Erosion of Secular Spaces in the UK, etno, postsekularyzm
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Cohesion, Multi-faithism and the
Erosion of Secular Spaces in the UK:
Implications for the Human Rights of
Minority Women
Pragna Patel
*
Abstract
This article explores the erosion of secular public culture in the UK and its implications for minority
women whose bodies have become the battleground for the control of community representation. It argues
that struggles for equality and secularism now overlap and have taken on a sense of urgency because it is the
human rights of women that are being traded in the various social contracts that are emerging between
state and the religious right minority leaderships in the UK. The increasing communalisation (involving
religious and community groups mobilising solely around religious identities) of South Asian populations, in
particular Muslims, reflects a form of instrumentalisation of religion by the state which has severely
constrained the public space available for women to mobilise around a rights-based agenda and has also
significantly narrowed the choices of women of faith.
1
Introduction
The UK has seen a concerted assault on secular
spaces in the wake of civil unrest in some of the
Northern cities in 2001, the 9/11 atrocity and the
7/7 London bombings of 2005. In the guise of the
‘war on terror’, the state’s response to the threat
of Islamist terrorism has been dominated by a
two-pronged approach to minorities – first, to
counter the direct threat of terrorism with
draconian, anti-civil liberties measures; and,
second, the development of a new ‘cohesion’ and
faith-based approach to minorities to replace the
previously dominant ideological framework of
multiculturalism for mediation between State
and minority populations.
on the preservation of religious identities of the
various minorities above the need to build a
democratic, secular and anti-racist culture.
2
For
Muslims, the Rushdie Affair marked a significant
turning point when demands for recognition and
equality became focused upon religious
observance and identity. Other minorities
quickly followed suit.
The ‘war on terror’ has resulted in the deliberate
pursuit of domestic policies by the British state
aimed at accommodating religious identity within
public institutions. This is in turn, a reflection of
a number of political and social trends resulting
in the shrinking of secular spaces and the
increasing communalisation (involving religious
and community groups mobilising solely around
religious identities) of South Asian populations in
particular – a process which has been quietly
taking place for some time.
The process of de-secularisation started in the
late 1980s following the Rushdie affair, when
cracks appeared in the widely held view that
Britain was a secular society in all but name. The
Rushdie affair and the resurgence of religious
fundamentalism in all religions
1
not only exposed
the lack of separation between the Church of
England and the State and the privileging of
Christianity above other religions, but also the
limits of multiculturalism which placed primacy
In accommodating religion within state
institutions, the state’s aim ostensibly has been
to contain Islamist terrorism on British soil and
to construct a moderate British Islam but the
process of de-secularisation is having far-
IDS Bulletin
Volume 42 Number 1 January 2011 © 2011 The Author.
IDS Bulletin
© 2011 Institute of Development Studies
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
26
reaching consequences in re-ordering and
undermining the democratic nature of civil
society with very specific consequences for all
progressive struggles but especially those waged
by minority women. This process is occurring
hand in hand with the dismantling of the welfare
state and the pursuit of a racist anti-immigration
agenda. The new cohesion and faith-based
approach to minorities has therefore become a
political resource used by the state and the
religious right in all communities to aid the
de-secularisation process.
experiences of racism without suppressing the
problem of gender inequality within family and
community. None of this was easy to do in
contexts where the only legitimate struggle by
many on the progressive left was perceived to be
the struggle for racial equality.
Since 1982, SBS has operated as a not-for-profit,
advice, advocacy and campaigning centre for
black women, with a particular focus on the
needs of South Asian women subject to gender-
based violence. While based in West London, an
area with a large South Asian population, we
have a national reach.
3
This article explores the erosion of secular public
culture in the UK and its implications for
minority women whose bodies have become the
battleground for the control of community
representation. My argument is that struggles
for equality and secularism now overlap and have
taken on a sense of urgency because it is the
human rights of women that are being traded in
the various social contracts that are emerging
between state and the religious right minority
leaderships in the UK.
In 2007, Ealing Council decided to cut funding to
SBS on the grounds that specialist services for
black and minority women worked against the
interest of ‘equality’, ‘diversity’ and ‘cohesion’.
Our very name and existence was deemed to be
unlawful under the Race Relations Act 1976
because it excluded white women and was
therefore discriminatory and divisive. Instead, in
the name of ‘best value’ for money, the Council
decided to commission a borough-wide generic
domestic violence service using the funds that
had previously been awarded to SBS – funds
critical to SBS in meeting core costs which were
not easily available from other grant-making
bodies, because most prefer to fund specific
projects rather than overall running costs.
2
The SBS experience
I use as my starting point a campaign waged by
the Southall Black Sisters (SBS) in 2007/8
against a decision made by the local authority
(Ealing Council) to cease critical funding used by
SBS to provide life-saving front-line services for
minority women subject to violence and abuse in
the family. What began as a local funding dispute
soon came to signify a much larger struggle for
equality and for the right to exist as an
autonomous, secular, anti-racist and feminist
organisation.
We were concerned that, if left unchallenged,
Ealing Council’s approach would have allowed
public bodies to redefine the notion of equality in
ways that undermined the very concept. It had
come to be defined by Ealing Council as the need
to provide the same services for everyone, in an
attempt to address some resentment among the
white population that it was the majority white
population rather than the minorities that had
historically been discriminated against and
‘excluded’ from civic regeneration policies. The
notion of equality in this sense was no longer
linked to the needs of the most vulnerable and
deprived, but instead viewed as reflecting the
needs of the majority community. Our fear was
that this approach would be replicated with
confidence elsewhere in the country, leading to
the widespread closure of similar organisations set
up to counter racism and provide minority women
with real alternatives to patriarchal community
(religious and cultural based) mechanisms for
dealing with disputes in the family.
SBS was first set up in 1979, comprising African-
Caribbean and Asian women, in the midst of
intense anti-racist activity. We consciously
adopted a secular feminist identity, one based on
a shared history of colonialism, racism and
religious patriarchal control. The absence of
recognition of gender power relations within the
previous anti-racist movements and the absence
of acknowledgement of racism within white
feminist movements had resulted in the
invisibility of black and minority women. It was
this invisibility which gave rise to the
organisation and others alike. Personally, SBS
was exactly the kind of political home that I and
other women like me were searching for, since it
enabled us to explore and validate our
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IDS Bulletin
Volume 42 Number 1 January 2011
SBS therefore brought a legal challenge against
Ealing Council, which culminated on 18 July
2008 when, at the High Court in London, SBS
won an important affirmation of the right to
exist as a secular specialist provider of domestic
violence services to black and minority women.
Finding in SBS’s favour, Lord Justice Moses who
presided over the hearing held that Ealing
Council had deliberately failed to have proper
regard to its duties under the Race Relations Act
1976, and had taken a flawed approach to
cohesion in reaching its decision:
In court, SBS submitted that Ealing Council’s
approach to equality in effect meant that the
race equality legislation in the UK could not
protect those who are historically
disenfranchised and discriminated against, since
it rejected the notion of positive action in
addressing racism. We argued that the Council’s
‘one size fits all’ approach was misconstrued
because it ignored unequal structural relations
based on class, gender and race. The SBS further
argued that specialist services for minority
women are needed, not only for reasons to do
with language difficulties and cultural and
religious pressures, but also because of the need
for advice and advocacy framed within a
democratic and secular ethos in complex
circumstances where racism and religious
fundamentalism are on the rise in the UK and
worldwide.
There is no dichotomy between the promotion
of equality and cohesion and the provision of
specialist services to an ethnic minority.
Barriers cannot be broken down unless the
victims themselves recognise that the source
of help is coming from the same community
and background as they do. Ealing’s mistake
was to believe that cohesion and equality
precluded the provision of services from such
a source. It seemed to believe that such
services could only lawfully be provided by a
single provider or consortium to victims of
domestic violence throughout the borough. It
appreciates that it was in error and that in
certain circumstances the purposes of Section
71 and the relevant statutory code may only
be met by specialist services from a specialist
source. That is the importance of the name of
the Southall Black Sisters. Its very name
evokes home and family.
4
SBS also argued that Ealing Council’s approach
to cohesion was fundamentally wrong because it
failed to recognise that, far from causing
divisions, the provision of specialist services may
sometimes be necessary to address substantive
inequality, and that in turn is central to
achieving a more cohesive society. It was pointed
out that the SBS project was in fact an example
of how cohesion is achieved organically, borne out
of collective struggles for human rights, and not
by the imposition of ill-conceived social policies
from above. It was described how black and
minority women from various national, ethnic
and religious backgrounds learn to co-exist in
the secular space provided by the SBS. In doing
so, they both tolerate religious and cultural
differences and at the same time challenge
religious and cultural practices that stifle their
common desires and aspirations to live free from
violence, abuse and from other constrictions on
their lives.
Lord Justice Moses concluded his much
celebrated judgement by safeguarding a more
progressive notion of equality:
An equal society protects and promotes
equality, real freedom and substantive
opportunity to live in the ways people value
and would choose so that everyone can
flourish. An equal society recognises people’s
different needs, situations and goals and
removes the barriers that limit what people
can do and can be.
The SBS case has created a legal precedent as to
the correct approach to be taken by statutory
public bodies in the delivery of services and the
funding of specialist organisations. The challenge
has come to represent a key moment for black
and minority groups and other organisations in
the voluntary or third sector seeking to address
the needs of the vulnerable and marginalised in
society. But it has also sounded a warning bell to
secular progressive minority groups.
The newly formed Equalities and Human Rights
Commission (EHRC) which intervened at SBS’s
insistence also criticised Ealing Council’s
interpretation and implementation of the
equality legislation and its policy on cohesion.
Ealing Council’s cynical use of the cohesion
agenda to cut our funding has profound
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Patel Cohesion, Multi-faithism and the Erosion of Secular Spaces in the UK: Implications for the Human Rights of Minority Women
implications for the human rights of black and
minority women in particular. We are acutely
aware that the judgement, notwithstanding its
progressive definition of equality, does not
necessarily preclude fundamentalists and the
religious right from claiming scarce public
funding to provide faith-based services on the
grounds that they are best placed to address
those from the same religious background.
The government’s cohesion strategy can be
traced back to July 2001 and the civil
disturbances that took place in the northern UK
cities of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford – areas
with large Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim
populations. These northern towns and cities are
economically deprived areas historically born out
of the collapse of the textile industries and the
failure of social policies to redistribute resources
equitably. The entire region is characterised by
considerable social segregation, especially in
education, social exclusion, poor housing and
racism. The result has been simmering
community tensions between white British and
Asian British youths in particular, who have
fought each other and the police in street
battles, often fuelled by inflammatory right wing
organisations and the media.
3
Cohesion: a new policy framework for minorities
As the SBS example so clearly shows, the
cohesion approach promoted by the government,
is now the dominant framework for dealing with
minorities. It is a policy objective that is linked to
the other overarching themes of governance in
the UK today, greater civic engagement;
preventing violent Muslim extremism; ‘managing
migration’ with a view to assimilation and the
shift in institutional accountability towards faith-
based organisations and institutions.
In implementing the ‘cohesion’ policy, the state
followed a contradictory course. For example, far
from removing racially segregated education,
identified as a major divisive force in British
society, the government actively promoted single-
faith schools and academies and set about
creating the conditions for faith-based
organisations to flourish.
Cohesion
is a malleable term that has never been
precisely defined by the government. Official
definitions refer to cohesion as a ‘process that
must happen in all communities to ensure that
different groups of people get on well together’
(Commission on Integration and Cohesion
2007). At the national and local level, a ‘cohesive’
community is described as one in which there is a
common ‘vision and sense of belonging for all
communities; where the diversity of people’s
different backgrounds and circumstances is
appreciated and positively valued; where those
from different backgrounds have similar life
opportunities and where there are strong and
positive relationships developing between people
from different backgrounds and circumstances in
the workplace, in schools and within
neighbourhoods.
5
In August 2006, the government announced the
launch of the Commission on Integration and
Cohesion to identify the ways in which local
areas can foster cohesion. The Chair of the
Commission was Darra Singh who was also
directly responsible for the SBS funding crisis as
the Chief Executive of Ealing Council. The
report of the Commission ‘Our Shared Future’,
published in June 2007, did not address
structural inequality or more pertinently the
contradictions of promoting faith-based
organisations in achieving cohesion. While there
was some acknowledgement in the report that
the disturbances in the northern cities in 2001
were in part a reflection of deprivation and
industrial decline, nevertheless its focus was
entirely on the need to develop local-based
cohesion work – largely through religious
exchange networks – and it gave guidance to
local authorities to avoid funding single identity
groups in particular. The report also avoided
addressing the problematic issue of state support
for faith-based schools, especially the existence
of Church of England, Catholic and Jewish
schools which in turn, has fuelled resentment
among other religious minorities, resulting in
While the rhetoric of cohesion appears to have
laudable aims and locates the responsibility for
community cohesion on all communities
including the majority community, in reality, the
government has linked the issue with race. Its
guidance document for instance calls on local
councils to develop their cohesion strategy in the
context of race relations. The assumption is that
it is migrants (largely Muslims) who have failed
to integrate into a ‘British way of life’ or adopt
‘British values’ and are therefore responsible for
the lack of cohesion in society. The SBS funding
crisis illustrated this connection clearly.
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IDS Bulletin
Volume 42 Number 1 January 2011
the growth of state funding of Muslim, Sikh and
Hindu schools.
Ealing Council’s Preventing Violent Extremism
(PVE) (Ealing Council 2008) strategies also
reflect a major preoccupation with engagement
with Muslims only. Of the £45 million made
available by the government for 2008–11 to local
authorities to tackle extremism among Muslims,
Ealing Council received a total £205,000 for
2008–9, rising to £225,000 and £286,000 for
2009–10, respectively. Ealing’s PVE agenda seeks
to ‘gather greater understanding of the
issues/concerns facing Muslim communities;
provide space for greater dialogue and discussion
around Muslim identity and understanding
Islamic values; provide more opportunities for
engagement with the wider community through
volunteering and establish greater support
networks for Muslim women. Under the theme of
‘Engaging with Muslim Women’, the Council has
made a grant of £35,000 available to local groups
to ‘foster in young Muslim women a greater
willingness to express their own views and
influence their local community, a greater
awareness on how to access public services offered
by statutory bodies such as the Council, and a
greater awareness on how to become involved in
local decision-making processes. Youth services
have also been provided with £10,000 to engage
with Muslim girls in secondary schools through
lunchtime sessions to discuss the concerns of the
Muslim girls (Ealing Council 2008).
In 2008, the government issued a consultation
document ‘Guidance for Funders’ (Department
for Communities and Local Government 2008),
which formed an important part of the
government’s response to the Commission on
Integration and Cohesion and its report ‘Our
Shared Future’. The Guidance set out the
government’s intention to advise funders on
‘practical ways in which local authorities could
help build strong communities by promoting
cohesion and integration locally.’ Following the
report, the Guidance also placed conditions on
the funding of single community groups defined
as third sector groups providing targeted support
for single issue/identity-based community activity.
These groups include black and minority groups
and other equality groups, including women’s
groups, gay and lesbian support groups, age and
disability groups and service providers. The view
was that local funding should not be made
available to single group projects if it ‘builds
resentment in others’. Following the SBS funding
victory, the government withdrew the Guidance
on funding for single identity groups and left it to
local authorities to use their discretion on what
organisations to fund or services to commission.
Local Authorities have since continued to divest
themselves and their areas of their ‘race’
equality departments and officers and replaced
them with Community Cohesion Directorates. It
would appear that it is the long-standing single
identity groups (more often than not, progressive
and secular) that are targeted for funding cuts at
the same time as encouraging faith-based groups
to emerge, as discussed below. The withdrawal of
funding for SBS is one high profile example but
there have been others, including several Asian
women’s refuges, mental health and community
organisations for African and Caribbean people,
to name but a few.
While Ealing Council maintains that the PVE
focus ‘compliments the emerging borough
“Integration and Community Cohesion” strategy
developed in 2007’, in practice, the Council’s
PVE and Cohesion strategies are
indistinguishable.
One consequence of Ealing Council’s cohesion
approach is that it has encouraged the
development of faith-based initiatives, including
the future creation of Muslim women-only
projects, without any reference to the politics
and ethos of such projects and even though there
are no visible demands for such organisations
(Ealing Council 2008). This approach is being
repeated throughout the UK and the
organisations that have so far been closed or
threatened with closure are secular organisations
for black and ethnic migrants, secular women’s
refuges for black and minority women, disability
groups and rape crisis centres. Following SBS’s
lead, organisations confronting similar funding
problems with their local authorities have
This dual process was vividly evident at the
height of SBS’s funding crisis. The irony of the
situation in which SBS found itself was, that at
the same time that Ealing Council decided to
withdraw financial assistance, Ealing’s Cohesion
Strategy was and continues to be dominated by
the need to promote faith-based (largely
Muslim) groups to deliver local welfare services
(Ealing Council 2007).
6
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Patel Cohesion, Multi-faithism and the Erosion of Secular Spaces in the UK: Implications for the Human Rights of Minority Women
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