing the rate of migration from populations that are less likely to integrate would be another entirely reasonable step.

But it is worth contemplating that this project may end in failure, and that Government cannot make people befriend others from different ethnic and religious groups, that state action cannot overcome human nature and the impulse to live with others who are like you. The state can stop doing certain unhelpful things (like promoting faith schools), but it cannot compel changes in social life.

Efforts to 'reform' and 'reinterpret' Islam are welcome, but they are surely received more warmly among secularists than among Muslims. And the hope that younger Muslims will become more secularised, liberal and tolerant is only realistic if they are exposed to wider society. As long as self-segregation is an option, and as long as Muslims can live in wards which are almost entirely Islamic, there will be a great number, a significant minority at least, who will hold regressive, separatist views.

Last week's Policy Exchange survey had some hopeful signs, Muslims do overwhelmingly identify with Britain. But given how segregated the country and some Muslim communities are, how can we be sure which 'Britain' they identify with?

Despite decades of failures, it is worth noting that problems integrating Muslim minorities are hardly rare around the world, and this is not a problem unique to the United Kingdom. That brings us to the final unsayable thing – well known to most British people but unmentionable to officials and politicians: Islam is a special case.

Casey said on the BBC's Daily Politics that Islam "is a peaceful religion" (to furious agreement from the politicians present), and the report says that sharia law is being "abused". The review does a very good job of exposing government complacency and official ineptitude, but there are clearly some subjects that are still off limits.

Over 40% of UK Muslims support “aspects” of sharia law

News | Mon, 5th Dec 2016

Policy Exchange survey, described as the largest study of Muslim opinion in the UK ever undertaken, has found widespread belief in conspiracy theories and significant support for sharia law.

The Policy Exchange study found that unsurprisingly "British Muslims as a whole represent an unquestionably more religious section of the wider UK community" and that "Faith clearly plays a more central role in the lives of British Muslims".

Muslims hold concerns on the NHS and the economy (among other political issues) that are normal among the rest of the population, but as other polls have shown, on specific issues there are marked differences between British Muslims and the general public.

"There are relatively large levels of support among British Muslims for the implementation of elements of Sharia law," Policy Exchange said.

43% said they supported "the introduction of Sharia Law" and just 22% were opposed. 16% of British Muslims "strongly support" the "introduction of aspects of Sharia law into Britain".

35% of 18-24 year olds expressed support for "aspects" of sharia and nearly half of the over-55s supported some "provisions" of sharia.

The report noted that other polls conducted in the past had found younger Muslims were more likely to support sharia, but Policy Exchange suggested that sharia might have "diminished appeal" "in an age in which this concept has become associated with, and tarnished by, ISIS."

49% of respondents in London favoured "Sharia provisions."

Just over half of British Muslims said they wanted to "fully integrate" (53%), and 37% said they wanted to integrate "on most things" with what Policy Exchange described as "separation in some areas, such as schooling and laws." 6% sought a "separate Islamic life as far as possible" and 1% wanted a "'fully separate Islamic area in Britain, subject to Sharia Law and government".

59% of young Muslims wanted full integration, suggesting some progress has been made, and the Policy Exchange report noted that this result suggested "that support for integration will increase as time goes by".

Unsurprisingly, "More religiously devout and observant respondents were relatively less likely to call for full integration".

However, there were significant regional variations, and in Yorkshire and the Humber just 28% were in favour of "full integration".

40% supported gender segregated education and 41% opposed, but 44% "supported the idea that schools should be able to insist on the hijab or niqab".

Support for gender segregation decreased among younger Muslims, but 1-in-4 of 18-24 year old Muslims supported segregation by gender.

53% said they "preferred to send their children to schools with strong 'Muslim values'", compared to just 20% of the general public who preferred a school with "strong religious values".

Respondents emphasised the quality of education, Policy Exchange said, but the British Muslim conception of what "good education" meant differed from that of the general public.

15% said art and music should not be taught at school, and Muslims who lived in areas where Muslims "made up over 50" of the local population" were more likely to oppose the teaching of art and music.

The report also said that anti-Muslim attacks "have become an engrained part of the mental landscape of many Muslims, and appear to confirm the threat posed by racism" despite the fact that "such episodes remain relatively rare and unusual".

Muslims "tended to say that they themselves had not experienced racism or Islamophobia" but had stories they could "point" to, often revolving around family members.

"Without in any way wishing to deny the reality of racist and Islamophobic attacks, it is striking how, to many people, these are a mediated phenomenon," the authors noted.

There was a "pervasive sense of unease," according to focus groups, though some participants "were willing to reflect critically about the extent to which an over-developed sense of victimhood might fuel paranoia," the report said.

"Arguably, this is a product of a culture infused with an abstract sense of grievance, at least as much as it as a response to tangible, empirical realities."

91% said they are "entirely free to practice their religion in Britain."

This paranoia also translated into belief in conspiracy theories, and the more educated Muslims were the more likely they were to believe in conspiracy theories.

52% of Muslims said they "did not know" who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. 31% said the "American Government", 7% said "Jews", and just 4% said al-Qaeda. One participant in a focus group said, "There was no Jews that were in that day."

By contrast 71% of the general public say al-Qaeda was responsible, with 1% blaming "the Jews".

The full report can be read here.