Secularism

Paris, and other atrocities

After the murder of twelve people at the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, we are once again having to deal with questions of free speech, of Islamism, and reprisal attacks by the neo-fascist far-right. The first job of any principled socialist should be to unequivocally condemn the attacks on the journalists. Some have accused the newspaper of being needlessly provocative or even Islamophobic. But the cartoonists who were murdered at their place of work were killed for no other reason than they drew images that were considered blasphemous by the killers, and the right...

A cheap shot from Ofsted

Ofsted has put seven schools in Tower Hamlets into special measures, saying that they have “not put in place steps to ensure that students, staff and governors understand the risks posed by extremism”. Six of them are Islamic private schools, and one is a Church of England secondary foundation school. The left should not defend the private faith schools which have been found to teach a very narrow curriculum, excluding the arts, and fail to challenge prejudiced attitudes towards women and people of different sexualities. Such schools should be abolished. The seventh school, Sir John Cass Red...

Priests Who Don't Believe in God? (1993)

"Must The Priest Believe?" — in God! — would, I thought, as my eye first flicked over the programme page, be a satire or a skit. But no, it was a serious edition of Joan Bakewell's "Heart of the Matter", provoked by the case of a Church of England priest, Anthony Freeman, unfrocked for publishing a book explaining why he no longer believes in God. He doesn't want to be sacked either — he thinks he should continue as a priest! The exclamation mark embodies my own incredulity — but possibly my ideas about these things are old-fashioned. There are quite a number of such Church of England priests...

Must The Priest Believe in God?

"Must The Priest Believe?" — in God! — would, I thought, as my eye first flicked over the programme page, be a satire or a skit. But no, it was a serious edition of Joan Bakewell's "Heart of the Matter", provoked by the case of a Church of England priest, Anthony Freeman, unfrocked for publishing a book explaining why he no longer believes in God. He doesn't want to be sacked either — he thinks he should continue as a priest! The exclamation mark embodies my own incredulity — but possibly my ideas about these things are old-fashioned. There are quite a number of such Church of England priests...

Must The Priest Believe in God?

"Must The Priest Believe?" — in God! — would, I thought, as my eye first flicked over the programme page, be a satire or a skit. But no, it was a serious edition of Joan Bakewell's "Heart of the Matter", provoked by the case of a Church of England priest, Anthony Freeman, unfrocked for publishing a book explaining why he no longer believes in God. He doesn't want to be sacked either — he thinks he should continue as a priest! The exclamation mark embodies my own incredulity — but possibly my ideas about these things are old-fashioned. There are quite a number of such Church of England priests...

Must The Priest Believe in God?

"Must The Priest Believe?" — in God! — would, I thought, as my eye first flicked over the programme page, be a satire or a skit. But no, it was a serious edition of Joan Bakewell's "Heart of the Matter", provoked by the case of a Church of England priest, Anthony Freeman, unfrocked for publishing a book explaining why he no longer believes in God. He doesn't want to be sacked either — he thinks he should continue as a priest! The exclamation mark embodies my own incredulity — but possibly my ideas about these things are old-fashioned. There are quite a number of such Church of England priests...

Must The Priest Believe in God?

"Must The Priest Believe?" — in God! — would, I thought, as my eye first flicked over the programme page, be a satire or a skit. But no, it was a serious edition of Joan Bakewell's "Heart of the Matter", provoked by the case of a Church of England priest, Anthony Freeman, unfrocked for publishing a book explaining why he no longer believes in God. He doesn't want to be sacked either — he thinks he should continue as a priest! The exclamation mark embodies my own incredulity — but possibly my ideas about these things are old-fashioned. There are quite a number of such Church of England priests...

Qu’est-ce que le racisme antimusulmans ?

La gauche et l’extrême gauche britanniques font fréquemment référence au concept d’« islamophobie », mais discutent rarement du sens exact de ce terme. Les musulmans qui vivent en Grande-Bretagne subissent-ils une oppression spécifique, en tant que musulmans, et si oui, laquelle ? Cet article soutiendra le point de vue que les musulmans qui vivent en Grande-Bretagne souffrent d’une oppression, d’une haine et d’un fanatisme antimusulmans spécifiques, mais que, pour comprendre et décrire ces phénomènes, il nous semble plus adéquats de les qualifier de racisme antimusulmans. Islamophobie L...

Where Were Lenin's Children?

What is happening in the USSR now was symbolised in one scene in a Moscow street last weekend. A group of monarchists stood by, singing the Tsarist national anthem, as the statue of Jacob Sverdlov, the Bolshevik who signed the death warrant for the murdering ex-Tsar Nicholas II, was pulled down. Socialists who respect Lenin and Sverdlov, who believe that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the great liberating moments in humanity's history, and that men like Sverdlov were heroes of human liberation, will nevertheless cheer the pulling down of their statues in cities all across the USSR...

Defying fundamentalism

In an article originally appearing in Against The Current , the publication of the US socialist group Solidarity, Haideh Moghissi reviews Karima Bennoune's Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. . This article originally appeared online here , and is from the March/April edition of ATC (No. 169). THE POST-9/11 “war on terror,” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, have provoked more interest in Islam. To some people Islam has come to represent the ideology of liberation from the yoke of Western imperialism; to others it is a backward...

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