26.03.2026

Secularism means mutual toleration

Communists oppose the scurrilous attacks on Muslim public worship. Eddie Ford says it is all part of the right’s culture war designed to promote white nationalism and a particularly bigoted version of Christianity

If you are a regular Daily Telegraph or Daily Mail reader, you cannot have failed to notice the explicitly anti-Muslim campaign they have been running. This undeniably intensified with Eid, the festival at the end of Ramadan, where Muslims have a well-deserved blowout, having endured their month of fasting.

This year the London mayor, Sadiq Khan - who is Muslim, of course - featured an Eid celebration in Trafalgar Square (organised by the Ramadan Tent Project charity).¹ Telling us where our politics are heading, this celebration previously happened five times before in central London without causing the slightest controversy. But the rightwing press got the story they wanted - along with the photographs they needed. Several hundred Muslim men bowing in the direction of Mecca at prayer time. Apparently, this praying by Muslims in a well-known public space is all about them taking over Britain and attempting to push aside our Christian culture.

This half-crazy narrative is not just being promoted by the Telegraph and the Mail, it hardly needs saying. We also have the Tory front bench in the form of shadow lord chancellor Nick Timothy, who had an article in the Telegraph basically decrying Eid as a sinister alien implantation by Islamic fanatics.² Thus he seriously contends that the domination of public spaces is “fundamental to the modus operandi of radical Islam”. Pretending to be a scholar, he claims that the adhan - the Muslim call to prayer - makes “the theological claim that there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger”, and therefore it is “a repudiation of other beliefs” by definition! Unlike good old Christian church bells, of course, which “simply ring out” and “do not assert any theological message or criticism of other faiths”.

Even if these “facts” were not true, Timothy generously concedes, we must understand that Christianity holds a “different place” to other religions in Britain - which cannot be denied, of course, seeing how it is the established state religion, with the monarch residing as the head of the church (or “supreme governor” of the Church of England).³ Christianity is “the foundation of our way of life”, expressed in laws and our cultural inheritance, whereas the adhan is an “expression of power”, linked apparently to the “politics of communalism”. This is already “corrupting” institutions like the police, as revealed by “the scandal of the ban on Israeli supporters from a football match in Birmingham”, Timothy tells his readers, and “we are likely to see it at the ballot box in the local elections in May”.

In the same paper, Charles Moore - the former editor no less - weighs into the debate. He agrees with Timothy that public Muslim gatherings are all about domination.⁴ He sternly writes that “rituals” like mass Muslim public prayer were “all right” in mosques, but most certainly “not welcome in our public places and shared institutions”.

Fancying himself as a theologian, Moore then lectures us: “long before Islam itself was born or thought of”, Jesus himself “addressed the subject of public prayer”. He quotes from Matthew 6:v-vi, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount, inviting us to “not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men” (curiously, Moore does not mention the synagogues in his ‘non-communalist’ Telegraph version).⁵

Such public prayer is a “bad idea”, he argues, while parliament apparently “follows Jesus’s advice”, as “prayers are the only proceedings in both Houses which are private”. He remarks that, in a country such as Britain, a large number of Muslims praying in public is a “collective action” that “resembles a demo, except that the participants are on their knees, not their feet” - meaning it must have “an element of political intent”. This, for him, was verified by the presence of Sadiq Khan, which means that the Labour Party “must be inextricably entwined with that intent”.

Hypocrisy

Nigel Farage has jumped on board, saying that a Reform government would ban such a display, when it comes to well-known public spaces - in that way we will be “defending our - mainly Christian - values”. Kemi Badenoch has come out in support of Nick Timothy too, stating that any public expressions of religion should “fit within the norms of a British culture” - and, when asked whether she agreed about Islam in particular being an issue, or the main worry was prayers being separated for women and men, she replied, “They are both correct”.

Well, this is anti-Muslim bigotry plain and simple. As the Labour Party said, would you raise a hue and cry if this was public worship by Jews, for example? You ask the question, you know the answer. Whatever Charles Moore may say about Jesus telling his followers to worship in private, there is a passage in the New Testament about his followers going up to the temple and putting on an overt display of Yahweh worship and all the rest of it - surely this had “an element of political intent”?

Obviously, we live in an officially Christian culture, no-one can deny. All maintained schools are legally required to have a daily act of collective worship “broadly Christian in nature”.⁶ Today, admittedly, there is widespread non-compliance with that legislation. Nowadays most schools do some sort of secular version - a nice liberal take on things, where if Jesus appears, he is a bit of a pacifistic, anti-racist hippy.

Nevertheless, the Church of England remains the established church and the current head of the church is King Charles. There are, by automatic right, bishops in the second chamber, and Christian celebrations feature prominently on TV and radio. As for the debate around public worship, the 18th century Methodists were famous for their ‘field preaching’. The likes of John Wesley and George Whitefield drew huge crowds. There was much praying, singing and ecstatic chanting. So the idea that Christianity is just private and discreet is nonsense on stilts

When it comes to religion and state, it is worth looking at the Green Party - especially as its recently declared membership now stands at 220,000. Do the Greens want to disestablish the Church of England? Well ‘yes’, but … Repeatedly questioned on this by the rightwing media, the Greens became defensive - okay, we formally have that position, but it is not a priority for us. It is similar with many Labour politicians (or Jeremy Corbyn for that matter). Personally they claim to be republicans, but do not want to make it an immediate demand in the here and now. Rather, they prefer to concentrate on so-called ‘bread and butter’ issues. In other words, their republicanism is platonic.⁷ So, somewhere buried in their mountain of conference resolutions, the Greens have separation of church and state - but they are not going to make a fuss about it.

But it is worth making a fuss about. Read Henry Mance, chief feature writer for the Financial Times. He has written a relatively lengthy article - ‘Is Britain ready for US-style religious politics?’ - where he discusses how Christian groups are playing an increasingly “prominent role” on the UK right, fuelled as they are by “new funding and transatlantic links”.⁸

Mance singles out two particular individuals, James Orr and Tommy Robinson. Orr is Reform UK’s head of policy and Nigel Farage’s senior advisor. A Cambridge professor of politics and philosophy, he is notoriously ‘post-liberal’: anti-abortion, anti-migrant, anti-Muslim. Then there is Robinson. He claims to have undergone a Damascene conversion while in prison. Out of jail he held a very public carol service this Christmas. Many crosses too featured on his ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march in London last September, which drew up to 100,000 people.

Mance draws a link between the United States and the far right in Europe - but particularly in Britain. True, this is not having a mass impact - at the moment. He does not buy into the oft-told story of Generation Z flocking to church to find spiritual solace. Actually, church attendance has not recovered to pre-Covid levels and we definitely still have a situation where the Church of England is in secular decline (pun intended).

But what is going on amongst the elite is a different picture. Mance’s essential argument is that you have all sorts of extremely well-financed foundations that are sponsoring politicians, conferences, think tanks, etc. They are militantly Christian.

Secularism

The CPGB’s position is quite straightforward. We are for secularism, not least the separation of church and state, which obviously means the disestablishment of the Church of England, and a situation where all religions have full, equal rights. This is something to their eternal shame that the comrades in the Socialist Workers Party abandoned when they led Respect alongside with the Christian, George Galloway and the Muslim Association of Britain. They used their members to vote down the principle of secularism when proposed by the CPGB. It supposedly puts off religious people.

Except it doesn’t. We asked Anas Altikriti of MAB about secularism. Having explained what we meant by it, he declared himself in favour. Ask other Muslims. Ask Hindus. Ask Jews. Ask Christians whether or not the Church of England should be the state religion, whether its bishops and archbishops should be appointed by the government?

Non-believers and believers should have equal rights and no privileges. We do not argue for an atheist constitution. True, most communists are atheists, of course, and will happily put forward what they think about religion in terms of history, philosophy, etc. Crucially, though, we want toleration. This requires the free expression of ideas, including those of all religions, as well as open debate in all spheres.

The SWP neatly illustrates the political cowardice of so much of the left. They are often afraid of putting forward a principle, when it comes to traditional left positions like republicanism, open borders, a skilled worker’s wage for MPs, extending abortion rights, etc. Absurdly, most left groups actually find themselves outflanked by the Greens, on the demand for a popular militia.

Communists and revolutionary socialists ought to have the courage of their convictions - why can’t we go out and win Muslim voters to secularism? Indeed, why can’t we win over Church of England members or supporters to secularism as well? Surely having the morally dubious King Charles III as the head of their church is an insult to their religion.