{"id":1770,"date":"2024-04-03T08:35:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T08:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2024-04-03T08:37:02","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T08:37:02","slug":"hate-marches-how-politicians-weaponise-religious-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1770","title":{"rendered":"“Hate marches”: How Politicians weaponise religious identity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Robertson<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

On March 1st<\/sup>, Rishi Sunak gave his first Prime Ministerial address from the steps of 10 Downing Street. It was late on a Friday afternoon, and apparently organised rather hastily. What necessitated such an urgent, national response?<\/p>\n

\u201cA shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality\u201d, Sunak said<\/a>, which \u201cdemands a response not just from government, but from all of us\u201d. As many commentators noted, it was not clear exactly what \u201cextremist disruption and violence\u201d he was referring to. The protest marches against Israel\u2019s campaign in Gaza has been one of the largest and most peaceful in British history, with arrest rates way lower than the Glastonbury Festival or a Premier League football match. The only violence that has been seen was not from the protestors at all, but by counter-protestors, including individuals formerly associated with the far-right English Defence League, after being encouraged by the then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman.<\/p>\n

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Yet, according to Sunak,<\/p>\n

Jewish children fearful to wear their school uniform lest it reveal their identity. Muslim women abused in the street for the actions of a terrorist group they have no connection with\u2026 You can be a practising Hindu and a proud Briton as I am. Or a devout Muslim and a patriotic citizen as so many are. Or a committed Jewish person and the heart of your local community\u2026 and all underpinned by the tolerance of our\u00a0established, Christian\u00a0church.<\/p>\n

It seems clear that Sunak was not responding\u00a0 to any real threat, but rather attempting to deflect from a wave of his ministers being accused of racism and Islamophobia, provide cover for the Commons\u2019 Speaker Lindsay Hoyle breaking Parliamentary procedure<\/a> to pass Labour\u2019s ceasefire motion rather than the SNP\u2019s more critical one, and to connect all this with the protests which have taken place weekly across the UK since October 2023 and which directly oppose the Government\u2019s position of support for Israel\u2019s military actions. These protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful<\/a>, organised according to the law with the support of the Police, and do not represent an extremist minority, but rather the views of 66% of the population <\/a>today, up from 59% in November 2023. Nor are the protestors predominantly Muslim, but represent a cross-section of the British public\u2014including many Jewish people.<\/p>\n

But from Sunak\u2019s speech, and Michael Gove\u2019s <\/a>widely criticised redefinition of extremism which followed, you would get the impression of a state of emergency, almost a civil war in which the Christian majority are embattled with a wave of Muslim immigrants.<\/p>\n

The reality could hardly be more different. As shown by the 2021 census<\/a>, we know that the percentage of the English population identifying as Christian has been dropping at a steady rate of 1.3% of the population per year since at least 2001, and was 46.2% in 2021 (in Scotland it is even lower). The UK is no longer a Christian majority country, and if current trends continue, will be a majority \u201cNo Religion\u201d by the next census. And for all Sunak and Gove\u2019s scaremongering, there is no wave of Muslim immigrants threatening the UK. They amount for only 6.5% of the population, 3.9 million, an increase of only 800,000 (the number of people on the biggest London march) over the last decade.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1. UK Religion 2011 Census<\/a><\/p>\n

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