Surely it's obvious that a secular state is the only way to preserve religion?
I know that sounds ridiculous on the surface. Maybe it's ridiculous at its root; I don't claim to be an intellectual, just a reasonably intelligent woman living in the West in the 21st Century. I am the product of my upbringing, my community, my reading and myself, and so I cannot help but have my opinions steeped in my experiences.
It's slow at work today so I've been trawling Melanie Phillips' Spectator blog. Mostly because I once was briefly acquainted with her son, but also because I read something or other which referenced Israel and she was the first person who popped into my head.
I find her someone with whom it is difficult to agree to disagree. She is regularly either uncomfortably right or disquietingly wrong about whatever she is talking about. Even when she is making some of her more eye-opening (and by this I mean the eyes are opened and the eyebrows raised, not that she has convinced me of the truth of her words) and alarming statements, she is full of passion which can sometimes be taken for being embittered. She reminds me of Ashley's best friend Dan, who questions why people think he is vengeful simply because he doesn't believe in proportional response. In his, paraphrased from memory, words:
"If someone hurts you, if the little country messes with the powerful one, then you don't calculate how much to hurt them in return. When they took a swing at you and only left bruises, they still meant to hurt, to kill. So you don't just shove back; you obliterate."
I can't say I entirely agree with his viewpoint, and I'm not, at this point, going to go into why. It just illustrates that sense of bullish principle that I find in Phillips' writing as well.
As a Jewish journalist, one might expect a reasonable amount about Judaism and Israel. But the post that struck me (and lead to my title pronouncement) was one defending the rights of two Christian preachers - one, allegedly, a convert from Islam - who were seen out of an area of Birmingham where they were preaching by a Muslim PCO (Police Community Support Officer) on the grounds that it was a Muslim area and this was "hate crime". They were warned that if they came back and were assaulted, well, "they were warned".
Now there are a whole number of issues here.
1. What the hell is a Muslim area? There are Muslim countries but within a country that defends free speech (albeit nominally a Christian country) there are no demarcated areas. People can practice their faith wherever the hell they want.
2. Police should be dealing with the perpetrators, not the victims. If they think violence is likely to erupt, they should deal with the causes of that.
But that's a specific case. What it showed, more generally, is the dangerous gap between offence and defence.
At what point does the innocent, non-violent, perhaps hopeless practice of one religion become offensive to another? Nailing a pig's head to an Asian community centre as happened earlier this week? That's a hate crime. It's disgusting. It takes a particular element it knows to be forbidden and unclean to a particular faith and culture and forces it upon those people with the specific aim of hurting, offending and discouraging those people. Hence the "go home" signs that accompanied it. Intention has a lot to do with the hurt, and since nailing pig heads to the wall isn't really common practice in any culture it cannot be explained away by any other argument.
Had the two Christian men been trying to convert by preaching that the Muslim people in the area were 'wrong', I would also have taken a step back. Of course, sticks and stones, but we label other kinds of name-calling as offensive and abusive. They were not doing such a thing as far as anyone knows (I'm happy to be corrected on this point if anyone knows better). I'd still be inclined to leave them to it, and I'd still offer them protection because we have this wonderful thing known as "freedom of speech" (or we like to think we do) but I'd disagree with their aims.
In the end we cannot, if we have any faith in the land we live in, expect the law to take sides. There will be times, by the very nature of things, when people will clash over beliefs. The law must protect everyone, so it cannot be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Baha'i... etc. etc.
How can the law decide whether it is an offence, for example, for a Jewish person to hear words said on the street that they do not agree with?
Using the excuse that it is an offence under that person's faith's law isn't good enough. It cannot protect a person of another faith, so it's not strong enough as universal law.
As a Christian, I am not interested in living in a Christian country, although under John Locke's version of tacit consent I have agreed to this. In an ideal world, I would be interested in living in a country where I can practice my faith for as long as and as overtly as I choose. I would expect the law to curtail me only if I deliberately and premeditatedly offended or physically hurt another person.
Recently, with the furore over the Archbishop of Canterbury's words on including elements of Shariah law in the UK, I was watching a debate programme in which a Muslim man explained patiently that Shariah law protected women, allowed faster divorces, etc. To him I say: Great! It sounds like there are elements that ought to be present in a modern, egalitarian society. We can't have a religious law for a mixed population and Muslim women shouldn't be the only ones offered this protection. Let's campaign together to change the secular law to accommodate these excellent concepts.
Christianity is the modern whipping boy. In some cases, defensive, angry Christians, who completely misinterpret turning the other cheek (in my opinion), spring up to demand protection. Sorry, folks, but you don't need protecting. You really don't. I get just as irritated with the stupidity of some of the atheist arguments and roll my eyes just as hard when people spout that bullshit about religion having "killed the most people". (Tell it to Stalin, the great, murderous atheist of the 20th Century). My point is I have the choice of answering those arguments or refraining from getting involved in the debate. I don't need to loudly trumpet my offence because I'm too busy discussing it rationally with my friends, my family and my God.
At the moment I am highly irritated by the situation in Greece where two gay couples will be prosecuted for taking advantage of a loophole in the law that doesn't state the gender of those being married. They wed, and now they will be taken to court over it because the law was inadequately stated. And why would the government want to protect the inadquate law? Because they're all Greek Orthodox Christians. And they're legislating in a Christian way. I shake my head, and wait for them to catch up with reality.
When will people stop behaving like children? When will they realise that "fair" is not stopping other people from doing something you disagree with but allowing them to live a free(ish) life?
It's not that I don't know that all ethics is essentially based on what you agree with. But the things that we - almost universally - don't agree with are things that physically or materially disadvantage someone, and there's not a religion or ethical atheist group in the world that I can think of who would have a problem with protecting people against those crimes. We already have the universal agreement. Now can we have the universal agreement to disagree?
And why do I make the claim that I do in the title? Because in a world where there are no longer many places that are exclusively one faith, pushing back and forth over minor issues is only going to lead to more people saying "bugger this for a game of soldiers, religions are full of mentalists" and perpetuating the nonsense that is said about religions until the practice of all faiths is banned. In the case of many a rabid atheist, that's exactly what they want. I don't see why those of us who have faith need play into their hands by constantly wailing and gnashing our teeth. We must accept that if we want our own faith to survive, we must leave room for someone else's and be ruled by laws that only make reference to faith insofar as guaranteeing freedom of non-harmful practice.
Update: Boy threatened with legal action for saying Scientology is a 'cult'. Scientologists aren't the first religious types to try stamping all over free speech, but like most people protesting too much (like those Catholics who get outraged over Harry Potter) they end up looking rather ridiculous. This is not a new story, but I wanted to add Caitlin Moran's comments:
Aside from the fact that if we ignored our brains and filtered this story purely through our dumb animal emotions, it felt a bit as if Tom Cruise was about to throw a child in jail - which was obviously quite exciting - you do have to ask, what is happening to this country? Have we turned into a bunch of wet nuns? First, we should be thrilled that we've got at least one teenage kid up, fully dressed, philosophically engaged and able to spell. Secondly, I'm embarrassed that all the grown-up liberal countries such as Canada and Denmark are laughing at us.
