Britain being overtaken by "militant secularists"
Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi says we should defend the role of religion in public life
British society is under threat from the rising tide of “militant secularisation” reminiscent of “totalitarian regimes”, a Cabinet minister will warn on Tuesday.
In an historic visit to the Vatican, Baroness Warsi will express her “fear” about the marginalisation of religion throughout Britain and Europe, saying that faith needs “a seat at the table in public life”.
In an article for The Daily Telegraph, the Cabinet Office minister says that to create a “more just society” Britons must “feel stronger in their religious identities”.
The minister, who is also chairman of the Conservative Party, says: “My fear today is that a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies. We see it in any number of things: when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere.
“For me, one of the most worrying aspects about this militant secularisation is that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities.”
Baroness Warsi leads an unprecedented government delegation to the Vatican where she will be received by Pope Benedict for a private audience on Wednesday.
She will be the first foreign minister to deliver an address to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which trains Papal diplomats, and the party will stay in the Santa Marta, an official residence in the Vatican for visiting cardinals.
The visit, to mark the 30th anniversary of the re-establishment of full diplomatic ties between Britain and the Vatican, follows the Pope’s successful visit to Britain in 2010 when he is said to have been impressed by the Government’s outspoken defence of the importance of religion in public life.
The speech represents one of the most strident defences of the importance of religion by a serving British minister. It comes days after the High Court ruled that local councils could not hold prayers during meetings. There have also been recent cases of public sector workers being banned from displaying Christian symbols at work.
David Cameron welcomed the visit. He said: “Our relationship with the Holy See is an important one and it speaks powerfully of the positive contribution faith can make to all societies.
“Sayeeda Warsi has consistently made the case for a deeper understanding of faith by the British Government so I am delighted that she will be taking this message to the Vatican personally.”
In the speech, Baroness Warsi, the country’s first female Muslim Cabinet minister, is expected to draw strongly on her background to illustrate the importance of religion. She grew up in a Northern mill town where Christian values were important during her youth. The minister has decided to send her own daughter to a Christian school.
The Conservative chairman will say that Christianity is a vital part of British life and warns of the dangers of eroding its importance.
“You cannot extract Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can erase the spires from our landscape,” she will say in her speech.
“I see a great danger to this confident affirmation of religion today. It is what the Holy Father called the 'increasing marginalisation of religion’ during his speech in Westminster Hall. I see it in the United Kingdom and I see it in Europe. Spirituality, suppressed. Divinity, downgraded.
“Where, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, faith is looked down as the hobby of 'oddities, foreigners and minorities’. Where religion is dismissed as an eccentricity because it’s infused with tradition.”
However, Baroness Warsi will call for a more robust discussion between people of different faiths. She says that faith has a “key role” in bridging divides. She will say: “Interfaith dialogue works when we debate our differences, when we wear our beliefs on our sleeves. It’s not about you giving your version of God, and me giving my version of God. And us coming to some watered-down compromise.”
In her speech, the peer will urge that European countries need to be “more confident” about the role of Christianity.
“Our continent needs the zeal of a convert,” she will say. “Not from discovering something new but rediscovering something which has underpinned our civilisations for centuries.”
Last year, the Prime Minister made a flagship speech on the importance of faith. However, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been highly critical of some aspects of Coalition policy, particularly government cuts, prompting criticism by some ministers.
In her article for The Daily Telegraph, Baroness Warsi makes it clear she is not calling for religious leaders to have the final say on government and social matters.
She says: “I am not calling for some kind of 21st century theocracy. Religious faith and its followers do not have the only answer. There will be times when politicians and faith leaders will disagree. What is more, secularism is not intrinsically damaging. My concern is when secularisation is pushed to an extreme, when it requires the complete removal of faith from the public sphere.
“I am calling for a more open confidence in faith, where faith has a place at the table, though not an exclusive position.”
Seven ministers including Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland Secretary and Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, travel to the Vatican on Tuesday. They will be joined by the Archbishop of Westminster. They will meet Holy See officials on Wednesday to discuss issues including human rights and international development.
The delegation will then be received by Pope Benedict XVI — an honour not normally accorded those who are not heads of state or government.
It comes as a report conducted for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) suggested that almost three quarters (74 per cent) of Christians polled agreed that religion should not influence public policy, while only about one in eight (12 per cent) thought it should, the survey found.
It also found that 92 per cent of Christians agreed the law should apply to everyone equally, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.
Just over a quarter (26 per cent) said they completely believed in the power of prayer, with more than one in five (21 per cent) saying they either did not really believe in it or did not believe in it at all.
Almost half (49 per cent) had not attended a church service in the previous 12 months, apart from on occasions such as weddings, funerals and baptisms.
This article appears on the Guardian's Comment is Free (Cif Belief) website today: Religious groups have too much freedom to discriminate
Now that faith groups are to become public service providers, the exemptions they have in British equality law must be narrowed
By Evan Harris
The Guardian has reported on those questioning the wisdom of contracting religious groups to deliver key public services. The government's "big society" initiative – it still seems too unfocused to call it policy – has, as one of its aims, the transfer of the delivery of some public services to voluntary sector providers on a greater scale than is currently the case.
It was envisaged by both this and the previous government that faith groups would be some of the new providers. It seems unjustified to argue against religious organisations providing public services, as it is discriminatory to single out those with a religious ethos for a prohibition on service provision. However, some religious organisations present extra challenges when being considered for the delivery of public services and it would be naive, foolish or perverse to ignore these.
First, they have a special exemption in equality law to discriminate against their employees narrowly on grounds of gender and sexual orientation (for priesthood and leadership roles) and more widely on the basis of religious belief. These exemptions are provided for in the European directive that underpins our anti-discrimination laws in this area. The problem is that the exemptions given in UK law by the last Labour government in the 2003 regulations and then in the 2010 Equality Act are far wider than provided for in the directive.
One of these exemptions is found in schedule 9, paragraph 3 of the 2010 Equality Act, allowing religious organisations to discriminate on the basis of religion in employment, in certain jobs and contexts. The last government faced infraction proceedings from the European Union for failing, unlike all the Catholic Mediterranean states, to properly limit these exemptions. The coalition needs to think more carefully about whether it wants to continue to fight the last government's battles. The concern is not only that workers are being required to sign up to a religious pledge when their job (say, secretary or caretaker) has no real religious element.
What is even more worrying is that staff of an existing secular provider – who make the beds in a hostel, or assist people with benefit claims – will face a faith test when the service and their employment contracts are transferred to a new provider that has a religious ethos. During the passage of the Equality Act, Liberal Democrats (that's me and Lynne Featherstone, now the equality minister) proposed an amendment that specified that religious tests were not to be permitted when delivering public services. This was vigorously opposed by religious leaders and the government. It was silently opposed by the Tories.
Second, our equality laws quite rightly prohibit the discrimination against users of public services on the ground of sexual orientation but the last government failed to extend this to religion.
When Featherstone and I proposed our amendment to prevent this, the then Labour minister Vera Baird argued that this was needed to allow Jewish care homes to function (as an example). Jewish-run care homes will appeal to the Jewish community, will cater to their needs and will fill their places – but they do not require to declare "no Muslims need apply" in order to do this.
Finally, it's not acceptable for a religious (or political) organisation to actively proselytise having been commissioned to deliver a public service, regardless of whether or not it is publicly funded. If religious organisations want to provide, for example, a hostel for the homeless, they must allow users in without needing to attend prayers, say grace or hear a sermon. Many religious organisations will not seek to discriminate or proselytise in this way but the organised lobby is fiercely protective of the latitude it has currently got.
The Liberal Democrats are not prepared to sit back and do nothing in the face of Labour and Conservative failure to protect public service workers and users from the risk of religious persecution. Grassroots members passed a motion at their last conference reiterating our call for narrower religious exemptions in the equality law and that in the meantime contracts with religious providers of public services need to have clear non-discrimination and non-proselytising clauses.
"Prejudice against Muslims in Britain is at an all-time high"
The chairman of the Conservative Party has said prejudice against Muslims in Britain is at an all-time high and has become socially acceptable.
Speaking to the Mercury, Baroness Warsi defended her controversial comments on Islamophobia, the fear of Islam, which were released yesterday.
The contents of a speech, made at Leicester University last night, had been trailed to the media ahead of the event, sparking a debate on Islam in Britain.
In the first major comments on religion by a member of David Cameron's Government, she said Islamophobia was seen by many as normal, and said describing Muslims as either "moderate" or "extremist" fosters growing prejudice.
In our interview, she revealed how she had been the target of racist e-mails since entering the House of Lords in 2007, including receiving one just minutes earlier which read: "Instead of bleating like some Halal lamb being led to slaughter, how about ending the knee-bending to Islam at every opportunity."
She said: "Anti-Islamic sentiment is the last socially acceptable form of bigotry in Britain, and that e-mail is a typical example of the kind of behaviour I face.
"There's a rising level of anti-Islamic hatred in this country. When I get that kind of e-mail, that's being directed at me as a person whose family has a tradition of half a century in Britain."
Lady Warsi, who is the first Muslim woman to attend Cabinet, said she stood by every word of her speech.
"When you're open and honest about problems people know exist then people will make headlines out of it.
"I don't regret any of it."
She said discrimination against Muslims was more acceptable in Britain than ever before, and urged people to be more careful about what they said about the religion.
"People need to take stock of what they're saying and ask, 'if my next door neighbour could hear what I was saying, would they find it acceptable? Would it be okay for me to say these things about Muslims if they were Jewish or black?'"
She said Muslim communities had to organise themselves in the way Jewish communities had in the past, to tackle anti-semitism.
She said: "You can't draw exact examples between Muslim society in Britain today and the Jewish communities of decades gone by, but people used to say that anti-semitism was not really an issue.
"It was only when the British Jewish community started working with the police, evidence was logged, gathering information. Until that point people didn't acknowledge there was a problem. British Muslims need to do the same.
"We need to get beyond asking whether it is happening or whether it is an issue, because it is.
"This isn't a fight to the bottom for who is the biggest victim.
"The reason you have to be careful about your language is because of the potential consequences. We're on a journey as a country. Words can become unacceptable over time.
"Saying someone is moderate or extreme Muslim, you decide whether someone is good or bad based on their religion.
"If someone goes out and starts shouting 'death to Britain' and comes out with loads of crazy statements and wants to do us harm then they are criminals.
"They've become detached from their religion to such an extent that they should be defined by their criminality rather than their beliefs."
Asked whether she still faces regular discrimination, she said: "On the basis of my race? Less so. On the basis of my religion? More so."
Abdulkarim Gheewala, president of the Islamic Education Trust in Leicester, said: "Baroness Warsi's comments are timely and most welcome. No one should be allowed to justify the demonisation of Muslims as a whole, in the name of freedom of expression. We congratulate her for her honest comments."
Read the full speech given by Baroness Warsi at the University of Leicester.
