Foreign Beliefs: Law, Public Discourse, and Religious Minorities in England

• In Event: Religious Minorities: Tolerance and Persecution

Abstract

The status of religious minorities in England has shifted over a span of centuries, from formal discrimination and exclusion to legal equality today. This shift is not merely a function of social attitudes, but of political decisions by the state; the law has been a prominent tool for defining, enforcing, and later remedying the exclusion of religious minorities.

The civil disabilities of Catholics and Jews, for example, were rooted in the fear that these particular minorities were a source of risk to society through their presumed loyalty to foreign interests. Religious foreignness (of identity, of belief, of the locus of religious authority) was a bar to civil Englishness, either in part or fully.

The expansion of both political equality and civil liberties protections gradually eroded these legal disabilities. The full citizenship of minorities has seemingly been achieved, at least as a matter of equality before the law. However, concern over the “foreignness” of religious minorities is again highly visible in public discourse, expressed as fears that Muslims in Britain are a danger to both national security and national identity. Both right-wing activists and mainstream media direct public attention to shari’a, grooming gangs, and forced marriage, portraying them as unique dangers of Islam in the United Kingdom.

This paper investigates the relationship between public discourse and the law, examining three aspects. First, I demonstrate that the current public discourse on Britain’s Muslim minority is strikingly similar to much earlier debates about the nationality of Jews. Second, the paper examines the extent to which current political discourse about Muslims is cast in terms of claims about the law and national identity. Finally I argue that this framing has identifiable effects on public opinion and on parliamentary and governmental action. This trend suggests that, while religious liberty seems a settled question, minority inclusion could still be eroded via claims about threats to national identity and security.

Author

• Catherine Warrick, Villanova University