The proportion of Muslims who agreed (79 per cent) was higher than for Christians themselves (70 per cent)
Nearly 80 per cent of Muslims say life in Britain should be guided by Christianity, according to a poll.
by Nick Allen (Telegraph UK)
People were asked to agree or disagree with the statement “Our laws should respect and be influenced by UK religious values”.
The proportion of Muslims who agreed (79 per cent) was higher than for Christians themselves (70 per cent).
The ComRes poll for the BBC appeared to contradict calls by some politicians to remove faith from the public arena.
Hindus (74 per cent) also gave more support than Christians to a strong role in public life for the UK’s traditional, Christian religious values.
The results suggested that people of different religions would rather there is some kind of faith-based framework to life in Britain, even if it is not based on their own religion.
Several years ago the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, warned that Christianity was “all but vanquished” as the guiding principle for Britain’s moral framework.
But, according to the poll, 91 per cent of Muslims agreed that religion “has an important role to play in public life” while 73 per cent of Christians also agreed.
Atheists have recently stepped up their campaign against the role of religion in public life, including using advertisements on the sides of buses.
But the poll suggested that, even with baptisms, church weddings and attendance at Sunday church services declining, people are unwilling for secularism to replace religion completely.
The poll also found that only 54 per cent of Christians and 52 per cent of Muslims agreed that the media reported their religion accurately.
Categories: Current Affairs
The Muslim Debate Initiative 
Hmmm…interesting post as always from Mr Williams.
But…
If the Muslims mean that they would like the law to be based on Christianity, as in Catholicism or a theocracy of some kind, then they are even more out of touch and foolish than I had given them credit for: Muslims have not exactly prospered under Christian ‘regimes’ of the past (or present, say Ethiopia) have they?
The question: “Our laws should respect and be influenced by UK religious values” is very poorly phrased and makes no mention of Christianity at all: it merely says ‘U.K religious values’. What are these exactly? It is likely to be interpreted by the Muslim on the street as meaning ‘respect or deference to the range of religious traditions present in the U.K’, which they would rightly think includes religions such as Islam, Hinduism etc in a kind of ‘Do not denigrate their Gods lest they denigrate Allah’ kind of way.
Frankly, secularism for all it’s glaring faults, is a reaction to Christianity IN PARTICULAR and the set of intellectual and social circumstances that this religion brought about in Europe. The Muslim (and indeed Chinese and others) experience was radically different. It would be rather bizzare for Muslims to throw their hat in with the Church of all people in a fight which has very little to do with them, what with Muslim learning having kick – started the Enlightenment in the first place which displaced the authority of the clergy and the Church.
A clearer question would have been ‘Do you want Christianity to be the basis of U.K law?’ rather than the waffly way they put it. The answer to that would have been interesting, but given that the four top Christian thinkers in history, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Martin Luther seem to think there IS compulsion in religion, and that one can compel salvation perhaps, I don’t see the benefit for Muslims in living under the yoke of the Church as opposed to the yoke of secularists.
So I think this article from the Telegraph is an example of what they say about lies and statistics…
I would be interested to hear from any Muslims who WOULD prefer to live under the COE or a Pope as opposed to, say, the situation in the United States or the U.K.
If we look at recent Europe: The first mosque in Spain was opened after four hundred years: I did not see the Church in Spain, where it is far more powerful than in Northern European countries, agitating for the prayer places of Muslims in that time (when they got a spare minute from backing Franco’s fascists that is). Nor is the Catholic Church exactly agitating against the hijaab/niqaab bans in Spain, France or Belgium. Nor have I heard a peep from the Pope about that nor the refusal of Italy to list or allow mosques as ‘religious buildings’. We all know what the current Pope had to say about the Prophet (PBUH). Most unhelpful not to mention inaccurate.
And I need not remind this site of Rowan Williams recent probing of the extremes of stupidity with his comments about Islam. And he’s one of the ‘nice guys’.
We love and respect our Christian brothers but let’s not sugar coat reality: I for one am happy living here in the U.K as it is: I DO NOT WANT MORE CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE, especially where that will mean state funding for missionary work/and curtailing of freedom of religious belief.
Yes, the militant atheists and secularists need to be tackled, but I think the idea that Muslims and Christians are ‘natural allies’ in this fight is a comforting fantasy and possibly fallacious. Are we going to, as Muslims, start defending the record of the Church in Europe and demand more space for it in public and political life? I think not. The secularists, to my mind, have a point against the Christians but not so against the Muslims.
After all, most of the ‘great’ secularist thinkers were practising/professing Christians, so even their own intellectuals seem to want to rein in the Church.
Who are the Muslims to disagree?
thanks for your comments – much food for thought…
I don’t know about the COE but the Catholic Church has very simplistic, black/white views on a lot of subjects—the reality of the diversity of the human condition requires a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to law in order to promote ethical-moral justice.
A deep understanding of the human condition and an emphasis on ethical-moral justice has always been a strong point of Islam—-but Christianity has mostly been stuck in a quicksand of debating and refining the “mysteries” of the trinity, nature of God, nature of Jesus Christ(pbuh), the understanding of salvation….etc…..and such other doctrinal issues……
We Muslims should be careful not to get sucked into this quicksand—but maintain some distance so we can put in more efforts to develop our strengths……and perhaps in doing so….we might be able to help our Christian brothers and sisters be better Christians…as in “followers of Jesus Christ(pbuh)” who was himself a reformer concerned with social justice.
Surah 3 verse 104
Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity.