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[This is the text of a Paper presented to a Conference of the Policy Studies' Institute on Church, State and Religious Minorities in October 1995. The text published in the proceedings of the conference is a little different, having been edited, shortened, and slightly rearranged to make easier reading. This text and that published in the conference proceedings remain the copyright of The Policy Studies Institute and the author.]
Originally it was hoped that I would be Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi. As you can see, I am not. To make up for this, I am going to take as my lead-in something that the Very Rev Dr Sacks said in his wonderfully thought-provoking 1990 Reith Lectures "The Persistence of Faith..."[see End Note 1].
In the January 1994 issue of The Political Quarterly, Dr Tariq Modood, our Chairman for today, ably précised the Chief Rabbi's lecture while he was developing the argument that the "principal minority community" - namely, the Muslims - was against Disestablishment, and indeed preferred a clear Anglican statement in education.
Dr Modood wrote,
"It is not a Muslim, however, but Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation, who in his 1990 Reith Lectures seems to have taken this minority perspective to its logical conclusion. While these lectures make some grand claims for religion, from the point of view of our interest in citizenship and equality the following argument can be extracted from them:
- (i) in the context of massive but incomplete secularisation, the fate of all religions, minority and majority, hang together;
- (ii) moreover, diversity requires that there be also an over-arching public culture;
- (iii) if this public culture is to have religious dimension, it will be that of the premier religion, which for historical reasons is the Church of England, consequently all minorities ought to support it as a national institution"[see End Note 2].
These three points fairly state the nub of the attitude that the Muslim Communities seem to have towards the Established Church. The Muslims do not, by and large, support Disestablishment. There are very good reasons for this, some of which I hope to address in this presentation.
This is not to say that we Muslims would not like to see changes in the attitude and role of the Established Church - or Churches, if one include the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland - especially towards other confessional minorities.
We believe that, in the realities of the fin de siècle climate of the Twentieth Century, the Church of England cannot carry on as it did in 1895, or even 1955. The demographic and confessional composition of society has changed. Although the fact of twenty-six bishops and archbishops sitting in the House of Lords places the Church in a unique proximity to government and constitution, the Church's relationship to the Government of the day has changed. Gone are the days when it could be described as "the Tory Party at prayer". And since the effective abandonment of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion its own definition of what constitutes "Anglicanism" has changed.
Dr Sacks ably enunciated what I would consider to be an evolutionary approach to the matter of the Established Church in a plural or multiconfessional society; that is to say that the role and function of the Established Church is evolving in step with the changing nature of the faith communities represented in the kingdom.
Our problem, that is the problem of the other confessional minorities (and I actually would include both the Church of England and the Church of Rome among these minorities because the "massive but incomplete secularisation" observed by Dr Sacks has made secularism the majority creed of the kingdom today), is an uncertainty that this understanding and support for Establishment by us is recognised and reciprocated by the Established Church itself. Yet it does sometimes show an imagination and awareness of a duty to the other faiths of the kingdom that have been breathtakingly progressive.
We thus find ourselves in a certain confusion, unsure whether the Church of England actually wants the support against Disestablishmentarianism which is being voluntarily offered, or even notices that this offer is being made.
The meaningful content for we Muslims in Establishment are the inherent potential for helping the other minority faith communities of the United Kingdom, and the Coronation Service with its Coronation Oath.
In his 1992 essay On The Constitution, the former Lord Chancellor of England, Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, wrote,
"In the United Kingdom, every sovereign takes part in a Coronation service ending in a Communion service according to the Anglican rite. In course of time this has become very much more than a denominational affair. It is a national, indeed an international, event viewed by hundreds of millions of persons not normally devout, and certainly not Anglican in their allegiance. It does not stop there. It is a solemn acknowledgement by the head of our otherwise secular state of the ultimate sovereignty of the spiritual and moral order in human affairs." [see End Note 3]
Lord Hailsham's last sentence neatly states the Muslims' attitude to Establishment. For us there must be a Church-State Link, or rather a Religion-State Link, in order to keep in touch with Reality (Al Haqq, which is one of the Appellations of God Almighty) and the Ultimate Sovereign (Al Malik, which is another). This need not militate against the interests of the other faith communities, providing the Church is willing to "do the decent thing" and act as an advocate for them all, and not abuse and exploit its dominant position.
Islam has always been in favour both of Establishment and multiconfessionalism since the days when the constitution of the Seventh Century city-state of Medina embraced Muslims, Jews and Christians, as well as some non-believing Arabs and a group of "hypocrites" (munafiqoun [see End Note 4]). And the great Ottoman Empire, inheritor of the ulus of the Byzantines (or New Rome), was never simply an "Islamic State" but was always a polyethnic, polyglot, multicultural, multiconfessional "supra nation" (ad dawlatu-l 'aliyyah), with special privileges and duties for its Muslim subjects.
To us it is God Almighty Who is the Fount of Sovereignty - inni-l hukmu illa li-Llah - "rule belongs only to God" [see End Note 5] - and earthly governments, however formed and chosen, exercise authority as a temporary trust from Him for which they will be accountable on the Day of Judgement. As the great Hanafi jurisprudent Radiyuddin al-Sarakhsi wrote, "as sultanu zillu-Llahi fi-l ard" ("government is the reflection of God on the earth")[see End Note 6]. Governments exist so to order matters at home and abroad that God may be worshipped and human beings be enabled freely to conduct their lives in ways pleasing to the Almighty.
Some acknowledgement of this situation by governments generally is looked for by Muslims; for us the existence and role of the Established Churches in the United Kingdom is just such an acknowledgement. Furthermore, the fact that the Sovereign's rule is sanctified by a religious service, with its solemn oath before God, is considered by us significant in itself. There is, for us, no good argument for replacing this, unless something demonstrably better can be produced. We have yet to be convinced that the advocates of Disestablishment actually have anything better to offer. All too often it seems that the call for Disestablishment cloaks other, self-interested, agendas. Most of us believe that the removal of Establishment from the Church of England would be followed by out-and-out (or fundamentalist) secularism, which, in its Late Twentieth Century manifestation, is a climate inimical to any religion.
Like the Jews and the Christians, the Muslims believe that the condition of men will deteriorate from the time of the Last Prophet to the Day of Judgement, each succeeding generation being worse than that which preceded it. Each season has its signs, and among the signs of the Last Days is a mounting tide of Unbelief that threatens to engulf all believers. In these days the believers must work together to help each other keep faith. We believe that the historical process that has placed the Church of England where it is at this time is not capricious, and the Church is well-suited (because of the nature of Anglicanism) to be the coordinator and spokesman for all the faith communities in the kingdom. However, in return for the support of the Muslims among the other minority confessions we look to the Church of England to deal fairly with us - to give, in two words, Christian Charity - and not to indulge in any more provocative adventures along the lines of the "Decade of Evangelism".
Two early demonstrations from the Church which would help mollify the anxieties of the Muslims, and possibly those of the other faith communities, are support for an extension of the Blasphemy Law and legislation to criminalise discrimination on the grounds of religion.
There is actually no such thing as blasphemy in Islam in the sense that it is understood in western legal systems since the time of the pagan Roman Senate. But in the aftermath of the "Satanic Verses Affair" it would be a good thing to protect the beliefs of all faith communities from insult and traducement.
The law on blasphemy, as it now stands, allows only the beliefs of the Established Church to be blasphemed against. This is palpably an absurd anomaly, for not even other Christian communities are protected. However, the Indian Penal Code which was administered in British India had just such provisions, and protected all the religions represented in the Empire. It worked, it used to be part of a British legal system, it has an established body of Case Law, and only needs a simple enabling act to bring it to life again in the United Kingdom.
A more urgent matter is discrimination against a person on the grounds of his or her religion.
Cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism, is not at all the same as religious pluralism, or multiconfessionalism. And neither of these presupposes a racial or ethnic pluralism, at least as far as the Race Relations Act 1976 concerns the Celtic or Anglo-Saxon peoples of the British Isles. The Act may offer protection to some communities of migrants now settled here, but it is having a deleterious effect on race relations in the kingdom the longer it operates in its present form. One of these effects is religious discrimination. It may be illegal to discriminate against someone for being a "Pakistani" but not for being a "Muslim". The only remedy available is to claim that, for example, taking time off for Muslim prayer (as opposed to, say, having a smoke break) is a cultural expression of being a Pakistani - clearly an absurd notion as there are Christians and Hindus (as well as other faith communities) in Pakistan.
The British Muslim communities are experiencing increasing religious discrimination with no legal remedies available, and urgent legislation to correct this situation is needed. The Church of England, with its score of bishops in the House of Lords is in a position to help directly without Party getting in the way. In the original thinking behind the legislation that led to the first of the Race Relations Acts being passed under the Wilson Administration, "religious discrimination" was included. It was dropped for complicated reasons associated with "cults", and the problem of defining religions, mainly, it would appear, in order to deny protection or legitimacy to the Church of Scientology. It was thought that the "racial", or "ethnic", categories would be protection enough. In the twenty-odd years since the first Act was passed, a large industry with a possible vested interest in perpetuating racial divisions within the kingdom has grown up. Whether this be a good thing generally, or whether the immigrants have benefited from its protection, is of less concern to the British Muslims than its deeply divisive impact in perpetuating, and even enhancing, racial divisions within the Muslim communities in the United Kingdom.
Islam is an acculturating religion.
Apart from the obvious way in which it modifies cultures to conform to its moral and theological perspectives, it also makes its adherents acculturate to the surrounding social environment in which they find themselves. So, over time, migrant Muslim communities easily adapt. What is important to them, and cannot be compromised, is their Islam. Islam really is their culture, and all the rest are simply colourful accoutrements that can be discarded if necessary.
Thus, in answer to the frequently stated doubts about Muslims' readiness to "assimilate" to the "British way of life" (whatever that may be), it can be said that, given time and without pressures to ghettoise them, Muslims acculturate wherever they are. There will emerge a distinctly "British" sort of Islam, just as there are equally distinct cultural flavours to the Islam of South East Asia or West Africa, for example. This will come about by the merging together of the various Muslim communities in the kingdom, and a large admixture of the host culture.
However, perpetuating the racial or ethnic divisions within the British Muslim communities militates against this process. It is also inequitable, denying "Britishness" to the British descendants of the original generation of migrants: for how many generations is one to remain a Pakistani, or Bangladeshi, or whatever? Three? Four? More? However, many are driven to take refuge in these categories in order to get what protection they can from the Race Relations Act. I even know of one young man who perforce calls himself a "Bangladeshi" although his father left Assam in British India before World War II and settled in the East End of London. This is frankly an iniquitous state of affairs. And what about the converts and their offspring? I have suffered religious discrimination for my being a Muslim, so has my wife, and so have my daughters: there is absolutely no remedy available to us in law.
The Church, from its particular vantage point and its lion's share of most of the religious airtime on the broadcast media, could certainly help in drawing attention to this, as it could for all the faith communities. We would either like to hear and see the Church put the general case for Believers, as opposed to narrowly hogging the show for Anglicanism, or give up some significant percentage of its enormous airtime to the other minority faiths.
There is a widespread assumption, played up to by many institutions, that Islam comes from India. I know of Arab schoolchildren who have been asked, when it's known that they are Muslims, if they can speak Urdu. This determination to cast Islam as some exotic import from the "mystic East" is harmful. Muslims know that their religion comes from exactly the same part of the world as Judaïsm and Christianity. Unfortunately far too many people in the wider host communities do not, and are equally ignorant about the long standing contacts between Islam and the British Isles which would help to facilitate the process of acceptance of Islam as a "British" religion with a place in "British" culture, which, after all, it helped form. This in itself might diminish the incidences of religious discrimination.
The Celts of western Britain and Ireland were great seafarers even in prehistoric times. Before the Roman occupation of the south eastern portion of Britain in the middle First Century AD, there was a well-established seaborne trade with the Mediterranean cultures; some of it by the long Western, or Atlantic, route round the Iberian peninsula and along the north African littoral to Egypt and the Levant [see End Note 7]. By this means it is more than likely that Christianity reached the western parts of the British Isles during the lifetime of the great Fathers of the Church, and probably during the lifetime of some of the Apostles themselves (such as St Peter himself when he was Patriarch at Antioch; or St James, Patriarch at Jerusalem), accounting for the fundamental differences between Celtic Christianity and that of the Church of Rome.
There is possibly more than a fanciful myth in the words of Blake's hymn (contained in his preface to his work on John Milton, the Cromwellian divine) "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?" or the legend that Joseph of Arimathea brought the "Holy Grail" to Glastonbury (which significantly sits on a land portage of one of the trade routes to Wales and Ireland). This trade continued during the Roman occupation, largely to the chagrin of the Romans who stationed part of the Classis Britannica (one of the two legion-sized permanent sea-going fleets of the Roman Navy - the other was stationed at Ostia, the port of Rome) in the Bristol Channel to interdict this commerce. During the "Dark Ages" it boomed: there were no Dark Ages in Celtic Britain and Ireland.
Among its major "trading partners" were the Visigothic kingdoms of Spain and the Vandal kingdom of north Africa, all Arian Christians (anathematised by the Church of Rome as "heretics"). There is no evidence that this slackened with the fall of these states to the Muslims in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries, and the subsequent large-scale conversion to Islam of many of these Christian "heretics". And these Muslims were also great traders, establishing factories in the west of Britain and Ireland. So the presence of Muslims on these shores is not a new phenomenon, an alien implantation. There have thus been constant direct contacts - true, they have been not always mutually enriching - between these islands and the Muslims since before the Synod of Whitby in 664 AD: that is, before the wilful and systematic destruction of Celtic Christianity.
During the later years of the Nineteenth Century, the British Empire embraced more Muslims than did the Ottoman Empire, which was the seat of the Caliphate. This state of affairs was recognised and endorsed both by the Caliph, Sultan Abdul Hamid II (jannat makan), and the Queen-Empress, Queen Victoria, who ruled over them religiously on behalf of the Caliph. Temporally they were subjects of the Queen-Empress; spiritually they were those of the Caliph. This was marked by the official appointment (endorsed by the Qajar Emperor of Persia, the Sharif of Morocco, and the King of Afghanistan) by the Caliph, and accepted by the British Crown, of a Shaykhu-l Islam of the British Isles. The first, and so far only, incumbent of this great office was the Liverpool solicitor and famous convert to Islam, HE Shaykh Abdullah Quilliam Bey.
Despite having such a huge population, the Empire never had much trouble from its Muslims qua Muslims. They were, by and large, loyal subjects of the Crown. For example, a majority of the British Indian Army was Muslim and loyally served the Empire, even when the enemy was other Muslims. And so, too, today. The Muslims of the United Kingdom are, by and large, loyal subjects of the Queen; which is not to say that they necessarily endorse the policies of Her Majesty's Government, whatever the political party that forms it. Yet we Muslims are forming the distinct impression, from the nature of the surveillance and pressure that is being directed at us, that the present government - and its bureaucrats - considers, as far as Muslims are concerned, that loyalty to the Crown is synonymous with endorsing its policies, particularly as they relate to Bosnia and the current witch-hunt going on in France.
I have met few British Muslims, but worryingly there is an increasing number of young people among those few (hardly surprising in the circumstances), who would not easily and with conviction take the Oath, as I did:
"I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her Heirs and Successors, and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully defend Her Majesty, her Heirs and Successors, in Person, Crown and Dignity, against all enemies...".
To a Muslim such a solemn oath in God's Name may not be broken, and one cannot be released from it: it is a life-long commitment. One will be called to account on the Day of Judgement, if not before, as to how well one discharged it. A solemn oath to a Muslim, and British Muslims are in no way exceptional, is a sacred thing. How true is this of the wider population of the United Kingdom, and even, dare one ask, of many of those who are presently sitting in de facto judgement on our loyalty?
Statistically, the largest single grouping of Muslims in the kingdom (about 48 percent) originates from the Indian sub-continent. But other significantly large groups come from other parts of our late, and most recent, Empire: Turkish Cyprus, Egypt, Sudan, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, West Africa, Aden, Somaliland and other parts of East Africa, and Indians and Cape Malays from South Africa. Most of them "earned their place in the sun", some by heroic sacrifices in appalling circumstances. I have met proud old men who fought at Dolgorodoc in the Keren Campaign with 5th Indian Division, and at Imphal and the "Admin Box", and others who were at Monte Cassino with 8th Indian Division. I even know some who were under General Sir Douglas Gracey (that gallant, much maligned, and poorly rewarded gentleman) with 20th Indian Division in Vietnam in 1945-46. The father of a Turkish Cypriot friend of mine fought at Tobruk. The father of a Bengali friend of mine served in the Atlantic "Western Approaches" and on the Murmansk convoys. Another friend of mine fought against EOKA in the Cyprus Police Force; an acquaintance fought the Mau Mau in the King's African Rifles, and another served in the Police Field Force Jungle Companies of the Royal Malayan Police Force during the Malayan Emergency. There are also many converts who, like myself, are proud to have served in Her Majesty's Forces.
Is there no shame left when the Established Church, among others, supposedly upholders of the Message of Jesus Christ, allows these and their descendants to be accused of disloyalty and of being inherently "security risks" by virtue of their Islam? Why should the British Muslims, alone among all the polyethnic and multiconfessional mix that is the modern United Kingdom, have to demonstrate constantly their loyalty to the Crown, for that is the hoop that the government and the Security Services are continually making us jump through these days? What British Jew is asked, when applying to join the Armed Forces (even the Reserve Forces), "if this country went to war with Israel, where would your loyalties lie?", or is turned down because the authorities are not satisfied with the answer? Or what British Sikh or Hindu is similarly asked about India? Yet it has been a common experience of British Muslims to be asked just this question about, of all places, Saudi Arabia. Don't you think that this is an impertinence? I feel that it is also setting a very dangerous and divisive precedent.
Increasingly, as we enter the third and fourth generations in the kingdom of the descendants of the erstwhile migrants from South Asia, we find that they are taking a more active and diverse involvement in the political fora available across the whole spectrum. More and more, one hears from these people statements such as one that was made to me yesterday: "why should we support the continued Establishment of the Church of England? It hasn't done anything for us in return for the support given up to now."
We would like to see the Church, from its unique "coign of vantage" provided by Establishment, act as the advocate for all belief systems and to speak out against any attacks on any of the religions represented in the United Kingdom. It is time to "hang together or hang separately".
We would like to think that this is the appropriate expression of the statement by HRH The Prince of Wales that he would like to be "Defender of Faiths" rather than the "Defender of the Faith". The Muslims would hope that he will continue to lead the Church, and to have himself crowned according to the Anglican rites, taking the Solemn Oath in the process. As the eventual Supreme Governor of the Church of England he clearly sees a future role for the Established Church in speaking out for the other religions and looking after their interests in the councils of state through its unique position.
Fidei Defensor ("Defender of the Faith") is anyway a problematic title, bearing in mind the accusations (high treason among them) and consequent disadvantages heaped upon Roman Catholics until recently (such as an inability to sit in Parliament until the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829), as it was conferred on King Henry VIII in 1521 by Pope Leo X for having written a book attacking the early teachings of Martin Luther. It had earlier been awarded to Charlemagne by another Pope for massacring with astonishing cruelty large numbers of pagan Old Saxons, (Arian) Christian Basques, and not a few Visigothic Muslims.
British Muslims' dissatisfactions do not, by and large, relate to the issue of the Established Church and its privileges. They are reacting to decisions taken by government, its agencies, or campaigns which specifically single out Muslims, or matters which the Muslims consider to be particularly aggrieving, and which leave the Muslim communities with a feeling of injustice, alienation, and even dissociation. Too often it seems that it is less a matter of nobody listening than one of an "open season" on Islam and any of its expressions. In some of these instances the Established Church could help more than it has.
The Church's deafening silence on Bosnia (with the outstanding and honourable exception of the Bishop of Barking), for example, reverberates through every Muslim household in the kingdom. The thunderous silence of the Church in the face of the relentless campaign in the media, apparently endorsed by several offices of state or their agencies, demonising Islam and the Muslims is truly awesome. Foolish and incautious remarks in foreign parts by princes of the Church do not escape the notice of communities already feeling themselves to be increasingly marginalised and vilified. Add to this a level of long-term unemployment that far exceeds the national average, and an intolerable and unparalleled degree of religious discrimination, and one can ask the question "why do so few British Muslims give ear to the extremists?". One might also ask, in the name of justice and equity, what is the Church willing to say and do about this?
So far, apart from the silences, it has come up with the suggestion (by means of a letter to The Times from the Right Rev the Lord Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael James Nazir-Ali, sitting here on my left) that Muslims must be enabled to "engage with contemporary life from the perspective of their faith", which we take to mean that we have to re-jig Islam to suit the times we live in. This is a hoary old chestnut that was often brought up by Christian missionaries in the past such as Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and Samuel Zwemer (author of, for example, Islam and Missions and Muhammad or Christ). As the strength of a religion - any religion - is a statement of the Eternal Verities, the idea of it making itself "more relevant" in order to accommodate to the fleeting and transient fashions of This World, whose Prince we are supposed to be trying to defeat not indulge, ought to be abhorrent to any believer, even if he or she be not a follower of that particular way.
We would echo Bishop Alcuin, another troublesome Briton, who is supposed to have written to Charlemagne in 800 AD, "nec audiendi qui solent dicere 'Vox Populi Vox Dei', quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit" ("and don't listen to those who keep saying 'the Voice of the People is the Voice of God', as the turbulence of the crowd is always close to madness")[see End Note 8]; or even the pagan emperor Marcus Aurelius, who is reported to have said something like "just because 50,000 people agree on a thing that does not make it right".
And for us this is a particularly bad time to seek to please the multitude, because every day it is more and more evident that the Zeitgeist is what is described in the Quran as taghout: the abandonment of taboos; the exceeding of all bounds in everything; the recognition of no limits to whatever one be engaged in, whether it be speculative theology, the writing of silly books that annoy Muslims or Hindus, the taking of drugs, or the indulgence of sexual fantasies. Taghout is something religions are supposed to resist and lead their flocks away from: "whoever rejects untrammelledness (taghout) and believes in God has grasped the most trusty handhold that never breaks" [see End Note 9].
In any case, the newly relevant Church of England, is itself hardly being accommodating. Perhaps this indicates its new relevance to the militant and fundamentalist secularism that is flowing into the United Kingdom from our European "partners", most noteworthy among which are France, for whom any outward display of religious identity ("ostentatious religious symbolism") - in particular the foulard islamique, or headscarf worn by Muslim schoolgirls - is inherently threatening to the "fundamentals of the Republic", and Germany, currently engaged in hunting down some 600 "böse und gefährliche Sekten" ("sinister and dangerous sects") such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists, and followers of Sri Chinmoy? Or perhaps the Church is feeling challenged by the rise of "born again" Christian fundamentalism sweeping in from the USA and the Philippines? Or perhaps it is deeply embarrassed and sees itself as having been wrong-footed by militant feminism and bounced into the divisive (and probably heretical) policy of ordaining "priestesses", and is ashamed at the increasingly outrageous behaviour of the evangelicals and charismatics within its own ranks? The Church of England has never been comfortable with Enthusiasts, probably not since the days of Cranmer and Laud at any rate.
To many Muslims the attitude of the modern Churches to Islam is incomprehensible. The earlier open hostility was easier to deal with, especially as it was based on a clearly stated (and ruthlessly enforced) concept of what it was to be a Christian. The Holy Bible was Divinely inspired as a whole, and thus immutable as a source of the sacred texts which gave authority to the Churches' pronouncements. Now nothing seems to be immutable; authority has gone from the Churches' pronouncements. A great proliferation of weird and eclectic "fundamentalist" Christian sects abounds, most of which are open heresies (according to the earlier state of Christendom). Some verses of the New Testament, which formally were thought important theologically, have been discovered to have been wrong or even interpolated and have been dropped (too often, however, without any change in the theology that they produced). And some simply get in the way of enabling Christians to "engage with contemporary life from the perspective of their faith". The Churches are willing to tinker with the traditional texts of the Holy Bible, suppressing, eliding, and generally "subbing out" the unfashionable and inconvenient. What none of these myriad Christian sects, the Church of England among them, is prepared to do is to rethink the traditional attitude towards Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Indeed, we increasingly see mediaeval slanders being revived and given new currency, even in respectable publications [see End Note 10]. This is difficult for the Muslims to come to terms with.
Islam is, after all, in modern Christian terms, a "Christian sect" (or more probably a heresy - if such a non-progressive and exclusionist category can exist anymore - like Arianism, Pelagianism, Priscillianism, Donatism, Socianism, and all the others that didn't match up at Nicaea, Chalcedon, Constantinople, or the various Lateran and Vatican councils), with its own teachings on Jesus Christ and its own Apocrypha. It requires belief, as fundamental matters of faith, in nearly all the things that the mainstream Christian Churches demand of their followers (such as the virginity of the saintly Lady Mary the Mother of Christ, the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth, the Miracles, Jesus' status as the Messiah (i.e. Christ), the Ascension, the Second Coming). Only it doesn't accept Christ's Divinity (whether as one of the Persons of a Trinity or otherwise), Original Sin, the Vicarious Atonement, the Crucifixion and Death on the Cross (which the Churches hold to have been the method of the Vicarious Atonement), and the Resurrection.
Today, a number of publicly confessed Christians deny the Virgin Birth, dismiss many of the Miracles, and are frankly agnostic about the Ascension; there are others who don't even believe in God; some, through the influence of Evolutionism, do not believe in Adam and Eve, and thus the Original Sin, whereas others simply just don't believe in Original Sin; some deny the need for belief in the Crucifixion and Resurrection, with some among them claiming that it is, in any case, not an historical event; and there are some who continue to deny the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, holding that he was some sort of "super prophet" but certainly not God. Yet all these are counted as acceptable "Christian" positions today by the Churches (in the past they would be, and have been, anathematised as heresies).
Yet, to the mystification of the Muslims, Islam - which displays fewer such "heretical" beliefs - is not even accorded the new-found respect and legitimacy which is given to these heresies, when for centuries that is just what the Churches' propaganda identified it as being. And, at the very least, having once called the Prophet Muhammad "a renegade Cardinal", the Churches could accord him the status they give to St Paul. Or, if not that, St Augustine of Hippo. Or, if not that, St Thomas Aquinas; for, after all, Thomist theology derives largely from Islam in the first place.
The courtesy of simple respect for Islam as a true and legitimate religion and for its Prophet as a genuine holy man and teacher is all that the British Muslims look for from the Church of England. For, as Hillaire Belloc elegantly wrote in his poem on the subject, "...it seems to me that the Grace of God is in Courtesy". At a time when the Established Church is embracing earlier heresies to its bosom, and according them legitimate status, surely one more (in the Churches' eyes) would not be a problem? Or is there something about the other teachings of Islam that the Churches regard with trepidation?
The cavalier attitude to the beliefs of the non-Christian religions within the United Kingdom can be seen by taking a selection of education items in illustration. Muslims are particularly sensitive at the moment to education issues, with not only yet another Muslim school being rejected by HM Secretary of State for Education for Grant Aided status, but also with Muslim children being exposed to evangelising by "born again Christian" teachers. Against a backdrop of falling membership of the Churches, with there being fewer Methodist communicants than there are Muslim worshippers, and probably even fewer Anglicans than either of those, the Rev Ernest Rae, Head of Religious Broadcasting for the BBC, said at the 1995 Radio Academy Festival in Birmingham, that "80 percent of religious broadcasting time is given for Christianity". What "Muslim" programmes there have been on the television channels have mostly been trivial in their content, do not address the essence of Islam or "being a Muslim" within the context of British Muslim culture, and in any case concentrate on Indian sub-continental communities, thereby reinforcing the impression of "otherness" of the Muslims here.
Jan Ainsworth, the Representative of the Church of England, and speaking on behalf of the Church at the launch of the Model Agreed Syllabuses Consultation Period in January 1994, said about the National Curriculum, "the Church of England wanted to have 67 percent of RE time for Christianity". Department For Education Circular 1/94 requires that the "act of collective worship" in schools be "mainly Christian and award a special place to the person of Jesus Christ": but it isn't good enough for people to be present, they have to participate. It is unclear, but highly unlikely, whether the Muslim teachings on Jesus Christ would be acceptable.
To hark back to my opening quote from Dr Modood, one might say that to want a "clear Anglican statement in education" was one thing, but to hog the show for Christianity was something else. What was needed was a moral and historical context for education to take place in, not a take-over bid. Are these above examples indicative of the Church's idea of quid pro quos?
We really must knock the ball back into the Church's court.
It is the Church of England that must do better to accommodate the needs of the other minority faith communities in the kingdom; otherwise, why should we continue to support its Establishment? Even though we stand by the position summarised by Dr Sacks, are we not entitled to expect that the Church now come up with something for us? We are tired of finding it expect proposals from us only for us to have to watch it ignore them. It is surely time to end the self-centred pantomime of the Established Church "meeting" and "consulting" with the other religious minorities, and thus being able to claim a sort of inter-faith virtue through having done its duty as the "premier religion" by the public culture, and so, by virtue of this, "consequently all minorities ought to support it as a national institution". This position has ceased to be an inalienable right of the Church of England whereby it does not have to earn its privileges through helping the other faith communities in the kingdom. With the wolves of Disestablishmentarianism howling at its gates, the Established Church has to do now the decent thing by the others in order to ensure their support for its continued position in the future.
St Matthew's Gospel records Christ as saying in a midrash, apparently on Leviticus 19:13-19,
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets "[see End Note 11].
Or is this another text that has been "subbed out" as inconvenient in order to enable Christians to "engage with contemporary life from the perspective of their faith"?