National Secular Society warns religious charities are spreading online misogyny

[ArabellaScott]

More conflicts of rights. Religion promoting misogynist views:

https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2025/05/nss-warns-religious-charities-spreading-online-misogyny

'The NSS said it had found a "worrying" number of cases where charities registered under the charitable purpose of "the advancement of religion" have promoted or condoned misogyny through their websites or social media accounts, including YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Registered charities are entitled to tax relief, which the NSS said essentially amounts to state subsidisation of the promotion of misogyny, sexism and violence against women and girls.
Recent examples include Birmingham-based charity An-Noor Masjid and Community Centre. In September, the charity shared a sermon on YouTube by Mahamed AbdurRazaq (pictured) which said men can hit their wives if they refuse to have sex.
The NSS said that unlike typical 'influencers' and other figures in the 'manosphere', faith leaders are often "highly respected" in their communities and by parents as well as young people. It said the status of being a registered charity can also make an organisation "more trustworthy".
It said this "veneer of respectability" makes their misogynist messages "even more dangerous".'

'It highlighted how the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) refused to penalise Moray Coast Baptist Church or Rosyth Baptist Church after the NSS reported them for misogyny. Both charities said wives should obey their husbands and promoted sexist stereotypes in sermons shared online.
OSCR said it could not intervene because these views were "likely to be held by virtue of a manifestation of a religious belief".'

Thanks for highlighting this, @ArabellaScott
I really don’t know why religious organisations are allowed to be considered charities and given tax breaks, claim gift aid etc for anything which is basically just supporting their club and dogmas rather than genuinely helping people in this world. (If their god is real, wtf does he need my taxes? I’d much rather it went to the NHS and social care etc!)

He’s clearly encouraging men to break the law, and women to submit to it. But to do it so as to leave no evidence.

No cause is too small for the righteous!

I actually like Keith Porteous Wood, who shares with Richard Dawkins a wonderfully old-fashioned culturally Protestant atheism, loves his old hymns, and doesn't need much encouragement to go off on a polemic about the Whore of Babylon.

They're old men, and I'll miss them when they're gone. Organisations like the NSS will probably be taken over by the blue fringes and be even more annoying but without the charm.

He's not who we are bothered about. He's an outlier in Christianity - I know Baptist churches run by women.

He bothers me.

Methodist, baptist, Pentecostal, I’ve found misogyny in all these

I used to have aunts (RIP) who went to a very conservative Baptist church. Woe betide any pastor who tried to tell them what to do.

I grew up in a very Christian community, where I was told at age 14 that I would one day grow up and realise the debating I was doing at school would be useless as it made me unattractive to potential future husbands. It strengthened my feminism and drew me away from Christianity.

The main problem is allowing any religion to shun secularists. That’s what keeps women in the fold against their interests.

He's botherersome individually but his message is not that of mainstream Christianity, only the extreme nut-job bits. I know that Paul told wives to obey their husbands but the NT also tells slaves to obey their masters - both apply to the set of circumstances c.100 AD, where slavery was normal and acceptable and wives were the property of their husbands - neither apply in any civilised society now and can therefore be ignored, having thought them through a bit. But the imam saying a man can hit his wife if she refuses sex is talking about a tenet of Islamic scripture which is still the case in many cultures i.e. women are property.

No. Any religion that promotes acts that break the law of the land can be criticised by anyone and everyone.

I don’t think he’s out of whack with some of the more evangelical/fundamentalist types.
unfortunately there’s statistics showing that the more moderate/liberal Christian denominations are tending towards extinction and it’s the others - the ones with misogyny baked in - which are on the rise.

@SionnachRuadh: "... whose brand of atheism doesn't draw any real distinction between a radical mosque and your local Catholic parish ..."

I wonder what you make this "real distinction" out to be. (Surely not as per Thomas Aquinas? -Although you never kow with religious people, I suppose.)

Be that as it may, as an ex-member of my local Catholic parish, I confess to wondering if my journey into adulthood might perhaps have been improved (not mincing words, by escaping abuse) had I instead been connected to my local mosque, however radical.

Any thoughts, @SionnachRuadh?

-- Matthew 7:16? ...

My experience is that the CofE is enjoying some resurgence - nice liturgy and beautiful buildings probably help.

Jesus at least did not think women's place was at the washing-up bowl. His (in)famous point about divorce is also more nuanced than people realise: he is railing against men divorcing their wives, accusing them of hardness of heart. His point that if either partner remarries they commit adultery is to both sexes, no get-out for men - in the context of 1st century marriage this was revolutionary.
Our idea that a woman can divorce her husband because of violence, infidelity or rape in marriage etc. is entirely foreign to 1st century thinking, when all women were property - in the context of his time, Jesus is saying that men should treat their wives with humanity.

I always say man wasn't made in God's image, God was made in man's image. While I appreciate and sometimes envy people the faith side of things, organised religion is ultimately a vehicle for male supremacy. It's right to challenge the charitable status of organisations that promote violence against women in all its forms.

'Lecturer Mahamed AbdurRazaq (pictured, left) said in his sermon at An-Noor Masjid that "hitting" wives who repeatedly refuse sex is acceptable.

But this was immediately before they went on to emphasize the prophets instruction that followers of Islam must follow the law of the land they live in. Because in Islam it is harim to try to use the words of the prophet to mislead or pursue an earthly goal.

What do you think ?

Thanks for raising this complex and sensitive issue.
It's important to treat statements like these with care and precision, especially when they concern religious teachings and their interpretation in secular legal contexts.
From what you've described:

• Yes, some individuals (including lecturers or religious figures) may interpret religious texts in a way that seems to justify certain actions, including discipline within marriage. However, mainstream Islamic scholarship and leading institutions globally increasingly emphasize that any such interpretations must be contextualized, non-violent, and consistent with the laws of the country in which a Muslim resides.
• In the UK (and many other jurisdictions), any form of domestic violence or coercion — including over sexual consent — is illegal. Even if a religious text is interpreted to support certain behaviours, Islamic doctrine itself prohibits breaking the law of the land, especially if that land provides protection and rights.
• This aligns with your final point: Islam teaches that Muslims must respect the laws of the country they live in, especially when those laws uphold justice and protect individuals — a principle many scholars cite as being rooted in the hadith and early Islamic jurisprudence.

If you'd like, I can help find and summarize formal responses from Islamic scholars or UK Muslim institutions on this subject — many have published guidance directly addressing the conflict between traditional interpretations and modern legal or ethical standards.

Where do I start?

I am not without religious belief but have long standing issues with evangelical and pentecostal churches, and the evangelical wings of the CofE, especially around their approaches to evangelism with young people. A family member of mine was sucked in as a young person, via ‘outreach’ on a university campus and is still deeply embedded.

I believe that the very traditional structures of leadership in these male-dominated institutions (respect for, trust in and almost worship of leaders) makes it almost inevitable that abuses of power will occur. See Mike Pilivachi at Soul Survivor Watford for starters.

The NSS is interested in hearing from people who have experiences within religious charitable organisations, although they are hampered by charity law. This is an email they sent me:

Thank you very much for getting in touch with the National Secular Society.

You have expressed concerns regarding religious organisations operating in schools and universities. Could you please provide a little more information, including the organisations and schools involved, and what your concerns are?

One issue that we are regularly contacted about is that of evangelism in schools. There are a large number of Christian organisations (many of which are charities) that visit schools in order to proselytise and further their religious agenda.

It is often difficult to raise this issue with the Charity Commission, because religious activities are explicitly recognised as a charitable activity. Therefore, organisations that evangelise in schools and universities are not necessarily breaching any charity laws, because evangelising is itself considered a charitable activity. We're campaigning for this form of religious privilege to be removed from charity law.

However, if you know of a specific charity whose activities you think may be breaching charity law in some way (for example, they are causing harm to people), please let me know further details.

Thank you very much in advance,

Kind regards,
NAME

Oh and if you have a teen DC about to go to university and think that the Christian Union is an innocent student society run by students for students, think again. It is an organised, externally-funded organisation UCCF that systematically seeks to recruit young people to a very specific religious doctrine and relies on the unpaid labour of young people to do so. Others are paid but supposed to fundraise for their own salary!

Relay worker:
https://www.uccf.org.uk/relay/what-is-it

It all came to a head with an independent investigation into UCCF discrimination and breaches of employment law:

https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/uccf-investigation-are-the-silences-louder-than-the-statement/16466.article

There’s a lot more that could be said on this topic. The blog ‘God loves women’ is a good resource.

Or, to put it another way,

Some Scotsmen say it's OK for a Scotsman to hit his wife ... but no true Scotsman would ever hit his wife, especially in England where hitting your wife is illegal.

Is that more or less it, @SerendipityJane? Or do you think there's a relevant difference once you change "no true Scotsman" to "no true Muslim"? As you said, it's important to treat such matters with care and precision.

I think the NSS is walking a very fine line here.

Saying it is ok to hit women, for any reason at all, is seriously problematic, it's assault, and it's right to draw attention to it. I'm not sure where that would fall under the law, though pragmatically I think it might be better to have that kind of organisation saying stuff like that openly rather than secretly.

However, to say that any group that has charitable status as a religious organisation should lose it because their ideas about social organisation don't meet what the NSS deem to be ok - yeah, sorry, I have no time for that. People are allowed to have views that are weird, unpopular, and counter-cultural, and meet together to talk about them.

One of the failings, imo, of groups like the NSS is that they fail to understand that their own ideas constitute a belief system and aren't self-evidently true, and I don't think they have a great history of showing good judgement.

I’m not seeing a ‘fine line’.
tbh there are far many organisations registered as ‘charities’ - whether religious or not - which shouldn’t be. But any which are preaching illegality, in this case violence against women - ffs that’s not about ‘what the NSS deems ok’.

I would imagine that openly advocating for assaulting women would be a breach of the code of conduct for regulated charities. It's not even a question whether it's acceptable or not. It's not.

Blimey, this is shocking. I can't see how he isn't committing a crime, by inciting men to beat and rape their wives. He's essentially condemned himself in the video. People (rightly) rail against Andrew Tate, but how many lesser known men are encouraging misogyny like this?

ArabellaScott · 06/06/2025 21:36

Railing against free parking does seem phenomenally petty.

That case seems to ring a bell. If I remember, the mosque were annoyed that Sundays were free parking, as in many places, but Fridays weren't and that it was unfair the mosque attenders had to pay on Fridays.

I am saying all religion is a total crock that has been developed to subdue women and undesirables by preying on a childish desire for a "fair" universe.

Sorry I can't be more precise.

It’s because the data shows that women are great at being doctors, lawyers, law makers etc. So therefore suddenly men, historically less religiously observant than women in uk at least when it comes to Christianity, are suddenly in larger numbers going ‘oh well if the BIBLE says…’ as all the cultural things we used to rely on (men are better at maths/driving/managing) had been debunked. What else is left bar blindly accepting faith that conveniently disempowers women, and provides men with power, domestic care, alleviation of boring domestic duty, and provision of limitless sex?

We should be very afraid!