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The state has no business to ask about religion

I HAVE been worried by the idea of a religion question in the next census since I first heard of it, and I am surprised that it has not generated much debate. Ziauddin Sardar ("At last we can stand up and be counted", 26 June) has failed to persuade me that I am wrong to worry. If, indeed, there is such a question, I for one shall refuse to answer it.

It is not a denial of religious identity to Muslims that has led to the problems Sardar identifies in gaining funding for Muslim organisations; and problems of discrimination will not be solved by making everyone slap a religious label (however ill it fits) on themselves in a once-every-ten-years count. On the contrary, the evidence produced by the census will doubtless be used by the less scrupulous to justify further discrimination. If what concerns Muslims is indeed "not the colour, race or ethnicity of individuals and communities, but what humanises them", then why is Sardar so keen to emphasise by survey yet another fracture line between us?

Historically, being identified officially as a member of a particular religious community has been dangerous, as the Jews in Nazi Germany learnt to their cost, and history produces countless other examples. Having religious affiliation as your prime identification has never furthered the cause of justice or peace. It might seem safe enough in modern Britain, but the upsurge of ultra right-wing groups throughout Europe would seem to advise against false confidence in this regard.

Real identity politics is no more about religion than about race relations. For those of us seeking to escape from a religious affiliation thrust on us by birth, culture or education, such trends are dangerous. Religious identity might be the only identity that matters to Sardar, but other things are equally or more important to many.

We live in a secular state a situation for which all of us, including British Muslims, should be glad. The state has no business to "make windows in people's souls", and no business even asking about such matters.

SUSAN DRAPER

Sheffield

IT IS wrong to claim, as Ziauddin Sardar does, that "the only identity that matters to Muslims" is the religious identity. The Indian and Pakistani Muslims, for instance, marry within their own caste (raja, khawaja, jat, butt, dar and so on). At this level, the caste identity overrides the religious identity. The demand for the creation of Bangla Desh was based on lingual/cultural, regional and national (an imagined nation) identities. These were the only non-religious identities that "mattered" to the former East Pakistani (now Bangla Deshi) Muslims at that juncture. The religious identity (Islam) did not.

YOUSAF SANI

Moseley, Birmingham

Crude nationalism begets violence

THE OPINIONS expressed in your editorial, ("Play games behind closed doors", 26 June) are of the kind I would expect to see littering the columns of the Daily Mail.

The overwhelming majority of those who cause violence are not football fans. They are the products of a yobbish culture inherent in a country that relies on crude nationalism to give it an identity, a nationalism that politicians and the media happily perpetuate to serve their own needs.

Furthermore, the football industry you decry as a damaging "gravy train" operates in the same way across Europe, particularly in Italy and Spain. Why, then, are the streets of Belgium and Holland not full of rampaging Italians and Spaniards? Maybe it is because they do not suffer from the deluded belief that their countries "rule the waves".

JAMES RICHARDS

Moulton, Northampton

No nose for news

You CAN only laugh at the "groin strain" mentality suffered by many sports writers which renders them incapable of spotting a major news story, so ably documented by Bill Hagerty's media notes (The Back Half, 26 June).

When a Reuters bulletin in the 1960s flashed the news that US marines had stormed ashore on the beaches of Beirut, to ultimately spark the start of the long war in Lebanon, Daily Mirror executives breathed easily. They would soon have a staff man on the spot. The Great Britain Rugby League team was en route to an Australian tour, and the flight was due to refuel in Beirut at any moment. Mirrorman Joe was on board.

Copytakers were alerted and told to hold Joe once he came through. Minutes later, he was on the line -- "with urgent copy". Other plugs were pulled to ensure he had full attention. "OK, here we go," said Joe excitedly. "Wigan wonder winger Billy Boston will not be available for Great Britain's first match in Australia due to a leg injury suffered..." (pause) "Hang on a minute. I can't hear a bloody thing here. There are tanks, soldiers firing machineguns... it's mayhem. I'll have to ring you from Perth." And Joe rang off.

Then there was a name football writer covering a match in Poland when that country was suddenly hit by serious bread riots. Could he file a first-person account of the troubles? "No need, old boy. Bags of bread at breakfast in our hotel this morning. See you later."

One morning in 1972, when the Munich massacre was at its height in the Olympic Village, with masked gunmen holding hostages and 11 bodies in the Israeli headquarters, one of my Daily Mirror back-page colleagues handed me a slip of paper: "There's a quote from the British cycling team manager. Now, as this is nothing to do with sport, I'm off for a day's golf."

JOHN JACKSON

Former Daily Mirror sports news reporter Twickenham, Middlesex

Don't abuse the countryside

DEBORAH BOSLEY'S article ("Country living stinks", 26 June) reveals more about her than the actuality of living in the countryside. I suspect that Bosley would be unhappy wherever she lived. She might as well return to London. At least the off-licence will be more conveniently at hand.

I find it depressing that you allow your pages to be used to launch drunken abuse against ordinary rural people. There are real problems in the countryside, which a serious left publication needs to highlight. Let' shear more about rural unemployment, homelessness, the lack of decent public services and the monopolisation and pollution of farmland by uncaring multinationals. And less from rich, bored, middle-class women who would find life difficult in paradise, let alone the countryside.

KEN LITTLE

London SE15

Expression of English elitism

JASON COWLEY is misinformed to write that the trouble with Englishness is that no one seems to know what it is any more (Diary, 26 June). The trouble is not only its vicarious expression through football. It is also that this same culture can countenance Cowley in his elitism, allowing him to both rubbish the tabloids for their jingoism and secretly admire the fighting spirit of the English proletariat in earlier conflicts. Without the mask of irony, a young novelist should not subscribe to such uncomfortable and unpleasant views in a publication with an apparently radical agenda.

DR PHILIP O'NEILL

Head of English, University of Northumbria Newcastle upon Tyne

Bottom of the class

ANDREW MARTIN (Class Conscious, 26 June) muses "Am I middle or working class?" in a load of old toot about football on the TV at his local pub. He clinches his position when he ascribes a classic skit on the "Banana Boat Song" to Bob Newhart. No, squire--it was Stan Freberg. Bottom of the class, or no class.

BARRY A HENMAN

Guildford, Surrey

The costs of childcare

JUDY HIRST is right to highlight the role that charities play in funding initiatives that many people might mistakenly imagine are supported by the state ("Now charity is running the country", 19 June). My ability to work full time and afford good-quality childcare is greatly enhanced by the existence of an after-school club at my children's school.

However, the actual and hidden costs are enormous. On top of the fees we pay, many parents frequently work a double shift -- working full time during the day and then devoting many evenings a year to keeping our after-school club going. Chasing grant funding is always on the list of things to do.

Fees to cover running costs have had to rise several times higher than the rate of inflation in recent years, despite charitable funding that enables us to offer subsidised places to less well-off families. We hoped these subsidies might become less vital following the government's well-publicised measures to help lower-income working parents pay for childcare.

Unfortunately, a long evening spent decoding the complex rules around the working families tax credit revealed that barely any parents apparently in need of support qualified for help with childcare costs.

SHELAGH YOUNG

Oxford

JUDY HIRST is right to say that the National Schizophrenia Fellowship has increased its funding from state sources to run mental health services, but she is quite wrong to say that funds raised from the public have dramatically declined. On the contrary, our voluntary funding has doubled in two years.

CLIFF PRIOR

National Schizophrenia Fellowship London EC2

So much for revolution

LAUREN BOOTH (19 June) reports that 300 people were caught without tickets at Cannon Street and Victoria Stations over a period of three weeks, and concludes that a middle-class revolution is brewing. That makes ten people without tickets per station per day. Call that a revolution? Sounds more like evidence of extreme law-abiding to me.

JIM BURFIELD

The Hague, Netherlands

COPYRIGHT 2000 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

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