The Derby Telegraph has reported that Al-Madinah School, a Muslim Free School that opened in Derby in September 2012, is forcing all female members of staff to wear a hijab (whether Muslim or not), and is requiring girls to sit at the back of classrooms. The Sunday Times is further reporting that reading fairy tales, singing and stringed instruments are banned due to being ‘forbidden in Islam’, and the school’s (non-Muslim) head and deputy head were bullied into resignation by the governing body due to the latter being belittled and sidelined as a result of her lack of faith – leading to both lodging official complaints of bullying with the Department for Education (DfE).
Category Religion and Society
The Guardian has run a few articles lately on face veiling as it has hit the news again in the UK. I have detailed before my frustration with veiling (primarily on communication grounds, but also on the more complex and debatable grounds of being undergirded by sexism). Here are some interesting views of some Guardian readers:
Imagine that I am sitting outside a cafe in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, dressed in full crusader costume, my red pectoral cross prominently displayed, pouring whisky into my coffee. What message does this send to passersby?
It is good that appropriate action has been taken over this, bad that US style evangelistic churches and movements are springing up and gaining traction in the UK. Sheesh. From the BBC:
Senior teachers at a South Lanarkshire school have been removed following a parent outcry over the involvement of a US-based religious group.
The BBC has published its annual report which shows that the amount of time devoted to religion on the various BBC platforms has reduced over the past year.
In the 2012/2013 period BBC1 broadcast 99 hours of religion as opposed to 102 hours in the previous year.
What do you say to someone who tried to stab you to death?
The unlikely opportunity to find out presented itself to Asif Mohiuddin not long ago in a jail in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Taken into custody for a second time for allegedly posting “offensive comments about Islam and Mohammed” on his blog, the outspoken atheist blogger and anti-Islamist political activist found himself in a cell next to one of the three assailants who had been waiting outside his office building when he arrived for the night shift on the 14th of January 2013.
I have been involved in long and protracted, and not to say a little tiring, debate on facebook about misogyny with regards to atheism, and the apparent schisms in the “atheist community”. Though most feminists will probably sigh at another man giving their tuppence on what should be a fairly straightforward point, I do feel the need to pass comment in the context of atheism and theism. Feminism in its various waves has become more and more nuanced in its outlook in what is now, in some sense, a broad collection of ideologies.
A family in suburban Boston hopes to change the phrasing of the Pledge of Allegiance to remove two words they claim violate students’ rights.
The family is challenging the pledge, which students recite daily in U.S. public schools, claiming the words “under God” violate the state’s equal rights laws.
The plaintiffs, who have requested anonymity through their lawyers, are taking an unconventional approach to challenging the pledge. Past cases argued the words “under God” violated the Constitution’s separation of church and state.
“How are the mighty fallen!” is a biblical verse that will not only be well-known by the Roman Catholic state school, the London Oratory, but now applies directly to them. The school – famously chosen by both Tony Blair and Nick Clegg for their sons – has just been criticised by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator for breaching the schools admissions code and ordered to change its policy.
Jesus of Nazareth is attributed with saying many things. “Blessed are the meek” was one. “My kingdom is not of this world” was another. As far as we know, he never said, “This thing’s never gonna fly unless my followers can secure a whole raft of legal, political and economic privileges.”
H/T High Wycombe Skeptics in the Pub. From the Freethinker: First they began gunning for The Gays, now religious…
Leading Indian Rationalist Assassinated By Gunmen
It is with deep shock and sadness that we report the assassination this morning (Tuesday, 20 August) of one of India’s most renowned rationalist and Humanist leaders, Dr. Narendra Dabholkar.
He was reportedly shot four times by two men on a motorbike this morning on Omkarweshwar bridge in Pune, Maharashtra state. He wasreportedly taking his daily morning walk when he was assassinated, a route that may have been known to his attackers.
Good on Williams here. I have talked about this before, that persecution as defined and supposedly exemplified by the victimised modern Christian is nothing but a ridiculous concept, and an insult to people around the world who are genuinely being persecuted, including real Christians in some hardline Islamic contexts. Here is the Guardian:
Tour comes amid division over how to stem flow of believers, particularly from poor communities, towards evangelism
When Pope Francis returns to his home continent on Monday as the first Latin American pontiff, the world’s attention is likely to focus on the adoration of more than a million worshippers expected at a giant open-air mass on Copacobana beach.
But it is during a lower-key visit to a small favela community on Thursday in the north of Rio de Janeiro that he will address the biggest threat to the pre-eminence of the Catholic church in the region: the exodus of believers to US-style evangelical preachers.
http://youtu.be/ctWj-OV4cI0
From the Rationalist Association:
A new YouGov survey suggests the decline of religious belief in Britain will continue for some time
New data published this week by the polling organisation YouGov shows that Britain’s youth are continuing to reject religious belief in large numbers.
I was listening to a local radio station the other day. It is called Jack FM and is an interesting radio station in that it has a really large playlist compared to other stations and plays more music throughout the day as it only appears to have DJs for the breakfast show. The rest of the time it is just music and adverts.
As I reported the other day, the Girlguides have dropped the pledge to God from their vow. Now it appears that the Scouts are doing similarly, as the Telegraph reports:
The movement has bowed to pressure from atheists and, from later this year, will offer an alternative promise for those joining without a religious faith.
Currently, all Scouts are expected to promise to “do my duty to God” – with alternative wording for Muslims, Hindus and people of other faiths. Those who cannot do so as a matter of conscience are able to join only as associate members.
The Telegraph and Daily Mail are predictably up in arms about this great news (something I have reported before). The BBC reports:
Girls will no longer have to pledge their devotion to God when they join the Guides and Brownies in the UK.
It comes after a consultation found a new Girlguiding UK promise was needed to include “more explicitly” the non-religious and those of other faiths.
They currently vow to “to love my God, to serve my Queen and my country”.
This was an article from The Spectator, a British conservative magazine. Thoughts? I love the remark made by one…
Three British Christians who argued that their beliefs saw them wrongly disciplined by their employers for actions such as refusing to counsel same-sex couples have lost their legal battle at the European court of human rights.