Week 33 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

It wasn’t ‘too good to be true’

          Regular blog readers will know that I have been concerned about the fate of Meriem Ibrahim, the young North Sudanese mother who had been convicted of the ‘heinous crime’ of abandoning Islam for Christianity (she had, in fact, been brought up by her Christian mother and had never been a Muslim) and sentenced to death by hanging.  Before being hanged she was to be flogged with 100 lashes for marrying a Christian and having a child by him.  Such marriages are forbidden by Sharia law and are condemned as ‘adulterous’! At the time of her condemnation she was heavily pregnant with her second child – a baby girl who was born while her mother was shackled to the floor of her cell.

            Following world-wide protests an appeal against the sentence was successful but she was prevented from flying with her family to her husband’s home in the USA on the pretext of a faulty passport. A fortnight ago a report on BBC tv announced that the whole family had been allowed to fly to Italy where they had met the Pope who had congratulated Meriem on her steadfast refusal to abandon her Christian faith, a course of action that could have earned her freedom.  Sadly this report was never confirmed or taken up by the media – and a search on line by Google discovered no news of Meriem later than her re-arrest at Khartoum airport when she had tried to leave the country.  I concluded that the news of the family’s flight to Italy was ‘too good to be true’ and this gloomy opinion was reinforced by a news report that the family had taken refuge in the United States Embassy in Khartoum and that her father (who had left her mother to bring up her baby alone!) was urging the reinstatement of the death sentence.

 Home – at last.  The Ibrahim family re-united in the USA.  Baby Maya, born in a Sudanese prison cell, is in her mother’s arms and her toddler son in the care of his Grandpa.   

 It has now become clear that that early BBC report was true.  The whole family had clandestinely flown to Italy with an Italian government minister.  They had met the Pope and Meriem had been congratulated on her refusal to renounce her faith despite the dire consequences that could have followed that refusal.  It seems too that that hasty departure from the American Embassy and from North Sudan, was not a moment too soon.  A lynch mob had been threatening to storm the Embassy and seize its prey!  At a time of bloodshed and violence and of the persecution of Christians throughout much of the Middle East and large areas of northern Africa, the Meriem Ibrahim story is one that has a happy ending!  Latest news reports confirm that Meriem, her husband and two children have flown to her husband’s home in the USA where they have been given a heroes’ welcome.  It was one story that wasn’t too good to be true!

Still living with Mum at 21? - and 31?

          Members and supporters of the present government never tire of complaining about the ‘terrible mess that the previous Labour government left us to clear up’. Well, I was never an enthusiast for New Labour but the Governor of the Bank of England who has recently retired always insisted that it was the Bankers and money-lenders, not the politicians, who were to blame for that mess.

            One of the messes that the New Labour government inherited from the Thatcher years – and failed to address – was the iniquitous right to buy legislation that compelled local authorities, but not private landlords, to sell their council owned houses at a fraction of their market value to sitting tenants  Inevitably council houses in pleasant rural areas were quickly bought up and sold on - often at an enormous profit – directly this legally became possible.  Equally inevitably, since councils were unable to build houses for letting ­to replace them, there were no properties for letting at reasonable rents in many rural villages.   Young couples, whose forbears had lived in that village for generations, found themselves compelled to move away.  Many villages consequently became ‘dormitories’, with their inhabitants commuting daily to the nearest town, doing much of their shopping there, and taking no interest in local life and local affairs.

            Mrs Thatcher and her successors, in pursuit of their dream of home ownership for all changed public attitudes so that, as Paul Honeywood, Tendring Council’s ‘housing boss’ told a Clacton Gazette reporter ‘Council homes are often looked at as a last resort for the unemployed and people in financial trouble but’ he added, ‘we are trying to change that perception and offer it as an alternative for those wanting to set up on their own or start a family’. What Mr Honeywood is urging is in fact, a return to the system that existed and worked satisfactorily for a century before the advent of Thatcherism – when local authorities, without interference from national politicians, built houses for letting and allocated them to those in need.  There was then no stigma attached to ‘living in a council house’.  When I was appointed as a Public Health Inspector by Clacton Council in 1956, my family and I were happy to live in a Council House in Holland-on-Sea until, after a few months, we purchased and moved into the bungalow in which I am living today.

            Clacton, and the Tendring District generally, is particularly in need of social housing available for letting at a reasonable rent.  The housing charity Shelter has discovered that one third of Tendring’s 20 to 34 year olds, despite being in work, continue to live in the family home with mum and dad.   They simply can’t afford ‘to get their feet on the housing ladder’ with house properties at their present level – and there are no longer, as there once were, council houses available for letting.

            Tendring’s position is worse than that of other neighbouring local authority areas.   In Colchester 6,064 (22 percent) of 20 to 34 year old are still living in the family home, in Braintree 5,770 (28 percent) and in Tendring 4,801 (37 percent) Typical of such a ‘stay-at-home’ is 22 year old Natasha Fuller of St Osyth who works full-time as a hairdresser.  She told a Gazette reporter, ‘I still live at home with my parents even though I have a full-time job.  I don’t earn enough to save for a mortgage or rent on my own home while running a car at the same time’.

Shelter representative Campbell Robb told the Gazette ’The clipped-wing generation are finding themselves with no choice but to remain living with mum and dad well into adulthood.  And those who aren’t lucky enough to have this option face a lifetime of unstable, expensive, private renting.  The government knows that the only way to turn the tide of the housing shortage is to fill the gap between the homes we have and the homes we need’.

And the only effective way of doing that is to repeal the ‘right to buy’ legislation and – as in the pre-Thatcher past – encourage local authorities to build the homes their district needs, and to let them to local people who need a home, without interference from ‘Nanny knows best, dear’ politicians!
 .       
ISIS is still with us!

          The blood bath in Gaza, the downing of the Malaysian air liner over eastern Ukraine and the centenary commemoration of World War I have driven ISIS and its determination to establish an extremist Islamic Caliphate throughout Syria and Iraq (and that’s just for a start!) from the news headlines during the past week or so.  They’re still there though and although they don’t seem to have made any progress towards taking Baghdad, they’re consolidating their strict Islamic rule over the territories that they have taken and are edging forward whenever they have the opportunity to do so.

            A recent effect of this has been to drive tens of thousands of Christian Iraqis from their homes in areas where the Christian faith has flourished for centuries.  Many in northern Iraq had been protected by the semi-independent Kurds but their protectors have now been driven out and the new extreme Islamic regime has offered the choice of death, conversion to their own extreme version of Islam, or a crippling tax payable by all non-Muslims. nearly one hundred thousand have fled and are now trapped on a barren mountain without shelter, food or water..  They urgently need the help of their Christian brothers and sisters in Europe and elsewhere. ISIS has changed its name and now likes to be called simply IS, standing for Islamic State.  Its members haven’t changed their nature though.

            Successive British governments’ no-doubt-well-intentioned meddling in Iraq, Libya and Syria has prepared the ground and earned recruits for extremists like IS and Al Qaeda.The Christian faith is being eradicated from the very area that gave it birth, and the whole of the Middle East and large areas of Africa, are now areas in which Britons visit, live and work in danger of their lives!  

            I wonder if Tony Blair and his successors are proud of the results of their activities?

Later News

         Since I wrote the above, only a day or two ago, events have moved quickly.  The USA and the UK governments have heeded the call for help of the thousands of Christian Iraqi civilians in their barren mountain refuge.   We are co-operating with the Americans in dropping water, food and the means of providing shelter to those refugees and the USA is also carrying out air strikes on the IS forces, though both governments insist that there will be no ground forces involved.

I applaud wholeheartedly the provision of humanitarian aid though, quite apart from the morality of the action, I doubt very much whether air strikes alone can be expected either to make it possible for the refugees to go peacefully to their former home free from persecution, or to pass through territory IS holds to a place of safety. Obviously the present situation cannot continue.  We can't supply those refugees indefinitely - and winter is approaching.  I wish that I could envisage a happy non-violent ending to the present situation.  I can't and, if I'm to be absolutely honest, I can't  imagine a violent one either.

I hope and pray that someone can! 

           

Week 31 2014

Tendring Topics

Pots and Kettles

            Nowadays, of course, both cooking pots and kettles gleam on the kitchen shelf and their contents are cooked or heated by gas or electricity.  This wasn’t always the case.  I can remember a time, in the 1920s and ‘30s, when much cooking and water heating was carried out over a coal fire or on a coal fired cooking range.  It didn’t take long for both saucepans and kettles to acquire a black, sooty coating.  Hence came the expression ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ when a critic of someone else’s behaviour showed the same defect as the subject of his (or her) criticism.

            It was a thought that must have recently been in the minds of a great many people with memories as long as mine. Our Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, has been revealed as the head of a government that has approved the export of arms and military equipment to the Russians, shortly after he had publicly criticised the French for honouring a contract for providing the Russians with battleships.  The embargo had been imposed because of Russian support, and alleged supply of arms, to the pro-Russian separatist rebels in Eastern Ukraine.

            It could, in fact, be argued that ‘our offence’ was rather more serious than that of the French.  I don’t think any one seriously imagines that the pro-Russian rebels have any ambition to acquire a navy, whereas they most certainly can use rifles, missile parts and other military equipment that we have been sending to Russia.  I don’t find the excuse that rifles can be used for hunting and that some of the other equipment was to be sold on to the Brazilian Navy, very convincing. Is it, I wonder, quite OK to supply arms to the Kiev government?   I reckon that those tanks that we see the rebels using don’t come from Russia but have either been captured, or acquired as a result of the defection to the rebels of some of the government’s forces.

           

The fact is that no-one can be certain of the actual use to which exported arms may be put.   I don’t suppose that when the French sold exocet missiles to the Argentines, they imagined for one moment that the Argentines would use them to sink British warships engaged in the liberation of the Falklands.  I have little doubt that Colonel Gaddafi used weapons and ammunition that we had sold to him against us, when we helped Libyan rebels to overthrow his government.  Some of the weapons used by the Taliban to kill ‘our boys’ in Afghanistan were undoubtedly provided clandestinely by ‘the west’ to help their grandfathers kill Russians!  We have also sold weaponry to such autocracies as Saudi Arabia and Qatar some of which, I have little doubt, have  found their way into the hands of ISIS and Al Qaeda. I hope too, that the governments of both the USA and the UK have recently felt  just a little uneasy about the use of weaponry that we have sold to Israel.

 The manufacture and sale of weapons of war is an evil comparable with the slave trade.  It thrives on international discord and those who hold shares in the companies involved grow wealthy on the death and maiming of their fellow men and women; on violent death, the destruction of homes, and the creation of innocent and helpless refugees.

A world-wide ban on the manufacture and sale of weapons of war would be a positive answer to our prayer, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’.

 Two young heroines!

At a time when the news seemed to be going from bad to even worse, with three air liners downed in a week, an Israeli armed incursion into Gaza with the shelling of a United Nations school used as a shelter for refugees, and a total of some 1,000, mostly civilian, Palestinian dead, on 24^th July there came some really good news on a BBC news bulletin.. Meriem Ibrahim had been allowed to leave North Sudan and, with her husband and two children and accompanied by an Italian government minister, had flown to Rome where she had met the Pope who had commended her faithfulness and courage.

Sadly there was no confirmation of this the next day and I very much fear that it may be yet another example of the  truth of the cynical comment that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is!

Blog readers will recall that Meriem Ibrahim was the young Sudanese mother who was sentenced to being flogged followed by hanging for allegedly converting from Islam to Christianity and for marrying a Christian - which, since a Muslim woman is forbidden by Sharia law from making such a marriage, was regarded as adultery!  She could have escaped those penalties had she abandoned her Christian faith for Islam – but that she resolutely refused to do.  She gave birth to a daughter while shackled to the floor of her prison cell.

World-wide protests resulted in her being freed but then at Khartoum airport where she, her husband and her two children were about to depart for her husband’s home in the USA, they were prevented from departing on the pretext that her passport was invalid – and in North Sudan, so it seems, she remains.

No less deserving, but more fortunate, is Malala Yousafazai the teenage Muslim girl from Pakistan who was shot and left for dead by the Taliban for the crime of attending school and promoting education for other girls.  At death’s door, she was flown to Britain for urgent surgery and, almost miraculously, has been restored to health.  However Malala isn’t one to seek safety from further Taliban activity in obscurity..  She has inspired others to campaign, and is campaigning herself, for education for girls throughout the world and has recently been to Nigeria where she urged the President to redouble his government’s efforts to find and liberate the teenage girls who have been abducted by jihadist extremists and threatened with slavery or a forced marriage.

A sad, bad world has reason to be thankful that there are young women of the calibre of Meriem and Malala!    I wish I could claim to have, or ever to have had, their faith and their courage.  The thousands of us, and the governments, who rescued Meriem from a cruel and totally unjust punishment must  again urge the North Sudan government to allow her to return home.

Late News

I have just read in the ‘Church Times’ that Meriem and her family have taken refuge in the United States Embassy in Khartoum.  Well, at least they’ll be safe there until the North Sudan government can be persuaded, or coerced, into allowing them all to travel to the USA.

Assisted Suicide

          One of my most horrifying nightmares is of being trapped in a totally paralysed body, praying for death, but being incapable of doing anything about it; incapable in fact of doing anything at all.

            It might have been thought that that recurring bad dream would make me a keen supporter of the ‘assisted suicide’ bill that was recently debated in the House of Lords.  It wouldn’t have helped 'the me' of my nightmare in the least!. No doctor would have been able to declare that I had six months or less to live, or that I had a necessarily terminal illness.  Nor, I think, would it have been possible for me to give the informed consent required by the bill.

            I don’t think it possible to solve this problem by means of legislation.  The present situation is, I believe, that it remains a criminal act to assist a suicide – but that the Public Prosecutor does not press charges if he or she is persuaded that the person giving the assistance was acting out of love and did not have some ulterior motive. That is probably the best that we shall get.  If the Public Prosecutor can’t make up his mind then a jury can decide.

           After sixty years of marriage  my wife’s life came to an end eight years ago, in her sleep  in her own bed at home, and after several days of unconsciousness.  I do not believe that she suffered any pain.  I can’t say with absolute certainty what I would have done had she been suffering unbearable pain that our doctor was unable to alleviate, and had begged me to help her end her life.  I hope that I would have agreed and tried to do so.  One thing I do know. The possibility of my being prosecuted for manslaughter or even murder would not have had the very least influence on my decision!  I doubt if I would have given it a moment's thought.

Week 27 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

A democratic choice?

         Democracy;  rule by the people;  is such a wonderful idea and so obviously (to us) a very desirable form of government.  It is said to have originated in ancient Greece, where every individual city claimed to be a democracy. They weren’t democratic by our standards. It never even occurred to anyone that women should have a vote, and there was a large slave population who were excluded from any role in decision making, though they did all the hard work that made those city-states habitable.

            In Europe, including of course the United Kingdom, democracy as we know it today has a fairly short history.  Even the Chartists, the ‘loony lefties’ of the 19^th century only demanded universal male suffrage*. It wasn’t until  the twentieth century (within my lifetime!) that, in this country, all women over 21 had the same voting rights as men.  Most people alive today can remember the voting age being reduced from 21 to 18 – and there are those nowadays who campaign for the voting age to be further reduced to 16.  There are also those (and I am among them!) who believe that we should change our ‘first past the post’ voting system, which makes it possible for a candidate to be elected even if his votes were less than the total received by other candidates, to ‘proportional representation’ by which the number of candidates elected is proportional to the number of votes cast for his or her party.  That would mean that every vote would count, smaller parties would be likely to get some representation in parliament, and it would be impossible for a party to form a government despite having a minority of votes in the country. This has happened in the past.

            One of the criticisms constantly levelled against the European Union is that it is ‘undemocratic’.  Decisions are made by the European Commission, the members of which haven’t been elected by anybody, and by the Council of Ministers – all senior Ministers of the member states of the EU.  Well, they have all been elected as MPs, but were elected to seniority only by members of their own party and are members of the Council of Ministers simply by reason of their office – hardly democratically put there by the European electorate.

            There is one European institution whose members are unquestionably democratically elected – and that is the European Parliament.  It was more democratically elected than our Parliament in Westminster since a system of proportional representation was used in the election.  The UKs representatives pretty accurately reflect changes in our national political thinking.  The Lib.Dems. once a force to be reckoned with, have all but disappeared;  the Ukippers (who want to see the end of the institution to which they have been elected!) have increased in numbers and so have the members of the Green Party – it’s true only from two to three but, of course, they’ll strengthen the voice of other European Greens on relevant issues.

            Now comes the question of who is to be President of the all-powerful European Commission.   The largest single political grouping in the European Parliament is that of the ‘Centre-Right’ – hardly the grouping that I’d normally be keen to support, but I’d have thought they’d be just the lot that would appeal to David Cameron, George Osborne and Co.  Not on this occasion as it happens.  The Centre-Right (and therefore the European Parliament’s) preferred candidate is Mr Jean Claude Juncker. A former Prime Minister of Luxemburg, Mr Juncker is ‘a federalist’ who believes that the EU’s best way forward lies in closer political union.  As such he is anathema to our Prime Minister Mr Cameron who is hoping to achieve the reverse, a looser union. He is trying hard, without much success, to gain support for his insistence that the democratic way forward is to ignore the expressed opinion of the democratically elected parliament, and to leave the appointment of the Commission’s President to the Political Heads of the EU member states.

            I don’t think he’ll succeed but, if he does, I’m inclined think that his fellow top politicians will make the same choice of Mr Juncker!  And so they did - when those top politicians voted on 27th June. David Cameron found just one supporter. Europe's best future does lie in closer integration.  If the UK doesn't think so it'll probably be better for Europe if we left the EU - but I think it will prove disastrous for us!

* It is interesting to note that all but one of the Chartists demands, considered dangerously revolutionary during the 19^th century, have since been met without the dire consequences predicted.  The one exception was the demand for annual Parliaments.  Thank goodness that wasn’t met – who nowadays would want all the hassle, all the false promises and all the lies of a General Election every year?

Almost, some Good News

            It isn’t very often that I have the opportunity to comment on a piece of unequivocally good news.  This isn’t because plenty of good things, resulting from the kindness of good and compassionate people, aren’t happening all around us every day.  But it is the bad things, the cruel, selfish, greedy and stupid actions of a minority of us that make the headlines.  Never forget that It’s the exception that makes the news. 

Meriem with her toddler son                                           

           

I really thought though that this week I'd be able to comment on the unquestionably good news that Meriem Ibrahim about whom I wrote the week before last, had been freed by North Sudan's Court of Appeal. She would, I thought, shortly be going home with her American husband, her toddler son, and her new baby daughter, born in a prison cell. You'll recall that she had been sentenced to be flogged and hanged after being wrongly convicted of adultery and apostasy.The report of her home-going  was too good to be true.  She was released, rejoined her family and was at Khartoum.Airport en route for the USA, when she was re-arrested for attempting to travel on a false passport and is currently, I believe, languishing in a police cell.

It appears that she had only a South Sudanese passport.  It was surely the sort of problem that, given good will, could have been solved within hours - but the good will wasn't there.  The Sudanese Police? Religious Authorities? were no doubt angry that their chosen victim had escaped from their clutches. They might not be able to flog and hang her but they could prevent her going home.

Meriem mustn't be forgotten.  The governments, and the thousands of those who petitioned for her release, must keep up the pressure until this latter-day Christian martyr is free to go home with her family.

The WAR CRY!

          Have you ever had a copy of ‘The War Cry’ thrust at you in the street by an eager individual wearing Salvation Army uniform.  If so, it’s quite possible that you fumbled in pockets or handbag for some small change and took the proffered magazine, quite intending to deposit it in a litter bin at the earliest opportunity.

            If you did that recently, you made a sad mistake.  Today’s War Cry is an attractive, ecumenical and very readable journal far removed from the fundamentalist, evangelical and sectarian publication I remember from the distant past.  I have the 14^th June issue in front of me.  The cover is a ‘still’ from a recently released historical film ‘Belle’ while inside, on page 3, is a review of the film that left me  eager to see it!    There’s also a well-written article about ‘People Trafficking’ a modern scourge with which the Salvation Army is particularly concerned, in which young people (particularly young girls seeking a better life) are tricked into what amounts to modern slavery

             Nor is today’s War Cry narrowly sectarian.  There’s a news story about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent visit to Nigeria in which he prayed with Nigeria’s President and expressed his sympathy and concern about the recent terrorist attacks to which Nigeria has been subjected.  There’s also news of the Methodist Church of Sierre Leone’s campaign against Ebola, a deadly infectious disease that has recently reached theirea from Guinea.

            The Salvation Army has been active in the provision and management of Food Banks (our local Clacton-on-Sea Food Bank is run by them) and War Cry reports on the findings on this subject of Oxfam and Christian-based groups ‘Church Action on Poverty’ and the Trussell Trust.

            Food Banks and food aid charities gave more than 20 million meals to the needy last year and there was a 54 percent increase in the number of people seeking food help.  It was pointed out that food prices rose by 43.5 percent in the eight years prior to July 2013 and during the same period household energy prices rose by 37 percent.  Meanwhile, ‘low and stagnant wages and insecure and zero-hour contracts mean that for many low-income households the income is less every month than their essential outgoings’

            It was good to see that the Salvation Army continues its success in finding people who had lost touch with their relatives.  During May 2014 The Salvation Army’s Tracing Service found 121 such people.  Over the course of the month the service concluded 134 cases, with a 90 percent success rate.

Note to Blog readers.  I have a problem with sending and receiving emails and my laptop will be with a computer specialist till Monday at the earliest.  I am therefore publishing this blog two days early.   I hope to be back to normal next week.   Ernest Hall

week 25, 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

A Modern Martyr

          Folk of my generation were brought up in the belief that in our wonderful 20^th Century, the age of Christian martyrs, like the ‘age of miracles’ was over.  Martyrs were those who were ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday – thrown to the lions in the arena in the reign of the Emperor Nero or slaughtered in some other agonising way for their refusal to renounce their Christian faith. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the protestant half of Christendom honoured as saints and martyrs their co-religionists who were tortured and burned alive by zealous Catholic monarchs like Queen Mary Tudor (‘bloody Mary’),.  The Catholic half gave similar honour (observed in the Church of Rome to this day) to recusant priests hung, drawn and quartered by her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I.

            There have, of course, been martyrs since those days – in the wake of the French and Russian revolutions for instance, though much of the anti-clericalism of those times resulted from the perceived support of the established churches for the tyrannical former regimes in those countries, and the contrast between the splendour and riches of the ‘princes’ of the Church and the abject poverty and squalor of the people.  The fate of the Jews in the Nazi regime was different (and worse) than martyrdom. Martyrs could often save themselves by repudiating their faith. In the holocaust the victims were condemned not by their faith but by their ethnicity.  None of us can change or repudiate that.

Suicide bombers, unlike their victims, are not martyrs.  They are cold-blooded murderers who compound their crime by killing themselves as well, thereby evading human retribution for their crime.

Meriem Ibrahim (an attractive 21^st century young woman threatened with a medieval punishment. She could be ‘that friendly and helpful young woman next door’ to you – or me)

A modern martyr (who may yet be saved from martyrdom) is Meriam Ibrahim of North Sudan.  She had a Muslim father, who deserted the family, and a Christian mother who brought her up as a Christian.  She married an American Christian man and has a young son and a daughter, the latter born in prison while she was shackled to the floor of her cell.  She has been condemned to death for having converted from Islam to Christianity and, before being hanged, is to be flogged with one hundred lashes for her ‘adultery’.

She is deemed to have been a Muslim because her father was Muslim. Sharia Law as interpreted in Sudan declares that death is the punishment for conversion from Islam to atheism or any other faith.  Since that same law also forbids a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man, her relationship with her Christian husband is ‘adulteus’; hence the flogging before the hanging!

‘Humanely’ (well, Islam does claim to be compassionate and merciful) they won’t hang her for two years (presumably to allow the new baby to become less dependent on her mother) and they won’t hang her at all, if only she’ll repudiate her Christian faith and return to Islam.  This she refuses to do.  She can’t in any case ‘return’ to a faith that she has never embraced.

Baby Maya, Meriam’s daughter born in prison to a mother condemned to death.  Her name is the same (though spelt differently) as that of my little German ‘adopted niece’ who was featured in this blog two weeks ago.

Meriam’s case is so outrageous to western minds that it has attracted world-wide condemnation.  Barak Obama (Meriam is married to a US citizen and that baby, born to a mother in shackles, and her brother, are half Americans) has expressed his outrage, as have David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband.  A petition, of which I am one of the 800,000 (so far) signatories, is to be presented to the Sudanese authorities.

Sadly, I have heard nothing of British Muslims making their voices heard, yet apart from Meriam and her family, it is they who are likely to suffer most from Meriam’s martyrdom.  Incidents such as these, and the wholesale murder and abduction of Christians by militant Islamists in Nigeria, lend fuel to the intolerance and prejudice of such neo-fascist and anti-Islamic  groups as the English Defence League, the BNP and at least a minority of the Ukippers.

            I very much hope that the Sudanese government will bend to world-wide anger and release Meriam and her children unscathed to join her husband, the children’s father, in the USA.  Already one Sudanese government spokesman has said that she would be released within a few days – but that was quickly denied.  Sadly, those who are convinced that Meriam was convicted in accordance with a law laid down directly by God to his prophet nearly a millennium and a half ago, are unlikely to be impressed by an appeal to ‘Universal Human Rights’ in 2014.

Better or Worse? – or just Different?

          Writing about Islam and Sharia law has brought to my mind the fuss that there has been about the accusation that the governing bodies of a number of Birmingham Schools had been infiltrated by Muslim extremists who were changing the schools’ characters and possibly using them to ‘radicalise’ the younger generation and possibly make them recruits for terrorism.   I think that we’ll probably hear a lot more about this in the days to come. 

My knowledge of the situation has been gained entirely from tv news bulletins and broadcast interviews with parents, governors and – of course - national politicians.   It must be said that Muslim parents seemed for the most part to be thoroughly approving of the very schools that have been causing most concern. Some of the practices of these schools reminded me of my own schooldays – now some eighty years ago!

Our school day began with an assembly and an act of worship; Christian worship of course.  Throughout my eleven years (5 to 16) of full-time education I never even met anyone with any other religious faith.  There was a hymn, a prayer and a reading from the New Testament. The handful of Roman Catholic pupils were excused this part of the assembly.  They joined us to hear the Head Master give out any notices and dismiss us to our classes.

In the 1930s.  Boys’ School on the right, Girls’ School on the left.  Utility block, shared but at different times, in the middle.  Note the fence between the two playing fields.

There was a Boys’ School and Girls’ School.  Ours were adjacent but quite separate.  There were separate playing fields with a high wooden fence separating them.  There was even a ‘trip wire’ a few feet from the fence over which we were forbidden to tread - to stop our watching the girls play hockey through the occasional ‘knot hole’!

There were no ‘sex education classes’ and certainly no contraceptive advice!  There were a few co-educational secondary schools.  As a schoolgirl my wife went to one, but they were the same in that respect. The very thought of mixed classes in such subjects would have provoked embarrassed shock and horror among even the most ‘progressive’ parents!   I am sorry that my school wasn’t co-educational.   It would probably have made me less agonisingly shy and ill-at-ease with the opposite sex than I was during my late teenage years.  I’m not so sure about the sex and contraceptive classes though – I really don’t believe that teaching these things to ever younger children is the best way to reduce premature sexual activity and teenage pregnancies.

            I am sure that there are lots of things about educating children and fitting them for the world of the 21 century that Muslims can and should learn from the ‘western world’ – but we shouldn’t be so reluctant to admit that there are one or two things that we can learn from them.