Monday 8 June 2015

Er, no it doesn't.

From the BBC:

Mohammed Shafiq is from The Ramadhan Foundation, an organisation which represents Muslims in Britain.

He says: "In the end, if you make that choice to leave Islam you're making a conscious choice to move away from your family as well and move away from the wider community."


Yes, that would appear to be true so far...

"This applies equally to all the other faiths."

Nope, nope and thrice nope.

8 comments:

Tim Almond said...

It's not even true about Muslims. Something like 25% of people who identify as Muslims regularly go to mosque in this country. If he was right, we'd have most Muslims not spending time with their families.

The more strict religious types have a certain view of what Muslims are like, but most of them are much less serious about it.

What always should be understood is the social importance of religion. Village churches stay in business because of middle-aged women who like flower arranging and singing songs, not so much because they believe in deities.

Anonymous said...

"if you make that choice to leave Islam"
So we're not just talking about people who aren't going to be very observant any more or simply not go to the mosque but rather are going to renounce their faith all together or else change to another faith.

Now this does often occur in other faiths. Many Hindus or Sikhs would face ostracism from their family and friends if they did take such action. Orthodox Jews would normally sit shiva [mourning for the dead] if a son or daughter decided they were to leave the faith or just marry out! It might be less common for Christians in the UK to adopt this attitude but not so in other places, like the bible belt in the US.

Physiocrat said...

Conversation between two Irishwomen

"What did you say your daughter had done?"
"Oh, what a relief, I thought at first you said she had become a Protestant".

Bayard said...

When I saw the title, I thought it referred to this: "an organisation which represents Muslims in Britain."

Some Muslims, yes, but not, as implied, all Muslims.

Anonymous said...

MW. I never read the article tbh, just the bit that you put on here. There's no doubt Islam is more culpable when it comes to killing apostates as they call them but so called 'honour crimes' [under a range of circumstances - resistance to forced marriage etc] are just as likely to be cultural as religious based.

Bayard said...

Yep, Islam was at the end of the queue when the religions were being handed out their believers.

JohnM said...

just as likely to be cultural as religious based.

Surely religion is a subset of culture not something distinct.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, agreed