To think that the mother/daughter duo who took Michaela to court should face some natural consequences?

Good points above. I always quite an optimist and think that most of the 3m muslims in the UK will become secular anyway over time. It is very very hard to keep traditional ways going in a society that has freedom. Some groups manage it - Jehovah's Witnesses, some cults, Plymouth Brethren, some very ultra-orthodox jews, but it is not easy to keep teenagers sequestered, separate and apart so as not to be influenced by secular Western values.
I think about half the UK says it is atheist and about 47% are Christian but plenty of those are fairly secular Christians so most of us really fall into the category of one or the other. In a sense for most of the UK islam is de minimis even if that does not seem so in a few areas like London and particularly near where I live which is probably one of the most mixed areas of the UK with a lot of hindus (25% of the borough), lots of NW London jews, muslims and many others so for me these issues are more relevant than people who live eg in Northumberland where I am from which is something like 98% white and about 93% atheist or Christian.

I am not surprised the court supported the school in this case and all parents know what the school is like before they send their children there and 50% of the school is muslim so clearly vast numbers of parents had absolutely no problem with no prayers at lunch times. In fact it is probably better from a muslim point of view to have a strict school with presumably no sex, alcohol or drugs at lunch times and no prayers, than many prayers but lots of the sex drugs etc of many a more liberal school.

@mids2019 - I think what you say below is wise. Basically you cannot after the liberalisation of England in the 1960s suddenly say that there should be a kind of parallel system to address the needs of a more vigorous form of religion. I think there are 3 million Muslims in the UK and obviously the very stupidest thing we could do is to structure education or other social requirements around it. The UK is mostly a culturally Christian country which in practice is mostly secular in behaviour. It is now also multicultural which matters. It matters a great deal then that there is not effective religious primacy either by law or by social pleading.

The submissions in that sense in Michaela were quite concerning; because the first thing that happened was as immediate need for special prayer compared to the Christian child who could apparently pray silently at any time. Not only did this submission sidestep the idea of prayer as something necessary at all, it immediately demanded time and resources to avoid apparent discrimination. That is not law but social pleading. The result in Michaela was absolutely right - I share nothing in common with KB and her educational ethos (would not send my children there) but if we do think that children should be educated in a way that does not discriminate then her approach was right. She could never have said yes. The fact that there was s degree of violence and threat as a consequence tells you that it is more necessary than ever to maintain the law and not social pleading which in this case became a strict demand very fast.

The adults in this case bear all the responsibility for this mess. If you are the kind of person who must show your goodness or religious compliance conspicuously then that is not being good or moral. It is just conformity, and asking others to conform to improve your piety/zealousness/social control/honour/standing is thoroughly regressive. Particularly for women and children who typically get the sharp end if they don't.

education I don't care shout eavesdropping?

@bombastix

I'll leave it up to 'RE teachers to explain to her what the angle Gabriel was playing at telling Mary she was giving birth to the son of God then appearing to a man a cave years later to tell him something different.....cognitive dissonance is at the heart of religious thought to some extent.

I think the term muscular was an interesting one and yes Christianity has lost its muscle and has accepted this but other faiths definitely haven't and Islam wants more muscle. I think this is a drive for secularization which we would embrace while accepting and honouring Christian heritage and it's influence on our history in the UK. This does not mean a huge number of active Christians (and in a generation there may not be) but recognising our country historically has been shaped by religion for blood or for ill.

WW2 was a profound conflict but one that was thought to be one fought by two imperialist colonial European powers by those in the middle East and North Africa and there was a dislike of both sides in the conflict as it swept through the region. My grandfather served in what is known as the Palestinian Mandate and the post war international agreement for this region to become the modern state of Israel (caused by WW2) is the greatest legacy of the war to some Muslims (they are not exactly fans I believe).

I think this explains some of the lack of commubity integration e.g. remembering war dead on armistice day and an aversion to our armed forces. There is historical huge dislike of Britians role in the world and it worrying UK citizens feel like this about the country. I think assuming a UK identity means a respect for the country's history and place in the world including its western democratic partners.

Around 1/3 of people think Islam is a threat to the British way of life and there was one survey suggesting more than half of people thought it a threat to western democracy. Do we hurl the term 'bigot', 'Islamophobe', 'racist' at these people or do we stop and think of we have a concern shared by significant numbers of people do we stop and talk more deeply about those concerns and not immediately dismiss the holders of those views as far right racists?

Addressing the concern I think is partly addressed by the stance eavesdropping should be secular and we need to ensure the mainly secular nature of country with its associated freedoms isn't encroached by any religion.

Do you know her personally?

@mids2019 yes it is about giving children the ability to think for themselves, and the idea which goes back a long way to the Enlightenment. We tend to take those cultural imperatives quite lightly in the UK if we know of them at all.

Yet what is interesting is how very quick this collapse of Christianity was in England (and to a similar extent Western Europe). There are probably many reasons, but at least one is WW2 because the limits of Christianity really were apparent after that and I think those societies realised they needed to build their morals into something else and they realised life was precious. The idea of the meek inheriting the earth was absurd. What had happened was a great tyranny had nearly destroyed Europe and there was a systematic destruction of the Jewish people. What comfort is God in all that? Very little.

That's not really a shared history with migration that came in the 60s onwards from places with more er muscular ideas of religion. It's one of the things that gets missed; that migration came from places that didn't basically have this devastating experience which is a huge moral challenge.

Anyway I have drifted! Freedom of thought is a gift. Your daughter sounds smart. Good for her and you.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

My error.

Questions like Ofsted, national curriculum , phse spring to mind with these places.

@bombastix

Fascinating subject

I would add to your list scientific rationalism in that there is no empirical evidence of God and it has been apparent for some centuries the universe works on the basis of scientific laws which have consistently been shown to be correct .

My daughter came to her own considered conclusion that there was no God due to a fundamental acceptance of science and by asking questions that are hard to answer by religion. Why does God allow bad things to happen? Does the same God look after Jews and Muslims and so why did he allow October 7th and rh retaliation in his name involving people devout to him? If you don't believe in the right God do you go to hell?

She is 11.

Now if a Muslim child entertained such questions which would be the result of a rational critical mind then the family would berate the child and warn of the severe consequences of heresy. You are effectively through coercion depriving a child of the free choice to ask their own existential questions. I don't think this is correct and tantamount to control and coercion

I suppose there are similar arguments about Muslims being free to determine their own moral compass as it governed by their religion. If a Muslim agrees with pre marital sex, homosexuality, alcohol, liberal clothing, yet has a personal relationship with God can they claim to be Muslim? It's a bit of a philosophical question.

I think the pressures you mention that have led to the decline of Christianity will ultimately impact other religions though it may take a few generations (in western nations). I guess what you see currently is a huge amount of resistance to these pressures though often under the guise of claiming any criticism of religion is hate speech.

Another possible factor in the decline of Christianity is the removal of blasphemy as a crime. Blasphemy is legal for all religions.

I think that there are some Muslims that will aggressively want blasphemy laws as a protection of religion. I suppose they would argue blasphemy is hate speech and prosecuted by law but that is simply not the case. We need to defend this freedom of speech and not fear horrendous reactions like Charlie Hebdot.

I have known calls for this (madrassa) type of education to be available in the UK which I doubt will ever happen

It already has @mids2019:

https://madrassah.co.uk/madrassah-directory/

The head of Michaela is vile. She deserved all she gets

@mids2019 - my view is that they are directly connected. It was those social changes, followed by legal changes, delivered by Labour governments to support abortion, decriminalized homosexuality, equal pay, removal of figures like the Lord Chamberlain to censor the theatre, availability of contraception, the slow end of prosecutions of blasphemy or obscenity against people or books and films, meant an end to the kind of explicit moralism of Christianity. It was neutered. There are still evangelists who are extreme who protest about homosexuality, the wickedness of abortion and they always hated these changes away from Victorian morality that was consciously done away with. Some people still hanker for a world where everything is controlled to a book.

It has not been perfect since. But the freedoms are night and day for women. Children will not adopt religious ideas unless it is done at an early age. Children are naive. I could have educated mine to believe in almost anything at a young age, maybe Zeus or Thor? At one stage in history that may have been the socially acceptable thing to do, depending on where you lived.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasa

I have known calls for this type of education to be available in the UK which I doubt will ever happen. We have families sending their children to such schools abroad and it massively impacts their formal learning in the UK as you get to stage of knowing a lot of Islamic teaching but with no room for science, maths and the rest of the GCSE curriculum.

@bombastix

I lived through maybe the end of the era if main stream observant Christianity in the UK and I think it would be an interesting academic exercise to see how a patriarchal religion declined e.g. expansion of popular music, alternative culture, feminism, contraception, legality of divorce and homosexuality etc. Modern liberties are partly a result of the decline of organised authoritarian religion which has direct social influence.

We don't wish to see a reversion to this culture I believe so we laid increasing secularisation in society generally or at least making religion a lot more personal.

One thing I think some Muslims fear to an existential degree is Islam going the same way as Christianity. Religion is ultimately passed through generations and through scripture. A child left to its own rational will not independently come to the conclusion that there is a divine entity in some alternate universe that will damn you for having a glass of beer with pork scratchings .

Therefore to protect faith there must be means to prevent children being influenced externally and we have plenty of examples of that through historic Christianity and definitely modern cults.
(Jehovah's witnesses do this through social control and the othering of 'worldly' people.)

We therefore get to the desire of many to have faith schools to protect from these influences but we are not as a society in a mood to extend faith schooling. We have only just managed to get some integrated schooling in Northern Island so the divisive effect is obvious.

So the courts are the only way to try and sustain religious ethos in school or impose it and if the courts say no . . .well a lot of unhappy religious people .

@MyrtlethePurpleTurtle

You give examples of well educated women who in some examples it is not quite evident how conservative their faith is.

You do get Muslim MPs obviously and I wonder to what extent this is driven by their constituency demographics? Anyway being an MP means having to represent a whole range of people in a democratic state so I very much doubt they would decry the rule of law or being cultural biases into decision making.

I know of Sultana and she has been known to tweet anti semitic comments in the past and there are certainly some working class white constituents who don't fully think she represents their interests. I think her political career maybe stalled under Keir but knowing her constituency she is going to have a hell of a job being in a party or government that won't have manifesto commitment to stop arms supply to Israel. Locals would want this raised by her every time she speaks

I suppose you can make comedy out of Islam by lampooning or dark humour (one of your examples) but you have to ask is thus lampooning a distraction from having a serious look at culture? It may be edgy humour but put her jokes in the mouth of a non Muslim and you may get a different reaction to the comedy. It's a bit Muslims are the only ones to make humour out of Islam isn't it?

The issue of which history should be studied in various countries' schools is always interesting. A lot of religious parents will send children to weekend classes too eg Catholics even if not at Catholic school might go to Sunday school and Holy Communion classes. I remember sayig to my child whose degree is ancient history why it is Greeks and Romans. Why isn't it Neolithic peoples or Neanderthals (I have 3% Neanderthal DNA) or Chinese.

Eh??

Off the top of my head:

• Shazia Mirza (my favourite female comedian)

• Tulip Siddiq - MP for Hampstead and campaigner for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

• Young Aspana Begum - courageous MP for Poplar (and hijab wearing)

• Even younger Zarah Sultana

• Rushanara Ali, Bethnal Green

• Then there's Shabana Mahmood who won 80% of the vote in the last couple of elections.

All (female) Labour MPs.

• Then there's the female Labour MP - I forget her name- who is a doctor and still works some A&E shifts. She was quite prominent during Covid.

There are others - including at local council level - but I can't be bothered to look them up.

@mids2019 I agree with a lot of what you say. Basically I remember my parents liberating themselves from the very strict morality of Christianity when they were young, the fight not to be considered sinful, or be condemned mostly by older people who derived power from religion. The campaign for moral rearmament and the Festival of Light. Malcolm Muggeridge on the Life of Brian and the idea of blasphemy.

We have really only just dispensed with the idea that the Christian church is the moral guide in the UK. Philip Larkin writes about it well in High Windows.

Religion is man made. There is something great in simply being able to say that, and be a person and be educated without religious interference. Let people have opinions not silenced by sanctioned beliefs.

And there we have it.....We live in a country of free speech where we can refer to sky pixies without a care. Freedom to criticise religion is a previous one.

@bombastix

still awaiting an Islamic equivalent of Life of Brian. The reason for a film like this never being produced is that in general we have over decades developed a culture where elements of religion can be mocked (e.g. Father Ted). We don't want to go backwards.

@Xenia

I have noticed people in our town moving so that their children do attend predominantly white schools. I think this is partially about school quality but also an acknowledgment of tension between religions and ethnicities that can impede learning.

I think integration is key and you can only have a diverse and inclusive society of you see it i.e. you see a class and see a diverse pupil cohort. However as mentioned before there is resistance to true social mixing because of different world views. People will do a lot to ensure their children are brought up in environments that reflect their religion and ethos. Where this can't happen in my opinion you can get real tension of not managed correctly.

sexism and homophobia should be unacceptable in schools but to what extent are teachers fearful of attacking such things because they may be accused of religious discrimination or not paying due regard to religious sensitivities.

Interestingly if we are mentioning the King then we have to reflect the monarchy features quite heavily in the history national curriculum. The history national curriculum covers predominantly UK history i,t's Christian monarchy and tumultuous events such as ww1 and ww2.

Why concentrate on a Christian Britain? Simply because it's our history as a nation and its incredibly important. We cannot start changing local curriculum to study the early history of Saudi Arabia for example and no one is suggesting we do apart from those that feel their religious and geographical heritage is such that they feel our history is relatively unimportant.

Similarly our English curriculum concentrated on English historical writers and it is an established curriculum again focusing on some of our greatest authors.

We have a curriculum designed to be Britain centric and by necessity there is going to be bias towards one religion.

One thing that has been suggested to me is that Muslim pupils disengage from the curriculum in some subjects and this impedes learning. However we have to retain the curriculum as is.

@LambertndButler if your god is so great he she or it will survive mockery on a website. I'm no fan of Kings or religion