That Is The Standard

As we rebuild our civilisation from scratch after what has been exemplified by the Epstein Files, we need to re-learn structured daily prayer, setting aside one day in seven, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, the global community of faith as the primary focus of personal allegiance and locus of personal identity, the lesser outward and greater inward struggle, the need for a comprehensive and coherent critique of both capitalism and Marxism, the coherence between faith and reason, and a consequent integrated view of art and science. The answer to the challenge of the Sunna is Sacred Tradition. The answer to the challenge of the Imamate is the Petrine Office. The answer to the challenge of Sufism is our own tradition of mysticism and monasticism. Liberal Catholics will be the last to see the point. Although, like everyone else, they may buy the book here. And like everyone else, they should read Fraser Nelson:

Larry’s Bar, under the National Portrait Gallery, is London’s best-kept secret. I was on my way there with a friend last week when we heard the Muslim call to prayer. “What on earth is that?” she asked. The answer: an open iftar, where non-Muslims are invited to join Muslims for a meal to mark the end of Ramadan. It’s intended as a cohesive national event. They’ve done it at Lord’s, Windsor Castle, Shakespeare’s Globe, King’s College Cambridge. Jews, Christians and atheists all attend. But to someone passing by at that exact moment, seeing all these people praying, it would look like Muslims taking over Trafalgar Square. 

It was Nick Timothy, a Tory MP, who beat Reform to the punch by saying the prayer - provocatively next to a church, he said - was an act of “domination”. A row followed. But I didn’t hear anyone make the fundamental point: this was an event open to all, where Muslims invite their non-Muslim neighbours to demystify the occasion and extend a hand of friendship. That hand was being scorched, and cast as that of the would-be oppressor.

Growing up in the Highlands, I once celebrated Passover with Jews. At the military where I lived in Cyprus, Catholics shared half a church service with Protestants - each half of the congregation seeing how alike they are. These occasions are rare and powerful: gestures of cohabitation, of neighbourliness, of friendship. My own church opens up to ‘Catholicism for the Curious’, carol services, soup kitchens and more. The idea is not to hide away but to actively serve the community - and in so doing, create the architecture for a pluralistic, multi-faith society.

The hard right has recently started to use the cross as a cudgel. Tommy Robinson converted and held a carol concert protest, with a group of nutty preachers - one of whom announced he used to be a witch. New flags have emerged showing the Cross of St George alongside a crucifix. You’d struggle to find a hard-right commentator who has not converted in recent months. Christianity is being enlisted in politics to advance a new narrative: that Christian civilisation is under attack by the woke left and the Muslims. This is how you build political movements: sell victim vs oppressor narrative.

Robert Jenrick barely said a word about religion in most of his parliamentary career but now pops up to demand that Keir Starmer celebrates what he calls “Psalm Sunday”. He means Palm Sunday, and the fact that he can get the two confused shows the level of cynicism here. Faith is a new tool he has picked up only recently. And yes, Christians can point to the aspect of Islamic worship we find jarring: the gender segregation during prayer (which was a short-yet-filmed part of the otherwise-mixed event). How regressive, we say. But where do you stop with this? What about the mechitza, the curtain or partition separating men and women in Orthodox Jewish synagogues? Or about the Catholic church’s refusal to ordain women or marry gay couples?

If we are to rub along together in these islands - Catholics, Jews, Unitarians, Humanists, Atheists, Anglicans, Evangelicals - we have to recognise what Jonathan Sacks, the former chief Rabbi, described as the “dignity of difference”. That is: to live, and let live.

The Jewish defence

Jews know better than anyone what happens when the ‘dignity of difference’ approach - the bedrock of a civilised society - is replaced by ‘this is a Christian country, you are a problem’ logic now being seeded into the UK public debate. Sectarian hatred is a glitch hardcoded into human nature, there to be activated in times of economic distress. A ‘our nation is under threat’ narrative can be easily promoted, to recruit supporters to your cause. New digital techniques mean such psychological buttons can be pushed by algorithms.

Stephan Zweig’s World of Yesterday describes what it feels like to live through a vibe shift. How cultured, cohabiting Europe descended into sectarian chaos; how his own friends started suddenly seeing their world through the newly-minted prism of sectarian (that is, anti-Jewish) conflict. And how it was enabled most of all due to those who didn’t resist or speak out when the (Nazi) crazies emerged, thinking they were a lesser evil than the other (Communist) crazies. No one spoke out for sane. Civilised Europe was torn apart for want of people to defend its values.

To be Jewish is to understand this mechanism: the cynical cultivation of moral panic, followed by pogrom. In our own way, Catholics - at least those of us who have lived through sectarianism and been cast as an enemy within - recognise it too. As the famous poem goes: first, they came for the Communists.

In this way, it is perhaps no surprise that the Jewish News was the first to defend the open iftar in a thundering editorial. It didn’t take much imagination to work out what follows when the ‘this is a Christian country’ brigade get their boots on.

There are times when Jews in this country wish to openly and publicly display our faith, whether that is through dozens of public Menorah lightings around the country, Purim parades through neighbourhoods with large numbers of Jews, road closures for a Hachnasat Sefer Torah, visiting streams or lakes on Rosh Hashana for Tashlich or large throngs of Charedim protesting education bills outside Westminster while reading Psalms and then davening Minchah. We are fortunate to live in a liberal, democratic society where such things are open to us - for many centuries such things would have been unthinkable.

Are there Islamists in this country who wish to assert their way of life over others? Of course. But it is hard to think of a more counterproductive way of combating such a thought process than by telling the many moderate Muslims that they - and they alone - should be unable to celebrate their faith in a public venue which they have booked for an event. In fact, there are few things more likely to help Islamists in their portrayal of British society as irretrievably hostile towards Muslims.

There are those in our community who will respond to this by telling us that the situation with Muslims is ‘different’. To that we would encourage them to look across the Atlantic. A number of the most influential right-wing voices in the United States were railing against Muslims a few years ago. Now they have switched their sights to target Jews.

Enter the Anglicans

And then the Christian bishops rallied to the defence. Here is the Anglican Bishop of Willesden:

The public iftar in Trafalgar Square was not an act of cultural imposition, nor a signal of division. It was, rather, a moment of hospitality: an invitation to share in the breaking of the fast during Ramadan, extended by one community to the wider public. It was open, generous and peaceful. It reflected something profoundly British - the instinct to gather, to mark significant moments together, and to make space in our common life for the traditions that shape our neighbours. 

To suggest that such an event is somehow threatening risks misunderstanding both the nature of religious expression and the character of our national life. Religious freedom in this country has never meant the privatisation of belief. It has meant the opposite: the right of individuals and communities to live out their faith openly, visibly and without fear. That principle applies as much to Muslims observing Ramadan as it does to Christians celebrating Easter, Jews marking Passover, Hindus celebrating Diwali, or Sikhs observing Vaisakhi.

The Bishop of Kirkstall came on to BBC Newsnight.

This is new. But I can see why people stay quiet. What you might call civilisationalism - a theme beloved of MAGA and Elon Musk - is a new creed, and like Brexit it divides old tribes. I’m not neutral. I loathe identity politics and religious sectarianism. Our model - call it Britishness - is precious but delicate. If attacked, as it is being attacked now, it needs defending. But the language of attack is new. What’s the language of defence?

I used to work as a barman in Cleo’s in Rosyth, for dockyard workers. The rule was no talk about football or religion, lest fights break out. The fights then would have been about Catholic vs Protestant - sectarianism that, in some cases, led to deaths. It has now almost died out. Those of us who welcome its death should be alarmed at attempts to revive it now, with Muslims as the new target.

This was the Jewish News’s point (after Niemöller). Those going after the Muslims would come after the Jews next - and in some quarters, already are. The Muslims at the Open Iftar wanted to break bread with Jews and Christians. Do their leaders stay quiet when they are slated by the online right for doing so? Or is it time to show some solidarity?

I write this as a member of a religious minority, so I declare my vested interest. When I started journalism I was advised “no good can ever come of anyone knowing you’re Catholic”. When I recently told a friend in Westminster how I was beaten for being Catholic (hardly an unusual experience in 1980s central Scotland) she was astonished. “You should write about this,” she said: as if sectarianism is a revelation. It made me wonder how many SW1 types playing this new game of religious identity politics are genuinely ignorant of where this path has always led.

The last two or three decades saw the extinction of sectarianism and its recognition as bigotry. Its retreat, and the emergence of a British model - space for people of all faiths and none to rub along together - is something precious. As the Jewish News recognises, worth defending.

The King’s gambit: Britishness as a remedy to sectarianism

This means speaking plainly about major integration failings, but without falling into the trap of tainting a whole community with the actions of the nutters. Jonathan Sacks’s answer is a British national identity so strong that it brings different ethnic and religious communities together in pursuit of the common good - not just the good for ‘my’ group, but the good for all of us together. A nation should respect its faiths, he said, and faiths should respect the nation. There are all too many examples of segregated,, closed communities, making no effort to reach out, no effort to respect the nation. The Muslims in Trafalgar Square were explicitly reaching out. Gathering in homage to both their faith and their country.

It sometimes feels as if Muslims can never catch a break - portrayed as dominating even when they invite outsiders as guests. That’s a depressing trend. But seeing Jews and Christians rally to their defence this week is a more hopeful one. There was, to me, something profoundly British in that response. And here, the King is more than just a national figurehead. In his first speech after his coronation, he said he had a duty as sovereign:- 

“…to protect the diversity of our country, including by protecting the space for Faith itself and its practise through the religions, cultures, traditions and beliefs to which our hearts and minds direct us as individuals. This diversity is not just enshrined in the laws of our country; it is enjoined by my own faith. As a member of the Church of England, my Christian beliefs have love at their very heart. By my most profound convictions, therefore – as well as by my position as Sovereign – I hold myself bound to respect those who follow other spiritual paths, as well as those who seek to live their lives in accordance with secular ideals.” 

That is the standard. A country that protects “the space for Faith itself and its practice” cannot then recoil when that faith is visible in the public square. The open iftar was not a challenge to Britain, but a test of it. And the answer came quickly: Jews and Christians defending it, because in doing so they were defending their own freedoms - and the country that makes them possible.