Christians have cause to be concerned over a recent report to the Government
A review into integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities was undertaken by Dame Louise Casey in 2015.
It was at the behest of David Cameron, and the completed review was published in December 2016.
In many respects the Casey Review (CR) is good. It mirrors what organisations such as Barnabas Fund have been stating for many years, statements that have caused them and others who have concurred with them to be much criticised. The CR notes:
• there are increasingly high levels of residential segregation, particularly amongst Muslims where some have no interaction with wider society;
• there has been significantly faster growth in the size of the Muslim community than among other religious groups, and much of this is due to immigration;
• that harmful social practices have gone unnoticed, or even been condoned as ‘cultural practices’ when in fact they have involved FGM, domestic violence or forced marriage;
• that intolerance of non-Muslims has been encouraged by some Islamic leaders
• that attempts have been made to run a parallel legal system with Shari’a councils operating in the UK.
Partial sea change
The CR does reflect a partial sea change from the view that all religions and cultures are equally valid and shouldn’t be critiqued.
But a question arises, that of ‘by what measure do we judge cultural and religious practices?’ The most obvious solution, and the one followed by the UK Government’s 2015 counter-extremism strategy, is to judge them against the historic national values that have developed over centuries in the UK. These include equal treatment of all by the law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. The latter has been one of the UK’s defining national values over past centuries – with refugees from religious persecution overseas frequently finding shelter in the UK, and the UK playing a prominent role in spreading freedom of religion to other parts of the world.
The irony
However, while the Casey Review at times pays lip service to such ideals, what it actually recommends is to create integration by imposing a somewhat different set of partisan, socially liberal values on wider society, with which one must not disagree or one is thus intolerant. Significantly, these values do NOT include freedom of religion and in many respects they significantly undermine both this and other aspects of the UK’s historic national values such as freedom of speech.
Government response
The Communities Secretary, Rt Hon. Sajid Javid MP, has refused to be drawn on the review’s recommendations and told the House of Commons that the Government would study the review carefully and give its response in the Spring.
However, in answer to a question in early December from Clive Betts MP, chairman of the Select Committee on Communities, Mr Javid stressed the importance of tolerance and respect, stating: ‘when it comes to … respect, it works both ways. It is respect for all communities of each other, including of immigrant communities of the dominant Christian culture in this country, which sometimes is lacking. We’ve got to make sure that we are promoting British values in every sensible way that we can.’
Concerns
An outline of concerns with the CR includes:
• The attempt to define British values with no reference to freedom of religion, rather using a phrase ‘mainstream modern British values’. No definition of these is given. Religious freedom, hard won over many centuries, has been swept aside.
• There is a prejudicial attitude to religion evident in the review. At one point the CR even quotes, unchallenged, such statements as: ‘But there are also a significant number of people who regard religion as a negative and divisive force in society. There is a global history of wars, persecution and other harms that have been perpetrated in the name of religion, against or between religious groups’. It totally ignores those such as Stalin who directly caused the deaths of between 34 and 49 million (excluding war deaths), while in China, Mao killed an estimated 45 million in just four years.
• Recent mainstream views on sexual ethics are referred to as ‘regressive’. Indeed, the language used about Christians and Muslims with conservative ethical views is highly prejudiced throughout the CR.
• Christians are portrayed in negative references throughout the CR. Lack of ethnic diversity in religious schools is explained away, except in the instance of Christian schools. Christians are seen as part of the problem, never as a solution to integration and still less as victims within society; no mention of Muslims who convert to Christianity and face reconversions and death threats.
• An ‘extremist’ view is seen as one ‘at odds with the views of mainstream society’. This is hugely alarming. It is a subjective definition and would class many as extremists, since the CR equates holding any conservative religious view as extreme.
In addition, the CR’s lack of understanding of the importance and development of freedom of religion in the UK leads the review to make some basic errors, such as claiming that all non-Anglican places of worship have to be registered with the Government. This has not been the case since the Conventicle Act was repealed by the Place of Religious Worship Act in 1812.
Backwards Christianity
The CR implicitly seeks to impose Government-backed definitions of what ‘modern British’ Islam or Christianity are. This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Review. A particularly disturbing section (8.23) divides the UK into two groups of people: a) those who ‘appear to be seeing religion as increasingly less important and, in some cases, less of a force for good’ and b) those for whom ‘religion is very important in their daily lives. Within this latter group there appear to be some who are keen to take religion backwards and away from 21st-century British values and laws on issues such as … sexual orientation’. The phrase ‘taking religion backwards’ is particularly disturbing in a Government-commissioned report as it strongly implies that there could be a Government-backed definition of what constitutes, for example, true Islam or true Christianity.
Darkly comic
In section 5.2 the CR notes that ‘very little reliable research has been done into more controversial questions related to integration, which might include views around: the acceptability of … drug use and the tolerance of views which directly contradict your own.’
The CR is thus equating how integrated one is with the degree to which one accepts the use of drugs – illegal drugs! As for how tolerant a new arrival is to the views of others, perhaps this could be measured by comparing how tolerant the review is to Christians already in the UK. The bar would, it seems, be rather low, as tolerance for traditional Christian belief is entirely absent in the CR.
Indeed, anything beyond the liberal humanist view of Dame Louise Casey could be seen as extreme and not to be tolerated. It is a 199-page resurrection of the darkly comic view that says: ‘You must be broad minded. You must understand that every belief is acceptable. Every belief except the one that you have, because that one is narrow minded.’
Sunday schools back in firing line
The CR attempts to resurrect Government plans for compulsory registration and inspection of Sunday schools and mosque schools, a proposal which would turn the clock back on freedom of religion by more than two centuries. Recommendation 11 (of 12) included the need for all children out of mainstream education to be registered and their education measured against an agreed standard.
Oaths of integration, oaths to work in a public office, further emphasis on the teaching of and assessment of the nebulous ‘British values’ within schools, (presumably the ones with religious freedom rights removed from them) and many other recommendations were contained within the 12 listed towards the end of the report.
