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Under Conservative rule combatting Islamophobia tended to be relegated to the realm of ‘whataboutery’ and to lack substance. Government’s recent commitment to funding protective Mosque security, and the Muslim Trust for its work researching data on anti-Muslim hate crime and its victim support, is welcome. Threats and attacks on Mosques, imams, and ‘microaggression’ against Muslims in distinctive dress – women in hijabs are particularly vulnerable - is growing. The Trust estimates that every five days a Mosque suffers hostile action of some sort.
On 25 July, Muslim leaders, Mosque Councils, teachers and security experts were gathered in Birmingham for a national emergency meeting. Meanwhile in Birmingham, the Department of Education is funding pilot school courses on antisemitism provided by the Archdiocese education service with the Catholic Education Service and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Combatting antisemitism remains a high priority, and for the Government, is clearly linked to Middle East foreign policy. Our big cities and Churches are noted for their diversity. St. Ignatius’, Stamford Hill, for example, is pure London. It has recently been resplendent with the flags of some 40 nations. Irregular attendees might have thought them a tribute to the World Cup, though the Vatican flag over the door to the presbytery would have given pause for thought - no notable strikers fostered at the end of the Via della Conciliazione. The 40 different nationalities/Londoners provided the display celebrating the annual parish festival. But Muslims aren’t popular with Catholics from Nigeria where Christians have a hard time in the Islamic North. The Church of its nature offers an identity that ought to relativise nationality. And St. Ignatius’, its priests, from the DRC, Nigeria and Philippines as well as from Britain, altar servers, readers and its people, form a religious microcosm of London, a defiant no pasaran to the manipulators of xenophobia. They relate to ‘place’ and don’t need Andy Burnham to tell them about it. But they also relate to the countries where the different generations, their parents or grandparents, came from and were born. Celebrating the significance of this religious gathering is not naïve romanticism. Hackney and Tottenham, like many inner city communities, have had their riots with different ethnic groups on different sides. Such complex UK realities fall into the sphere of both theology and sociology. They come under the heading of ‘integration’, a catch-all like culture, not often clearly defined. Baroness Louise Casey analysed in a December 2016 study what works and what doesn’t work in the integration of Britain’s Muslim communities. Integration is more of a subjective concept than at first sight. Should integration be ‘a two-way street’, each meeting half way. Or, to stay with the traffic analogy, is an immigrant like a driver on the slip- road onto a motorway. The traffic on the inside lane of the motorway needs to give way and let the slip-road driver in, but, once on the motorway, the driver must obey the highway code and obey the overhead signs. The second analogy might better fit the reality. Neither option makes for an easy ride for the immigrant. Least of all for the Muslim immigrant. Take Palestinians for example. A Christian immigrant has an easier time than a Palestinian Muslim; they can integrate into widely accepted national bodies, the Christian churches. Nor do they have an alcohol ban limiting socializing in pubs. A Muslim joining a Mosque finds himself/ herself amongst a worshipping community that may have arrived only a generation ago, and may still be seen as ‘foreign’. Worse, they daily risk encountering some degree of Islamophobia, influenced by perverse distortions of Islam overseas, notably jihadist terrorism or the persecution of women in Afghanistan. British Catholics might feel particular empathy with Muslims. Henry VIII’s 1534 Act of Supremacy, declaring himself head of the Church tying religion to the political power of the throne and creating the Church of England, severed links with Rome. By the 17th century Catholicism was largely seen as an alien religion, a fifth column in a Protestant country, persecuted and excluded from public office. The physical threat was still apparent in 1780, the anti-Catholic Gordon riots lasted days destroying property. The restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850 caused Protestant demonstrations. In 2008, Archbishop Rowan Williams’ championing ‘constructive accommodation’ toying with the idea of recognition for aspects of Shari’a Law, along the lines of Jewish Beth Din courts, caused a major controversy. He had launched a national Christian-Muslim Forum two years earlier. The existence, and growth, of Britain’s over four million Muslim population is a highly politicised aspect of Britain’s demography. Islamophobia is a strong element in the xenophobia of far right-wing Parties. The Jewish population of Britain is only some 300,000; antisemitic violence and hate speech is proportionately greater per head - and the Jewish community comparatively more effective in drawing attention to the hurt and anxiety it causes. The Muslim Council of Great Britain (MCB) was formed in 1994 at Government instigation to provide a broadly representative organisation, some 500 affiliated Muslim bodies, with which to relate and give Muslims a public voice. Whilst the MCB spoke out against acts of terrorism, relations soured in 2009 when Daud Abdullah, its Deputy- Secretary General signed a declaration from the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, an international grouping of radical Muslims with links to Hamas and with some members allegedly from extremist jihadist organisations. Hazel Blears MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, called for his resignation. The declaration was a response to Israel’s assault on Gaza - with the customary rationale of curtailing rocket fire - over three weeks 2008-2009, Operation Cast Lead. Gordon Brown’s Government condemned Daud for promoting violence. The MCB Secretary-General, Abdul Bari, was unwilling to sack Abdullah on grounds that such government intervention undermined the independence of a religious organization. This was both disingenuous and provocative, though he later willingly accepted capacity building help from the TUC. The Government adopted ‘a policy of non-engagement’ towards the Muslim Council, temporarily restoring relationships for five months before the 2010 general election. ‘Non-Engagement’ has continued since then, Governments officially refusing to associate with the MCB for sixteen years, though individuals, both Stephen Timms MP and Nick Clegg MP for example, attended meetings even when holding ministerial office. To find interlocutors for reports, consultations and advice, Government relied mainly on hand-picked Muslims mostly sympathetic to State sponsored programmes such as Prevent - viewed as discriminatory by many Muslims. This had an alienating effect but did bring into national prominence several significant figures from the Muslim community. The Church sought similar partners for its inter-faith dialogue with Muslims. One of these, an outstanding leadership voice, Leicester’s Shaikh Ibrahim Mogra, himself a former deputy Secretary-General of the MCB, visited Pope Francis on 5 April 2017 as Co-Chair of the Christian-Muslim Forum, one of four imams accompanied by Cardinal Vincent Nichols. His reaction was typically warm: ”I think it’s going to be one of the most powerful messages that will go out to the Muslim world that the Christian communities are our friends….I think we should reciprocate that”. Rejection of the Muslim Council did not encourage integration. Prime Minister Burnham needs to put this right. And the Church needs to recall Ibrahim Mogra’s delight at his welcome in the Vatican and could do more to show by example how wrong and misguided Islamophobia remains today.
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Pope Leo has scheduled this Autumn what he describes as “a synodal discernment on the steps to be taken in order to proclaim the Gospel to families today”. He sees families as active subjects of evangelization as well as recipients of pastoral care. The meeting of Presidents of Bishops Conferences, and Eastern Catholic Churches, will therefore be “placing particular emphasis on listening to the families of their local churches”. They will need to heed the input from different generations and not just from the ‘nuclear family’.
Sadly in the UK, it is likely this will mean little happens. To date the Bishops Conference of England and Wales has not been prominent in implementing Leo’s vision of a synodal Church. Sadly because at a global level in a divided world how many other organisations have the Church’s capacity to listen and learn from what their members say? Pope Francis set up The Dicastery of Laity, Family and Life in 2016 - amalgamating two Pontifical Councils, for the laity and for the family. The creation of this new body corresponded with the publication of his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) a blockbuster of 60,000 words, 325 substantial paragraphs. It was an outcome of what proved to be two quite contentious synods. In 2021, Francis made the fourth Sunday in July, the Feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne, next Sunday, World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly. The forthcoming conference celebrates the 10th anniversary of the publication of Amoris Laetitia, a decade in which the social changes and problems it considered, amongst them economic pressures on families, declining birthrates, and increasingly temporary relationships between couples, and loneliness, have grown rapidly. The thematic framework, typical of Pope Leo’s pastoral theology, has a number of headings: “reality, beauty and challenges”; signs of the times and contemporary experiences of family life; “Christian families as active subjects of the Church’s mission”; “accompanying families” in their difficulties. Two themes focus on marriage: young people and the vocation of marriage, and their early years together. These fall within the wider, more comprehensive ambit of Amoris Laetitia (AL), the assumption perhaps being not that it is out-of-date – it remains notably contemporary and down to earth - but that very few will have heard of it and even less have read it. Hands up. I fell into the latter category. It really is worth taking the trouble to read it. So is there something missing in Amoris Laetitia (AL) that needs thinking about and discussion ? Or something dealt with too briefly that could do with being fleshed out at the conference? By way of a suggestion, in the 1960s the hierarchy’s headline on the topic was that marriage was a sacrament. The emphasis was on its unusual characteristic: sacramental Grace available to, given by, the married couple to each other: not by an ordained minister (as in the Orthodox Tradition through liturgical blessing of the marriage). Only in AL paragraphs 67, 71-75, and a footnote, is the word sacrament used in relation to marriage. Though the ‘symbolic’ dimension of the family and marriage in the Catholic theological tradition is developed at length. In short, the sacrament of matrimony is not missing from AL, but the significance of Grace being given in this particular way could be explored much more. The word ‘Grandparent’ though was missing from AL. The word used throughout is ‘the elderly’; strangely, given a Catholic theological emphasis on relationships. Care for the elderly is the main emphasis. In only two paragraphs (AL 192/3) are the elderly doing something useful themselves, if a little vague: providing “continuity of generations”, “bridging the gap” to the past, enabling values to be passed down. Not unimportant in the face of cultures with a “lack of historical memory” described by Pope Francis as a “serious shortcoming”, and a theme taken up by Pope Leo. Music to the ears of an old historian. I remember the now Cardinal Robert Sarah, formerly Archbishop of Conakry in French Guinea (and on President Sékou Touré’s death list), addressing a meeting of European Union and African Bishops in Cape Coast on ‘the family’. It was the late 1980s, AIDS was cutting a terrible sward through African societies; a parental generation was dying. Elderly grandparents were caring for many orphaned children, exhausted and penniless, at their wits end. But no mention of grandparents in Archbishop Sarah’s address on the family. “The family” seemed, by default, to be the European nuclear family. Astonishing but not so surprising once the faithful are accustomed to theology and to sermons that rarely touch the ground in the real world. Advances in medical treatment and good health systems mean there are a lot more, and will be a lot more active grandparents in the future. Demographic and cultural change should not be a ‘do not collect £200 as you pass go’ card for parents to exploit grandparental babysitting potential, and meeting the grandchildren at the school gate - very common in Italy - though it can be. And it certainly should not provide enhanced opportunities for dreary pensioner conversations about ailments and operations. It can, though, be about volunteering and deploying skills built up in a lifetime, and learning new IT skills from grandchildren. It can be about social justice: advocating for decent pensions for the poorest and a civilized social care plan, peacebuilding and curbing climate change. It can be about 'finishing the race' with greater involvement in the life of the Church - even if only at at walking pace. Grandchildren offer a window into contemporary life and a connection to the future. Grandparents can offer time, attention and support in a busy world in return. It should be a relationship entailing a mutually enriching set of conversations each learning from the other. The non-appearance of Nonna and Nono ten years ago is being rectified. There will be families selected to attend and participate in the lasting from 17-25 October conference. One of the signs of the times in the UK is that grandparents, the elderly, outnumber other age-groups in the Catholic worshipping community. If reflection during the October Conference on the role of grandparenting, and of relationships with aunts and uncles, is the less than 1% of the attention afforded in the otherwise excellent text of Amoris Laetitia, it will be a prime example of pastoral tunnel-vision. In Belfast in the mid-1980s I watched a fully armed British soldier, shouldering a rifle, inspecting a coach for weapons. The coach was full of primary school children waiting to go to the Servite priory in Benburb for a weekend retreat away from home, a poor and rough part of the city. At mass, there was a prayer in thanksgiving for ‘new shoes’ and, somewhat competitively, for deceased grannies, first one who had died ‘a year ago’, followed by one who had died ‘a month ago’ and finally a granny who had shuffled off this mortal coil ‘a day ago’. The celebrant wisely wound up the bidding prayers. It was sweet and funny but, of course, apart from the first prayed for granny, many people actually were dying violently in the Troubles.
A month of so ago I went back to give a lecture in Queen’s College. The Good Friday Agreement had come and felt long gone. It was sad to see, after the great achievement ending sectarian killing and the creation of a new political dispensation, how little had changed. Miles of walls separating working class unionist and nationalist communities, Catholic from Protestant, with gates shut early in the evening to separate them. Only 10% of schools integrated. Everything still fed into the sacred binary. I was lecturing about Gaza, Palestine and Israel. The Catholic students supported the Palestinians. The Protestants far less. There are so many deaths still left uninvestigated. So many families with no real idea what happened to their loved ones. Their seeking answers after all this time, in a divided society with pockets of worrying residual thuggery, is an act both of courage and proof of how important is ‘closure’ for moving beyond grief. Investigative journalism, finding out what others want to hide, is more dangerous: a great way to make powerful and/or dangerous enemies and for lawyers to guarantee investigations will need big budgets. Even without punishing legal proceedings, the work takes time and time costs money. With an impressive portfolio of articles, books and TV productions dating back to the 1970s, John Ware is a notable survivor of a rare breed of journalist. Ware’s Neither Confirm Nor Deny: British Intelligence, Lawless Agent Running and the Suppression of Truth, Merrion Press 2026, was published a few weeks ago. It exposes and sifts the dirt in the dirty war known in Ireland as The Troubles. It is a gift of truth for the many families of innocent victims whose deaths have been left uninvestigated, allegedly for national security reasons. ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ is the refrain dear to the British Intelligence Services, used repeatedly by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, RUC, MI5 and the FRU, the Army’s Force Research [agent running] Unit, and then by the British government. It served to hide the crimes of the extraordinary number of covert agents who had penetrated rival loyalist and nationalist organisations and their armed wings notably the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and Freedom Fighters (UFF). To survive and to harvest the hoped-for, high quality, intelligence highly placed agents were complicit in extreme violence. Ware struggles with this moral dilemma throughout the book. The story focuses on the actions of two figures, Brian Nelson and Freddie Scappaticci (known as Stakeknife) and their handlers, chronicling how they engaged or colluded in abductions, torture and killings of IRA targets. Nelson was embedded in the UDA. Scappaticci worked his way up to a critical senior position in the IRA’s Internal Security Unit (ISU), and was in charge of compiling their assassination lists, participating in the commission of murders. Stakeknife was too often in the habit of being in proximity to killings or abductions to absolve him from responsibility for them. He led a charmed, reckless life. Even his wife did not know he was working for the British. Evidence, meticulously compiled by Ware from FRU contact forms (CFs), recording meetings with the two agents, indicates that even when Nelson and Scappaticci warned in good time of a planned assassination, no action appears to have been taken to protect the targets. Ware’s account suggests that senior officers in the different intelligence agencies valued their agents and potential intelligence ‘take’ more than the lives of potential and actual targets, however slim the evidence that they were active IRA members. To name an agent was in all senses beyond the pale. That their actions should not be totally outside the remit of criminal justice apparently less so. Britain is not, of course, the only State responding to what is declared a national security threat to have condoned assassinations. It was in September 1989, in response to great pressure and very late in the day, that Nelson and Scappaticci became enough of a concern for the Chief Constable of the RUC, Hugh Annesley (later Sir Hugh), to initiate an independent investigation. In an attempt to show the UDA exclusively assassinated IRA gunmen, the UDA had been leaking documents demonstrating collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces. Chief Constable Annesley asked John Stevens (later Sir), a future Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, then deputy chief constable of Cambridgeshire, to undertake the investigation. Laurie Sherwood, a CID inspector, Stevens’ special senior assistant, were the only heroes in this ugly saga. They faced intractable systemic obstruction from the different intelligence services including the withholding of key documents and information as the highest authorities in the different agencies clung to what they hoped was ‘plausible deniability’. The principal front-line handlers who failed to stop the killings and their agents who were complicit in them were working for a British army military intelligence unit. For some time even the existence of this unit was kept from Stevens. From the Military’s point of view, this was war. Most of the dead named in the cases against Nelson and Stakeknife were the enemy, active members of the IRA. Around the world in warfare, the consequence of treachery is often death. But several of those killed both by the IRA and UDA/UDF, with assistance from British agents, were innocent Catholics and not, as alleged, informers. The irony is that Prime Minister Thatcher always insisted The Troubles weren’t a war between the IRA and Britain. So the IRA were not belligerents. They were criminals and it followed they should be treated as criminals. This included not being given special treatment even if this meant making martyrs out of the hunger strikers. The Irish Bishops remained steadfastly opposed to armed struggle as a way of solving unjust social conditions, Northern Ireland’s problem of clashing identities, and were supported by Pope John Paul II in a passionate promotion of human rights and rejection of violence in an historic sermon in Drogheda during his October 1979 visit. “What Christianity does forbid is to seek solutions to these situations by the ways of hatred, by the murdering of defenceless people, by the methods of terrorism”, he said. His appeal to “the moral sense and Christian conviction of Irish men and women”…. “that nobody may ever call murder by any other name than murder” was anathema to both warring sides in the Troubles and those who spied on them . |
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