Get Back: it’s ok to be Muslim but not Christian in the SNP

Both branches of the Abrahamic faith are “socially conservative” on gender

A number of people have asked why I appear to be defending the “right wing”candidate in the SNP leadership, Kate Forbes, even though she is a Free Church social conservative who opposes abortion and gay marriage.  I am an atheist and support both of those essential freedoms. So what is going on?

Well, first of all, for the avoidance of doubt, I do not support anyone in the SNP leadership contest. I am not a member of the SNP and I am indifferent to all three candidates. However, I loathe cant and double standards because they demean politics.  I recoil at misrepresentation and the left’s habit of condemning people they disagree with as morally unworthy and, in the SNP’s case, unfit for office.

We saw the double standards at work most vividly in the Channel 4 debate on Thursday.  Humza Yousaf, a practising and supposedly pretty devout Muslim, was given a free pass on precisely those “socially progressive” issues upon which Christian, Kate Forbes, was rigorously held to account.

I don’t object to the finance minister’s being rigorously challenged on whether her beliefs on gay marriage and abortion would be translated into her policies in government. I don’t want her rolling the clock back to the days when homosexuality was illegal.  What what I found offensive was the presumption that she could not be trusted when she insisted that, as a democrat she had no intention of doing so. I also bristled at the way the interviewer, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, only challenged her on her Christian faith and not Humza Yousaf on his.

How did he reconcile his religious beliefs with support for those “progressive values” he says Forbes will “roll back”. Islam and Christianity have common Abrahamaic roots. And both Islam and Christianity are socially conservative belief systems. Humza Yousaf, and many commentators on Twitter seem to think, on the contrary, that Islam is somehow a liberal faith. Either that, or they believe it is somehow racist to indicate that Islam inhabits the same moral universe as Christianity.

Well, here is the heart of the matter: this declaration by the Scottish Association of Mosques on the issues raised by Kate Forbes’ participation in the leadership:

“Muslims believe marriage is a sacred institution and that marriage is between a man and a woman".

The organisation representing leading Scottish Imams went on:

"We believe in modesty and sexual relations within the boundaries of marriage. We believe that gender is binary and irrevocably linked to sex. That life is our greatest gift and to be protected. These are our beliefs and we hold fast to them."

There was no attempt by Guru-Murthy in the C4 debate to question Humza Yousaf on these mainstream tenets of his religion.  Yet we know that he skipped the vote on equal marriage in 2014 under pressure from the Glasgow Mosque and the late Muslim leader, Bashir Maan. Yousaf  doesn’t even bother to deny this pressure any more and simply insists that he has always personally believed in gay marriage, abortion, self ID and the rest of the supposedly “progressive” agenda even though this arguably makes him a hypocrite.

There was an assumption that Kate Forbes’ very sincerity about her belief condemns her. Why isn’t she repudiating her faith? Be like Humza, her critics insist. Her protestations that these conscience issues would not affect her conduct as First  Minister are deemed untrustworthy whereas Humza’s dissembling on his religious belief is somehow admirable.

Behind all this is the split in the SNP over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The presumption of commentators seems to be that opposition to Self-ID is a sign of religious bigotry. Yet many lesbian feminists oppose the law allowing 16 year olds to change legal sex, as does a majority of Scottish voters. But this crucial issue was hardly raised in the Channel 4 debate, even though it was one of the principal causes of Nicola Sturgeon’s downfall.

There wasn’t even the obvious question for a practising Muslim in Nicola Sturgeon’s cabinet: does Yousaf believe that the double rapist, Isla Bryson, who was incarcerated in women’s prison, is a woman?  Like Nicola Sturgeon he can’t answer this, though for different reasons. Nicola Sturgeon is a follower of the Stonewall faith that a trans woman is a woman; Humza Yousaf is a follower of the Islamic faith which holds that sex is binary.

If the SNP left think that people of faith should not be in politics in a secular society, fair enough. But this has to apply across the board.  I don’t myself believe that people with religious faith should, or could, be excluded from political office, or only deemed acceptable if they repudiate their faith.  The 2010 Equality Act, defends believers against discrimination, just as it defends gays, disabled people and members of minority racial groups. I can’t see how any liberal could understand equalities legislation and still claim, as many have, that Forbes religious faith means she must be “opposed to equality”. 

I am more inclined to hear the honest opinions of a religious politician, freely expressed, than the hypocrisy of a religious politician who abandons sacred beliefs out of opportunism. I accept Kate Forbes promise that her personal beliefs would not lead her to “roll back progressive values” as Humza Yousaf accused her.  (Who is slinging the mud here?). She seems to me to be sincere. I do not feel the same about Humza Yousaf who many regard asa sleekit politician who tries to be all things to all men and parrots whatever he thinks is likely to get him elected.

At any rate, he should be challenged as rigorously on this as the other candidates. The casual demonisation of Christian belief permeates social media and the major news organisations. Yet there is no belief more eccentric and magical than the idea the humans can change sex. Enough. Private beliefs are precisely that. What politicians do is what matters, not what religion they follow.