Have you heard the one about the jihadi on the No. 81 bus? What about the apparently professional people who believe in witches and demons?
But first the jihadi on the bus.5 Chinese crackers illustrates how an Islamophobic urban myth is slipped into general currency:
Urban myths and Muslim bus drivers praying
[…]
I thought something might be fishy when I saw ‘Get off my bus, I need to pray’ in the Sun last week. Having pictures or even video of a Muslim bus driver praying on his bus does not prove that the driver made his passengers get off so he could pray.
Via Islamophobia Watch, we can have a look at this article from the Slough and Windsor Observer, ‘Bosses defend Muslim who stopped the 81 bus to pray’, which explains:
London United Busways say they have carried out a full investigation after driver Arunas Raulynaitis rolled out his prayer mat to perform his daily prayers, facing Mecca on the number 81 bus in Langley.
Bosses have analysed evidence, including CCTV footage, and say the driver was actually on his 10-minute break when the incident took place at around 1.30pm on Thursday.
They added that the control room had in fact radioed Mr Raulynaitis to terminate the bus outside Langley Fire Station in London Road because it was running late due to road works. Passengers were asked to leave the vehicle while they waited for another bus to pick them up to complete their journey.
[…]
But a 21-year-old passenger – who was hoping to join the bus before it terminated – told the Observer: “People were fuming because they said the driver had asked them to leave so he could pray.
“Most people ended up waiting for 15 minutes and weren’t happy. I was late for work so I got a lift with my friend. But it was a hassle I didn’t need.”
So, the driver was told to stop the bus because it was behind schedule, and he decided to pray at that point because it was time for him to take his break. Not really worth reporting in a national newspaper. Unless you make dodgy assumptions about the guy’s motives.
It’s exactly this sort of story that led the passengers on the bus to believe that the driver had told them to get off so he could pray. If you’re primed to think a particular group are arrogant and prone to demanding other people bend to their whims to accommodate their needs, you’re far more likely to conclude that anything a member of that group does that you don’t like has been done for that reason.
We visited friends in Langley (close to Slough) quite recently and I was surprised – hardly any of the locals were noticeably Moslem or even non-white, oddly so considering it’s so close to Heathrow. Other than at Heathrow itself and in Tesco in Slough did I once see a hijab or a brown face. (Though to be fair, we were only there two days. Perhaps it was the weather.) Funny how these kinds of stories emanate from mostly all-white enclaves, though.
That said, I don’t think anyone should get prayer time at work anyhow, no matter what their religion and/or job is. Do it on your own time and if your prayer schedule doesn’t fit the normal working day, or your Sunday is sacrosanct, then you should look for work that will specifically accomodate that, or be self-employed as many religious do, quietly and with no fuss. But some religious make a hell of a fuss and think their religion should be the way of life for everyone, regardless of their beliefs or lack of them, and many of them are Christians.
Perhaps the media might choose to report on that, or on the increasing stridency of religious people in secular life generally? What about reporting on the government-funded, class and race-based faith schools, currently institutionalising religious sectarianism and embedded privilege into yet another divided generation? The situation can only worsen once this ghettoised cohort of British children gets into the workforce.
As it is a Christian doctors’ association has already pressured the doctors’ ruling body, The General Medical Council, to release new guidelines that allow them, the religious, to refuse treatment to patients for conditions which they find personally morally suspect, on the grounds of a vague all-encompassing ‘conscience.’
The lobby groups, some funded by spiritual/political mentors in the USA, are triumphant, having already successfully bullied UK pharmacists over the matter of refusing contraception and particularly the morning-after-pill.
even that isn’t enough for some religious:
David Jones, a Roman Catholic professor of bioethics at St Mary’s University College, London, said that doctors with a strong objection to abortion may feel like “an accessory to murder” if they directly referred patients to other doctors for the procedure, as the GMC suggests. “How this guidance will be implememented is crucial,” he said.
Jafer Qureshi, a co-founder of the Islamic Medical Ethics Forum, which advises Muslim doctors on issues including medical euthanasia and organ transplantation, added that medical students had recently complained about a “climate of intolerance” to their beliefs.
But where are the lurid red-top headlines about medical missionaries and foreign fundies interfering in the NHS and policing our morals?
If I saw the tabloids campaigning against fundamentalism generally – if only in defence of Page 3 stunnas – and there were a few more disapproving (and true) stories of fundamentalists of other religions than just Islam interfering with the rights of others, then I’d be less inclined to think this Langley item is a made-up story designed specifically to appeal to the average BNP voter.
Fundamentalists of all types seek to overcome their own weakness and ultimate lack of faith by imposing on us. Many (and they’re usually the most visibly pious) secretly lack the ability or the will to hold to the tenets of their religion or to live a right life acording to their chosen beliefs; they know they are weak and it’s so much easier to comply when all the discipline comes from outside.
So they seek to construct a society in which to sin is impossible, a place where they won’t have to try at all and can just go along with the rules, parrot the right words, and be saved with no exertion at all. Which slightly misses the point of the spiritual life, which is all about the personal effort.
But to get back to the way the media treats fundamentalism and the religious; Islamic fundamentalism is demonised because of the way many Moslems look. Many British Moslems are non-white, an artifact of postcolonial immigration patterns. But Christian fundamentalism is nothing to worry about, the media think; after all it’s homegrown, sort of, and mostly practiced by whites (though becoming less so, witness the influence of African evangelicals and EU Catholics). Nevertheless the tabloid news equation can be ultimately reduced to Moslem=non-white=bad, Christian=white (ish)=good.
Myself I’m much more concerned about the GP who’s goes all ecstatic and happy-clappy on Sundays and who thinks dominionism is no bad thing, or the cabinet minister who shirks his duty to his constituents in order to appease an archbishop, than I am about a tired bus driver taking a restful little contemplative break on his own time.
UPDATE: Now see, this is exactly what happens when you give any public ground to the religious.
