I recently read an interesting article in The Washington Post http://tinyurl.com/3t3xc3a about Islam in America. The article features Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf addresses a rally to protest congressional hearings on the role of Muslims in home-grown terrorism on March 6 in New York. He identifies five myths about Muslims in America and goes on to explain how old Islam is in comparison to the American country and covers such issues as terrorism, the treatment of women and whether Muslim American want to introduce Sharia law.
Having recently returned from America and had many conversations about diversity and accepting other people’s differences I was somewhat disappointed that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf felt it necessary to bring up these issues in such a public domain. That was until I read a headline in the online Gothamist.com http://tinyurl.com/3r9m98k which highlighted the fact that a 13 year old girl had been arrested for trying to rip the hijab off the head of another young Muslim girl in New York. This followed the arrest of a 12 year old girl on a similar charge.
However, the USA is not the only country to be currently challenging the Muslim faith. France is currently reviewing Islam and the hijab has been banned or is in the process of being banned in various countries across the world.
It seems that faith is an easy target for headline writers these days and often gives column inches to those who do not deserve it. The Nursing Times.Net highlighted the Christian nurse who refused to remove a crucifix at work has lost her discrimination claim against Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust (http://tinyurl.com/6zoaabj). And Personnel Today published the fact that Christian British Airways (BA) worker Nadia Eweida has lost her appeal against a ruling which said the airline was not guilty of discrimination by stopping her wearing a religious cross at work (http://tinyurl.com/43w9zlb), although this may have been subsequently reversed.
What is apparent is that religious tolerance is being challenged in two of the (so called) most tolerant societies in the world. This does not even consider the intolerances in other part of the world that has resulted in wars and ongoing conflict.
The fact that people’s emotions run high gives the media great copy. This is evidenced by a short piece on UK TV last night where a Christian preacher spoke of how he sits with Muslims friends, eats Halal food with them, but insists on blessing the food in the name of the Christian God denouncing all other false Gods – I assume referring to Allah. I am not sure whether this guy was given air time as people would find it funny or odd or because it showed a lack of consideration for people that he himself called friends. It reminded me of an occasion when I took two officers from the Metropolitan Force for dinner in Liverpool. One was a devout Muslim so we headed to a restaurant that used Halal meat. I was astounded when the non-Muslim colleague asked if we could go somewhere that was not Halal as they did not serve beer. This was a colleague of his and he was ignoring his devout religious beliefs. Is this despotism? No I don’t think so. We still hear of people being attacked because of the colour of their skin, or their gender or sexuality. It is ignorance plain and simple.
I have just read two books that refer to police constables being leaders within society. One comes from Sir John Alderson (1979) and the other from Professor Steve Savage (2007). Both speak of the police as being leaders within society and even further back Storch (1975) refers to the police as being missionaries looking after the morals of society.
The question is this. If Peel’s principle of the public are the police and the police are the public is correct, can we be satisfied that we have the processes to prevent such ignorance from becoming an increasing problem within policing?
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