Brights News Feed

Dr Evan Harris MP (Lib Dem), Frank Dobson MP (Lab) and David Wilshire MP (Con) have tabled an amendment that would effectively abolish Britain’s archaic blasphemy law. The vote is tomorrow.

From New Humanist:

A letter published in today’s Daily Telegraph makes the case for repealing the law: “As the Law Commission acknowledged in 1985, when it recommended repeal, it is uncertain in scope, but lack of intention is no defence, and the law is unlimited in penalty.

This, together with its chilling effect on free expression and its discriminatory impact, leaves it in clear breach of human rights law. In the end, no one is likely to be convicted under it.”

The letter is signed by a host of honorary associates and distinguished supporters of the Rationalist Association, the BHA and the NSS, including Richard Dawkins, RA President Jonathan Miller, philosopher and regular New Humanist contributor AC Grayling, historian David Starkey and author Philip Pullman. It’s even been signed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, with the letter pointing out that “the Church of England no longer opposes its abolition on principle”.

The NSS point their members and subscribers to www.theyworkforyou.com where you can write to your MP in support of the amendment. The BHA have a specific “Write to your MP” page with a pre-set message about the law. Don’t delay! MPs will vote on the amendment as early as tomorrow.

The British government today released a “joint statement” (PDF) with a number of religious groups, essentially touting the view that “faith schools” are a social good and heralding yet further expansion of their presence in state-funded schooling.

This is despite a two-thirds public majority who think that no religiously-affiliated schools should receive any state funding (BBC), and despite last year’s DfES-commissioned report — “Faith Primary Schools: Better Schools or Better Pupils?” (LSE) — which concluded that there was “clear positive selection of pupils into faith schools on the basis of observable characteristics that are favourable to education”. These “observable characteristics” account for the results disparity which the government still continues to use as an excuse for furthering the faith school agenda, even though their own DfES-commissioned report shows that these successes are down to nothing but social selection, so effectively the better results of faith schools are just a measure of how much the local population is skewed in its favour by covert selection and so-called “pushy” parents.

The British Humanist Association condemned today’s report as a “disgrace” (press release).

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In a possible indication that this PledgeBank pledge (reported previously) has proved highly successful, it is reported today that The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is the most popular holiday read for the UK’s Labour party MPs this summer. The popular tract is also in second place for the Liberal Democrats (ahead even of Harry Potter!) and second place overall.

The Anglican Bishop of Carlisle, recently maligned in the media for comments to the effect that the UK’s current bout of flooding was God’s punishment for society tolerating homosexuality, attempted to deny that he had said any such thing today.

But judge for yourself…

He [Bishop of Carlisle, Graham Dow] said: “I did not say that the Yorkshire floods were God’s action or because of recent legislation.

“Sadly, that was what was written. The way I see it is that all through Scripture - from Genesis 3, through Noah’s flood, the period of Old Testament kingship, right through to Revelation - God views life as a whole; that is, our morality and the health of the land are all one piece.

“The land is not neutral to us; it is God’s, and for us to steward. If we want to enjoy its fruits then we must live God’s way. That is the message all through Scripture.”

The Bishop said: “Of course we know that disasters have physical causes; but I believe that at such times we also do well to ask questions about our morality, as the book of Revelation does.”

(From the Bishop’s local newspaper.)

Amid heightened, “critical” level terror alerts across the UK, the Daily Mail (which the Brights News Feed does not necessarily condone as a good source of objective news) today carries an article (“I was a fanatic, I know their thinking”) with a self-proclaimed “former extremist recruiter”, Hassan Butt.

I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this “Blair’s bombs” line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

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Echoing comments made by “conservative” US figures in the aftermath of the New Orleans flooding, several Church of England bishops have made extraordinary comments (for a relatively sane and liberal denomination) blaming the swathe of localized flash flooding across the UK on modern lifestyle, modern power structures, and of course, the modern “witch” (i.e. gay people).

The Telegraph article is worth reading in full — although it’s not clear where, or why these (obviously very recent) comments have been made, perhaps they were solicited individually? — but here are some choice quotes.

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The government has responded to a faith schools petition on the Downing Street website. The petition read:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ban within government-funded schools the promotion or practice of any particular faith or religion. […] Faith-based or sect schools encourage and propagate divisions within our society. Schools should be places where our children are taught to think about the world around them and come to their own conclusions. In short, they should be taught, not only about the profusion of religions and faiths but also about how moral and socially responsible lives can be led without them; rather than, at a time before they have sufficiently developed critical faculties, being indoctrinated.

The government response follows below.

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According to the press release:

A British branch of a new Europe-wide phenomenon is to be launched on Thursday 21 June in London. The Council of ex-Muslims of Britain is building on the stunning success of other branches already operating in Germany, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The British Humanist Association and National Secular Society are sponsoring the launch and support the new organisation.

The Council will provide a voice for those labelled Muslim but who have renounced religion and do not want to be identified by religion.

• Read the manifesto at Maryam Namazie’s blog
• The website (still under construction at the time of writing) is www.ex-muslim.org.uk
• Also see AC Grayling back on Comment is Free
• Islamophobia Watch have already dismissed the organization on the basis of one comment made on Maryam Namazie’s blog

The government of Pakistan has today added its voice to the official condemnation against the British government’s honouring of novelist Salman Rushdie (now “Sir Salman”) in the bi-annual British hounours ceremony. Iran had already passed a resolution of condemnation yesterday.

Of course, the rent-a-mobs are back out for their now-traditional bi-annual effigy burning photo opportunity. There have been renewed calls for Rushdie’s death.

(Iran’s official position as of 1998 is that Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie was void, but the Iranian state media famously followed the announcement with news that leading clerics considered the fatwa irrevocable, leaving the actual state position somewhat ambiguous.)

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Philosopher A. C. Grayling famously believes that the current upsurge in religious news coverage, protest, and renewed political assertion, is a symptom of decline: religion is in its “death throes”.

This week he twisted the knife, exploring the responses to the recent wave of successful secularist publishing (”Tome truths“). Basically, he makes a fairly convincing case that the backlash of protest doth protest too loudly.

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