NEW STATESMAN: AFTER GOD

Once a year or so, New Statesman runs a special issue focusing on religion. I'm a big fan of New Statesman - a subscriber actually - and enjoy it each and every week. The magazine engages with topics of religion and spirituality often and I always find their annual special "God" issue a particular treat.

This week's issue's cover is, "After God: What atheists can learn from believers". Below is an abstract from the New Statesman's website, showcasing the intelligent, reflective and thought-provoking writing to be found in this weeks's magazine on this topic:

Swept away by science and the scathing scrutiny of New Atheists, religion seems to be on the point of extinction, yet billions still cling to it. For our cover story this week, we ask some of the leading “New, New Atheists” – those who “separate their atheism from their secularism” and treat religious heritage as “a treasure trove to be plundered” – if faith has a place in modern life. Here is a preview of each contributor's position:

Alain de Botton: The three elements of religion that a post-religious society should “steal”.

“The challenge facing atheists,” de Botton writes, “is how to separate many ideas and rituals from the religious institutions that have laid claim to them but don’t truly own them ... Secularism is not wrong. It is just that we have too often secularised badly.”

1. New priest

“The most sophisticated response we have yet come up with is psychotherapy ... [But there] is also, in a serious sense, an issue of branding. Therapy is hidden, unbranded, depressing in its outward appearance. The priests had far better clothes, and infinitely better architecture.”

2. New gospels

“So, why does the notion of replacing religion with culture, of living according to the lessons of literature and art as believers live according to the lessons of faith, continue to sound so peculiar to us? The fault lies with academia. Universities are entirely uninterested in training students to use culture as ... a source that can prove of solace to us when confronted by the infinite challenges of existence ...”

3. New churches

“You sometimes hear it said that art museums are our new churches ... The challenge is to rewrite the agendas for our art museums so that collections can begin to serve the needs of psychology as effectively as they served those of theology, for centuries.”

Francis Spufford denounces the “burning simplicities” of New Atheism

This post-Christian puritanism, largely oblivious now of its history, is highly visible in the New Atheism of the 1990s and 2000s, and especially in Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Strange indifference (except at the margins) to all religions except Christianity? Check. Sense of being locked in righteous combat with the powers of darkness? Check. Puritanism, it turns out, can float free of faith and still preserve a vehement world-view, a core of characteristic judgements ...

I don’t expect the puritan call will lose its appeal to the young and the zealous, but maybe we are entering a phase of greater tolerance in which, having abandoned the impossible task of trying to abolish religion, atheists might be able to apply themselves to the rather more useful task of distinguishing between kinds that want to damn you and kinds that don’t.

Jim Al-Khalili: “It is time now for the New, New Atheists”

Believing in a god is fine by me, if it is important to you ... But what I, and many other atheists, take issue with is the arrogant attitude that religious faith is the only means of providing us with a moral compass ...

Our society is no longer predominantly religious. Atheists are the mainstream. This is precisely why we should set out our stall to be more tolerant and inclusive ... The New Atheists have laid the foundations; maybe it is time now for the “New, New Atheists”.

Karen Armstrong: “The biblical God is a starter kit”

Most of us are introduced to God at about the same time as we hear about Santa Claus, but over the years our views of Santa mature and change, while our notion of God often gets stuck at an infantile level ... The biblical God is a “starter kit”; if we have the inclination and ability, we are meant to move on. Religion, too, is a practical discipline in which we learn new capacities of mind and heart. Like premodern philosophy, it was not the quest for an abstract truth but a practical way of life.

Richard Holloway: The former bishop of Edinburgh calls for a “critical sympathy towards religion”

A good approach here is not to try to stop the revelation argument from going round and round but to ask a different question, thus: given that there probably is no God, where did all this stuff come from? To which the obvious answer is that it came from us.

So it’s a mistake to do what most unbelievers usually do at this point, which is to dismiss them as fairy tales ... The word to grasp here is myth: a myth is a story that encodes but does not necessarily explain a universal human experience.

The wrong question to ask of a myth is whether it is true or false. The right question is whether it is living or dead, whether it still speaks to our condition.

NEW STATESMAN: WHO SPEAKS FOR BRITISH JEWS?

This week's issue is a special on the British Jewish experience, with a signature essay by David Cesarani. Also in the issue:

• Ed Miliband on his family's refugee history
• Linda Grant on the Jewish novel
• David Baddiel on identity
• Michael Rosen on his communist childhood
• Will Self on other people's obsession with his Jewishness
• Anthony Julius and David J Goldberg debate anti-Semitism
• Jemima Khan interviews Anne Frank's step-sister, Eva Schloss
• Rachel Shabi and Mehdi Hasan on Muslim-Jewish understanding
• Daniel Trilling on Britain's last anti-Jewish riots
• Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner on Judaism and women's rights
• Bella Freud interviewed
• A short story by Naomi Alderman

All this, plus columns from Nina Caplan, Felicity Cloake, Anthony Clavane, Will Self, Rachel Lichtenstein and Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

NEW STATESMAN: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

In this week's Cover Story, the Archbishop of Canterbury's former press secretary George Pitcher - ousted in the fallout from his New Statesman guest edit - reports on Rowan Williams's struggle against the Church of England traditionalists who run his office.

NEW STATESMAN: THE GOD WARS

To hardline atheists, it is now unreasonable and “dramatically peculiar” to argue that religion is not altogether evil. How did such intolerance become acceptable to rational minds?

THE POWER OF A DANGEROUS IDEA

Secular commentators dismiss religion as a malign force in the world. But from Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi to the Arab spring, faith is inspiring the new peaceful protest. Read Mehdi Hasan's article on the New Statesman website.

Ramadan: a guide for the perplexed

Here's a nice piece from today's Guardian G2 section, published online in the Comment is free: Belief website.

Ramadan: a guide for the perplexed

I'm fasting for Ramadan. It might be a good time to lay to rest some common myths about the whole business

By Mehdi Hasan

I crawled out of bed this morning at 2.45am, exhausted and bleary-eyed. I wolfed down two eggs, two slices of toast, a croissant, half a banana and several glasses of water. Then I went back to bed.

I performed a similar routine at a similar time yesterday, and the day before that, too. Awoke, ate and slept again. Have I gone mad, I hear you ask? Why do I seem to be having pregnancy-style, middle-of-the-night cravings for fried breakfasts and lots of liquid?

I don't. There's a more prosaic explanation: it is Ramadan and I'm now on to my third day of fasting. Luckily for me, and for the 1.6 billion other Muslims across the world, there are just 27 more days to go. (Is that my stomach I hear groaning?)

Fasting, or "sawm", in Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam – the others being the "shahadah" (declaration of faith), "salat" (the five daily prayers), "zakat" (almsgiving) and the "hajj" (pilgrimage). The fast is considered to be a "wajib" or obligatory act (though there are exemptions that I'll come to in a moment).

Muslims fast for 30 days in Ramadan. Just to be clear: we fast from sunrise (hence the 2.45am wakeup) to sunset (around 9pm at the moment) each day. We don't fast for 30 days as a whole. That, of course, would be impossible. Not to mention suicidal.

Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, is regarded by Muslims as one of the most holy months: we believe that it was during Ramadan that the Qur'an was first revealed to prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.

The Islamic calendar has been lunar since its inception in AD622, with each month beginning with the sighting of a new moon. As the lunar year is 11 to 12 days shorter than the solar year, the start date for Ramadan moves back through the western calendar each year. A few years ago, Ramadan coincided with our winter, when the days were shorter and cooler; this year, to much moaning and griping from British Muslims (yes, me included), it's fallen in the summer, with much longer and hotter days. That means the fasting isn't easy. Imagine, for instance, going on the underground in the sweltering August heat without being able to take a bottle of water with you.

In fact, you're not allowed any liquids: no water, no juice, no milk . . . The list of "banned" items and activities in Ramadan is extensive: no cigarettes, drugs, sex, bad language or bad behaviour, from sunrise to sunset. That, dear readers, is the challenge. (In case you're wondering, chewing gum isn't allowed either.)

"Has it begun?" my colleagues asked me earlier this week, their eyes expressing a mixture of sympathy, pity and – just perhaps – awe. Most (well-meaning) non-Muslims view Ramadan as deeply oppressive. Isn't it dangerous, I'm often asked? Doesn't it damage your health? Weaken you?

The short answer is No. Millions (billions?) of Muslims have been fasting for centuries, without suffering any Ramadan-specific illnesses or diseases. Vulnerable groups – the sick, the elderly, children, pregnant women, travellers – are exempt. And, in recent years, a number of academic studies have demonstrated the health benefits of fasting. According to a paper published in April by the Intermountain Medical Centre Heart Institute in Utah, it can lower the risk of coronary artery disease and diabetes, and keep blood cholesterol levels in check. The researchers found fasting could also reduce other cardiac risk factors such as excess weight, blood sugar levels and triglycerides.

Some of the world's leading athletes and sports stars have managed to fast while performing at the highest levels. Next year, Ramadan starts in July, and will cover the whole period of the Olympics. East London will be home to Muslim athletes from across the world, fasting, competing and – I guarantee you – winning medals.

It's nothing new. In the 90s, Hakeem Olajuwon, a devout Muslim considered to be one of the greatest basketball players of his generation, would often play in the NBA for the Houston Rockets while fasting. "It made me stronger and my statistics went up," he later remarked. "I was better during Ramadan, more focused." In February 1995, Olajuwon averaged an impressive 29 points per game and was named NBA Player of the Month, despite the entire month coinciding with Ramadan.

More recently, Manchester City's Kolo Touré, also a practising Muslim, has had no qualms about fasting and playing top-flight football. "It doesn't affect me physically," Touré argued during last year's Ramadan, which happened to correspond with the first month of the Premier League. "It makes me stronger. You can do it when you believe so strongly in something."

Ramadan becomes an unparalleled, month-long opportunity for personal and spiritual growth – and the fast is a deeply private act of worship. "Of the five pillars of Islam, the fast of Ramadan is perhaps the most personal expression of self-surrender to God," the American writer and convert to Islam, Jeffrey Lang, argues in his book, Even Angels Ask. "We can observe a Muslim performing the other four pillars, but, in addition to himself, only God knows if he is staying with the fast."

So far, I've managed three. Now, what time is it? Noon. Hmm. Just eight hours and 55 minutes to go.

Mehdi Hasan is the senior editor (politics) at the New Statesman, author of the e-book,  Summer of Unrest: The Debt Delusion and co-author (with James Macintyre) of Ed: The Millibands and the Making of a Labour Leader.

WE NEED LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR THIS VITAL DEBATE

Allan Hayes's First Person column appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

We need level playing field for this vital debate

Allan Hayes considers the merits of the Archbishop of Canterbury's criticism of the Government

The article by the Archbishop of Canterbury in last Friday's New Statesman raises important and fundamental issues for our society: it deserves to be considered carefully. The Archbishop's sometimes allusive style can make it difficult to see what he is getting at, but the implications of phrases like "managerial politics, attempting with shrinking success to negotiate life in the shadow of big finance", "an increasingly audible plea for some basic thinking about democracy itself", "things that cannot be left to chance" and "confusion about the means", are absolutely clear – we must join together in thinking deeply and seriously about where we are going.

His call for an open probing of the current reworking of our education system is particularly relevant to schooling in our city, and I join him in asking whether we are forgetting our duty to educate our children as carriers of our humanity and not just as contributors to our economy.

He lists things that we must take seriously at a national level and cannot be left to localism: child poverty, youth services, access to good education and sustainable infrastructure. The first of these has just been brought home to us recently in the television programme "Poor Kids", and the more general problem of unequal distribution of wealth is increasingly being recognised as maiming society, besides being morally unacceptable.

He is concerned about cultural fragmentation and Balkanisation. These too are important issues for our city. His idea of a "community of communities" should be looked at, but with proper emphasis on the overarching culture and community that we all belong to.

He takes "ironic satisfaction" from the way several politicians are "quarrying theological traditions". It would be surprising if several thousand years of religion had not produced something worthwhile. We have a common heritage of humanity that we can share and draw on independently of belief.

The Archbishop ends with a call for "a democracy capable of real argument about shared needs and hopes and real generosity" and asks "Any takers?" The answer from all people of goodwill, and certainly from secularists and humanists, will surely be "Yes", but then we may ask "what terms and conditions apply?" 

Is he willing for his church to contribute without seeking to control? It may seem churlish, but what sort of "real argument", what encouragement to hopes and generosity is it when the Church is seeking more state schools than the quarter it has, when it has privileged access to government, and bishops in the House of Lords, when non-religious beliefs are all but excluded from religious education and a daily act of worship is imposed on schools?

Allan Hayes is director of the Leicester Secular Society

NEW STATESMAN: OLD FRIEND

Well, there's an almighty stooshie in the media over this week's edition of New Statesman, guest edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams!

There's a great deal of objection being voiced over some of the things Dr Williams has said in his editorial, entitled "The government needs to know how afraid people are" that "With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted". Of course, it doesn't help keep things quiet when that's the quote on the front cover.

I used to subscribe to New Statesman and was a regular reader every week. It was nice to become reacquainted with an old friend - the upshot of my reading this issue and taking an interest in the media controversy surrounding it is that I renew my subscription! And I'll be posting on this blog a host of relevant links in the future, I'm sure.

Much of this issue is themed around religion. There's a particularly good essay by Philip Pullman about being a "C of E atheist"; an interview with Tom Hollander about his BAFTA-winning sitcom, Rev; and the Guest Column by the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, on the relationship between religion and Big Society.

NEW STATESMAN: WHO ARE THE ENGLISH?

This week's New Statesman is a special issue on Englishness in which we look at a nation in the grip of an identity crisis. Dominic Sandbrook provides a history of English radicalism, Mehdi Hassan disputes the claim that multiculturalism has failed, and Jon Cruddas argues that Labour must rediscover a politics of English virtue.

Islam should not be missionary

The Guardian's Comment is Free - belief website runs a weekly feature called The Question, posing one at the start of the week, then publishing commissioned responses on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday following (along with the facility for readers to post responses of their own). This week's question is, "Should Religions Compete?"

Here's today's response, from Mehdi Hasan, senior editor (politics) at the New Statesman and a former news and current affairs editor at Channel 4. He writes a blog for the New Statesman. He is co-author of Ed: the Milibands and the Making of a Labour Leader.

Islam should not be missionary

Muslims must shun the divisive idea of a marketplace of religions which all compete for believers

Islam, it is often assumed, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, is a missionary faith.

It isn't.

Yes, the Quran does of course encourage the believers to spread god's word: "Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best." But it also recognizes religious, cultural and ethnic diversity: "O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another." How can Muslims presume to convert to everyone to Islam when God Himself, in His infinite wisdom, chose not to? "And if Allah willed, He could have made them [of] one religion, but He admits whom He wills into His mercy." In fact, the Quran tells Muhammad, at one stage, to adopt an "agree to disagree" approach to the non-believers: "For you is your religion, and for me is my religion."

In a diverse, globalised world, which depends upon religious tolerance and harmonious relations between communities, Muslims have to learn to live together with non-Muslims without surrendering to the "I must convert all the kafirs" itch. There is no need for an Islamic equivalent of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

So it frustrates me when many of my co-religionists get excited at the prospect of people converting to Islam, especially celebrities. Does it matter if Michael Jackson was on the verge of a deathbed conversion to Islam? Should we encourage Simon Cowell to become a Muslim? (No and no.)

Faith is being reduced to a numbers game. "Islam is the fastest-growing religion on earth," is the mantra that my Muslim friends recite with glee. So? I've never quite understood how adding to the world's burgeoning Muslim population helps me, the Islamic world or the faith itself. We have enough theological, political, cultural and socio-economic problems as it is, without mindlessly adding to our numbers. I can't help but sympathise with the senior Indian Muslim cleric who once revealed to me his (private) advice to Hindus considering converting: "Don't bother. Not until we Muslims get our house in order."

These days, it is converts themselves who often damage the Islamic cause. The majority, of course, are peaceful, law-abiding citizens whose conversions have enriched their lives and those of the Muslim communities into which they have been welcomed. But what about men of violence like Richard Reid, Germain Lindsay and Dhiren Barot? Others that the "ummah" could have done without include Adam Gadahn, Al Qaeda's media spokesman and Colleen La Rose, aka "Jihad Jane".

Then there is the thorny issue of Islam's apostasy laws, which prevent Muslims from converting to other religions. We cannot expect to "compete" with other faiths for new recruits if those faiths aren't given a similar opportunity to try and recruit from inside the Islamic world. In Kuwait, in 1996, amid a row over the conversion of a businessman to Christianity, one cleric argued: "We always remind those who want to convert to Islam that they enter through a door but that there is no way out." This is as illogical as it is unIslamic. How can you expect people not to change their minds? Or dare deny them that freedom?

Above all else, religion should not be about competition, which is for bankers and financiers, not for the faithful. The idea that there should be a marketplace of religions in which priests, imams, rabbis and pandits jostle with each other to sign up new believers is deeply divisive. The only "invisible hand" in the world of the religious should be God's.

If there is to be mutual respect between religious communities, and much-needed inter-faith dialogue, there can be no hidden agendas. Muslims, Christians, Jews and the rest should never go into discussions or debates with the secret aim of trying to convert one another. Nothing could be more counter-productive or damaging to relations between the faiths. For Muslims, in particular, accused by the far right and sections of the liberal left, of trying to "Islamize" Britain, and Europe, it also makes tactical sense to avoid feeding this false narrative.

We are not missionaries. The role of a Muslim is not to convert the rest of the world to Islam. We should instead focus on becoming the best possible Muslims, and leading the best possible lives, that we can. If the rest of the world then chooses to follow our lead, so much the better.

I can't help bet feel disappointed that the three published responses to this question are two Christian and one Muslim, even if in one of these responses (Alan Race's, of course) inter faith issues are foregrounded). I also find it disappointing that there's little talk about cooperation instead of competition. Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and chip in my own comment then!