well thank you very much it's it's a great pleasure to be here and it's a

great pleasure to be speaking for the National Secular society strangely

enough I have quite happy memories of this somewhat Pyongyang esque building

because the last time I was here about ten years ago for a conversation on

Philo Semitism between Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis a wonderful

event I'm sure you could probably see online somewhere the evening went

slightly downhill but the fact that I remember we tried to find somewhere in

the Russell Square area afterwards to have dinner and could find nowhere

except for one establishment I remember which promised that they could give us

food but not drink which was exactly the opposite of what we wanted

anyhow it's a great pleasure to be speaking of the National Secular society

and also I might say to see some great heroes of exactly the discussion we're

having today in this room it's a particular pleasure to see Peter

Tatchell and Richard Dawkins who have I

know I know I can speak for everybody else through not just the admiration of

everyone here but so many people around the world apart from anything else on

having been willing and able to talk about precisely the difficult issues

which we're talking about here today it's also always as ever a great

pleasure to be with Rahul Reiser majid Nawaz who I can never hear enough

of and I'm short same for you they are real points of light these days both of

them and the work they do is a rare bit of illumination I think in difficult

times I'm going to limit my remarks I think to have as much time as possible

for QA discussion argument whatever you like and we just make a few comments

further to those that's already been made which I very much agree with the

first is just to observe that I mean we are we are stumbling through this period

in this country and I would argue in the West in general particularly in Europe

we're stumbling through this period and we nobody anticipated it nobody expected

it to come I'm in the middle of a book at the moment and you know it's just

extraordinarily read any of the thinkers politicians in particular in recent

decades across Europe and just nobody predicted the kind of conversations we

are having today in 1989 until Valentine's Day that year nobody had

heard of a fatwa until 2015 and January very few people

in Europe understood the details of Islamic blasphemy law until 2005 and

Denmark and so on and we're sort of trying to struggle through this and find

a way and it's very messy and it's going to be very messy for a long time to come

and I think it would be very unwise to predict how it's going to go but I

wanted to make a few comments about trends as it were well it's been

exceptionally unhelpful but utterly understandable that politicians

throughout the West have responded to the upsurge in Islamist violence and

intimidation by saying that their behavior has nothing to do with Islam

it's absolutely understandable we know what they're trying to say they're

trying to say that the terrorists and the extremists speak for minority and

what's more you mustn't blame Muslims you mustn't take this out on your

mother's and neighbor and so on it's a very laudable and understandable

political stance as it were to take but the difficulty is of course that we all

know that it's also wrong and a mistake to say for other reasons for years we've

had this David Cameron when he was Prime Minister slowly soar evolved his

rhetoric on this but my favorite ever I think was US President Barack Obama when

he said after one of the there was a set of of the everyone remembers Isis

beheadings in Syria and after everyone David Cameron or Obama whoever it was

whose Citizen had just been beheaded would come out and the steps and say

this had nothing to do with Islam and and then I think the last of the u.s.

hostages who was beheaded Barack Obama said at one point it not it not only had

nothing to do with Islam it had less to do with Islam than any other religion

I don't think the Buddhists Chabert any anything for that but but but everybody

is at that and there's another strange movement you can see during the same

period which is the the thing of absolutely everybody becoming an expert

on Islam and absolutely everybody becoming an expert on the Quran and

hadith and you hear this all the time now only three years ago Conservative

Party conference to then home safely now Prime Minister Theresa May in her

conference bee starts quoting her favorite bits of the Quran I mean it was

it was weird I mean it was like I mean George Bush did that famous year after

2001 he went for a local Islamic Center in Washington and said as the Quran says

although I find it better in this translation as if he'd spent the

previous evening you know its roof

doesn't quite get the demotic Arabic but it'll do and you know in treasom a does

it everybody does it again I mean we know why but but but it might just be

unhelpful it certainly unhelpful when our new

Prime Minister Commission's an inquiry into the practice of Sharia law in the

UK and appoints the inquiry and who does she put on the inquiry but some Imams

hey what do you think their conclusions going to be about Sharia law in the UK

roughly speaking starting from a point of deep criticism or now you see these

are very very deep waters and I don't envy the politicians on it it's very

easy to mock them but it's it's it's obviously not gonna be easy I warned and

have them for a long time though about some of the euphemism which is being

going on because I think that no good can come from it and I'll explain why

and during the period that politicians have all tried to keep up this facade

that the Islamic blasphemy police have nothing to do

Islam the jihadists have nothing to do with Islam Islam has nothing to do with

Islam during the same period the public's of the West have come to

totally different conclusions and let me give you just three polls from three

countries from three years ago so this is these are polls carried out in Europe

in 2013 okay before Charlie Hebdo before last November in Paris before but the

Brussels attacks and before the Cologne attacks New Year and so on so in 2013 7

% of the German public said that they associated Islam with openness tolerance

or respect for human rights 7% of the Germans said that turned the other way

around in France in 2013 67 percent of the French public said that they thought

that Islam itself the religion not Islamism Islam is incompatible with the

French state 67 percent the same poll showed that 73% percent 73 percent of

the French public viewed Islam very negatively it's the same story across

every European country in the Netherlands the same year 68 percent of

the Dutch people said that they thought that there was quote enough Islam in

Holland now I would submit that and there are polls from last year's but I

would submit to you that in the last three years those concerns haven't gone

down that it's not the case that more French people in 2016 have favorable

views towards the religion of Islam than they did in 2013 and so we see this huge

gulf emerging and I think it is a very troubling gulf and it is a gulf between

publics who as it were to use a slightly gross left/right analogy but to use it

for a second publics who are are going very very clearly to the right on these

issues because of the facts that are happening in front of them and

politicians simultaneously stampeding to the left and that that

opens I put it no stronger than this an extremely troubling possibility in our

time it's my belief by the way that the problems for Islam not insuperable and

ovens in solvable pass apart Lee because of what both measured and he'll have

said earlier but that they are exceptionally difficult and that they

may well be even harder than Christianity's troubles in recent

centuries in one example I would give you but I think it's a sort of useful

place to start is that if you do go through the

Christian scriptures there is a verse in Gospel of Matthew that is usually

wheeled out but apart from that most people would find it hard to disagree

with very much said by Jesus and when somebody says to him you know how many

times should I forgive my brother he you know says seven times no seventy times

seven in other words forgive endlessly a pretty good message whatever your views

on the rest of what his followers did but I would just put it like this I mean

would the history of Christianity bloody as it undoubtedly has been and still is

would it have been less bloody or more bloody if even on one occasion the

founder of Christianity had when asked what to do with your brother when he

offends you said chop off his head I think it would have been a lot worse and

this is a simplification of one of the problems that all Muslim reformers have

and as I say it's not unsolvable it's not unseen superable but it is very

considerable and it's a big mistake to pretend otherwise finally I would just

make these observations in the UK to go back to that issue of is it what

mainstream public opinion is I would submit that under underneath a lot of

this is another concern and it's concerned that rahil's excellent film

and remarks in particular touched upon deep concern that people have and I

would give you one example to focus on the Trojan horse affair in Birmingham

two summers ago that revealed terrible things being taught in British schools

not in is make seminaries not in madrassas loving

but in in in what were meant to be secular state-run schools but have been

taken over by these extreme ideologues that story was concerning enough but I

think I'm not the only person in Britain who also noticed with great concern the

fact that those revelations were objected to pushed back against cold

lies by absolutely every organized Muslim group in this country that I can

think of other than the coulomb foundation everybody else tried to cover

it over everybody else tried to say it was lies everybody else tried to say

well it's all Michael Gove making it up or so on and so forth and this is a very

very troubling thing because I would trust that you I anybody else if we

discovered that a school that in any way was associated with us was teaching

hatred in assemblies and chants and songs against minorities in the morning

that that we wouldn't just say thank goodness you've caught this but would

feel a deep sense of shame that this was happening in our name and I think that a

great many people are very worried when they see these organizations that as I

say endlessly present themselves as representing a community pushing back

against every single thing like that that comes out it's an understandable

instinct not to want as it were your community's dirty laundry to be aired in

public we've seen it with the Catholic Church we've seen it with all sorts of

institutions but this is one that really is going to be a problem in the years

ahead that as I say in wrapping up these remarks and as I say leaving as much

time as possible for questions and discussion this is why secularism

matters so much now I I hope I'm not insulting you if I say that were it not

for the subject of this panel it would be my view that the national secular

society would be a sort of you know Pleasant you know a meeting place of

people with similar thoughts whose raison d'être had passed arguably and I

would submit that because of this issue you and your association are on

the very front line of the most important discussion of our time I'm

extremely proud that you are there and very proud to be here and I look forward

to your questions thank you