Britain's Equality Commission Releases Study on Religious Discrimination

Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission yesterday released a report titled Religious Discrimination in Britain: A Review of Research Evidence, 2000-10.  The report says that its aims were:

to identify and review:
• quantitative and qualitative evidence of religious discrimination;
• any evidence about whether religious discrimination is increasing or decreasing;
• any differences in evidence between England, Wales and Scotland;
• ‘Islamophobia’ as a frame of reference for discrimination against Muslims; and
• gaps in the existing research and statistical evidence.

The Commission has also made available a related statistical briefing paper on Religion of Belief.

In a somewhat provocative interview with the Sunday Telegraph ahead of the release of the report, Commission Chairman Trevor Phillips said:

I understand why a lot of people in faith groups feel a bit under siege. They're in a world where there are a lot of very clever people who have a lot of access to the airwaves and write endlessly in the newspapers knocking religion and mocking God. The people who want to drive religion underground are much more active, much more vocal....

Our business is defending the believer. The law we're here to implement recognises that religious identity is an essential part of this society. It's an essential element of being a fulfilled human being.....

I think the most likely victim of actual religious discrimination in British society is a Muslim but the person who is most likely to feel slighted because of their religion is an evangelical Christian.

There are a lot of Christian activist voices who appear bent on stressing the kind of persecution that I don't think really exists in this country. There are some Christian organisations who basically want to have a fight and therefore they're constantly defining the ground in such a way that anyone who doesn't agree wholly agree with them about everything is essentially a messenger from Satan.

I think for a lot of Christian activists, they want to have a fight and they choose sexual orientation as the ground to fight it on. I think that whole argument isn't about the rights of Christians. It's about politics. It's about a group of people who really want to have weight and influence and they've chosen that particular ground.