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.

It is becoming more and more typical for politicians in Britain to whip up religious sentiments to win over Muslim votes as the country prepares for the general election on 4 July. Since Muslims’ religious sentiments are currently—and profoundly—entwined with what is happening in Gaza, a political party’s stance on this issue might determine how much support it receives in areas with a significant number of Muslim voters. Unsurprisingly, then, some politicians have started using their support for Gaza as a bargaining chip to win Muslim votes.

In a video that has gone viral online, Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, makes an appeal to a Muslim audience (one apparently composed solely of men), promising that her party will recognise the state of Palestine if they support her.

Lamentably, such political theatrics seem to have emboldened some fringe elements within British Muslim communities who seek to use religious identity to stir up division in British society.

The Muslim Vote (TMV), which targets ‘seats where the Muslim vote can influence the outcome’ and aims to create ‘a powerful, united force of 4 million acting in unison’, seems to aim to weaponise religious identity in a bid to gain political clout. With its list of approved candidates—i.e. those who can be counted on to promote TMV’s agenda—and its obsession with religious identity, TMV seems to think it represents all British Muslims, and it seeks to capitalise on the ongoing conflict in Gaza to sway them.

It should therefore come as no surprise that highly contentious Muslim organisations such as Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend) and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB)—both of which are under investigation for extremism—are backers of TMV. Indeed, Communities Secretary Michael Gove has even said in Parliament that MAB’s ‘Islamist orientation and views’ were a cause for concern. 

A video posted (and since removed) by 5Pillars, a group that was described by Sara Khan in 2017 as ‘Islamist’, shows Asrar Rashid, a Muslim cleric, publicly endorsing two Muslim candidates contesting important Birmingham seats against the Labour Party. One of them, the British-Kashmiri activist Shakeel Afsar, had this to say during the controversy over the film The Lady of Heaven in 2022:

‘The city of Birmingham will not tolerate the disrespect of our prophet (pbuh), and there will be outcomes from your actions. You will have repercussions for your actions. We have been trained from birth that we must defend the honour of our prophet and we will lay our life on the line.’

Are such sectarian rabble-rousers really representative of all British Muslims? It seems not, because they are deliberately fostering antagonism against Muslim candidates who refuse to toe the line.

Meanwhile, some shameless politicians are openly embracing Muslim identitarianism in their bid to gain power. George Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Britain, was recently caught on camera using the language of religious demagoguery to browbeat Muslims into not voting for Labour:

‘Do you think God is listening to someone who is praying one day and voting for Keir Starmer the day before? What kind of a believer would that be?’

Imagine those who, out of a simple desire to be decent religious people, might feel pressured—even threatened—to comply with his demands. This is blatant religious coercion. Radical provocateurs, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, are openly employing such coercion to win votes. The rise of this sort of rhetoric in a secular democracy is alarming.

Pressure like this might even be illegal. Section 114A of the Representation of the People Act states that it is an offence to influence elections by ‘causing spiritual injury to, or placing undue spiritual pressure’ on voters. Yet, in the face of Galloway’s threatening religious rhetoric, the authorities are, staggeringly, silent.

In Islamic theocracies like Iran, such undemocratic discourse is very familiar. In Iran, religious clerics are the ultimate power, not the people—and the Iranian people, who have been protesting against the government since 2022, know this all too well. How shameful that we in Britain seem to be going down the same path, embracing theocratic rhetoric in our supposedly free and fair elections.

Some media pundits attempt to simplify the situation by claiming that the British Muslim vote is being driven away from the mainstream political parties over the issue of Gaza. But saying that there is no such thing as a ‘Muslim vote’ is naïve: the problem goes much deeper than just the flashpoint of Gaza. The Muslim vote is a fact of British politics now, thanks to years of campaigning on the part of Islamists to build a theocratic voting base by weaponising religious identity. This is sinister and will have dire consequences for our secular democracy.

It is true that many British Muslims are concerned about things such as employment, housing, educational opportunities, and a bright, prosperous future. However, it is wrong to underestimate the influence of religious coercion in Muslim communities. It has long been an open secret that religious zealots in Britain have bullied and harassed people into conforming to their ways.

During the 2021 by-election in Batley and Spen, a group of Muslim women wrote an anonymous open letter in which they condemned the ‘shameful’ behaviour of certain self-proclaimed Muslim community leaders who created chaos during the election campaign. The letter added that these are ‘the same faces that have plagued our area…for many years.’ That these women felt they had to write anonymously for fear of being targeted is a testament to just how deeply our politics has been infected by religious bullying.

This explains the conduct of the many British politicians who continue to focus their attention on the radical voices of self-appointed community spokesmen as if such people actually represented their community. Muslims who oppose these ‘spokesmen’ and their heinous acts of intimidation have been silenced, and those who aspire to integrate into British culture more broadly are either shunned or disregarded, or worse.

Now, groups like TMV feel confident enough to issue lists of demands to Keir Starmer, which, they say, he must act on if he is to win the support of Muslims. That these demands are simply part of a particular religio-political agenda is clear enough to see. The goal seems to be to disrupt conventional electoral politics and create parties that prioritise religious identity over secular democracy—not to provide a voice for British Muslims.

It is time for British politicians to move past polarising identity politics and focus on the country’s most pressing issues, which impact people from all walks of life, including those from Muslim communities: lawlessness, violence, extremism, and the cost of living, to name but a few.

British Muslims should also realise the perils of being silent in the face of toxic religious identity politics. The so-called community leaders have long monopolised religious and political discourse, painting themselves as representative of all British Muslims—all the while disregarding concerns over the rights of women and other vulnerable people in Muslim communities.

Instead of continuing to foster the culture of fear and division that is already being cultivated in our society, voters should support candidates based on their ideas and their qualifications to be public servants, and politicians should be ready to serve the people of Britain regardless of their religious affiliations, rather than being held hostage to religious demands.

The best course of action for all of us is to promote a shared, inclusive identity that can bring people from all backgrounds together, rather than continuing to cut ourselves off from our fellow citizens on the basis of religion. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that British democracy depends upon it.

Related reading

The Michaela School and religious exceptionalism, by Khadija Khan

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

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

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

Silence of the teachers, by Nath Jnan

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

The perils of dropping a book, by Noel Yaxley

Britain’s blasphemy heritage, by David Nash

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

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

Rap versus theocracy: Toomaj Salehi and the fight for a free Iran, by Noel Yaxley

The ‘Women’s Revolution’: from two activists in Iran, by Rastine Mortad and Sadaf Sepiddasht

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

When does a religious ideology become a political one? The case of Islam, by Niko Alm

The post Islamic identity politics is a threat to British democracy appeared first on The Freethinker.

The UK that goes to the polls on 4 July will be the most religiously diverse in election history. Less than half the population of England and Wales describe themselves as ‘Christian’. Most people in Scotland are now non-religious. And there are now more Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland, but even here we are seeing more and more people turning away from religion.

This sustained shift in demographics demands a radical response from the state. Entrenched Christian privilege and a laissez-faire approach to social cohesion are ill-suited to a religiously diverse, pluralistic population. That’s why the National Secular Society is calling on the next Government to seriously rethink the role of religion in public and political life.

Here’s what we want to see from the incoming Government.

Secular, inclusive education

Schools play a key role in shaping future generations and fostering a culture of tolerance and understanding. But faith schools build division into the system.

A third of all schools are faith schools. This isn’t sustainable. Already, the prevalence of religious schools means many nonreligious families have no choice other than a faith-based education for their children. This needs to be addressed.

Dividing children by religion leads to ethnic segregation, too. The next Government should commit to phasing out faith-based education to better encourage integration and ensure that every child can receive a secular education.

The calling of the election means that the outgoing Government’s plans to abolish the 50% admissions cap in faith-based academies hit the buffers. The Conservative manifesto revives plans to lift the cap and allow faith schools to apply 100% religious selection, paving the way for yet more discriminatory faith schools.

Worryingly, Labour didn’t oppose plans to scrap the cap and will come under pressure from regressive religious groups to reinstate this policy. They should resist.

Religious selection means faith schools are not only less religiously and ethnically diverse; they admit fewer children from poorer backgrounds, children in care, and children with special educational needs and disabilities. Any government interested in tackling unfairness and discrimination in education can’t afford to ignore the pernicious effects of faith-based admissions. That’s why it is alarming that Keir Starmer has said a Labour Government would be ‘even more supportive of faith schools’ than the current Government.

In all state-funded schools, even the two-thirds without a religious character, daily acts of ‘broadly Christian’ collective worship are required by law. This law, dating back to 1944, has no moral or educational basis. Teachers don’t support it and many schools flout it. Imposing worship in schools undermines children’s freedom of religion or belief and opens the door to evangelism in schools. We will encourage the next Government to support its repeal as soon as possible.

England’s outdated model of religious education dates back to a similar era. Labour’s plans to modernise the school curriculum must not shy away from reforms to liberate this subject area from the inappropriate control of religious interest groups. All children and young people should have an equal entitlement to an objective and critical education about worldviews, citizenship, and ethics.

We will also push for new legislation to boost Ofsted’s powers to crack down on unregistered religious schools operating illegally. The creation of a register of children not in school is a key part of this. During their time in office, the Conservatives made plenty of encouraging noises but ultimately failed to tackle the problem. The required legislation for a register was in the Schools Bill which was ditched by the Sunak Government in 2022. The Tory manifesto promises to revive the register plans.

Labour’s manifesto makes no such commitment, but the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has previously signalled her support for a home-school register to deliver better oversight of home education, which in too many cases leads to children being indoctrinated with fundamentalist dogma in unsafe and illegal schools. She also says she wants ‘every child to receive a world-class education’. To achieve this, the next Government will need to stand up to religious lobbyists who impede attempts to protect the educational rights of children in independent and unregistered religious schools by spuriously claiming that such attempts violate religious freedom.

Free speech

For all its faults, the Conservative Government has shown willingness to protect the right to free expression. It was slow to do so when Islamic fundamentalists descended on a school in Batley in 2021. But after a parent was left pleading for mercy after her son was involved in the scuffing of a Quran in Kettlethorpe last year, the Home Secretary robustly asserted: ‘We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country.’

A recent recommendation for the creation of guidance to better protect schools and teachers facing blasphemy accusations should be adopted and implemented—as should the recommendation from Sara Khan, the Government’s Independent Advisor on Social Cohesion and Resilience, to create a special unit tasked with responding to ‘flashpoint incidents’ such as blasphemy protests.

The next Government needs to find ways to address anti-Muslim prejudice in ways that don’t impede the freedom to scrutinise and criticise Islamic beliefs, ideas, and practices. It needs to be clear that there is no right not to be offended—and no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion.

In opposition, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, and the Greens have all shown a worrying disregard for free speech by uncritically adopting a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ proposed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)  for British Muslims. The concept of Islamophobia unhelpfully conflates hatred and discrimination against Muslims with criticism of Islam. This blurring is intentional. The silencing of scrutiny, criticism, mockery, and anything deemed ‘offensive’ has been a long-term aim of Islamist groups, some of which have been too close to Labour for comfort. Labour has promised to reverse the Conservatives’ decision to downgrade the monitoring of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate incidents that fall short of criminality. There are also fears that a Labour Government will seek to incorporate the APPG definition into law.

Hindu groups have jumped on the bandwagon, calling on the next Government to criminalise ‘Hinduphobia’. Any attempt to do so will be met with fierce opposition from secularists and free speech campaigners. Resisting the politics of competitive grievances and sectarianism is something the next Government needs to do if Britain is to avoid becoming increasingly fraught with ethnic and religious tensions.

Towards a secular democracy

It makes no sense for one of the most diverse and secularised nations in the world to retain an established religion.

One manifestation of the Church of England’s established status is the twenty-six unelected Anglican clerics sitting as of right as legislators in the House of Lords. In 2022, Keir Starmer called the Lords ‘undemocratic’ and ‘indefensible’. He launched plans drawn up by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to replace the upper chamber with an elected Assembly of the Nations and Regions. The plans would bring a welcome end to reserved seats for bishops.

Despite originally suggesting the plans be implemented within the first five years of a Labour Government, the party is now promising a much more incremental approach. Replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber remains the goal, but the manifesto commits only to ‘immediate modernisation’ of the Lords by introducing an upper age limit of 80 and scrapping hereditary peers. Secularists will be arguing that any immediate modernisation must also include the removal of the archaic, unfair, and undemocratic bishops’ bench.

But we need to go further. A state religion is incompatible with a democracy in which all citizens of every religion and belief are equal. The announcement of the election unfortunately spelt the end of a bill backed by the National Secular Society to disestablish the Church of England.  But we’ll urge the next Government to engage with this long overdue democratic reform to transform the UK into a fully secular democracy, free from religious privilege.

A new administration will bring fresh hope for other necessary reforms, such as assisted dying, making wedding law fairer for all, outlawing caste discrimination, removing the advancement of religion as a charitable purpose, and effectively protecting children from abuse in religious settings.

Ultimately, Britain needs a new political framework to foster unity and keep religious fundamentalism in check by balancing religious freedom with other fundamental human rights. Secularism offers such a framework.

That’s why we’ll be urging the next Government to adopt secularist principles and policies which move us towards a freer and fairer society, where people can live by the creed they choose but where no particular religion or belief is privileged or imposed.

Related reading

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

Secularism and the struggle for free speech, by Stephen Evans

Religion and belief in schools: lessons to be learnt, by Russell Sandberg

The case for secularism (or, the church’s new clothes), by Neil Barber

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

Secularism is a feminist issue, by Megan Manson

Blasphemy and bishops: how secularists are navigating the culture wars, by Emma Park

Bad Religious Education, by Siniša Prijić

Silence of the teachers, by Nath Jnan

The perils of dropping a book, by Noel Yaxley

Britain’s blasphemy heritage, by David Nash

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

‘This is not rocket science’: the Disestablishment of the Church of England Bill 2023, interview with Paul Scriven by Emma Park

The post What secularists want from the next UK Government appeared first on The Freethinker.

As revealed in the new review by the Independent Advisor on Social Cohesion and Resilience Sara Khan, the teacher was utterly failed by the school, police, and political authorities. Their response exposed a severe lack of understanding of the seriousness of blasphemy accusations, and only succeeded in validating and encouraging the demands of the mob.

This is particularly true of Batley Grammar School (BGS), which decided to issue an apology to the parents of every pupil after a single menacing phone call. The apology provided no context or explanation for the lesson’s content, and leaders did not consult the religious studies (RS) teacher before sending it.

This attempt at appeasement actually invited further pressure, legitimising religious outrage by accepting there was something that required an apology. Now faced with agitators outside the school gates, and the sharing of the teacher’s image and personal details online, the school capitulated. Senior leaders denounced the use of the image at a televised press conference, and met several self-appointed ‘community leaders’ – none of whom were parents. They also suspended the teacher, isolating him by preventing communication with his colleagues.

The effect of this ordeal upon the teacher and his family has been severe. He remains in hiding, unable to return home, and living with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts. His children missed months of education, and had to sleep on the floor of squalid temporary accommodation.

Galling as it is to see Batley Multi Academy Trust stand by its actions in the Khan review, schools are under-equipped and under-qualified to manage situations like those faced by BGS. Far less forgivable are the failures of those responsible for defending our democratic freedoms: the local authority Kirklees Council, local MP Tracy Brabin, and West Yorkshire Police.

Kirklees Council, which issued no public statement of any kind during the protests, told the Khan review that they took this decision to maintain their relationship with the local Muslim community. This illustrates an alarmingly ignorant view of Muslims as a homogenous group, with a single viewpoint to which one must defer in the interests of cohesion. In reality, a plurality of views exists amongst British Muslims on every issue and, as the Khan review makes clear, many Muslim parents at Batley did not support the protests.

Brabin’s statement at the time describing protestors’ ‘upset and offence’ as ‘understandable’ and ‘predictable’ betrayed the same ignorance, and a bigotry of low expectations towards British Muslims. Though she issued a meekly worded criticism of the threats and intimidation directed towards the RS teacher some days after her first statement, it was tempered by a simultaneous welcome of the school’s apology and ‘recognition of the offence caused’. Like the council, Brabin validated religious hysteria about a drawing of a human being and sold out the right to free expression in the hope of a quiet life.

The police’s appalling response to the protests is only comprehensible in light of comments made by one anonymous officer to the Khan review, describing how police inadvertently support extremist preachers in the misguided belief that they have a positive relationship with a minority community. Even so, one would have thought the murder of Samuel Paty—beheaded in Paris for teaching a very similar lesson to the one delivered in Batley just six months earlier— would have led police to take the threat to the RS teacher very seriously. Instead, they treated the protests as a low-risk ‘neighbourhood incident’, a baffling decision given the blasphemy-motivated murders of Asad Shah in Glasgow and Jalal Uddin in Rochdale in 2016.

In the Khan review, experienced police officers also criticised the failure to make clear that any threatening, harassing, or intimidatory behaviour against the RS teacher and other school staff would not be tolerated, and that perpetrators would be subject to the full force of the law. To date, no arrests have been made for the harassment the Batley RS teacher experienced.

The events at Batley are not unique. In 2023, a pupil received death threats after a Quran was lightly damaged at a Wakefield school. Once again so-called community leaders used this as an opportunity to whip up tension, leading to representatives from the school, West Yorkshire Police, and the boy’s mother appearing at a local mosque in order to ease tensions. As with Batley, every effort was made to accommodate, appease, and defuse, with very little made to challenge.

In these responses, we see the success of dogmatic religious activists in convincing public bodies that they represent the wider Muslim community, and how the privileging of religious sentiments throughout public life makes it more difficult to challenge fundamentalism.

Only now do some of the lessons of these events finally seem to be sinking in. Action to challenge the fundamentalist threat to our schools is long overdue, and the Khan review’s recommendation to form a specialist unit to support schools which find themselves targeted by religious thugs is a step in the right direction.

But it is not enough. Until we succeed in denying the concept of blasphemy as one which should have any force in our society, or indeed worldwide, events like those in Batley will continue. Yet instead of challenging blasphemy-related extremism, political parties, local government, universities, and civil society promote the nebulous and authoritarian concept of ‘Islamophobia’, which opens the door to criticism and discussion of religion being portrayed as attacks upon individuals. This is little more than a blasphemy law disguised as a diversity and inclusion initiative.

There are signs UK society is coming to terms with the danger and scale of anti-blasphemy violence. Let us hope we can wake up to this threat before any more innocent teachers are left living with post-traumatic stress, or any more individuals are beheaded for asserting their right to freedom of speech.

Editorial note: this piece was originally published on the National Secular Society website on 4 April 2024 and is republished here with permission.

Further reading

Blasphemy in the classroom, by Emma Park (New Humanist)

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

Secularism and the struggle for free speech, by Stephen Evans

Britain’s blasphemy heritage, by David Nash

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

Blasphemy and bishops: how secularists are navigating the culture wars, by Emma Park

Faith Watch, November 2023 and Faith Watch, March 2024, by Daniel James Sharp

The Michaela School and religious exceptionalism, by Khadija Khan

The post Three years on, the lessons of Batley are yet to be learned appeared first on The Freethinker.