Eric Pickles's comments on 'militant atheists' belie an ignorance as to what secularism is, writes Matthew Broomfield.
Eric Pickles’s comments on ‘militant atheists’ belie an ignorance as to what secularism actually is, writes Matt Broomfield
“We’re a Christian nation”, Conservative party chairman Eric Pickles recently told the party’s spring conference. “We have an established church. Get over it. And don’t impose your politically correct intolerance on others.”
These comments belie an ignorance of the rights and freedoms available to religious believers of all denominations under a secular system. He is not alone in failing to understand the positive impact of constitutional secularism on liberal democracy.
What secularism is:
1) Unifying.
Narendra Modi, the Hindu Nationalist expected to triumph in the ongoing race to become prime minister of India, has a track record of nurturing anti-Muslim sentiment. In 2002, an anti-Muslim massacre in the state of Gujarat (where Modi is chief minister) resulted in over 1,000 deaths.
At the time of the pogrom, Modi did little to check the violence, and spoke out against opening relief camps for those affected. Last year, he said he cared about the deaths of these Muslims as much as he cared about a puppy being run over by a car. If he is elected, he will have been borne to power on a tide of anti-Muslim sentiment. Secularism insists that there is no place for this type of sectarian hatred in public discourse.
2) Accommodating.
The exam watchdog Ofqual and the Joint Council for Qualifications are currently meeting with Muslim groups to discuss the possibility of moving exam dates in 2016, when they will clash with the day-long fasts of Ramadan. A secular system allows for compromise: Muslim pupils have the right to engage in the private religious practice of fasting and the right to take their public exams at full strength, yet at the same time they must not be allowed to gain an unfair advantage over non-Muslim pupils.
This dialogue between faith groups and the government is an often-overlooked aspect of state secularism. It recognises the importance of religious belief on a personal level, and seeks to accommodate all belief systems into society without allowing them to negatively affect state policy or the rights of other citizens.
3) Profitable.
If religious institutions were subject to the same rules of taxation as other organisations, they would contribute significantly to the national economy. There may be as much as $100,000,000,000 of untaxed church property in the United States, and Nebraskan senator Ernie Chambers has recently tabled a motion to try and access the currently untaxable wealth bound up in the roughly 3000 untaxed religious properties in his home state. The Church of England alone is worth around £5,000,000,000, and a secular reform of religious taxation policy in the UK would allow the government to tap into this wealth.
Ultimately, perhaps Pickles might best be persuaded by the bottom line, as the religious institutions of Britain follow Biblical precedent and render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Secularism is not:
1) Atheism.
It merely gives atheism an equal footing alongside other belief systems. The aggressive anti-theism of the Hitchens-Dawkins axis (the ‘thuggish hard left’ Pickles referred to in his speech) has little to do with secularism.
2) Extremist.
In his speech, Pickles aligned secularism with the extremist doctrines of the English Defence League and militant Islam, saying “they’re all as bad as each other”. In reality, secularism is not a religious or political ideology at all, so much as it is the absence of any one dominant ideology.
In Saudi Arabia, new measures introduced by King Abdullah redefine terrorism as “calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based”. It is a long way from prayers in local council meetings to this totalitarian subjugation of religious minorities, but secularism exists to safeguard against religious extremism, not “appeasing” it – as Pickles claimed.
3) Intolerant.
In the wrong hands, it can undoubtedly be abused in order to infringe the personal rights of citizens. “There is no reason for religion to enter the public sphere; that’s the law,” Marine Le Pen told RTL radio in France, in an attempt to justify the National Front’s plans to force Muslim schoolchildren to eat pork.
The issue here is that what an individual has for his or her lunch is not in any sense a public affair, in the way that it would be if all children were forced to eat halal meals. Secularism encourages rather than denies individual choice, and recognises that religious institutions have a role to play in society. Its focus on the separation of church and state simply serves to prevent any one belief system from affecting the rights of other individuals.
Le Pen’s brand of virulent Islamophobia is a poisonous ideology in its own right, and has no more place in the secular public sphere than Sharia law.
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40 Responses to “Eric Pickles needs a lesson in what secularism is (and isn’t)”
Paine in the USA
Thank you Edwin, Little Simon obviously hasn’t been exposed to the power of religious indoctrination and how it effects public discourse. I too am a Brit, I have been living in the USA for most of my life. For this reason I see the danger in confusing religious faith with respect.. On the contrary, otherwise intelligent people believing in Bronze age myths hurt society as a whole. Look at the extremists of the Islamic World and how the moderates will not chastise them for their fundamentalism. Their scientific prowess was capped off around 1200 AD due to the adherence of the religion. It is disgusting, and it should disgust the little Simon fellow.
Paine in the USA
Dear Simon, anyone who has taken an elementary look at this issue wouldn’t dare bring up the USSR,Pol Pot, etc. Chestnut. Were those secular nations? No mate. State run ideology is akin to religion in that its inhabitants have no voice in what they can say or believe. Your augment is sophomoric at best, probably moronic. You are digging a deeper hole. Please read.
Paine in the USA
I have a feeling Simon Lad is religious, it sure seems to be.
Fortuna
“The aggressive anti-theism of the Hitchens-Dawkins axis”. This shows that the author has actually swallowed the religious propaganda lie of the ‘aggressive atheists’, making an otherwise good article an utter fail.
Sun
Oh god. Every time I see Matt Boomfield I want to punch a cat.
There are numerous problems with secularism, not to mention he has piss poor understanding of it. (and no I’m not Christian. I do enjoy the holidays). I’m not going to go into everything.
I don’t have the time to get into all the specific but listen up moron. If secularism meant you think it meant then there would be no Christian holiday by the philosophers who invented the term. Secularism isn’t supposed to deconstruct the native dominant cultural religion. Also secularism wasn’t really part of England to begin with. There is a still a Church of England. You should know your bloody history. You obviously ignore culture. Even the US founding fathers when the created secularism in the US still put their hands on bibles in inauguration, had the word god on currency and national holidays, etc.
Which leads me to my final point. Why secularism is stupid. Besides the fact that it creates balkanization and sectarianism, it is deconstruct the cultural institutions slowly over time in this idea that a country is supposed to be neutral and anything should just happen.