Author: Ophelia Benson

Now I’ve seen everything – now that I’ve seen an editorial in the Telegraph saying how swell Islam is compared to those other timid religions that won’t stand up for themselves.

It’s another Warsi-flatter, saying how right she is to order everyone to be intrusively religious and to go urge the pope to be more intrusively religious along with her.

It is unsurprising that it has taken a Muslim member of the Cabinet to speak out clearly and forcefully on the importance of faith in the life of the nation; followers of Islam tend to be less mealy-mouthed about their beliefs than many Christians.

Why yes, yes they do. Some are so much less mealy-mouthed that they threaten cartoonists and novelists with death for failing to submit to their god and their prophet. Some actually try to do the killing themselves. Some actually succeed. Countries governed by “followers of Islam” are all nasty authoritarian places at best, vicious theocracies at worst. Is that really what the Telegraph is admiring and promoting?

 …politically correct fawning by public bodies over the sensitivities of other faiths has left many Christians feeling inhibited about asserting and celebrating their own beliefs. It has also left many wondering exactly when it was that Britain stopped being a Christian country. Combine that with the aggressive intolerance of the militant secularists, and it is little wonder that the Church of England frequently feels beleaguered.

Diddums. It “feels beleaguered” while it has bishops in the House of Lords and quite a lot of air time on the BBC. It doesn’t get to shove people off the sidewalk the way it used to, but it has hardly lost all of its very real power.

Last week, we had the perfect illustration of this baleful process, when the National Secular Society succeeded in a High Court attempt to prevent Bideford Town Council doing something it had done for centuries – holding a short prayer service at the start of its meetings. The atheist former councillor who pressed the case argued that the council had no right to “impose” its religious views on him, conveniently ignoring the fact that no one had forced him to attend the prayers, and failing totally to see that it was he who was seeking to impose his views on others, not the other way round.

That atheist former councillor is “an evil little thing,” isn’t he. Theocracy speaks the same language everywhere. No one “forced” him to attend the prayers but it’s awkward and inconvenient to opt out. That’s how majoritarian bullying works. The Telegraph’s approval of majoritarian bullying is a squalid spectacle.

Such instincts, Baroness Warsi notes, are “deeply intolerant”, and have historically been the hallmark of totalitarian regimes. Her warning that the removal of faith from the public sphere is dangerous is, therefore, both timely and right, and all credit to her for sounding it. It is high time that many of our religious leaders were similarly assertive, and stopped seeming so apologetic about their faith.

Totalitarian regimes is it? You mean like Franco’s Spain? Like Saudi Arabia? Like Iran? For that matter, like Elizabethan Britain?

Does the Telegraph really want that? If it doesn’t, what the hell is it playing at?

Oh vomit. Sayeeda Warsi is off to visit the pope, and by way of preparation she and the Telegraph unite in telling us all that we need more religion and less “militant secularism.” Warsi says it in her own article, and the political editor says it all over again in an article about her article. Why two articles where one would do? I have no idea.

First Warsi’s bullying theocratic shit, under the sinister threatening headline We stand side by side with the Pope in fighting for faith:

Today I have the honour of leading the largest ministerial delegation from the United Kingdom to the Vatican – our reciprocal visit following the momentous State Visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI in September 2010.

We will be celebrating the decision Margaret Thatcher took 30 years ago to restore full diplomatic relations between our countries. The relationship between the UK and the Holy See is our oldest diplomatic relationship, first established in 1479.

Yes well in 1479 secularism wasn’t an option. It is now. The “Holy See” isn’t a real country; it’s a clerisy; there is something badly wrong with the whole idea of having “diplomatic relations” with a small group of Catholic priests who believe themselves to have the right and the duty to boss all Catholics in the world and everyone else in the world along with them.

For a number of years I have been saying that we need to have a better understanding of faith in our country. Why? Because   I profoundly believe that faith has a vital and important role to play in modern society. But mistakenly, faith has been neglected, undermined – and   yes, even attacked – by governments in recent years…

I will be arguing that to create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds. In practice this means individuals not diluting their faiths and nations not denying their religious heritages.

Really. Stronger than the people who bully and threaten random strangers who make jokes or ask questions about their religions? More confident than the people who demand that people be executed for asking questions about a religion?

What she says is wrong and morally bad. People need to stop saying things like that. Religious bullies need to stop bullying the rest of us.

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; when states won’t fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere.

But the UK does fund “faith schools”; there are bishops in the House of Lords; religion is not nearly “sidelined,” meaning kept private, as it should be.

When we look at the deep distrust between some communities today, there is no doubt that faith has a key role to play in bridging these divides.

Right after it gets through with creating and widening them.

That’s some emetic stuff.