1. Comment #201871 by ThoughtsonCommonToad on June 30, 2008 at 11:03 am

We are also asking our members and supporters to post messages on the websites of these newspapers that have covered the story:
Daily Mail: http://tinyurl.com/5dgdev
Daily Telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/5mv87j
This is London: http://tinyurl.com/6dwhh7

So the Daily Mail group, (who else thinks the Telegraph isn't part of it anyway) covered a story that was pro-faith. Shock Horror.

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2. Comment #201907 by Ophelia Benson on June 30, 2008 at 11:57 am

Tut tut, what strident secularism. We should all take a leaf from Cristina Odone's book and learn not to be so dang strident.

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3. Comment #201917 by epeeist on June 30, 2008 at 12:09 pm

That's all very well - but who is going to pay for the hot water?

I put comments on the "Daily Mail" and "This is London" sites (not published yet). Now I need to disinfect my keyboard and have a bath.

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4. Comment #201918 by epeeist on June 30, 2008 at 12:13 pm

Comment #201907 by Ophelia Benson

Tut tut, what strident secularism. We should all take a leaf from Cristina Odone's book and learn not to be so dang strident.

Err, no.

We should take a leaf from your book "Why Truth Matters" and learn to recognise special pleading when we see it.

A cracking good read by the way and a lot cheaper than some of the books that MPhil is getting a cut on is recommending.

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5. Comment #202044 by happymannequin on June 30, 2008 at 5:16 pm

From Cristina Odone's Guardian article

"The schools are not divisive. Fully 76 of the 77 British citizens convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a secular state school; the exception was home-schooled."

There is a similar statement in the main "In Bad Faith" document.

The Office of National Statistics gives the following figures:

There were 371,000 school-aged (5 to 16 year old) Muslim children in England in 2001 and four Muslim state-maintained schools in 2004, catering for around 1,100 children.

Using this data (and assuming we are just looking at Muslim state-school pupils) the argument would require about 1000 Terrorism Act convicts from secular state-schools and none from muslim state-schools, to reach the conclusion (with a standard 95% confidence level) that state-school pupils are more likely to become Terrorism Act convicts (ie. there would be only a 1/20 chance that this 1000-0 outcome occurred if you suppose that a member from either group is equally likely to be convicted). This is the conclusion Odone seems to be slyly suggesting. Let's hope we never reach these levels of convictions.

Someone please check my working.

Odone also says

"Moreover, faith schools are crucial in the emancipation of Muslim girls: those who attend Muslim schools are more than twice as likely to go on to higher education than those who attend secular state or independent schools."

It is important to remember that going to a faith school is a choice: the children who decide, or whose parents decide for them, may be more likely to succeed. The "What Makes a Perfect Parent" chapter of Freakonomics gives an account of research into the Chicago Public School system. Those students who wanted to change school (and so entered a places allocation lottery) performed better than their peers, regardless of whether they were awarded places or left behind at their old school. There is a link between success and 'caring' about their education (it does not follow, though, that the choice itself caused a performance improvement). So the faith-schools in the UK are full of students who 'chose' to be there, and therefore might be expected to perform better than their peers, whether the school itself is good or not.

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6. Comment #202090 by Layla Nasreddin on June 30, 2008 at 8:58 pm

Why do you Brits put up with this "faith schools" garbage, anyway? (Not that we Americans are any better, though at least we don't have tax-funded parochial schools--if you want your kid to go to one, you can damn well pay for it yourself!)

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7. Comment #202092 by Goldy on June 30, 2008 at 9:01 pm

Why do you Brits put up with this "faith schools" garbage, anyway?

Keep everyone happy? Guilt of empire? Equality for all? Who knows...
Question to all - who pays for these things? Taxpayer (as usual) or do they get their funding privately?

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8. Comment #202095 by Goldy on June 30, 2008 at 9:04 pm

In the UK, I believe it's partly because religion is institutionalized, but probably due to the fact that religious people vote and have a loud voice.

So institutionalised that we even let people sit (unelected, as far as I know) in the House of Lords purely because they are, errrr, religious.

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9. Comment #202100 by Goldy on June 30, 2008 at 9:09 pm

So institutionalised that we allow fuckwits like these to roam the streets
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7482616.stm

Edit - and yet they don't question the titular head of their sect being a woman...

Fuckwits.

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10. Comment #202101 by Layla Nasreddin on June 30, 2008 at 9:13 pm

I'm under the impression that the present "boom" in faith schools is the fault of Mr Tony Blair, who did so much to encourage them (using tax money, of course).

The idea of public (i.e. secular state) schools having an "act of collective worship" and that RE (religious education) is a REQUIRED subject is so totally foreign to me! Here in America, the only references to religion in the curriculum that I can remember were a few glancing references in history -- oops, "social studies" -- texts, which were quickly passed over without too much comment. (Admittedly, the schools I had the misfortune to attend were utter failures when it came to actually educating students in anything but sports, maybe, but never mind.) We don't want offend anybody, you know, or be seen as "promoting" a religion by spending extended amounts of time on it!

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11. Comment #202106 by Bonzai on June 30, 2008 at 9:30 pm

Am I missing something?

The government is NOT OBLIGED to give a cent to any faith school. The onus should always be on the supporters of these schools to argue why they deserve any tax payer money in the first place. The "secularists" actually shouldn't even be expected to make a case against it. So how is it a "witch hunt" even if the government actually listens to the "secularist lobby" and has the balls to attach strings to its fundings,--rather than just cut it off as I think it should?

On that note it is quite rich that Cristina Odone actually used the phrase "witch hunt", apparently forgetting its historical origin.

Clearly these faith heads are having their free ride for too long and take their privilege for granted.

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12. Comment #202110 by Goldy on June 30, 2008 at 9:49 pm

Want to know what the religious think?

This is a really odd argument especially coming from Westerners. Judging that several evangelical atheist books have made it to the top of the best sellers list, that the authors have received much media attention, interview time even on conservative media outlets, such as FOX news, not to mention outlets such as Youtube, forums that are available to the public, I have to wonder who has denied you the right to criticize religion? If anything, you've been provided an open door.

I've attended several universities where students and Professors lambasted religion with free reign. If there's even been a moment in history where the atheist gets his time on the pulpit it's now.

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,1350,I-believe-that-there-is-no-God,Penn-Jillette-thisibelieveorg,page6#201452

This was my reply
http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,1350,I-believe-that-there-is-no-God,Penn-Jillette-thisibelieveorg,page6#201622

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13. Comment #202115 by Layla Nasreddin on June 30, 2008 at 10:27 pm

Want to know what the religious think?

Everybody's a f**king victim, no? (Pardon the language.) I see this all the time. "Waaah, they're picking on me! They have NO RESPECT for me or my beliefs!" "I am victim, hear me bleat!" It's SO boring.

I recall an article about the infamous Abdul Rahman apostasy case in Afghanistan and the whole "death to apostates" rule. There was a long response from a Muslim convert woman (not me!) about how we should look at hard it was to be a convert to Islam in the West, where people look at you funny and give you a hard time, especially if you're a woman wearing the hijab. "Waaah, I'm a victim! Feel sorry for me!" Fortunately, nobody was buying it, and even I wanted to barf; there's a big difference between being ostracized by your family (bad enough, granted) and being put under SENTENCE OF DEATH by the authorities for changing your religion. Too many of these people have no concept whatsoever of true suffering and repression.

If you read a lot of religious blog or sites, you won't have to scroll far before seeing endless comments about how "hard" it is to be religious today (yes, in America), how the mean secularist bullies won't just leave them alone and insist on shoving their unbelief in their faces, and all this crap. Yes, I know it can be difficult to live up to your faith these days, I admit it. I want to "understand," really I do, but you can only take so much of this whingeing before rolling your eyes and saying, "Get over it! This whining is undignified and pathetic, and makes you look like a five-year-old! The fact that the US government is not going to pay for vouchers for your parochial school or enact your religion's moral precepts into law does NOT mean that 'true Christians' such as yourself are destined to be forced back into the catacombs before long!"

End of rant...sorry.

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14. Comment #202125 by Goldy on June 30, 2008 at 11:36 pm

I replied to his comment with my own wee rantette. I'm not totally sure how they can play the vistim card. My comment on that thread just summed up my feelings...

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15. Comment #202152 by gcdavis on July 1, 2008 at 1:13 am

My comments as posted

Publicly funded faith schools are an outrage in a secular democratic country. They are by definition divisive. I can hardly believe that at a time when a country like Turkey is defending its secular constitution we in the UK are standing idly by while our government desecularises our education system.
http://www.whengodsonyourside.blogspot.com/

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16. Comment #202190 by mcek on July 1, 2008 at 2:42 am

It's so cute that suddenly Daily Mail is so supportive to all Muslim immigrants. Wasn't Pat Condell just talking about it?

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17. Comment #202196 by Shuggy on July 1, 2008 at 3:03 am

"Faith school" is a contradiction in terms. Schools exist to teach facts (including the facts of art and literature), how to find them out and and how to think about them. If they teach fairy tales as facts, and especially if they teach unquestioning belief in fairy tales ("faith"), they are betraying their purpose.

(Not sure if I agree with that 100% myself, but that's where my logic leads me. Discuss.)

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18. Comment #202211 by hungarianelephant on July 1, 2008 at 3:43 am

Y'know, it's like Alien v. Predator. Is it at all possible that both the government and the faith schools could lose?

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19. Comment #202967 by sean salvador on July 2, 2008 at 7:26 am

We are also asking our members and supporters to post messages on the websites of these newspapers that have covered the story:
Daily Mail: http://tinyurl.com/5dgdev
Daily Telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/5mv87j
This is London: http://tinyurl.com/6dwhh7


Tried that and didn't get them posted up. wonder why...

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20. Comment #203372 by Goldy on July 2, 2008 at 6:16 pm

Letters in the Independent

Faith schools and a free society

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (30 June) is right that religion should not be allowed to make ghettos. Cristina Odone's report on faith schools, published by the Centre for Policy Studies, misses the point. The point of is not that faith schools have discriminatory admission codes and employment practices, cream-skim pupils, or turn away children in care, although they do. Rather, what makes faith schools fundamentally bad for children is that they are more concerned with the inclusion of religion â€" the religion of the child's parents â€" than the inclusion, wellbeing and educational needs of the child.

According to Ms Odone, Islamic schools are crucial to the emancipation of girls because they give parents the confidence to keep them in school for longer. But relegating girls to Islamic schools where they are indoctrinated in their parents' beliefs, segregated on the basis of sex (imagine how unacceptable this would be if it was based on race), veiled, prevented from mixing and playing with boys, prevented from doing sports, dancing and so on is anything but.

In Islamic schools students are taught to despise unbelievers, and to hold males and females as unequal.

Ibrahim Lawson, headteacher of Nottingham Islamia School, clearly states their main purpose: "The essential purpose of the Islamia school, as with all Islamic schools, is to inculcate profound religious belief in the children." Education, however, is meant to give children access to science, reason and advances of the 21st century. It is meant to level the playing field irrespective of and despite the family the child is born into. It is meant to allow children to think freely and critically â€" something that religion actually prohibits and often punishes. Contrary to Ms Odone's claims, this can only be guaranteed by a secular educational system.

Until children are given precedence over their parents' religion, the Government, with its commitment to faith schools, will continue to fail them.

Maryam Namazie

Spokesperson, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, London WC1

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in her columns has continually and laudably called for the protection of personal freedom. Yet she reacts to the publication of the recent report into faith schools by calling on the Government to refuse to facilitate parents with a faith in passing on that faith to their children.

Where does Yasmin stand? Where do we stand as a society? Do we respect freedom to pass on a faith and also the time-honoured principle that parents have primary responsibility for their children? Or are we in fact backing the approach adopted by totalitarian regimes that the children belong first to the state?

In 1937, Hitler said, "The youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."

Chilling words, which were never more timely.

Karen Rodgers

Cambridge

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