Have another Big Questions, this one asking: Should the British stop tolerating intolerance? (Michael Frayn got there long ago, in the 60s, with BBC talking heads and all.)
Five minutes in, Maajid Nawaz responds to the host’s devil’s advocate question “If an area is 95% Muslim shouldn’t the schools in that area focus on that?” with a forthright defense of secularism including in state schools.
Tolerance of intolerance is intolerance by proxy.
And if areas are 95% Muslim we have to tackle the fact those areas are 95% Muslim. Without that failure of integration ‘Muslim’ state schools wouldn’t exist.
“If an area is 95% Muslim shouldn’t the schools in that area focus on that?”
I find this, and the corresponding situatioin in the US, to be a compelling argument against local control of schools. If you define an area small and arbitrarily enough, you can almost completely sabotage many of the most important goals of free public education.
Secular schooling is vital to prevent (even more) ghettoisation in the UK – and schools can be a vital lifeline, sometimes the only one, for children at risk of abuse. Where this abuse has a religious dimension (e.g. FGM, forced marriages etc.), the schools can only be a lifeline if they are secular – in reality, not just in name.
Speaking of the 60’s there was a group that had a song “Appreciation” which started:
I appreciate appreciation.
I don’t tollerate intolleration.
I can’t remember the name of the group, and I’ve searced for the lines a few times on the interwebs but I only ever find my own references to them – maybe it was just an Essex thing, but it does illustrate that this is not a new issue.