January 18, 2005
ILLIBERALISM, HE SAID
Muslim schools accused of 'undermining our society' (Liz Lightfoot, The Telegraph, January 18th, 2005)
David Bell, the chief inspector of schools, angered Muslim leaders yesterday when he accused many Islamic schools of undermining the coherence of British society.The growing number of Muslim schools must adapt their teaching to ensure that pupils learned about democracy and the political institutions of this country and understand that there were other religions, he said.
"I worry that many young people are being educated in faith-based schools with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society," he told a London conference on citizenship.
The number of private faith schools has increased significantly since the Government indicated its willingness to extend state funding through voluntary-aided status to those run by minority faiths.
Last week Feversham College in Bradford, the first Muslim state school, topped the Government's secondary school value-added league table thanks to the progress of its pupils.
Mr Bell said he believed that it was right that parents should be able to pay for faith schools in a free and open society. But many Muslim schools needed to adapt their curriculum to help pupils "acquire an appreciation of, and respect for, other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony".
He said: "The growth in faith schools needs to be carefully but sensitively monitored by Government to ensure that pupils at all schools receive an understanding of not only their own faith but of other faiths and the wider tenets of British society.
"We must not allow our recognition of diversity to become apathy in the face of any challenge to our coherence as a nation. I would go further and say that an awareness of our common heritage as British citizens, equal under the law, should enable us to assert with confidence that we are intolerant of intolerance, illiberalism and attitudes and values that demean certain sections of our community, be they women or people living in non-traditional relationships."
Nothing can make one feel one’s age quite like seeing gender equality and gay rights take pride of place along with democracy, royalty and Shakespeare as part of Britain’s common heritage. What’s next, single moms and soccer violence? If Mr. Beck had the courage to raise the spectre of inciting treason or terrorism, there could be little objection if true, but Mr. Beck is presumably a busy man and elects to save time by drawing a straight and simple line between the mere existence of faithful British Muslims and the end of civilization as we know it.
Some Muslims hate the West for its freedom, democracy and religious pluralism. They are a threat and need to be fought and defeated. That’s what we pay trained people to do. Many more Muslims, like many Christians and Jews, fear the moral and social dissolution in much of the urban West’s libertine culture and are determined to protect themselves and their families from it through their faith, religious schools and family cohesion. People like Mr. Beck fear this even more than terrorism because they quite rightly see it as a challenge, not to traditional British society, but to the British state’s heretofore largely unchallenged drive to destroy or undermine any institutions that thwart its control over the economic, political and moral life of the British.
David Bell sounds like he would have advanced quite well as a bureaucrat in Elizabethan England, except he would have been persecuting Catholics.
Tolerance is a luxury affordable only to a coherent majority with a higher calling.
Posted by: Randall Voth at January 18, 2005 7:42 AMPeter:
I didn't read the whole article, but the portion cited doesn't reference gay rights so far as I noticed.
But what puzzles me most is your offhand dismissal of gender equality. While that can be a code phrase for a whole host of nonsense, at its core it means nothing more than women should be equal to men in the eyes of the law.
How is that supposed to make you feel old? Why do you lump that in with soccer violence?
Should Muslim schools be allowed to take state money and teach otherwise?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at January 18, 2005 7:57 AMJeff:
You should spend some time studying what laws and policies modern bureacracies, especially leftist ones, consider flow from the phrase "gender equality". I think you will find it has little to do with treating women as equals.
Posted by: Peter B at January 18, 2005 8:23 AMSorry, and what do you think "non-traditional relationships" are? True, he might just have been referring to stay-at-home dads, but I doubt it.
Posted by: Peter B at January 18, 2005 8:26 AMTolerance is a luxury affordable only to a coherent majority with a higher calling.
I'm a bit more optimistic, Randall. I wonder if you've got the modern notion of tolerance, which is really enforced approval -- cheering at the May Day parade with a bayonet at your back, as it were -- fixed in mind. Agree there's no future in that. The older notion of tolerance, more or less you can go to hell your own way so long as you leave me to mine, I think we can still manage.
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 18, 2005 10:00 AMBell's statement seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Why should taxpayers fund an education teaching children that the laws and principles of the very people funding them are wrong?
Posted by: Brit at January 18, 2005 11:22 AMBrit:
Yes, why should the religious pay taxes to fund state schools?
Posted by: oj at January 18, 2005 11:38 AMAs long as religion is extra-carricular, there's no problem for anyone.
Posted by: Brit at January 18, 2005 11:59 AMPeter:
Actually, I more easily read into the phrase "non-traditional relationships" as unmarried, cohabiting heterosexual couples.
Go with the numbers. Since the homosexuality rate is only about 3%, it could not even come close to equalling the number of cohabiting heterosexual couples.
Besides, like Christianity, Islam textually advocates murdering gays. They don't need to be in a "non-traditional" relationship to be intolerated out of existence should someone take holy writ to be, well, holy writ.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at January 18, 2005 12:28 PMSince Muslims, or many of them, are outspoken opponents of democracy, it seems silly of democratic governments to, willynilly, fund them.
The weakness of popular self-government under a rule of law is that it cannot, consistently, defend itself from cynics who claim one right against democracy but do not permit the same right against themselves.
This has nothing whatever to do with marriage and everything to do with politics.
Orrin, for example, has lauded the supposed moderation of the brand of Islam in Indonesia, but we saw this week just exactly how moderate it is: not at all.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 18, 2005 3:42 PMHarry:
"The weakness of popular self-government under a rule of law is that it cannot, consistently, defend itself from cynics who claim one right against democracy but do not permit the same right against themselves."
Eloquent and bang on. Now tell us why the many, many Muslim immigrants to the States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand fit that bill.
Posted by: Peter B at January 18, 2005 7:20 PMI don't know how many do fit that bill, but we know for sure that some do.
The attacks against our system of government, both rhetorical and actual, are documented.
Since the rationale for both kinds of attacks arises from one of commonest interpretations of Islamic Holy Writ (probably, the commonest), the default assumption has to be -- disloyal.
Easy enough for any who dissent to speak up, here, though it takes a certain courage to do so in, say, Indonesia. And it is not entirely without risk even in our free society.
Every time I suggest it is dangerous to write Muslims a blank check, the appeasers want to accuse me of planning to herd all of them into camps.
Not all.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 20, 2005 1:50 PM