The Centre For Social Cohesion

Without being mutually civil and solicitous of each other’s welfare, the members of no society can for long sustain themselves as a single society. Hence, social cohesion must always be a desideratum of any political society that wishes to remain viable.

Since the end of World War Two, Britain has undergone a huge amount of inward immigration of people different in outlook, values, and tastes from the indigenous populace. At the same time, the tastes, values and outlook of its indigenous populace have steadily become ever more diverse for reasons that have little to do with inward immigration. One thinks here of much social legislation since the sixties, especially that legalising homosexuality and abortion, facilitating divorce, and removing stigma from unmarried mothers and their offspring.

As a result of both social developments, Britain is today far more ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse than it was in 1945 or in 1965.

Given the earlier definition of social cohesion, it follows Britain will not be able to enjoy as much social cohesion as it did a half century ago, unless its present diversity is underpinned by widespread acceptance of certain shared meta-values and beliefs that can sustain such diversity. Most notable among such needed meta-values and beliefs is that in the desirability of and need for toleration and respect by all of those who are different to themselves.

Has the growth in acceptance of such meta-values kept pace with growing diversity?

On the whole, I believe it can be said to have done so to date, claims to the contrary being simply scare mongering. However, it is an entirely different matter whether the same meta-values can for long endure in a country in which there are growing enclaves in which there are substantial numbers of those in whom these meta-values are conspicuous by their absence.

It is against the background of the foregoing considerations that are best-viewed three matters, not entirely unconnected with each other, each of which has been much in the news of late.

First, there is the alleged recent emergence in certain parts of Britain today of areas in which reside high concentrations of certain religious minorities some of whom have turned them into effective no-go areas closed to those not of the same faith as the vast majority of their residents.

Second, there is the apparently burgeoning demand by Britain’s Muslims for schools catering for members of their own faith maintained by the state.

Third, there is the apparent increasing frequency with which Muslim employees in shops, garages, hospitals and working as taxi-cab drivers are being reported to be refusing to perform tasks they consider to be in violation of requirements of their faith that have traditionally been expected of those performing such jobs.

A recent illustration of the third phenomenon is reported in Tuesday’s issue of the Daily Mail. A female Muslim employee working at the cash-desk of the Reading branch of Marks and Spencer is reported to have refused to put through the till there a copy of a children’s bible on sale presented to her by a 69 year old customer wishing to purchase it for her grandchild who claims the employee refused to handle it because she claimed it was ‘unclean’.

It must be of growing concern to any right-minded person that, as Britain’s Muslim population continues steadily to grow, especially as a proportion of the total, significant elements among it appear, like the M&S shop-assistant, to lag behind in acquiring the necessary meta-values of tolerance of and respect for those different to themselves.

It is because faith schools in general, and Muslim schools in particular, are felt liable to inhibit the development of such meta-values so many oppose their proliferation through being able to receive state support.

Clearly, exactly what is taught in such schools is absolutely crucial in determining whether they serve to facilitate or to impede social cohesion in Britain today. Given that there are well over a hundred such schools in the independent sector, it seems the demand for such a denominational form of education is very strong among Britain’s Muslim community.

Relative to the size of Britain’s Muslim school-age population, Muslim schools still cater for only a very small proportion of it. However, there is simply no way of knowing whether, if local parental demand is to be allowed to determine the religious character of maintained schools in an area, just how many more Muslim voluntary aided schools might quickly spring up if able to.

One alternative to allowing their proliferation would be to single Britain's Muslims out for less favourable treatment than its other religious groups receive who have been granted their own maintained schools in much greater number relative to their respective sizes. Another alternative is to abolish all maintained denominational schools in favour of community schools.

Both alternatives are fraught and equally liable to have a much more deleterious effect on social cohesion than allowing the controlled growth of maintained Muslim schools.

The former alternative risks so alienating the Muslim community to the point where its relations with the public authorities become strained to breaking point.

The latter alternative risks simply extending such alienation to all other religious groups as well who will bitterly resent having to be asked to sacrifice their own hard-won educational establishments.

In any case, unless the state is going to abolish independent schools altogether as well, something which risks antagonising even more of the country’s populace, all that its not granting Muslims their own maintained religious schools will do is encourage the proliferation of such schools within the independent sector where the state will be able to exert far less control and scrutiny over what they teach.

Successive post-war governments in Britain might well have done best never to have created its current level of diversity. Having done so, however, the least bad option the country faces appears to be that for which the present government has currently opted: namely, permitting the expansion of Muslim schools within the state sector, thereby bringing them under greater regulation and constraint than would otherwise happen.

Some newspapers reported at the weekend that the Ed Balls the Secretary of State for Schools has signalled the government has gone back on its previous policy to allow the expansion of maintained faith schools. As yet, nothing he has publicly said suggests that there has been any such change of policy.

Far better to gain the goodwill and gratitude of Britain’s Muslim community by allowing and maintaining their own faith schools where they are desirous of having them than arouse what would be well-justified antagonism on their part should they continue to receive in this matter less favourable treatment than other groups.

However, the government must be prepared to subject all such schools to a very rigorous inspection regime to ensure that they are actively teaching the requisite meta-values now needed to maintain social cohesion here in the face of present diversity.

Perhaps, all Muslim state schools should be required to teach about the Bible to ensure their pupils will all have come into sufficient early contact with it that none will be liable to refuse to handle a copy when on sale in a store at which they have chosen to be an employee.

Toleration and respect are two-way streets that members of Britain’s Muslim community need to embrace every bit as much non-Muslims to ensure peace and harmony continue to prevail there in the decades to come.