The racial violence that erupted on the streets of the UK in early August was tragic. Ordinary British folks of all colours and creeds who have coexisted peacefully for so long suddenly feel threatened and exposed.

The false information that was spread on social media following the horrific mass stabbing of children in Southport at the end of July was reportedly the main factor contributing to the ongoing riots. The British people were left incensed by the violence, and horror engulfed the whole country.

In order to incite anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments, bad-faith actors disseminated a flood of lies about the Southport incident on social media, including the false assertion that the suspected assailant was an immigrant with a Muslim background.

In recent years, toxicity has spread like wildfire online, so it is unsurprising that some have pointed to social media as the cause of the violent scenes witnessed by Britain in August. But there is another reason why the far right was able to take advantage of the situation so easily: mainstream liberal silence on issues of immigration and integration.

With Western liberals making excuses for Muslim zealots and the authorities allowing fringe Islamist elements to dominate Muslim communities, it was inevitable that controversial and contentious figures like Tommy Robinson would fill the vacuum. Over-sensitive political correctness gives the likes of Robinson room in which to stir up hatred. Robinson’s long history of capitalising on people’s worries and insecurities related to legitimate issues around immigration and integration is enough evidence of that—and now we have seen what mainstream silence leads to.

But even if the ineptitude of the authorities and the negligence of the liberals are at least part of the explanation for these riots, they are no excuse for them. Unfortunately, the far right extremists who have set fire to hotels hosting asylum seekers, destroyed public buildings, thrown items at law enforcement personnel, and smashed up police vehicles are now being pampered by another brand of apologists, their actions explained away as the result of legitimate grievances. Sound familiar?

People like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has long criticised the Western left for infantilising fundamentalist Muslims and validating their grievances, seem to dismiss the racial hate that has been encouraged on X and which contributed to the riots. As Hirsi Ali has put it, ‘Elon [Musk, owner of X] has given all those voiceless victims a voice and a platform to draw the attention of the negligent politicians and their sprawling bureaucracies.’

Has she not learnt how Islamists were and are empowered by the left’s inability to denounce religious fundamentalism? Is it prudent to adopt the same lame excuses in order to wave away the violent, racist, and hostile mob attacks which occurred all around the UK? Is it really so difficult to be consistent in one’s opposition to fanaticism and violence?

Another lamentable aspect of our current predicament is the failure of the torchbearers of inclusivity and justice themselves, who, whether unwittingly or deliberately, push people into toxic forms of politics. Many people who have long been supportive of liberal values feel compelled to abandon them due to the extreme ‘woke’ beliefs that have been embedded in much of the left. The unrelenting demands for conformity and draconian cancel culture of the ‘woke’ left have pushed people towards even more divisive ideologies.

Conspicuously, Tommy Robinson and his ilk are not capable of providing a balanced critique of immigration and the Islamist menace, which continues to be the UK’s greatest security risk. They are part of the polarising grievance industry and behave like cheap provocateurs. They propagate anxieties and insecurities with the intention of causing animosity and rifts. They have no intention of providing fair and just solutions to our many problems.

Far-right extremists who committed violence should be brought to justice without any delay. But it does need to be said that not all of the people at the protests were violent ‘far-right thugs’ (Keir Starmer’s words). Many of them turned up with their families and desired only to be heard. They did not necessarily share Robinson’s repulsive ideology. Dismissing all concerns about immigration and painting everyone who took part in protests as thugs is not the way forward. In fact, it will only make things worse. If people are treated with disregard and contempt for their legitimate concerns about immigration, there is every possibility that eventually they will become far-right thugs. As MI5 puts it:

[T]he extreme right-wing terrorism landscape has evolved away from structured groups towards a more diffuse threat where individuals form loose networks, often online. The ideologies and grievance narratives are varied, wide-ranging, and often overlapping.

The former government’s social cohesion adviser, Sara Khan, has stated that previous administrations ‘have astonishingly failed to address these trends, and they’ve taken instead, in my view, approaches that have actually been counterproductive’.

In short: the wave of violence and bigotry in August was all too predictable. Sadly, Starmer seems set on continuing to turn a blind eye to people’s legitimate concerns, which will only give more opportunities to the far right to manipulate people and pursue their own, horrific ends.

It is time to reflect and reaffirm that it is possible to criticise Islam without endorsing prejudice against Muslims and that it is reasonable to discuss the issues around immigration and integration without being bigoted. It is also necessary to defend secular democratic values by opposing the absolutism of the liberal fringe and the xenophobia of the far right. If the peaceful coexistence that has characterised British cultural diversity at its best is to survive, we urgently need to stop apologising for the far right and Islamism. If we fail to heed the lessons of August 2024, we may end up with a country where unabating violence and hatred become, quite simply, the way of life.

Related reading

The far right and ex-Muslims: ‘The enemy of my enemy is not my friend’, by Sara Al-Ruqaishi

The post Reflections on the far right riots: a predictable wave of violence appeared first on The Freethinker.

Islam’s hostility to human values ​​has long been the main reason why many of its followers have left it to become atheists. But, amid the far-right riots carried out in Britain earlier this month, it seems that some ex-Muslims have forgotten the motivation that drove them to become apostates in the first place. Do we oppose Islam out of sheer, mindless hatred, or do we hate it because it is hostile to humanity?

Some ex-Muslim atheists have shown their support for far-right figures such as Tommy Robinson and have encouraged anti-Muslim bigotry. In addition to that, they have promoted the violence perpetrated by the far right across the UK. This support is often based on the argument that the ‘demonstrations’ only target Muslims.

This position is based on misinformation. As we have seen, the riots went beyond targeting Muslims to include refugees and people of colour more generally, those who work in refugee support centres, and the police. But even if this position was accurate, it would still be bigoted and inhumane in itself.

‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which many if not most ex-Muslim atheists support as an alternative to Sharia law, begins thus: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’ The word ‘dignity’ is placed before the word ‘rights’ for a logical reason: human dignity serves as the basis for human rights. The concept of dignity recognises that all human beings have a special value that is inherent in themselves—not acquired—and therefore deserving of respect, without exception, simply because they are human beings.  In other words, you cannot talk about human rights if these rights are limited to certain people and denied to others.

To support bigotry against Muslims is to strip Muslims of their human dignity, which means that Muslims will not enjoy the same rights as everyone else. And this is exactly what you support when you talk about the right of white English people to ‘security of person’ while supporting riots that are trying to take away the right of Muslims to the same. In supporting the far right, these ex-Muslims show themselves to be non-secular, non-humanist atheists.

The far right and Islamism: two sides of the same coin

The far right bases its hatred of others on a sense of superiority that has no scientific basis. They believe that being white and/or Christian makes them inherently better than everyone else. Isn’t this exactly the same justification Islamists use for persecuting ex-Muslims and others who don’t fit into their narrow view of the world? Islamists see themselves and their worldview as superior and unchallengeable, and this is the basis on which they persecute women, gays, atheists, non-Muslims, and secular Muslims. The far right does exactly the same: they target those who are not white and/or Christian because they believe that they alone are worthy of respect.

Far-right ideology is not a cure for Islamism. Rather, it feeds it. When a far-right extremist calls for bigotry against Muslims, he/she encourages Islamists to respond with their own bigotry—as we witnessed in Birmingham on the night of 5 August. Supporting the far right to oppose Islamism feeds an endless cycle of bigotry and terrorism. It is unfortunate that some of us ex-Muslims contribute to this cycle, which only strengthens the very people, whether Islamist or far-right, who seek to destroy us.

A better approach: secular alliance against extremism

The cure for reactionary Islamism is not through an alliance with the reactionary far right built on a shared fanatical bigotry against ‘Muslims’, but through an alliance between secular atheists and secular Muslims. This would be a useful and humane alliance built on the values ​​advocated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: dignity, freedom, and rejection of extremism.

As ex-Muslim atheists seeking to build more humane societies, we must work to build bridges of understanding and coexistence between all religious and ethnic groups. We must unequivocally reject any form of fanaticism and violence, whether it comes from Islamists, far-right extremists, or anyone else. Taking a stand against far-right extremism and being a voice for justice and equality reflects our principle of rejecting extremism. Those who stood with the rioters showed that their problem is not with extremism as such but with Muslim extremism only.

For a better world free from hatred

Given that a large proportion of us ex-Muslims are refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, it is shameful that some of us are complicit in the attempted destruction of the democracies in which persecuted people like us seek refuge. Promoting far-right ideology threatens refugees like us. Moreover, far-right ideas are categorically opposed to the fundamental democratic ideals ​​of freedom, equality, and justice—the very values ​​that we as ex-Muslims felt the lack of in our countries of origin, leading us to flee by air or sea to places which stood up for those values. In other words, allying ourselves with extremists, some of whom call for the return of a ‘white and Christian’ England, undermines our own rights and interests as atheists in the UK.

The post The far right and ex-Muslims: ‘The enemy of my enemy is not my friend’ appeared first on The Freethinker.

This article was originally published on the NSS’s website on 23 July 2024.

It’s easy to see how the idea of being saved by an act of ‘divine intervention’ might well appeal to a narcissist like Donald Trump. But his claim that he had ‘God on his side’ during the recent failed assassination attempt is more likely to be the sentiment of a grifter exploiting religion for political gain.

But sincere belief in the supernatural isn’t necessary for Trump and his cronies to dismantle America’s wall of separation between church and state. His nomination of conservative justices to the Supreme Court during his previous term of office paved the way for the overturning of Roe v Wade—a significant win for evangelicals. With a return to the White House looking distinctly possible, more laws to enforce the doctrines of his Christian support base could be on the cards.

The rise of Christian nationalism in the US is another indicator of a backsliding of secular liberal democratic values, the foundation upon which many successful modern societies are built.

Right across the world, wherever religion and political power are entwined, the chips are down for liberalism. Whether it’s Protestant evangelicalism in the US, Hindu nationalism in India, or Islamism in the Middle East, the closer clerics are to governance, the lower the likelihood that individual rights and freedoms can flourish.

Europe, too, is facing testing times.

American Christian Right organisations are pouring millions of dollars into the continent to fuel campaigns aimed at diminishing the rights of women and sexual minorities. Christian identity politics has become intertwined with nationalist ideologies, shaping the political landscape and contributing to the growth of far-right movements across the continent.

Meanwhile, mass migration and a failure to integrate sizeable Muslim populations have contributed to the undermining and challenging of fundamental liberal values like free speech, equality, and state neutrality.

One of secularism’s most important roles in protecting liberal values is in preserving freedom of expression—making sure that individuals are free to voice their ideas, beliefs, criticisms, and scorn of religious ideas without the threat of censorship or punishment.

Here in the UK, an incident at a Batley school starkly illustrated the erosion of this freedom. A teacher who used a cartoon of Muhammad to teach pupils about debates on free expression faced immediate and credible death threats and now must live under a new identity.

The writing has been on the wall ever since the Rushdie affair. But a spate of violent protests and murders across Europe since has sent the clear message to European citizens that, even if blasphemy laws have been abolished (and not all have been), they remain in place for Islam, and will be enforced by intimidation and violence.

Meanwhile, growing numbers of women and young girls on the continent are compelled to obey sexist religious modesty codes and thousands of children from minority backgrounds are attending illegal schools run by religious extremists.

Meaningful debates on these matters have become increasingly challenging due to the pervasive influence of ‘Islamophobia’, a term once noted by Christopher Hitchens as strategically employed to insinuate a ‘foul prejudice lurks behind any misgivings about Islam’s infallible message’. The language of Islamophobia has fostered a fear of being labelled ‘racist’ or bigoted, causing many liberals to refrain from criticising any manifestation of Islam, however worthy of disdain. This has created a void that is exploited by extremists on the far right.

Meanwhile, a crisis in confidence that secular liberalism can counter the ascendancy of radical Islam and ‘wokery’ has led some public intellectuals to be lured by the notion that Christianity is somehow indispensable in safeguarding the Western way of life. Daniel James Sharp and Matt Johnson have presented compelling critiques of this ‘New Theism’ and its defence of Christian privilege. But entrusting the preservation of liberal democracy to a belief one considers untrue yet expedient seems precarious at best.

All this is to say that the current climate for liberal values and human rights is challenging.

Amidst the ongoing threat posed by religious fundamentalism, a renewed embrace of the Enlightenment concept of separation of religion and state is sorely needed to safeguard individual rights and freedoms.

These are the issues we’ll be addressing at Secularism 2024, the National Secular Society’s upcoming conference on October 19th. A diverse range of expert speakers will shed light on some of the contemporary challenges faced by liberal societies and explore the role of secularism in protecting liberal values and social cohesion.

To be part of this important conversation about democracy, freedom of speech, individual rights, and the rule of law, join us at Secularism 2024. Tickets are on sale now.

Related reading

What secularists want from the next UK Government, by Stephen Evans

Secularism and the struggle for free speech, by Stephen Evans

Donald Trump, political violence, and the future of America, by Daniel James Sharp

A reading list against the ‘New Theism’ (and an offer to debate), by Daniel James Sharp

White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. By Rachel Laser

Reproductive freedom is religious freedom, by Andrew Seidel and Rachel Laser

The rise and fall of god(s) in Indian politics: Modi’s setback, Indic philosophy, and the freethought paradox, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Campaign ‘to unite India and save its secular soul’, by Puja Bhattacharjee

The resurgence of enlightenment in southern India: interview with Bhavan Rajagopalan, by Emma Park

Three years on, the lessons of Batley are yet to be learned, by Jack Rivington

Keir Starmer must bring the UK’s diverse but divided people together, by Megan Manson

Islamic identity politics is a threat to British democracy, by Khadija Khan

The hijab is the wrong symbol to represent women, by Khadija Khan

Britain’s blasphemy heritage, by David Nash

The perils of dropping a book, by Noel Yaxley

Free speech in Britain: a losing battle? by Porcus Sapiens

Cancel culture and religious intolerance: ‘Falsely Accused of Islamophobia’, by Steven Greer, by Daniel James Sharp

British Islam and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in universities: interview with Steven Greer, by Emma Park

Rushdie’s victory, by Daniel James Sharp

The Satanic Verses; free speech in the Freethinker, by Emma Park

The post An upcoming secularist conference on the safeguarding of liberal values in a time of crisis appeared first on The Freethinker.

All this, to my mind, underscores the need for a much more robust secularism in the UK. Perhaps we ought to start with the Church of England? The CoE, after all, was the original—and, thus far, the single most successful—sectarian religious group dedicated to imposing on the rest of us. Without such privilege enshrined in our law and state, other groups will have a much weaker foundation for their own claims to special treatment. ~ Daniel James Sharp, Editor

In his first address to the nation as prime minister, Keir Starmer promised that his government will ‘unite our country’.

This must be a priority for our new PM. The 2024 election campaigning and its result keenly illustrated why.

Rishi Sunak’s call for a general election predictably sparked a flurry of wishlists for the next government from myriad groups. But this election’s lobbying frenzy was overcast by a worrying shadow of sectarianism.

A coalition of Hindu organisations released a ‘Hindu Manifesto’ which said linking Hinduism to issues of caste and misogyny in India could be considered ‘Hinduphobia’, and that Hinduphobia should be criminalised.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews published a ‘Jewish Manifesto’ calling for future MPs to allow religious freedom to trump other rights, by protecting the controversial practises of ritual circumcision on baby boys and ritual non-stun slaughter of animals.

And the ‘Sikh Manifesto’ 2020-2025 from the Sikh Network called for a ‘code of practice’ on the right of Sikhs to wear religious items such as swords and recognition of ‘anti-Sikh hate’ in a ‘similar fashion to Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’.

All three manifestos called for more support for state-funded, segregated faith schools for their respective communities, as did the Catholic Union. Interestingly, a newer Sikh Manifesto from the Sikh Network omitted this call—a step in the right direction.

All three manifestos also made some barbed references to sections of other religious communities. The Hindu Manifesto accused Islamist and Sikh extremists of ‘acts of violence’ against UK Hindus and suggested that the government is giving more support to Muslim and Jewish causes than Hindu ones. Conversely, the latest Sikh Manifesto says the government ‘needs to confront Hindu nationalist groups’ in the UK, while lamenting that Sikhs are under-represented in the Lords compared with Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. And the Jewish Manifesto expressed that ‘Islamist extremists’ are one of the ‘major threats to the immediate physical security of British Jews’.

These concerns are all valid. But their inclusion in each religious group’s ‘manifesto’ suggests that cracks between British religious communities are widening.

Meanwhile, a group of Muslim organisations launched ‘The Muslim Vote’, whose ‘high level pledges’ include adopting the contentious All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ ‘Islamophobia’ definition and ensuring school rules have exemptions to accommodate pupils wearing ‘religious symbols’ and attending Friday prayers.

A similar ‘Muslim Vote’ campaign has been launched in Australia, ahead of the next federal election. The country’s prime minister Anthony Albanese has spoken out against it, saying: ‘I don’t think, and don’t want, Australia to go down the road of faith-based political parties because what that will do is undermine social cohesion.’

He’s right. But in the UK, too many candidates have instead rushed to embrace faith-based politics. Some have publicly endorsed the various faith manifestos and posted pictures of themselves clutching them on social media.

And sectarian politics had significant success in this election. Despite its overall victory, Labour lost four seats to independent candidates backed by The Muslim Vote in Leicester, Blackburn, Birmingham Perry Barr, and Dewsbury and Batley. Other Labour MPs only just held on to their seats, including the new health secretary Wes Streeting, who retained his seat with just 528 more votes than the candidate backed by The Muslim Vote, Leanne Mohamad.

Sectarianism, particularly in connection to the Israel-Gaza conflict, also underpinned appalling campaigns of abuse and threats against candidates. Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi and Rushanara Ali were smeared as genocide supporters, Naz Shah was followed around and heckled by a man who called her a ‘dirty, dirty Zionist’, and Jess Phillips was heckled during her victory speech with cries of ‘free Palestine’. Phillips called it the ‘worst election’ she’d ever stood in, and that one Labour activist had her tyres slashed.

Starmer’s Labour government has inherited a country where most people have no religion, Christians are a minority for the first time in history, and other religions are growing in number and variety. But most of us don’t let religion divide us. During his campaign, Sunak called the UK ‘the world’s most successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy’. It is true that, in general, we rub along pretty well with each other, but the lack of separation between religion and state creates unequal citizenship and so undermines this claim.

The election has revealed powerful forces which threaten to split our communities apart and pit them against each other. And many of our representatives seem all too happy to help them, for the sake of votes.

This approach will not heal divisions. It will instead entrench the notion that religious communities should compete with each other, rather than work for the mutual benefit of all UK citizens of all religions and beliefs.

How will Starmer face this challenge? So far, not all signs have been encouraging. Despite his personal atheistic beliefs, Starmer is in danger of falling into the same trap by appealing to faith-based interests. He told Premier Christianity magazine that his government will work ‘in partnership with churches and faith communities’, using a ‘network of parliamentary faith champions’.

Starmer needs to ensure that this ‘partnership’ doesn’t lead to a balkanization of public services or become a vehicle for proselytising and religious privilege.

Before the election, Starmer said his government would be ‘even more supportive of faith schools’ than the Conservatives. An early test for Labour will be whether they resist Catholic bishops’ demands to continue with the Tories’ dreadful plan to abolish the 50% cap on faith-based admissions at free schools, paving the way for a new wave of religiously, ethnically, and socio-economically segregated faith schools.

If Starmer wants to make sure his vision for a changed United Kingdom doesn’t turn it into a divided one, he and his party must consider carefully their approach to religion. Rather than giving more and more privileges to religious elites at the expense of equality, cohesion, and fairness, the government should work to ensure our society is a level playing field based on shared values, where individuals of all religions and beliefs have the opportunity to flourish.

Let’s hope the change Labour promised is in the right direction.

Related reading

What secularists want from the next UK Government, by Stephen Evans

The case of Richard Dawkins: cultural affiliation with a religious community does not contradict atheism, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Faith schools: where do the political parties stand? by Stephen Evans

Circumcision: the human rights violation that no one wants to talk about, by Alejandro Sanchez

Britain’s liberal imam: Interview with Taj Hargey, by Emma Park

Cannibal Speaks Out, by Modus Tollens

Islamic identity politics is a threat to British democracy, by Khadija Khan

Three years on, the lessons of Batley are yet to be learned, by Jack Rivington

Secularism and the struggle for free speech, by Stephen Evans

Bring on the British republic – Graham Smith’s ‘Abolish the Monarchy’, reviewed, by Daniel James Sharp

Secularisation and Protestantism in the 2021 Northern Ireland Census, by Charlie Lynch

The need to rekindle irreverence for Islam in Muslim thought, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

British Islam and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in universities: interview with Steven Greer, by Emma Park

The post Keir Starmer must bring the UK’s diverse but divided people together appeared first on The Freethinker.

In the Netherlands, House of Representatives elections were held on 22 November 2023. This turned out to be a great victory for Geert Wilders’ party (Party for Freedom; PVV), which gained 37 seats out of 150. Other parties with a significant vote share included the Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which won 24 seats, New Social Contract (NSC), which won 20 seats, and Farmers and Civilians (BBB), which won 7 seats. PVV is generally considered to be a populist party and VVD a traditional liberal party, while NSC is a Christian democratic party and BBB is for the protection of farmers’ interests.

On 28 November 2023, the Speaker of the House of Representatives assigned an informateur: Ronald Plasterk. An informateur investigates which parties can form a coalition in the wake of an election and presides over negotiations between the party leaders to draw up a program of policies. Here is a description of Plasterk’s rather broad assignment:

‘1. To investigate whether agreement is or can be reached between the parties PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB on a common baseline for safeguarding the Constitution, fundamental rights, and the democratic rule of law. 2. If, in the opinion of these four parties, agreement is reached on point 1, then subsequently investigate whether there is a real prospect of reaching an agreement on issues such as migration, security of existence (including care, purchasing power, permanent jobs and sufficient housing), good governance, security, and stable public finances, international policy and healthy business climate, climate, nitrogen agriculture and horticulture, and fisheries.’

The first task is rather striking since no Dutch political party has as its basic premise the view that the Constitution may be violated, or that fundamental rights or the democratic rule of law should be threatened. No party denies the value of fundamental rights or the model of the democratic rule of law. So, reaching a consensus on these principles ought to have been very easy. But was it?

In fact, reaching a consensus proved more difficult than expected. Indeed, it has recently become clear that one of the named parties wants to abandon negotiations: Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC, a relatively new party that emerged from a split with the Christian Democratic Appeal party last August.

Background to the informateur’s brief

We must understand the specific nature of Plasterk’s assignment against the background of a situation that the Netherlands shares with other countries in Western Europe, including Germany, the UK, and France. That background is that, for more than 20 years, Western Europe has been affected by violent terrorist attacks in which the terrorists have invoked their religion as a motivation. This religion is not Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jewish, but Islamic.

Of the four political parties that have recently been exploring whether they want joint government responsibility, one party is wholly focused on this particular issue. That party is Wilders’s PVV, which essentially won the election.

Islam as a problem and a breaking point

Wilders takes the motivation given by terrorists themselves very seriously and concludes that ‘Islam’ is thus a challenge to Europe.

He also proposes measures to stop the growth of Islam. Wilders and his party have proposed measures like banning the Qur’an, expelling ‘radical Muslims’ from the Netherlands, closing mosques, and denying Islam the status of a religion (and thus excluding it from the constitutional right to freedom of religion). The PVV even made a legislative proposal to settle these things. These measures are—to put it mildly—at odds with the Dutch constitution, fundamental human rights, and the democratic rule of law—and also with the European Convention on Human Rights. Nevertheless, PVV’s most extreme ideas have been ditched by Wilders in the recent negotiations.

Contrary to what he has been accused of, Wilders does not discriminate based on skin colour. He is only vehemently anti-Islam. He is very critical of Moroccan youth but not because of their ethnicity; rather, he is concerned about the overrepresentation of Moroccans in the criminal statistics.

In any case, the negotiations for the formation of a new government are in a critical phase now. Two weeks from now (4 May 2024), the four parties involved in negotiations will tell the public whether they will make the jump. Is there still hope?

Two clashing perspectives

I think there are still chances for a settlement. Let us first put the question: what should the conversation between the four parties mentioned at the beginning of this article be about? There are two opposing perspectives.

First, that of journalist Peter Oborne, as set out in his book The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam (2022). Oborne argues that throughout the Western world, people are needlessly worried about Islam. Islam is an ‘ordinary religion’, and all stories about Islam as inherently violent or impossible to integrate into democratic conditions are based on false assumptions.

Second, there is Anne Marie Waters’s perspective, as set out in her Beyond Terror: Islam’s Slow Erosion of Western Democracy (2018). The title speaks for itself.

Geert Wilders, in his book Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (2012), took a stand supportive of Waters’s point of view and illustrates this with numerous examples. Not least the example of his own life: he has been on the hit list of jihadist terrorist organizations for decades.

In my view, Oborne is naïve. But Waters (and Wilders) are too pessimistic. What we should do is focus on Islamism, or political Islam, not on Islam as such.

The significance of this debate

This debate is also of great interest to freethinkers and atheists. If Waters and Wilders are right, then it is not only permissible but urgent that restrictive measures be taken to protect the democratic rule of law from the forces that undermine it. And if Oborne is right, anything Wilders proposes is out of order, discriminatory, and contrary to the Constitution, the democratic rule of law, and the fundamental rights of citizens.

France as a guiding country

The most interesting developments on the status of Islam and its practitioners in Europe are currently taking place in France. This is not surprising. France has the largest Muslim population compared to other Western European countries, and it has also been hit by the most horrific jihadist attacks. Think of Charlie Hebdo (2015), the Bataclan (2015), and the beheading of Samuel Paty (2020). These events, together with France’s century-long tradition of thoroughgoing laïcité, have unleashed an unprecedented intellectual energy in finding solutions to the related problems of Muslim integration and Islamic/Islamist terrorism.

The most recent development is the struggle against ‘Islamist separatism’. In 2020, President Emmanuel Macron vowed to tackle this phenomenon, which he described as the attempt of France’s Muslim community to supplant civil laws with its own laws and customs derived from religious practice. The Macron administration opposes this because it essentially creates two parallel societies.

In my view, the solution lies in recognizing that Islamism poses a challenge to Western European countries, but that, at the same time, one should try to respect the rights of all citizens, including Muslim citizens, as much as possible. One way to do this is to avoid creating privileges for religious minorities, e.g., granting Muslims the right to wear headscarves in situations where this is forbidden for all citizens (such as in the army or the judiciary).

One finds this line of argument defended, for example, by the French philosopher Sylviane Agacinski in her Face à une guerre sainte (2022) and by the French lawyer Richard Malka in Traité sur l’intolérance (2023). What these approaches have in common is targeting Islamism, rather than Islam itself.

So what Wilders will have to convince his interlocutors of is that Islamism is a real problem, not just in the Netherlands but in all of Europe—and the world.

Wilders is also a well-known Dutch politician in other parts of the world. Indeed, he is so well known that jihadist-motivated murderers have travelled from Pakistan to the Netherlands to kill him. In 2019, Pakistani Junaid I. was sentenced to 10 years in prison for an attempt to kill Wilders, while last year, the Pakistani ex-cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced to 12 years for incitement to murder Wilders.

The Netherlands as a test case

The Netherlands could become a test case for developments in other parts of Europe. At present, in Germany and Belgium, parties similar to Wilders’s are on track for steep gains in 2024. These parties are critical of Islam and mass migration and in favour of national sovereignty. This is generally characterized as the ‘far-rightisation’ of Europe or the ‘normalisation of the far right’. It is a matter for debate whether this increasing drift to the right among the populations of these European countries ought to be of serious concern. Personally, I think the so-called right-wing parties have some good points to consider; above all their critical attitude towards the Islamist undermining of democratic institutions. Nevertheless, it is essential that Europe finds a liberal path forward. What happens in the Netherlands will be a sign of what is to come.

Further reading on religion in the Netherlands

Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Derk Venema and Niko Alm

The Enlightenment and the making of modernity, by Piers Benn

The post Geert Wilders, Europe, and the threat of Islamism appeared first on The Freethinker.

While Ramadan is a sacred month for Muslims, let us not forget that it is also an excuse for religious fanatics and theocratic Islamic governments to force individuals to adhere to their intolerable ideologies. While Ramadan is said to be a month of compassion, generosity, introspection, and tranquillity, it is also a month of persecution and pain during which those who refuse to comply with fasting rules are bullied and oppressed.

Many closeted apostates and liberal Muslims around the world face harsh punishment for defying fasting rules. They endure severe penalties, isolation, and exclusion in the name of religion. It is therefore important that, during Ramadan, we scrutinise such appalling attitudes, which are contrary to the spirit of human dignity and freedom.

In Pakistan, according to the Ehtram-e-Ramazan Ordinance, anyone eating in public places during fasting hours can be fined and/or jailed for three months. These draconian Ramadan laws have been used to harass and persecute minorities across the country. In 2016, a Hindu man in his eighties was beaten up for eating rice before Iftar (the fast-breaking evening meal during Ramadan). Such a horrific incident set a dangerous precedent in a society that is already plagued with ever-growing religious intolerance.

In 2014 in Iran, where fasting rules are also enforced by law, two men were publicly flogged for eating during fasting hours. In Nigeria this year, eleven Muslims were arrested for eating during Ramadan. In Oman, Muslims who break the fasting rules can be fined or arrested. In Egypt, where there is technically no legal enforcement of Ramadan, cafes have been stormed by police for not following Ramadan edicts.

Even in the West, this bullying is not uncommon. Allegedly, a non-Muslim man in England was recently bullied by his Muslim colleagues for eating during fasting hours in their presence. The full context of the video is unclear, but the man filming it can be heard using the slur ‘kuffar’ against the man who was eating.

It is absurd that those who are convinced that fasting is a spiritual necessity are obsessively concerned with whether others are participating in their rituals. There is a plethora of reasons why someone could not be fasting, including old age, illness, medicine, pregnancy, impending travel, not being a Muslim, or simply not feeling like it. Coercing people into not eating or drinking for your sake is not respecting someone’s religious sensibilities. It is a blatant instance of religious bullying. If someone’s faith is so shaky that they feel disturbed by the sight of another person eating, then perhaps they need to set their own house in order rather than inflicting pain on others.

To defy such rigid and draconian fasting rules, last month the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) staged fast-defying picnics in London outside the embassies of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco—countries that prosecute people for eating in public during the fasting hours of Ramadan. I was an attendee.

Fast-defying activists drinking a toast outside the embassies were approached by staff and security officers, who continuously questioned the activists’ motivation for eating and drinking in protest of compulsory Ramadan fasting. The security guards and the staff watched over the activists through windows. As CEMB put it, ‘they weren’t too pleased to see us there and shared some disgruntled looks, and kept an eye on us, peeking through the windows.’

Outside the Saudi embassy, two armed police officers approached the protestors and asked them pointed questions about eating and drinking outside the embassy. CEMB spokesperson Ali Malik explained to them that ‘We’re not Muslim. You’re free to be a Muslim the same way we are free to drink.’ The officers even called their colleagues and a police van showed up right away, but those officers soon left when they realised no crime was being committed. The two armed officers remained and could be seen looking up public drinking regulations, presumably looking for an excuse to take action. They failed, but this shows how willing even the British police are to intimidate and harass Ramadan dissidents.

Maryam Namazie, the spokesperson for CEMB, wrote to me:

‘People are expected not to eat out of respect for Muslims’ religious sensibilities. For us, defying fasting during Ramadan is very crucial because we remember all the pressure and intimidation, the flogging, and the arrests that have been inflicted on those who defy fasting edicts. Even in Britain, if you have a Muslim name or you look Muslim, they’ll say “why are you not fasting?”. The whole idea of identity politics is such that people feel entitled, as if they have a right to ask you that and put pressure on you.’ (Lightly edited for clarity.)

She further added, ‘The imposition of Ramadan rules by brute force is linked to the rise of Islamism. Therefore, these fast-defying picnics are an important form of dissent against intimidating Islamists who seek to subjugate people and in solidarity with those who are persecuted during this bleak month for merely drinking or eating to allay their thirst or hunger.’

Ramadan bullying is just one of the many ways in which extremist Muslims oppress the vulnerable. Inside some Muslim communities, women are treated as second-class citizens and human rights are completely disregarded. Closeted apostates and liberals in these communities are the greatest victims of this extremism, as they are forced to be silent and obey at the price of ostracization—or worse. Those who criticise such dogma and bullying, whether they are Muslim or not, are frequently accused of being an ‘Islamophobe’ or a bigot, but this only serves to validate and strengthen the Islamists, which, in the end, only leads to harm—of Muslims as well as non-Muslims.

Society must be free to scrutinise and criticise practices that are incompatible with human rights. The fringe elements who seek to dominate public discourse through fear and intimidation need to be called out unequivocally. Only then can we protect the most vulnerable of all: the dissident minorities within minorities.

Further reading on Islam, Ramadan, and dissent

Interview with Maryam Namazie: ‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The price of criticising Islam in northern Nigeria: imprisonment or death, by Emma Park

The need to rekindle irreverence for Islam in Muslim thought, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

Faith Watch, March 2024, by Daniel James Sharp

The post Mind Your Ramadan! appeared first on The Freethinker.

The culture of intolerance that has grown over time in the UK has undermined the ethos of British schools. As Islamist zealots grow stronger in influence in our society, a number of schools known for their secular, inclusiveness and apolitical approach, such as St Stephen’s Primary School, Parkfield Community School, Batley Grammar School, Kettlethorpe High School, and Barclay Primary School, have been caving into their demands one after the other.

There has been an attempt by Muslim fundamentalists in the UK to politicise educational institutions, in order to gain clout in social and political sphere.  And now these nefarious elements have come out in force to assert their intolerant beliefs under the pretext of religious freedom. They use religious identity and political grievances to subvert the secular democratic system. Unfortunately, innocent school children seem to have become pawns in their hands.

What happened outside the gates of Barclay Primary School in East London late last year illustrates this state of affairs. As reported in the Telegraph, children and parents had been in conflict with the school over its policy of being ‘apolitical’ and monitoring comments in parents’ WhatsApp groups, as well as not allowing the children to wear pro-Palestinian clothing. In December, the school was forced to close early for Christmas by a pro-Palestine protest in support of a boy who arrived at the school wearing a Palestine badge on his coat and refused to take it off. The boy’s mother was from Gaza; his father accused the school of ‘Islamophobia’. Yet neither parents nor protesters seem to have acknowledged the school’s interest in avoiding extremism and safeguarding for all students – or its claims that staff and the school itself had been threatened by ‘malicious fabrications’ and ‘misinformation’. Since then, the school has received threats of violence, arson and a bomb threat.

Given this toxic situation, it was only a matter of time before the Michaela Community School in north London was added to the list of schools singled out for their secular principles and inclusiveness.

Michaela was founded by headmistress Katharine Birbalsingh in 2014. The school, known for its outstanding academic results, is facing a lawsuit for maintaining its longstanding secular character by banning prayers. It is a sad state of affairs that a school known for its excellence has become the target of unfounded charges of prejudice. Among certain religious zealots, particularly Islamists at present, the attitude seems to be that those who defy their dictates must be punished pour encourager les autres.

The manner in which the Michaela case has been framed, with the accusations of victimisation and discrimination against Muslim pupils, demonstrates that Islamists will stop at nothing to bully people into compliance. They use the language of human rights to assert their supremacist beliefs. They attempt to use English legislation pertaining to religious freedom as leverage to force the schools to comply with their requests.

The issue of discipline within the school premises has now turned into a question of whether Muslims have the freedom to practise their religion on their terms. The Muslim author of an article recently published in the Guardian, Nadeine Asbali, castigated Birbalsingh’s supposedly ‘dystopian, sinister vision of multiculturalism’.

But this was not merely a case of students offering prayer in the school. As reported in The Standard, Birbalsingh said that her decision came against a ‘backdrop of events including violence, intimidation and appalling racial harassment of our teachers’. At one point a brick was even hurled through a teacher’s window. There was also allegedly intimidation of some Muslim pupils by others. The Muslim pupil who sued the school was reportedly suspended for five days in 2023 for threatening to stab another pupil. This suggests that children were being influenced by an extreme Islamist ideology, which cannot but harm the wellbeing of the whole school. Birbalsingh’s intervention was arguably a matter of safeguarding, as well as of fostering inclusion and cohesion among the student body.

Concerningly, the threat posed by religious extremists remains present and has often gone unnoticed. The Commission for Countering Extremism has reportedly revealed that research on radical groups is ‘skewed’ towards the far right. Consequently, Britain has ‘substantial gaps’ in its understanding of Islamist extremism, which has been ‘systemically under-researched’. The CCE also warned that Islamist radicals are attempting to dissuade researchers from writing about them by threatening legal action. This is just like the lawsuit being pursued by the unnamed Michaela student against her school: she may claim that the ban on prayer is discriminatory, but in fact, she, or whoever it might be speculated is behind her, is arguably attempting to exploit human rights law to enforce the sowing of division in the school, against the better judgement of its headmistress.

A highly polarised society where differences are valued more than similarities is a breeding ground for extremists. Parallel legal and educational systems based on extremist religious beliefs are operating in plain sight, contributing to further division in society. Disproportionate emphasis on religious freedoms has given minority ethnic or religious groups too much leeway to live according to their own cultural and religious norms, in disregard of the law, human rights principles and British values. Unfortunately, the main culprits at present are the Islamists.

The Michaela lawsuit and the threats and violence out of which it comes ought to be a wake-up call for progressives. They should acknowledge the perils of being in denial about the threats which Islamist extremism poses to the sort of peace, fair treatment and mutual harmony which are encouraged by a code of school rules that is universally applied, with no exceptions. In a modern secular society, it is surely in everyone’s interests if religion, like politics, is kept out of the classroom.

Asbali argues that the Michaela School prayer ban implies ‘the bleak and frankly insulting assumption that, in order for all of us to live harmoniously, we must become robots with no beliefs or ideas of our own’. But this arguably misrepresents the case. It is not a question of what pupils believe – that is, of course, their own business, as Birbalsingh would surely allow. It is a question of their public actions while in school, where a multitude of different considerations may apply, and headteachers must not be unduly shackled by religious demands.

Freedom of belief is one thing – but freedom of manifesting a belief is another. Article 9, paragraph 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights itself makes this plain, stipulating that ‘Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society’ for various reasons, including to protect ‘public safety’ and ‘the rights and freedoms of others.’

It may also be that, as Asbali says, some Muslims believe that the five-times daily prayer ritual ‘will be one of the first things we will be questioned about by God after we die.’ However, is at least questionable whether children are obliged to fulfil this ritual. More fundamentally, it is open to debate whether points of religious doctrine like this one, which are based on nothing but ancient traditional authority and faith with no evidence, should be allowed to take precedence over concerns for the wellbeing of a mixed group of children in the here and now.

The Michaela case is but the latest in a string of incidents at schools in the UK to pose the question of how far religious exceptionalism should be allowed to interfere with the good running of a school and the wellbeing of its whole community. The High Court will have to decide whether Birbalsingh’s policies have struck the balance fairly. In the meantime, the question remains how many other schools and headteachers will have the bravery and tenacity to stand up against the threats of litigation, or worse, from religious extremists. As things stand now, the storm of threats looks to be a long way from abating.

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As the Israeli bombardment of Hamas hideouts in Gaza continues, killing thousands of Palestinians, protests against Israel have erupted worldwide. The demonstrations in the Muslim world have been typically volatile, with Israeli flags and effigies burnt, and genocidal chants against Israel and Jews redoubled. Meanwhile, the hundreds of thousands protesting in support of Palestine in major Western cities have not focused their energies on ensuring respite for Palestinians, and addressing the plight of the Gazans, who are currently facing a gruesome existential crisis.

Any sort of resolution to the conflict, in my view, would only be achievable via reconciliatory movements, such as rallying for a two-state solution and demanding the release of Israeli hostages, in the same breath as calling for a ceasefire or condemning the Judaeophobia on display across the rallies. Instead, the pro-Palestine protesters appear more invested in demanding the erasure of Israel by freeing Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’.

Many gullible Western liberals have demanded that solely a Palestinian state exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Strangely, they do not appear to see anything anti-Israeli, nay anti-Semitic, in this demand. Of course, these protesters vociferously accuse Israel of erasing Palestine, without blinking an eye at their own position on the elimination of the Jewish state.

More critically, as thousands are being killed in Gaza, it takes a special ideological fixation, and indifference to human suffering, to peddle self-serving inflammatory narratives, fuelled by the blood of the Palestinians whom one claims to be defending. It should not require lengthy reflection to realise that championing Israel’s destruction, especially without any practical means to carry it out, is not exactly the best way to convince that state not to inflict harm on others. But it is precisely this symbiosis between Palestinian suffering and calls for Israel’s destruction that has helped sustain both the Islamist and leftist dogma on the conflict. Instead of adducing the death of Palestinians as an argument for destroying Israel, the cause of peace and safety for both sides would be better served by building bridges.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the reactions to the 7 October massacre orchestrated by Hamas, in which over 1,000 Israelis were murdered, the highest number of Jews killed in an attack since the Holocaust. Islamists have loudly glorified Hamas’s Judaeophobic jihad – fuelled by animosity against the Jews on the basis of religion – and claimed it is consistent with Islamic scriptures. At the same time, the ideological left’s exuberant celebration of the mass murder of civilians is almost exclusively reserved for Israeli citizens and not any other country’s citizens.

Those hostile to Israel often refuse to differentiate between Israelis and Jews in general. Yet even the most raucous anti-Western voices on the left would take a courteous pause before linking attacks on Jews in the US, the UK or France to ‘colonialism’. In contrast, when gruesome massacres of Israelis were being carried out, the left’s instinctive reaction was to celebrate, as they have continued to do while hostages remain in captivity with Hamas. Even Western parliaments, such as the one in Scotland, refused to fly the Israeli flag, while the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) did not even mention Israel in its moment of silence for the ‘loss of innocent lives’.

Of course, the left’s celebratory or at least exculpatory attitude towards the killings in Israel would hardly be adopted towards the numerous states empirically more guilty of crimes similar to those attributed to Israel, from Turkey to China. Even from a Muslim-centric lens, many times more people have been killed in wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen since the turn of the century than during the entire history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Similarly, the suffering of Afghans, Iraqis or Syrians at the hands of external forces is not generally used as an apologia for the Taliban or ISIS – at least not to the same degree as with Hamas.

Those deeming Israel an ‘artificial state’ might want to look at the arbitrary nature in which the vast majority of the postcolonial states came into being, without consideration for locals’ consensual aspirations. For instance, 80 percent of the borders in Africa were simply based on longitudes and latitudes. The Muslims of many Indian states had little in common with what is now Pakistan, the doppelganger of Israel whose creation they rallied for in the 1940s, with significantly more displacement and human suffering. Indeed, the creation of Pakistan involved the largest mass migration in human history. While Jews have always lived in the Israel-Palestine area, Muslims from Uttar Pradesh or Bengal in India had as much connection to the Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces in Pakistan as someone in Poland would have with Portugal.

Today, too, it is Mizrahi Jews of Middle Eastern origin who constitute the largest percentage of Israeli Jews, owing to the mass expulsion of Jews from Muslim-majority states. This fact is consistently ignored by Israel’s opponents in those countries. The attribution of war crimes singularly to Israel is determined by the rulebook put forth by the same global establishment that created Israeli and Palestinian states in the region. Paradoxically, the Jewish-majority country has been required by its critics to treat territories captured in war in a manner unlike that in which any other victorious power ever has done in history. 

Despite all this, one can still attempt to make sense of the ideological left’s fixation with Israel, given the historical military and economic support provided to the state by the Western powers, under the leadership of the US. This fixation has been further augmented in the present crisis by the majority of Western governments’ backing for Israel and the predominant media support for their narrative on the conflict.

The rise of Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government in Israel, which has exploited its own religionist rationale to bulldoze Palestinian rights, has also encouraged those on the left to condemn the stance of Western powers and criticise their role in the conflict. This condemnation is undoubtedly crucial to keeping a check on Israeli far-right manoeuvres, and to the possibility of an eventual compromise. Not only have growing Jewish settlements on the West Bank shrunk Palestinian control over the territories, but the current Israeli regime’s open support for the settlers is encouraging violence against Palestinians who have nothing to do with Hamas or anti-Israel jihad.

It is also essential, for anyone who recognises the clear role of religion in the conflict, to delegitimise any canonical justifications of exclusively Judaic claims to the land in the Old Testament, just as it is to highlight the Judaeophobia in the Quran and Hadith. Yet to condemn the settlements on the West Bank, and the Israeli government’s policies, requires by the same token the acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy as a state. A sweeping assertion of Israeli illegality is not only counterproductive, but also inconsistent with the international law usually cited to delegitimise Israeli action in the West Bank.     

However, the most ominous hypocrisy, and one that is especially damaging to any quest for Palestinian freedom, stems from the Muslim left. For one thing, they deceitfully refuse to acknowledge the Arab and Muslim imperialism at the heart of the conflict; for another, they refuse to acknowledge the Judaeophobia rooted in Islamic scripture as the driving force behind the Muslim world’s murderous obsession with Israel. The genocidal rhetoric against the Jews with which Islamic scriptures are brim-full, and which is often echoed at Palestine protest rallies even in the West, is the predominant motivation behind Muslim animosity towards Israel. In Hamas, this animosity finds its most bloodthirsty expression. The leftist postcolonial apologia of their actions provides the cover of victimhood that sustains Islamist violence.

Even so, what makes support for Hamas by self-identified ‘pro-Palestine’ sections truly bizarre is that the jihadist group is not just indirectly responsible for Gaza’s plight, nor is it merely using civilian inhabitants of Gaza as human shields. Rather, Hamas has actively killed Palestinians to maintain its stranglehold over the population. From gunning down supporters and members of political rivals Fatah to brutally massacring dissenters in Gaza, the group has thrived on Palestinian dead bodies.

Furthermore, like many other jihadist groups in the Muslim world, the rise of Hamas was facilitated by Western powers and indeed Israel itself at the tail end of the Cold War, in order to counter groups with Soviet sympathies. Thereafter, through funding from the oil-rich Arab world, Hamas leaders have enriched their bank balances, and many, like the current chairman Ismail Haniyeh, are orchestrating Israeli and Palestinian bloodshed from the comfort of Qatar. Hamas, together with its fellow jihadist outfit, Islamic Jihad, has been duly supported by Iran, where the leaders of both groups met this June to plot the ‘most efficient way to end the more than 75 years of occupation’ along with the Shia jihadist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. The plan that ensued, punctuated by the gory events of 7 October, was designed to derail the ongoing normalisation of ties between Israel and the Arab world. As recently as September, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman had underlined that official diplomatic ties were ‘closer’ than ever. Tragically, the present conflict has dealt a blow to these diplomatic efforts.

In addition to the glorification of jihad against Israelis, what also binds Hamas and its leftist apologists is their condemnation of the diplomatic recognition of Israel on the part of Arab and Muslim states, a move initiated by the Abraham Accords in 2020. For over eight decades, since the 1937 Peel Commission report suggested the creation of a Jewish homeland, the violent Arab rejection of it has superseded any endeavour to form a Palestinian one. Even until the Six-Day War in 1967, the West Bank and Gaza were under Jordanian and Egyptian control; the idea that a Palestinian homeland might be created in those territories, even one that was temporary and conditional to future expansionary ambitions, was never promoted.

At the heart of the ongoing conflict in the region is the fact that different religious groups are claiming exclusive control over much of the same territory. These opposing claims are irreconcilable. However, one way to resolve the dilemma might be to allow Muslims and Jews to share collective control over certain parts of the land, most notably in Jerusalem, while holding other parts exclusively. I suspect that this will indeed be the means of resolution in the long term – though not until more blood has needlessly been spilt.

The collective Arab-Muslim acceptance of Israel has long been the sure move that would ultimately ensure Palestinian freedom. Unfortunately, it is the puritanical proponents of ‘free Palestine’, whether the jihadists or their apologists, who have rallied, politically or militarily, to practically deny any bid for that freedom by denying Israel’s right to exist. Even among the more reconciliation-minded of these ideologues, it is the rise of the Israeli right and its repudiation of the two-state solution that they view as the deal-breaker, and not the fact the Jewish state has been surrounded in the region by those propagating their own genocidal version of a single, Arab state.

In this way, the Islamist and leftist dream of Israel’s extermination, which symbolises the salvation of their respective ideologies, has long treated Palestinian lives as fodder – no matter if treaties signed by Egypt and Jordan with Israel underlined the potential of peace deals in the region. Today, both Jordan and Egypt are likelier to welcome Israelis than Palestinians, with King Abdullah II refusing to take refugees and Egypt having sealed its border with Gaza since 2007. The lack of even a whisper of condemnation of Egypt or Jordan in rallies for Palestine makes it easy to understand how such rallies can be interpreted as being targeted specifically at Israel, and at Israel alone.

Even so, despite the hysterical ideologies at the heart of the long-running Israeli-Arab conflict, and the existence of countless volumes underlining the complexities of the conflict, the solution is still set to be as arbitrarily imposed as the problem was. While the Hamas-initiated war might postpone the Saudi-led acceptance of Israel, the deal will happen soon. As has long been maintained by Mohamed bin Salman, this deal is likely to lead to the creation of an autonomous Palestine as well, especially since Riyadh wants to maintain its leadership over the Muslim world.

Unfortunately for the Palestinians, what they will eventually get is likely to be a fraction of what they could have attained decades ago through reconciliation, while a wish for such reconciliation is scarcely detectable in the rallying cries of those claiming to be the well-wishers of Palestine. Reconciliation and a two-state solution are also likely to come in the aftermath of a torpedoed Gaza and an enormous loss of Palestinian lives. Meanwhile, those on the ideological left, along with the Islamists, persist in their hate-mongering rhetoric, unwilling to acknowledge how their disdain of compromise is contributing to the bloodshed of Palestinians and Israelis alike.  

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Religious dogma inevitably hinders progress. Theological codification, in turn, institutionalises societal decay. Today, nowhere is this more starkly visible than in Muslim communities.

Much of what ails the Muslim world today is rooted in Islamic text. From the subjugation of women to violence against freethought, many of the human rights abuses in Muslim-majority countries are justified via Islamic scripture and jurisprudence.

Democracy remains sidelined in these countries, with even aspiring secular states granting constitutional sovereignty to Islam. The glaring lack of modern Muslim contributions to science, technology and global development owes much to the Quranic undermining of the value of life in this world, in turn upholding a fixation with a collectively imagined ‘afterlife’.

Yet merely stating these obvious, not to mention ominous, realities can get critics accused of ‘Islamophobia’, even when the critics themselves come from within Muslim communities. This refusal by the community at large to acknowledge the symptoms naturally hinders any cure for the ailment: the imposition of Islam on Muslims.

Vedic faiths such as Hinduism allow for intrinsic dissenting space within the religious domain, while some Christian and Jewish traditions have been able to forge identities that are not bound by literal adherence to their scriptures. Muslims, meanwhile, are forced to accept absolute Islamic authority, even if they individually lack canonical devotion – leading lives in accordance with the scriptures – or ritual practice. This approach not only sustains Islamic inertia in Muslim communities, it intrinsically views any irreverence of Islam as something alien.

From Taslima Nasrin to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, many of the staunchest critics of Islam from within the tradition have not only had their books banned in Muslim countries, they have been discredited as outcasts. Their own critiques of Islam seem to reciprocate this rejection by betraying the parlance of an outsider, sometimes showing the same disdain for Muslims as they would for Islam. Salman Rushdie, the attack on whom in August was another grim reminder of the price of mocking Islam, has long been pigeonholed as a ‘blasphemer of Muhammad’, despite decades’worth of writings about the Indian subcontinent, including its multi-pronged identity crises.

The security threats facing Rushdie over four decades explain why those Muslim-heritage authors who have focused the entirety of their writings on the rejection of Islam, such as Ibn Warraq and other vocal ex-Muslims, have had to use pseudonyms to dodge Islamic blasphemy codes and the violence that inevitably follows. These authors too are dismissed as unrepresentative voices, even as anonymous atheism escalates across Muslim countries. This has meant that the overwhelming majority of the writing and scholarship on Islam that is produced worldwide, including in the West, continues to be done from within the confines of the religion.

A common theme among these contemporary thinkers arguing for Islamic modernity, including Reza Aslan, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Shahab Ahmed and Mustafa Akyol, is the endeavour to stretch the restrictive boundaries of Islam, but not to erase them. Even when thinkers such as Abdolkarim Soroush challenge scriptural authority, they do so from the perspective of human fallibility, not as a rejection of divinity: in other words, they justify contentious Islamic commandments in terms of the limitations of human comprehension and not in terms of the absence of a supernatural origin. Thus Muslim authors, from Islamists to modernists, continue to treat almost identically held Islamic doctrines as the starting point of their arguments. This is also why the ‘Medina state’, traditionally the first Islamic regime built by Muhammad, continues to be presented as a superlative embodiment of both an Islamic and a secular realm by the ideologically antipodal advocates of the same religion.

The treatment of the much touted ‘Golden Age of Islam’ is no different. There is no doubt of the significance of Arab and Muslim contributions towards science and philosophy between the 9^th and 15^th centuries AD, but that had little do with Islamic scriptures. All attributions of scientific advancement of that time to the Quran or Hadith (the sayings of Muhammad) depend on a kind of ‘Texas sharpshooter fallacy’, with the credit being claimed after the inventions and discoveries had been made.

Meanwhile, many of the practitioners of Islamic thought and jurisprudence, such as Abu Hanifa, Maalik Ibn Anas, Ibn Idrees Shafiee, Ahmad ibn Hambal, Ibn Abi Aqil, and Ibn al-Junayd, continue to be identically venerated as absolute authorities in Sunni and Shia Islam, and much of today’s Islamist hegemony is rooted in their writings and the schools of thought they founded. Yet it was the rationalist, not the religious, philosophy that was the most noteworthy contribution of the early Muslim authors to global thought. For which, many of the humanist Muslim philosophers were targeted as heretics.

A paradigm case is the 12^th century philosopher Ibn Rushd, Latinised as Averroes, who has been dubbed by many the father of Western secular thought. Rushd argued for pluralism in Islamic jurisprudence. His challenge to Islamic orthodoxy resulted in his being banished from Cordoba. Thus, while Ibn Rushd continued to inspire Western philosophy and political thought in the Middle Ages, his works remained largely sidelined in the Muslim world until the 19^th century.

Like Ibn Rushd, many early Muslim rationalists, such as Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi, were deemed heretics. Most notable among their critics were Al-Ghazali and Ibn-e-Tamiyyah – two of the theologians that have had the longest-lasting impact on Muslim thought and continue to be cited to substantiate Islamist politics. Similarly shunned were the Muʿtazila, the rationalists that challenged Quranic literalism and sought to subordinate theology to reason between the 8^th and 10^th centuries in what today is Iraq, inspiring modern liberal theologians like Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd.

Looking at the fate of even those rational thinkers of the time who did not explicitly reject Islam or theism, and who were largely looking to reconcile science and reason, it is clear that irreverent scepticism and freethought were not exactly embraced even in the celebrated periods of Islamic rule.

Today, it is common in the Islamic world to eulogise past empires from the Ummayad to the Ottoman, as well as the ‘Golden Age of Islam’. But this narrative betrays an academic revisionism which enforces an Islamophilic understanding of the Muslim past and present. This reintepretation of history is taking place, while at the same time the cultural relativist narratives of Orientalism and ‘Islamophobia’ are used to silence criticism or enquiry into Islam for ideological reasons. Intellectual progress in the Muslim world is currently hindered by scholarly bias in favour of Islam and its history, where making the obvious link between jihadism and Islam, or probing the veracity of claims in Islamic tradition, is deemed to be targeting Muslims as a whole. To change this, Muslim heritage thinkers not only need to embrace rationalism, but also to rekindle irreverence for Islam. In fact, the long history of Muslim countries contains many examples of irreverence and the questioning of religion.

One notable example was the 9^th-century philosopher, Abu Bakr al-Razi, a deist who criticised Islam and mocked the very idea of Quranic revelations. In Fi al-Nubuwwat (On Prophecies) he challenges the Quranic claim that a text like it cannot be produced:

‘Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly… You are talking about a work [the Quran] which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation.’

Al-Razi’s contemporary Ibn Al-Rawandi was an outspoken antitheist, described by historians as someone who upheld ‘atheistic ideas, the negation of Allah, the denial of Quranic prophecy, and the vilification of the prophets’. His Kitab al-Zumurrud (The Book of the Emerald) is presented as a theological dialogue in which he is a participant, called ‘the heretic’, arguing that ‘Muhammad’s own presuppositions and systems show that religious traditions are not trustworthy. The Jews and Christians say that Jesus really died, but the Quran contradicts them.’

Abu al-Alaa al-Maarri, a renowned 10^th-century poet and anti-religion deist, used parody and sarcasm in his assault on Islam, even satirising the Quran in Al-Fuṣul wa al-Ghayat (‘Paragraphs and Periods’). A famous couplet of his in Arabic is translated as:

‘Muslims are stumbling, Christians all astray,
Jews wildered, Magians far on error’s way.
We mortals are composed of two great schools
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools.’

Abu Nuwas also used satire in his poetry in the 8^th century, not just to target the Abbasid Caliphate, but even to express mockery for Islamic scriptures via homoeroticism. In one exchange he is reported to have used Quranic verses to woo a male lover.

As with much of early Islamic history, there is debate over the accuracy of the reported heresies that many of these dissidents, and others like them, were charged with. Their successors have often attributed their blasphemies to lies made up by rivals, or sectarian attacks, so as to sanitise those critiques that could be reconciled with Islam.

Conversely, there also are question marks over the sincerity – not to mention authenticity – of those rationalists who worked within boundaries of permitted Islam. Conflating deism or pantheism with Islamic characteristics could simply have been a means to avoid being censored and attacked, or even to make their ideas palatable for realms immersed in Islamic theology. The Egyptian philosopher Abdel Rahman Badawi argued in ‘From the History of Atheism in Islam’ that some sceptics steered clear of targeting belief in Allah as a whole, since it made their works likelier to be banished. This was the case with many anti-theistic ideas of the time that have only managed to survive till today via literature that counters those critiques.

Today, the ideological self-confinement of Muslim thought within Islamic boundaries is likewise an exercise in self-preservation and acceptability. Certainly, the attempt to reconcile religion with modernity can aid progress in Muslim countries. For example, it should not require complete rejection of Islam for aspiring Muslim scientists to deny the Quranic description of a flat earth, as long interpreted by Islamic scholars, even as recently as the 20^th and 21^st centuries. However, to seek to confine all intellectual enquiry within the bounds of Islam, however widely interpreted, is to prevent ideological pluralism. This in turn will keep Muslim freethought outside the realms of acceptability. In other words, as long as enquiry in Muslim countries is required to be sanctioned by religion, it will be limited in what it can achieve.

The authorities who hinder freethinking about Islam in this way, whether through sharia enforcement or via the ‘liberal’ denial of space for Islamic dissent, are actively suppressing the progress of Muslim thought. In doing so, they are hindering the intellectual growth of a quarter of the global population. It is only through unabashed irreverence and unapologetic rejection that Islam will find its due place in the modern world. That will finally allow Muslims to collectively embrace secular laws, to make intellectual progress on a par with other advanced countries, and to conduct their lives free from the hindrance of theological doctrine.

Today, however, whether in Islamist theocratic regimes like Iran, the now ostensibly liberalising Arab monarchies, or the heavily Islamised (though officially secular) democracies such as Indonesia, Islam remains a source of absolute power in the vast majority of Muslim states. The first step on the path to Muslim freethought needs to be a root-and-branch reform of the Islamic regimes themselves.  

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‘I’m offended by that….’ was the startled response I got from a fellow teacher. I’d raised concern in a department meeting. A student had been coming to school with her face concealed behind a niqab. I said that children shouldn’t have their faces covered in school.

Eyebrows were raised. Lips were pursed.

‘So…. Anyway…’

The ‘discussion’ was over.

I couldn’t help a final retort… ‘Be offended, then. It will do you some good.’

Admittedly conceited – and childish – I was sincere. I wanted my colleague, with whom I normally had an excellent relationship, to ‘feel’ the sharp jab of offence and consider, really, what had spurned it. After all, pain is so often a precursor to change, or at least to reflection – I hoped.

It was October, and for a month, a new, 16-year-old Year 12 student of Bengali heritage had been coming to our east London school wearing niqab – an Islamic face covering. She was a new student. Nobody had ever seen her face. She just arrived wearing it. Nobody said anything. We prided ourselves at this school, a recently established free school in east London, on our reflective, progressive ethos. Yet as far as this student’s approach was concerned, any sense of reflection or progress was hard to find.

I raised my concerns. On a practical, safeguarding level alone, it was a worry. How could the school know the student was who they claimed to be? Sixth formers have branded uniforms and carry photo identity cards for a reason. Then, of course, there’s the ethical quagmire around the whole ‘covering of women’ issue.

‘Just get over it. It’s their culture,’ I was told by a colleague.

‘Whose culture, exactly? Niqabs are a Gulf tradition and about as Bengali as the didgeridoo. And we don’t have a problem policing “culture” when it comes to the fashion choices of other minorities’ – is what I would have responded, had the conversation been allowed.

Meanwhile, other students were starting to follow suit. A handful of girls – all of Bengali heritage – were now coming in to school in niqab. For some reason, it seemed to be fine for them to do so intermittently: some days a student in my Year 12 English Literature class would wear a niqab, other days she wouldn’t. On the days when she did, her height and voice were the only ways I could identify her. She was quiet and of average size, so I couldn’t be certain who she was on the days that she did come in covered. My go-to approach was by process of elimination via the class register, which didn’t seem satisfactory or safe.

Then the Muslim boys, in disobedience of the school dress code, started to come in to school in thobe – long gowns traditionally worn by Muslim men. The school’s management team buried their heads deeper in the sand. Apparently, Muslim students could bend the rules, while others would get detentions for wearing trainers or donning ‘sculpted’ haircuts.

Any time I brought up this Islamic exceptionalism, papers were shuffled, eyes were averted and excuses made. Being of part-Bengali heritage myself gave me a certain latitude to be franker than others, but the mostly white, middle class staff room – normally a cacophony of ‘decolonising the curriculum’, ‘white privilege’ and ‘women’s rights’ – was silent on this issue, even though it blatently involved privileging one group of students over the rest.

And we all know why.

For the same reason I have to write this article under a pseudonym. The same reason a Yorkshire teacher and his family are still in hiding after showing the wrong cartoons to his class. It is ‘Islamophobia’ in the literal sense: teachers and schools are scared of Islam. Batley Grammar, protests at the gates, online furore, death threats, Samuel Paty, being labelled by colleagues as ‘intolerant’, ‘racist’, ‘offensive’. Schools are terrified of doing the wrong thing – so we do nothing.

And the worst symptom of this fear? Silence. In order to counter the unresponsiveness of my colleagues, I contacted my Head and other senior management via email to outline my concerns. There was no reply. Eventually, when I encountered my Head in the staff room, he nervously agreed that the school needed to ‘have a conversation’ about these issues.

That was four years ago. Since then, the cultural stand-off has only become more entrenched. The Muslim students effectively wear what they want, leave lessons to pray when they want, separate themselves according to gender when they want. They excuse themselves – on cultural grounds – from assemblies celebrating ‘controversial’ topics such as Pride month. Classrooms are commandeered in break times as ‘safe spaces’ and ‘prayer rooms’, segregated by gender, ethnicity and religion.

The staff pat themselves on the back for their ‘tolerance’ while simultaneously wringing their hands when the same students express intolerance on issues such as women’s rights, homosexuality, censorship and evolution – which they often dismiss as being inappropriate, ‘Western colonial’ content. But still nobody wants to have a conversation about it. Or even to ask what kind of message we as a school send when one group of students is allowed to create its own dress codes, curate its own curriculum, crowbar its ideas on gender and sexuality into classrooms.

While there may be some merit to certain cultural accommodations, the fear and silence that surround the whole situation are the most worrying aspect of all. Teachers today cannot even talk about the repercussions of allowing one particular group to break the rules applicable to everyone else, for fear of causing ‘offence’. What hope do future generations have?

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