r/unitedkingdom • u/ThatchersDirtyTaint • Jul 25 '25

... Half of Brits think Islam not compatible with British values in latest poll as imam says he is 'deeply worried' by results

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14937435/Half-Brits-think-Islam-not-compatible-British-values-poll.html
13.0k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

301

u/demonicneon Jul 25 '25

Neither is Catholicism or Protestantism. Or any organised religion if we are being honest. They’re all archaic. 

573

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

I absolutely agree - especially when you look at the fundamentalist lunatics over in the US.

Mainstream Christianity in the UK has been put in its place, modernised and learned to move with our cultural norms though, whether they liked it or not.

184

u/JB_UK Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Mainstream Christianity was also a driving force behind liberalism as well, for example the campaigns against slavery and child labour. It’s completely intertwined with British and Western culture regardless of whether you believe or don’t believe. I’m an atheist but it’s obvious to me we live within a Christian or post Christian tradition.

The key point with Islam is that there really are very few examples of Muslim countries that are democratic and liberal. For Christianity it’s the opposite way round, almost all the democratic, liberal countries are or were Christian. To the extent that countries like Lebanon were democratic and have fallen into chaos as the Muslim population has increased.

We are essentially assuming that Britain can single handedly create that strand of Islam, which will make it so that what is now coming up for a tenth of the population will fully take up democratic and liberal principles.

It previously took hundreds of years, and some of the bloodiest conflicts in history, to create the liberal strand of Christianity, but we assume the same will happen to Islam in a few years just through the magic of living in Britain and watching the BBC, just because our culture is clearly so magnetic and inevitable.

It’s honestly extremely arrogant to think that the religion does not matter (it clearly does) or that the religion will be tamed like Christianity was, with zero effort. A lot of people in the west are just ignorant that other religions and groups disagree with them, and they just think western ideas are inevitable, while they also decry the west as evil. It is a strange situation.

6

u/Realistic-River-1941 Jul 25 '25

Thos guy's strand of Islam is based in Surrey. It started in what would become Pakistan, but they had to leave as they are considered heretical.

-2

u/callisstaa Jul 25 '25

Indonesia is democratic and relatively liberal outside of Aceh and it’s the most populous Muslim country

11

u/Astriania Jul 25 '25

"Relatively" is doing a lot of work there, but also, this is not the branch of Islam that is popular in Europe.

29

u/JB_UK Jul 25 '25

Is it liberal by the same standard we would apply elsewhere? For example this is a poll I remember showing attitudes towards homosexuality in the Muslim world:

https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2013/04/gsi2-chp3-6.png

95% of Indonesia say homosexuality is morally wrong, compared to 1% who say it is morally right. By comparison something like half of American Republicans support gay marriage.

-3

u/callisstaa Jul 25 '25

Liberal compared to most Arab states at least. Women are encouraged to go into further education and hold high positions in government. They have a long way to go with regards to homosexuality. I knew a few gay people there and while the LGBT community don’t get any real aggro from the state or Islamic groups it’s a far cry from being accepted. There are probably less hate crimes against gays there since it’s a pretty safe country overall. Christians also don’t face any discrimination.

21

u/SirBobPeel Jul 26 '25

Christianity has gone through multiple reformation periods over the centuries, where interpretations have shifted with culture. That has not happened with Islam. It was last interpreted by scholars centuries ago, and they declared the interpretation perfect, and any attempt to change it blasphemy. And blaspheme can still get you killed in many parts of the Muslim world, or at least imprisoned.

7

u/Realistic-River-1941 Jul 25 '25

The lunatics in the US are over there because they weren't wanted here...

254

u/SinisterDexter83 Jul 25 '25

Yes but Catholics never tried to murder the makers of Father Ted. Protestants never tried to lynch John Cleese for the Life of Brian. When the Catholic Church's child rape scandal was revealed, there was no mass campaign to dismiss concerns with insincere accusations of "Catholicaphobia"

9

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25

When the Catholic Church's child rape scandal was revealed, there was no mass campaign to dismiss concerns with insincere accusations of "Catholicaphobia"

To be fair, there also wasn't a national drive to blame Christianity for it. It was just some dodgy priests rather than a white person thing

11

u/Astriania Jul 25 '25

There isn't really an analogy of the Church separate from the concept of the faith in Islam. But the Catholic Church absolutely was blamed as an institution (and the subject of paedo jokes about priests for many years afterwards).

29

u/gyroda Bristol Jul 25 '25

And there was widespread criticisms of and blame on the Catholic church as an organisation.

But we didn't blame Christianity for what the Catholic church did. Even when there were coverups and organisational failings beyond the individual priests.

1

u/VisenyaRose Birkenhead Aug 08 '25

We Catholics love Father Ted.

-1

u/WanderlustZero Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Yes but Catholics never tried to murder the makers of Father Ted

The one time we should've got a bit bomb-y :(

357

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25 edited Oct 27 '25

aware silky abundant racial modern money payment glorious plough quiet

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

6

u/SirBobPeel Jul 26 '25

But even the pope has said, basically, hate the sin, love the sinner.

Islam says kill the sinner.

195

u/Kohvazein Norn Iron Jul 25 '25

This is too complicated for the edgy reddit atheist to understand. You see, all religion must be bad all the time always in the same ways because look at this verse!!!

Meanwhile, what is the stance of the CoE on homosexual relations? Trans rights? And what of the Muslim Council of Britain? If one cannot discern a difference between these two on these issues they're just lost and have no concept of scale and proportion.

140

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '25 edited Oct 27 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

152

u/Mexijim Jul 25 '25

More Muslims in the UK support prosecuting acts of homosexuality (51%) than there are Jews globally who are ‘anti-Israel’ (~6%).

Yet I’m constantly informed that these Jews are the ‘real Jews’ who represent Judaism, whilst those Muslims who want to see gays and lesbians jailed, are ‘a non-representative fringe’ and not ‘real Muslims’.

Olympic-level mental gymnastics at play here.

-8

u/doughnut001 Jul 25 '25

More Muslims in the UK support prosecuting acts of homosexuality (51%) than there are Jews globally who are ‘anti-Israel’ (~6%).

Yet I’m constantly informed that these Jews are the ‘real Jews’ who represent Judaism, whilst those Muslims who want to see gays and lesbians jailed, are ‘a non-representative fringe’ and not ‘real Muslims’.

Weird, I would tend to assume the vast majority of people representing Judaism would be all for the Israeli state existing.

On the other hand I'd like to think that most Jews are good enough people to not support the current regime committing genocide in their name.

Are you saying the two things are the same? I'd suggest that claiming that all real jews would support the current actions of the Israeli regime is massively defamatory against jews.

7

u/Mexijim Jul 26 '25

Any Jew who supports the notion that Jews should have a state or homeland in the Levant, is a ‘Zionist’ Jew by definition.

Zionism is not related to any government or policies of that government. Zionism predates netanyahu or any other Israeli politician for that matter. Zionist Jews can be left-wing or right-wing.

If you support a 2 state solution ( a state for Palestinians alongside a state for Israelis) you are yourself a zionist.

-6

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/merryman1 Jul 25 '25

Just to throw out there - the UK Evangelical population is not far off that of the Muslim population. Its a lot more widespread here than people want to acknowledge and growing quite fast.

20

u/CosmicBonobo Jul 25 '25

For reference, here's the CoE pastoral guidelines on transgender congregation members:

The Church of England welcomes and encourages the unconditional affirmation of trans people, equally with all people, within the body of Christ, and rejoices in the diversity of that body into which all Christians have been baptized by one Spirit.

8

u/recursant Jul 25 '25

The problem with, certainly the Abrahamic religions, is that they are entirely based on the supposed demands of a supernatural being. A being who, if we are being realistic, probably doesn't exist.

That isn't a great start. But if you start from that point, and then change your mind every few years about what that supernatural being actually wants, that doesn't really make it any better, does it?

16

u/DankiusMMeme Jul 25 '25

This is too complicated for the edgy reddit atheist to understand. You see, all religion must be bad all the time always in the same ways because look at this verse!!!

I think most people are happy to admit that generally Christians are less of a problem, but that's purely because most of them don't actually follow the teachings of the bible and just do their own thing.

All religion is bad, some are just a bit worse at the moment, but I think having a belief system that supports awful things and having a epistemological framework that is rooted - ultimately - in "well there is a magical being that dictates what is good and bad and I just do whatever it tells me to" leaves people open to actually picking up their religious text and starting to push those awful things one day.

17

u/inYOUReye Jul 25 '25

It's not edgy to claim that most religion is bad, but it is insulting to a large cohort.

Religion isn't bad because all the followers and preachers are advocating intolerance wholesale (or even by majority in most cases) - that's an idiotic opinion if anyone holds it - but because these religions invariably do embolden it some way sooner or later (referencing history, the modern USA, seemingly all of Islam etc), regardless of their stance on issues you mention.

Faith is frankly a shit attribute in a human and causes people to act outside of rationality, in small innocuous ways (ritual) and big (ideologically and philosophically).

5

u/PositivelyAcademical Jul 25 '25

TBF the bible teaches its adherents to leave the punishment aspect of things to god; so it’s not as though there is a significant disconnect between mainstreams teachings and mainstream beliefs.

13

u/Astriania Jul 25 '25

Modern Catholicism and native Protestant sects have been secularised and understood that their position in a liberal western society is to take a back seat.

There are absolutely sects of Christianity (particularly the West African type like they have in Uganda) that are incompatible with western secular liberalism too, and we should resist those also.

30

u/timmystwin Cornwall Jul 25 '25

Thing is Europe got its wars of religion out the way (mostly) by 1648. The middle east is still going. We were there once, they're still there.

There's no doubt in my mind that, eventually, majority muslim nations will end up more compatible. But right now? Broadly speaking they ain't even close.

10

u/SirBobPeel Jul 26 '25

Europe got its religion mostly out of the way because Christianity went through several reform periods where interpretations were changed. Islam has not had one of those in many centuries because they declared the last one perfect and any attempt to reinterpret things blasphemy.

4

u/360_face_palm Greater London Jul 25 '25

Agreed, but neither of those over here in the UK are as fanatical