Here are just a few of the more obvious problems with Cristina Odone’s latest article ‘We have the anti-Semites we deserve’.
In the opening paragraph she presents the whole Trojan Horse issue as a demonization of Islam. There were some anti-Muslim elements in the coverage, but this was a serious problem, and viewed that way by many observant Muslims. She also mentions the removal of kosher food from Sainsburys – now, this was disgraceful, but it wasn’t motivated primarily, if at all, by any antipathy to religion, or even to Judaism.
After a string of such supposed affronts to religion she observes.
This is not on a par with the Islamic State’s persecution of Christians in northern Iraq.
Well – that at least I can agree with.
She goes on to complain that society promotes equality for some groups, but not for the religious. But whereas she offers examples of LGBT people and women being abused solely because of their identity, the cases she offers of Christians being persecuted all relate to their own discriminatory treatment of others. (By contrast, if a B and B owner refused to admit people on purely religious grounds, perhaps because someone was wearing hijab, clearly that would be a case of genuine bigotry.)
Odone links this championing of secular values, and refusal to privilege religion, with a growth in antisemitism and Islamophobia. But antisemitism at present (unlike in the Middle Ages, say) seems to have comparatively little to do with hostility to religion/Judaism. Some antisemites are themselves pretty religious. Islamophobia of course has more to do with religion, but Odone’s analysis still seems flawed. The odd secularist may sometimes drift into bigotry, but they seem few in number compared to a) anti-Muslim racists and bigots who may be religious themselves and b) those with genuine concerns about extremism, many of them practising Muslims.
She goes on:
A Jew – as Stephen Pollard wrote in the Telegraph – is an Israeli; an imam is an Isis apologist; a Christian is a creationist.
Again, the kind of antisemitism Pollard identifies doesn’t seem religiously inflected – and most people surely don’t think all Christians are creationists. Odone concedes that Christians in the UK aren’t faring as badly as Christians in northern Iraq – she might also consider the situation of those who are being persecuted for their lack of faith, in particular ex-Muslims, and, given that she seems willing to magnify comparatively trivial problems, spare a thought for the group which is mistrusted more than any other religious/belief category in the US – atheists.