Keep religion out of politics

Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

It is a credit to Scotland that the party of government has elected a member of an ethnic and religious minority to the role of First Minister. Let no one say that Scotland condones racism in politics. However, diversity is a two way street. It is not acceptable, in a secular society, for religion to be accorded some kind of moral superiority. Nor is it wise to open the doors of government to any particular faith.

On his first evening as First Minister, Humza Yousaf invited the press to photograph him convening a prayer meeting in Bute House. All male of course. It was a controversial PR exercise and has rightly provoked a debate about the role of religion in politics. A number of SNP members asked: what if Kate Forbes had convened a Wee Free conventicle on the first day had she become First Minister?  She’d have been denounced. Religious fundamentalist! Keep your regressive beliefs to your self!   Would it have been acceptable to hold a highly publicised Catholic mass in Bute House?

Of course, Kate Forbes wouldn’t have done anything so provocative. The former Finance Secretary, now consigned to the Siberia of the Holyrood backbenches,  understood she would be the leader of a largely secular country.  To have paraded her faith in the seat of power might have alienated Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, not to mention humanists and simple non-believers.  Clearly Humza Yousaf doesn’t share those ecumenical sensitivities.

Now, I am an atheist and have no dog in this fight, but I do care about politics.  Like many who saw this spectacle I wondered happened to the separation of religion and state?  Politicians used to say: we don’t do god.  They said this for very good reasons, given the long history of enmity between rival faiths.  Yet, here was the First Minister of Scotland making a very public display of his particular faith, not in a place of worship, but in the heart of government - the equivalent of 10 Downing Street.

Tony Blair was religious but we never heard a word about it even when he converted to Catholicism.  This was important. How could he have been seen to be independent in tense negotiations between the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland if he’d dragged his religion into politics. The Good Friday Agreement might never have happened.

There is also the issue of ecumenical equity. If you invite one faith into the centre of power, others are going to want a piece of the action. Or feel that they are somehow regarded as inferior because of their faith. Peter Kearney the spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland has made clear his concern that followers of the Pope’s rulings on for example abortion, are now regarded as unfit for office in Scotland. Some Catholics heard in the demonisation of Kate Forbes, disturbing echoes of the attitude towards Catholics in the past when they were often blocked from high office on grounds of their religion.  Indeed, the SNP used to have a reputation for being anti-Catholic in the 1960’s.

It is worth recalling what Kearney said only a few weeks ago: “Some of the things that have been said about religious opinions leave a lot of Catholics and a lot of Christians feeling marginalised."  He went on: “In our pursuit of diversity we have embraced conformity”. That was an apt way of expressing the contradiction in the left’s attitude attitude to Islam: a new conformity. These double standards on faith derive in part from the left’s preoccupation with minority rights.

Anyone who points out that Yousaf is a member of a socially conservative religion is likely to be attacked as a racist or an Islamophobe.  Yet you can say anything you want about Kate Forbes’s Christian values with impunity. She was continually smeared as a homophobe, yet Yousaf was not interrogated about problematic passages of the Koran and other Islamic texts in which sexual minorities get pretty rough treatment. Forbes is part of a minority that is not welcomed into the church of identity politics.

In common with many in the Labour Party, and the media, the SNP left seem to regard followers of Islam as somehow honorary secularists.  At any rate they give them extraordinary latitude to hold views on gay marriage and abortion that they would condemn as morally reprehensible coming from members of any other faith.

Let’s remind ourselves of what the Scottish Association of Mosques, representing leading Imams, said about the attacks on Kate Forbes’s religion in the first week of the leadership campaign. “Muslims believe marriage is a sacred institution and that marriage is between a man and a woman". It continued:  "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."

Humza Yousaf insists he is a practising Muslim.  These are the mainstream tenets of his faith: anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-transgender.  He can claim that he is a follower of the left’s attitudes on the gender but only by opening himself to the charge of hypocrisy. As is now widely known, Humza Yousaf dodged that crucial vote on gay marriage in 2014 after it had been condemned by Bashir Maan and the Glasgow Mosque. There was something knowing and slightly bogus about Humza Yousaf’s adherence to the “progressive agenda” when he is an apparently devout member of a socially regressive religion.

Now he is of course entitled to hold his beliefs and should not face discrimination or hate because of them. Religion is a personal matter. That’s the point - it should remain personal and not get bound up with politics. In a free society we can believe anything we wish. It is after all a right protected under the 2010 Equality Act,  something Forbes’s critics, like the SNP deputy Westminster leader  Mhairi Black, seem to have forgotten. 

Actually, I think her openness on religion was an asset to her campaign and partly explains why she ran Humza Yousaf so close.  She made clear from the get go that she accepted the laws of the land and had no intention of trying to legislate on the basis of her personal beliefs. She insisted she was no “dictator” and accepted the democratic wishes of the people. What she was expressing was her personal, private morality. She understood the importance of keeping the two worlds apart, and not politics with religious values.

Yet Humza Yousaf, the First Minister of Scotland, is clearly not content for religion simply to remain in the private sphere, as a personal morality, but is making it part of his pitch as a national leader. He has not of course urged Scots to join the Muslim religion and nor is he given to quoting the Koran in speeches. He is not an evangelist. But he is making a significant departure from what is normal practice in UK politics where religion is kept very much at arm’s length.

Holding a prayer meeting in the seat of power in Bute House will not help the new First Minister  persuade a sceptical electorate that he is a “unifier”. That there is no “team Yousaf” and that he wants a broad church.  The First Minister has appointed his cronies into the cabinet and imported faith into governance. This is not the way to bring his party, and the country, together.