Islamophobia & Religious Discrimination: contextualising the need

My opening speech from the “Islamophobia & Religious Discrimination: new perspectives, policies and practices” event yesterday (9th December 2009):

Why do we need an event that focuses on Islamophobia and religious discrimination when, as Alistair Campbell once famously remarked to Tony Blair, as a nation “We don’t do God”.

For a nation that doesn’t ‘do God’, reading or watching the news may suggest otherwise. A glance back at 2009 might remind you of a number of different stories that had a relevance to religion or belief:

The British National Party (BNP) run a European election campaign under the slogan “What would Jesus do?” culminating in them winning two seats in the European parliament after almost a decade of running openly anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim campaigns

Anjem Choudhury and his Islam4UK group campaigning against British troops returning from Afghanistan

“I detest the niqab and the BNP: what does that make me?”

For anyone who has read the post by Gary Younge on Comment is Free entitled, ‘When you watch the BNP on TV, just remember: Jack Straw started all this’, many I’m sure will conclude that he makes some good points. Not least when he notes that:

…there is little doubt that once the BNP is on Question Time, Jack Straw – or indeed anyone in the New Labour hierarchy – is in no position to take the fight to it. The same is true for most of the rest of the British political establishment that will be represented on the panel – they have either actively colluded or passively acquiesced in the political trajectory of the past decade.

But it is no accident that this happened on New Labour’s watch and no small irony that Jack Straw should set himself up as Griffin’s opponent.

In fact I couldn’t agree more. Why put up against the BNP’s Nick Griffin the very man that started the whole niqab furore a few years ago?

“We don’t do God” but then maybe we do: Speak Out magazine

(The following short post is an introductory piece that will be included in the next edition of Speak Out magazine due for publication in early June. It will introduce a collection of short pieces about minority religions in Birmingham and a more detailed piece of the British Humanist Association’s recent report into the ‘religion or belief’ equalities strand – click here to read)

The former Labour spin-doctor Alistair Campbell was once famously quoted as saying, “We don’t do God”. In many ways, Campbell may have been speaking on behalf of the British per se: or at least how things might have been because there are signs that some things might be changing.

“If I could get one sentence into Labour’s manifesto for the next election…”

On his website, Alistair Campbell recently announced his intention to take up the invitation from The New Statesman magazine to guest edit an edition some time in March. As part of this he intends to:

…hand over a page, more if the response merits it, which answers the question ‘if I could get one sentence into Labour’s manifesto for the next election, it would say this …’ For all that the Tories may be ahead in the polls, and swanning round like they’re in power already, I think the battle of policy ideas still has more energy on the left than the right, and I hope this reflects that.

So here goes with my own suggestion:

Introduce a ‘living’ wage over the existing ‘minimum’ wage; reinstate the lower 10p tax band; introduce a higher tax band of 60p for those earning above £100,000; and increase the National Insurance Upper Earning Limit and 40p tax band concurrently, so as to support those on the lowest incomes at the same time as increasing revenue to improve public services including the NHS and education.

Immortalising Jade Goody: a People’s Princess for today’s Britain

A post written since the death of Jade Goody can be found here.

There is a certain irony to the fact that Jade Goody’s imminent death will no doubt earn her the public approval she has sought for much of her recent life. Yet despite the finality of death, her passing will not be the end irrespective of whether her publicist Max Clifford’s claims are true that she has found God. No, it will be the events of just over a decade ago that will ensure her celebrity beatification.

With her last breath, Goody will be miraculously reincarnated as the new ‘People’s Princess’. Somewhat miraculous when you consider that she was recently described by Time magazine as being “inadequately educated, a single parent to two boys, spilling out of nightclubs and ill-fitting dresses…a human face to…Britain’s stubborn social inequality and boozy irrepressibility”

In the same way that the flawed reality of Princess Diana became consumed by the sanctified figure she has since become so, like Diana, will Goody’s victimhood take on a whole new meaning. From the sins of the heroine and her claims to being a victim of circumstance, so the myth will remember how she eventually found love through suffering. But as the archetypal story states, she can only redeem herself through sacrifice and that ultimate sacrifice has to be death. The blood of the daughter redeeming the sins of all those worshipping at the altar of mammon, the false god of riches and avarice. Why her, why now, her desperate followers will ask.