Criticism of Islam is a protected belief

[theilltemperedmaggotintheheartofthelaw]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15272771/Criticism-Islam-ruled-legally-protected-belief-man-banned-fined-thousands-pounds-social-media-posts.html

I wasn't able to find the judgment. There'll be a hearing in February but it's not clear to me whether claimant's beliefs have already been tested for Grainger compliance. Either way, the tribunal will (also) have to address objectionable manifestation (Bananarama doctrine).

I've raised it here because of the parallels with Forstater. It's a constant refrain of TRAs that permitting Forstater belief is tantamount to attacking GR as a protected characteristic. They do not understand secularism (or the SC ruling).

Of course the situation is not the same insofar as Islam has not been written into our law and Muslims don't expect the rest of us to follow its rules.

Article 9, anyone?

It’s not a fetish, I don’t have any fetishes whatsoever! I’m incredibly vanilla, anyone who knows me would say the same.

You have excelled yourself on this one.
Its all lies that you are spouting when it’s clearly been shown figures exist as given by a previous poster.

“It is not our place to dictate, only to listen and implement “
God love ya,
I don’t know where you get your ideas from but that is a cracking one.

It's all junk science. They don't even know what they are measuring when they look at "unconscious bias," or measuring anything at all, because it doesn't seem to be a stable measurement.

The fact that "adult universities" are teaching this stuff is an embarrassment, but it's why we are where we are now.

Well, we can put this particular piece of nonsense to bed straight away. Christianity reached the British Isles during the Roman occupation, which ended in the early 5th century. Islam didn't even begin until the early 7th century. So it definitely wasn't here earlier.

Mind you, this poster's posts read like a caricature of a loony leftie as portrayed in a right wing tabloid. I think they're an undercover agent for Reform!

What craziness is in this thread? There were likely Christians in Britain in the 3rd century, certainly before the 5th.

Mohammed wasn't even born until the second half of the 6th century.

Hahaha 🤪

Most religions are intolerant of homosexuality. Their followers may have more nuanced beliefs.

Quite. Which is why reasonable people can criticise a religion but take its individual adherents as they find them.

Islam was on these shores hundreds of years before it even existed as a religion?

😂 I wonder if this misconception comes from discoveries of Muslim artefacts among Viking possessions? For some reason we think of the Viking era as ancient history, yet it was the 8th - 12th centuries AD.

Following introduction by the Romans earlier than 200 AD, England became solidly Christian, co-existing with older religions, until the Saxons turned up in the 5th century and temporarily reverted Eastern England to paganism.

Mohammed was born in the 6th century. The Vikings got here 300 years later, plenty of time for Islam to have grown and Muslims to be travelling.

The UK already has a bunch of depressing sectarian issues inside Northern Ireland.

We are recreating that nonsense on the mainland and we need to stop it and being able to criticise and laugh at Islam is essential.

Yes racism is part of the reason this is important because unfortunately many Muslim societies are horrifically racist.

Look what is happening in Sudan Lighter skinned Arabs slaughtering darker skinned people part of an on going process which has being going on since the 600s. Black Muslims get treated badly all the time by Arabs and there is a long history of Imperialism and colonialism.

Anyway this court case is a positive move and part of the modernisation process Islam is undergoing. It is going to become a less sexist, racist religion over time. It will just take a long time to get there. Look at what is happening in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Gradual change is occurring.

Of course it's always been ok to be critical of a religion or even the concept of religion.

@fromorbit “Anyway this court case is a positive move and part of the modernisation process Islam is undergoing. It is going to become a less sexist, racist religion over time. It will just take a long time to get there. Look at what is happening in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Gradual change is occurring.”

On what basis are you saying this? From what I can see islam marches to its own drum, and what we might consider modernisation to mean is pretty much irrelevant. You might have written exactly the same thing a hundred years ago (look at what is happening in Turkey and Persia) but that isn’t how things played out.

You should watch the Book of Mormon. You are in for quite a surprise.

The other user spoke as if needing to be able to criticise Islam is necessary as the religion is homophobic. All religions are homophobic, tht user just does⅞n't have any need to speak about the homophobia in Judaism or Christianity. They only want to criticise Islam and its followers.

Most church goers I know would disown any child they had who was anything other than heterosexual.

You can’t know many church-goers then. Or certainly you don’t know many church-goers outside of certain denominations. While some denominations teach against it, many Christians are relaxed about homosexuality. There are many gay vicars in the Church of England, particularly in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

Most Christians are not C of E. In fact, the joke among Christians generally is that C of E clergy are agnostic.

Not globally, but in the UK they are. And I’m aware of that joke. It is just that, a joke. Sometimes people of a certain denomination may make snide comments about another. It doesn’t make it true, of course.

Well that just goes to show that no religion - and no secular ideology either - should be off limits for criticism. They are all the creations of human beings - none of whom are perfect, so their religions and ideologies are all flawed and nobody should be prevented from pointing this out.

https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/a-new-survey-claims-most-anglicans-back-gay-marriage-but-the-truth-is-very-different/6183.article

"Let’s start with how many Anglicans there are. 5,120 people were questioned as a representative sample of the UK population. Of those, 1,088 (weighted) said they were 'Anglican’, over 21 per cent. In England and Wales that became 1,078 of 4,680, or 23 per cent. Let’s think about that for a moment – if these 'Anglicans' were in the Church of England and Church in Wales (the Anglican Church in Wales) every Sunday that would mean we had 13.5 million people in our pews each week.

Of course the reality is different – the most recent <a class="break-all" href="https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/a-new-survey-claims-most-anglicans-back-gay-marriage-but-the-truth-is-very-different/%20www.churchofengland.org/media-and-news/press-releases/statistics-mission-2020" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“Statistics for Mission” from the Church of England (the annual report on church attendance) tells us that the average weekly attendance (those attending on Sunday or another day of the week) is just short of 750,000. That means that almost 95 per cent of the 'Anglicans' in the survey are not regular church attenders, even in a non-Covid year."

And just to bring it back to my original statement:

"Most church goers I know would disown any child they had who was anything other than heterosexual."

"

What about the 47% of Muslims that say it is not acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher? These are the followers of that religion who have chosen to follow that religious doctrine.

Do you think that view affects how they treat gay teachers?

From the Guardian article I shared:

“Of those questioned, 88% said Britain was a good place for Muslims to live in, and 78% said they would like to integrate into British life on most things apart from Islamic schooling and some laws.
However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed. Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.”

My point is that Islam isn't the only homophobic religion. I am not arguing that Islam is not homophobic. I am arguing that most religions are.

I’m not sure what your point is here, or why you’re so keen to be seen to be right on this. Why is that? Where are you based and what denominations are the Christians you know?

I’m in the UK and none of the. Christians I know would disown their child if they were gay. One or two Christians I know who worship in the charismatic tradition would be upset and worried, but none would disown their kids. The Anglicans wouldn’t give a fig and most of the Catholics wouldn’t either, though again, one or two of the older ones might be worried. I’m talking about practising Christians here, not the general population who might say they’re CofE but never attend church.

No. You asked Why would you even be in a conversation at work about your beliefs about any religion? Why would you need to employ skills of "tolerance" to work with someone of faith?

On a thread about Islam, where you and PPs have suggested that we shouldn’t be allowed to even criticise Islam and Keir Starmer wants to try and outlaw such criticism, I responded to that question.

If you want to start a thread criticising other religions feel free but afaik there are no current moves to outlaw that. Only criticism of ‘targeting expressions of Muslimness’ which, as 47% of Muslims polled think that a gay person shouldn’t even be employed as a teacher, I think that would constitute an ‘expression of Muslimness’, and not being allowed to criticise that would lead to pretty blatant discrimination against gay people.

If you are so desperate to protect Muslims from the rest of us that you would want to stop us calling out blatant homophobia, I’d say that’s a ‘you’ problem.