Author: Douglas Knight

In a striking example of self-analysis, about 500 delegates, including both practising and nominal Muslims, attended an inaugural Secular Islam Summit this month in St Petersburg, Florida.

The declaration was signed by such luminaries as Ibn Warraq, a widely published author, whoA group of prominent secular Muslims has shown the kind of unconditional willingness to engage in self-criticism which is so well-established in the non-Muslim West. The declaration points the finger at some of the pillars of institutional Islam, calling on governments to â??reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their formsâ??, and to â??oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostasy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsâ??.

Rather than trumpeting the message of Muslim conservatives, who call for obedience to authority structures, this new group demands â??the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxyâ??.
In perhaps the most controversial statement of all, the group calls for â??a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islamâ??. This suggests that the scriptural foundations of Islam, the Qurâ??an and Hadith, should be subject to scrutiny.

Of course, there must be some doubt about the extent to which the secular Muslims will have any impact in Muslim-majority countries. Yet theirs is a voice that is long overdue. Under the right circumstances, they might trigger a process of profound self-examination among some Muslims.

Peter G. Riddell A breath of Islamic fresh air – Secular Muslims are creating signs of hope: donâ??t knock them

The St Petersburg Declaration – There is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine

Europe’s current problems are entirely self-inflicted. This does not mean, however, that the result will be less catastrophic. By subverting the roots of its own Judeo-Christian culture – a process that started with the French Enlightenment (as opposed to the Scottish Enlightenment, which was not anti-religious) – a religious and cultural vacuum was created at the heart of European civilization. The collapse of faith in its own values has, not surprisingly, led to a demographic collapse because a civilization that no longer believes in its own future also rejects procreation. Today, a new religion and culture is supplanting the old one. There is little one can do about it, but hope for a miracle.

America’s immigration problems pale in comparison with what confronts Europe. America’s major ethnic minorities – Blacks as well as Hispanics – are Christian, while the meanstream culture is also rooted in Christianity. In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom. Nobody fights for the flag of hedonism, not even the hedonists themselves.

I suppose one could feel sad about all this, but sadness is not what I feel. One can feel compassion for those who die in accidents, fall in battle or get murdered (like the countless unborn children that perish every day) but can one pity those who have killed their own future for the pleasures of the present? Europe’s predicament, I repeat, is entirely self-inflicted. Not Islam is to blame. Secularism is.

Paul Belien The Closing of Civilization in Europe

I think weâ??ve reached a point where certain things need to be clarified about the rights, liberties and dignities of independent bodies with the State (the Archbishop of Canterbury to Robert Pigott of the BBC on Jan 24th 2007).

In what follows I want to explore why I think that the Archbishop has offered that careful and profoundly serious observation and to ask, in the light of recent events and with the publication imminent of the long-awaited Sexual Orientation Regulations for the UK Mainland, whether there are limits to the â??reachâ?? of the State?

The Government – basing itself in a range of convictions and ideas quite widely but by no means universally held, and often loosely linked to the Human Rights Act – is behaving increasingly as if Government and Parliament were the sole arbiter of what is right and good and wholesome, whether for individuals or for society.

There is appearing a jealous, if somewhat edgy, and a rather poorly informed intolerance of alternative moral and ethical authorities, and especially of those based in the life and the traditions of communities of Faith.

And unless, to use the Archbishops judicious language, â??certain things……are clarifiedâ?? and certain people think about all this with rather more care, there seems to be a real danger that this country will come to lose the contributions made to every aspect and level of its life by its range of independent voluntary bodies, many but by no means all of which have their roots and motivation in the Churches or in other communities of Faith.

At stake is the status of marriage in British society. Government and Parliament are imposing upon the country â?? and especially upon the Churches â?? alternative concepts of the family and of parenting as the equivalents of marriage.

Where does this leave this countryâ??s hard-won traditions of religious freedom and of the freedom of the individual?

The Government is rightly concerned that the Human Rights Act should be valued and welcomed, not misused as whipping-boy by means of all sorts of fantastic charges against it. The Government could have used the HR Act, as the Polish Government used it, to exempt Roman Catholic and other adoption agencies from the SORs. But instead it has chosen to privilege secular over religious ideologies, perhaps because it thinks it opportune to cut the Churches down to size after the autumnâ??s arguments over (so-called) â??Faith Schoolsâ??.

And Government is colluding with those who would corral the Churches and the Faiths into the private sphere, so as to leave â??the street, public life and political decision-making open to the influence only of secular ideologies.

No wonder the RC Archbishop of Southwark has called the recent decisions about Faith-based adoption agencies â??a triumph of dogmatism over freedom of conscienceâ??.

Nor are these the first examples. Registrars are required, at the risk of their jobs, to officiate at marriages of transgendered people and at registrations of Civil Partnerships, even if they have conscientious hesitations about doing so. Verified stories abound of Faith-based, and especially Church-based, organisations that offer social care, often to some of the most disadvantaged and demanding individuals and groups, which have had their public funding threatened as officialdom is anxious about a crucifix on the wall or Grace before meals.

Is this ignorance? Or prejudice? Or is it intolerance, even fear of an influence and a source of authority beyond and implicitly challenging the authority of the State? Must diversity of provision have been designed and authorised by Whitehall and Town Hall, rather than developed over centuries in a society that has had to struggle hard and long to win its freedom from Government.

How close are we getting to the point when a religiously-formed conscience will be seen as an obstacle to, rather than an inspiration for, service in Parliament, and still more in high political office? What an irony, as we celebrate William Wilberforce and all the others, of many churches and more than one Faith, through whose efforts in Parliament the Slave Trade was abolished.

The Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, Bishop of Winchester, When the State decides what the Church believes