Ayaan Institute: The Bloom Review wants the state to regulate Britain’s non-Christian minorities

Yahya Birt argues that the Bloom Review (an independent review of “How Government Engages with Faith” by Colin Bloom) is disappointing and disproportionately focuses on Britain’s non-Christian religious minorities, with proposed further extensions of counter-extremism measures into Muslim civil society. First commissioned in 2019, the much-delayed review by Colin Bloom, the faith advisor to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, into the UK government’s engagement with faith communities has a disappointing and disproportionate focus on Britain’s non-Christian religious minorities and fails to consider what faith engagement should look like in a country where Christianity is now a minority faith (46% in the 2021 Census) For a review released under Michael Gove’s ministerial berth, the most eye-catching recommendations focus on tackling the perceived harms of non-Christian faith communities, notwithstanding nods to the importance of faith literacy and the civil society contributions of faith organisations (27% of charities and growing). These are predictably a further extension of Gove’s counter-extremism policies into Muslim civil society but also into other faith communities, based on the same flawed focus on British values. It uncritically replicates the central canard that political violence emerges from a lack of shared British values, that the causes of conflict can be resolved by dividing Muslims into good or bad, or “Muslim” or “Islamist”. “Islamism” in contemporary Western political parlance simply means those Muslims who currently oppose Britain’s current interests – it has little to do with values and more to do with a post-hoc rhetorical justification of the current national interest. Read more: The Bloom Review Wants the State to Regulate Britain’s Non-Christian Minorities – Ayaan Institute Related…