Religious orthodoxy versus liberal values
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2018
⏱️ 43 minutes
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Summary
Orthodox faith schools have long been crucibles in which enlightenment values and religious freedoms have simmered uncomfortably. The bubbling grew fiercer this week with the prospect of more faith schools and the scrapping of the rule that they have to take in non-believers. The concern among many about what religious conservatives are teaching children has hardly been assuaged by a group of ultra-orthodox rabbis in Hackney, who are urging their schools not to accept government funding for teaching the 'lie' that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old. The influence of religious conservatism, of course, extends beyond the education system. Halal slaughter, considered cruel by many outside the Muslim faith, is on the rise and we're increasingly and unwittingly eating the product of it, according to Lord Trees, former president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Many believe that such orthodox beliefs and practices have no place in modern society; Iceland, for example is proposing to criminalise male circumcision. Yet, conservative adherents of minority faiths believe such interference displays religious illiteracy. The attempt to snuff out thousands of years of tradition in the name of recently acquired 'liberal' values is, they say, ignorant, arrogant and oppressive, because truly liberal values should respect cultural and religious diversity, not flatten beliefs into state-sanctioned uniformity. Their opponents draw the line when they perceive harm to others - children, animals or society. Can we - should we - live in a society that accepts religious orthodoxy? Witnesses are Dr Susan Blackmore, Prof Philip Booth, Stephen Evans, and Jonathan Arkush.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.5 | Good evening. Like many of my generation, I was circumcised against my infant will, taken from my cot and mutilated, and my parents didn't even have the excuse of being Jewish or Muslim. |
| 0:14.6 | It's my only chance of achieving the victimhood that's so fashionable these days, hashtag me too, so I feel very strongly about it. |
| 0:21.4 | Not as strongly as Iceland, the country, not the shop, which is intent on banning childhood |
| 0:25.9 | circumcision altogether, is an unacceptable infringement of the rights of a child. |
| 0:30.5 | The uproar hasn't been confined to Iceland's handful of Jews and Muslims, it's worldwide. |
| 0:35.1 | And just one of the new points of friction, where resurgent |
| 0:38.9 | religious orthodoxy rubs up against modern liberal values. Here we are to have more faith schools, |
| 0:45.2 | and the requirement that they should take children with different beliefs is to be dropped, |
| 0:49.1 | angering those who think they reinforce divisions within our society. In their schools, |
| 0:54.8 | ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis don't want to have to teach what they call the lie that |
| 0:59.6 | the world is more than 6,000 years old as asserted in the Bible. Anathema to those who think |
| 1:05.1 | faith in the unknowable is one thing, teaching easily disprovable nonsense, another. |
| 1:10.4 | This week, too, we found out from Britain's |
| 1:12.4 | former top vet that we're all unknowingly eating halal and kosher meat. So widespread has the |
| 1:18.5 | Muslim and Jewish method of slaughter, which dictates throat-cutting, always a conscious animal |
| 1:23.4 | in the Jewish tradition, sometimes for Muslims, so widespread has it become. |
| 1:28.4 | Is this tolerance and diversity of which we should be proud, or are the duties of traditional |
| 1:32.9 | religion ultimately incompatible with post-enlightenment rationalism and 21st century |
| 1:38.3 | rights culture? |
| 1:39.8 | That's our moral maze tonight, our panel, and McClevoy, senior editor at the economist, |
| 1:43.6 | Claire Fox from the Academy of Ideas, |
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