Secular Society Threatened?

[Louis VI the Fat]

Disturbing developments:

Anger as Cherie Blair spares devout man from jail

Cherie Blair has been reported to the office overseeing judges' behaviour for apparently sentencing a man convicted of assault more leniently because he was religious.

The National Secular Society wrote to the Judicial Complaints Office on Friday complaining that Mrs Blair — a prominent Roman Catholic — suspended the six-month prison sentence passed on Shamso Miah, a Muslim who broke a stranger's jaw in row over a bank queue, on the ground that he was devout.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7014701.ece

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"The Republic neither recognizes, nor salaries, nor subsidizes any religion." So says the 1905 French law on the separation of church and state. Yet nowadays officials do everything in their power to promote the construction of mosques — even providing sweetheart land deals that push the bounds of legality.


A report finds that 30% of the funding for mosques in France can be traced to public coffers. While one Muslim leader credits "divine will," the real driver is politics:

The mayors involved sometimes want more control but also to win votes in tight elections. With the explosion of land prices, granting municipal land proves decisive. The emphyteutic lease has become the principal tool of mayors, even if the courts sometimes punish rents which are too low, seen as explicit financing of religion. This was the case in Marseille and Montreuil.
Since then the system has become more refined. Mayors use the additional cultural activities of the mosque, sometimes a simple tearoom, in order to give subsidies.

France is not the only Western nation to provide land for mosques, at times stretching the law to do so. The government of Argentina handed off a parcel appraised at $10 million for a mega-mosque in Buenos Aires, while Boston has been embroiled in a scandal over the below-market-value sale of real estate to house an Islamic cultural center.


However, France stands out because the country, which banned religious symbols in schools five years ago, is reputed to be the most secular in Europe. That it now finances, more or less openly, Muslim places of worship speaks to the social changes sweeping the nation and the continent. For states looking to better manage those changes, here is a good place to start: resist the temptation to bend or alter laws for the exclusive benefit of any single group.


http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2...nances-mosques

Are these isolated incidents? Or part of a larger development, a slow undermining of secular society, a decline by degrees by accomodating religious agitation?

One of my nightmares is a Christianity and Islam making common cause against Reason. The two religions are arch enemies. But as anyone who is familiar with Navaros knows, Islam is also admired in some Christian circles for its relentless, unforgiven pursuit of its own goals. Some Christians seem quite content to hide behind Islam, to ride its wave, and drown secular society.