Following the SOF annual conference in Leicester, this conference issue of Sofia starts with edited, shortened versions of the talks given by our three main speakers. First we have economist Tim Jackson, who is Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey. He explains the complex processes that led up to the financial crash of 2008 and lambastes the government strategy to solve the crisis. That strategy aims to reduce the public debt and promote growth by pumping money into the financial corporations who are losing the money, while cutting most of our social investment as fast as possible. He argues that this policy is not only very unjust but bad economics: 'Actually, George, it's complete rubbish – it is really economics of the worst kind.'

Next we have Chris Howson, a long-time activist in Bradford and now Anglican Chaplain at the University of Sunderland. Although his work has been inspired by liberation theology, his talk is not so much about theology but discusses some of the activities for the common good that he and his friends have been involved with, such as setting up a public library in Barclays Bank in Bradford (where, as elsewhere, libraries are being closed down). He admits this was great fun, especially when the police supported them, enraging the bank manager. He also describes continual inter-faith work in Bradford with Muslim, Sikh and Hindu neighbours, whom they 'got to know as friends and colleagues'.

The third speaker was Alom Shaha, who grew up on a south London council estate among other Bangladeshi Muslims. As a young man he rejected Islam and now teaches physics at Camden School for Girls. He describes how he came to write his Young Atheist's Handbook. Asked whether there were any aspects of Islam where he could say: 'I don't believe in Allah any more, but this is useful, this is constructive,' he replies firmly in the negative: 'Islam has oppressed me and has oppressed lots of people I know … Actually, I do know what I got from Islam. It was something to rebel against and make me think.' At the same time he condemns the racism inherent in Islamophobia.

These talks and other conference activities gave rise to many fruitful discussions. There is room here to mention just two points where those could be taken further. Firstly, the talks show a clear tension between good interfaith relations and 'exploring religion as a human creation'. Howson rightly stresses the importance of getting on well with Muslim, Sikh and Hindu neighbours, becoming friends and colleagues to work together. Shaha insists on the freedom to practise your religion, as long as it does not harm others. At the same time he denounces what is oppressive in Islam.

I think if SOF does its job of exploring religion as a human creation properly, it has to sift what is good and bad in other religions besides Christianity and not fudge things over. Precisely because religions are human and not supernatural, they are going to be a mixture of good and bad, as we are ourselves. And if we speak out roundly about the oppression and abuses in our own tradition (Christian and humanist for most of us in SOF) and treat other religions with kid gloves for fear of giving offence, that is treating their adherents as less responsible, less fully adult human beings than ourselves. That could be compared to the way in which, in the nineteenth century, Ruskin 'kid-gloved' women, preserving them from the hurly burly of public life and the burdens of adult citizenship in their 'queens' gardens'. (See also the letter below from Maryam Namazie, who spoke at a previous SOF conference.)

The second point is about theology and politics. Jackson uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate his thesis of 'The Altruist Within'. His talk does not mention God but he speaks out of a tradition where public policies that are good news for a few rich people and bad news for the poor are unjust and wrong (and furthermore, bad economics). Inspired by liberation theology, Howson assumes that activism for the common good equates with 'building the reign of God'. And we have a report of the Taxpayers against Poverty Campaign, led by 82-year-old retired Anglican priest Paul Nicolson, who now faces jail for his opposition to the government's austerity measures, and who also defends his action by saying: 'This is the gospel'. Some members of the audience objected that politics should be kept out of religion and SOF's remit. One person was heard to mutter, 'Oh God! Now SOF's becoming the Socialist Party at prayer!' He has a point of view, which merits much further theological (not to say political) discussion.

So let us hope the conference provided food for thought, talk and action — and don't forget the London conference on Saturday 21st September, where the speakers will be Stephen Batchelor, Richard Holloway and our own Don Cupitt.

Dinah Livingstone

Letters to the Editor

One Law for All – 3 Reports

A new report by One Law for All entitled Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left (www.onelawforall.org.uk/siding-with-the-oppressor-the-pro-islamist-left) criticises the pro-Islamist Left for using accusations of racism and Islamophobia and a conflation of Muslim with Islamist in order to defend Islamism and Islam rather than out of any real concern for prejudice against Muslims or their rights, particularly since Muslims or those labelled as such are the first victims of Islamism and on the frontlines of resisting it.

The report has been written as a companion to Enemies not Allies: The Far-Right (www.onelawforall.org.uk/new-report-enemies-not-allies-the-far-right/). Like the far-Right which 'despises' multiculturalism yet benefits from its idea of difference to scapegoat the 'other' and promote its own form of white identity politics, the pro-Islamist Left also uses multiculturalism to side with the Islamic far-Right and the oppressor. Challenging this perspective is especially important given its wide acceptance as 'progressive' in mainstream society.

Another new report by One Law for All entitled Multiculturalism and Child Protection in Britain: Sharia Law and Other Failures (www.onelawforall.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Multiculturalism-and-Child-Protection-in-Britain.pdf) reveals how a multicultural approach, adopted by local authorities and other public authorities to child protection, is placing children in danger and creating parallel societies. The report also exposes Sharia tribunals and their increasing authority in the issue of child custody, and questions the impact this has, and is likely to have, on the equal protection of children regardless of race or ethnicity.

The reports are available for free download on One Law for All's website. The books are available for purchase at £4 from One Law for All.

Maryam Namazie
Spokesperson, One Law for All
BM Box 2387, London WC1N 3XX, UK
onelawforall@gmail.com | www.onelawforall.org.uk

Honest to God

I was very interested in the recent Honest to God issue. I too remember those heady days of the early sixties and the furore the book caused then. One question it raised was: 'Can contemporary man not be an atheist?'

For some years I have run a group called Philosophical Explorations with the University of the Third Age. What has struck me is that equally intelligent people can have widely different views. Broadly speaking, people are either Platonists or Aristotelians. If you're a Platonist you're likely to believe in a God who's a lot more real than we are and who is responsible for the whole show; if you're an Aristotelian you'll have no need of that hypothesis. To the Platonist it's blindingly obvious that God exists; to the Aristotelian it's equally obvious that the whole God business is a human invention.

That's the really interesting bit – that people inhabit different realities. Take Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams. Williams doesn't ever seem to have seriously doubted that God exists while Dawkins has dismissed from the start the very possibility that he does.

Of course life is dynamic and people can flip from one reality to the other. People have conversion experiences and deconversion experiences – decisive for them but usually pretty unconvincing to those of us on the outside. Maybe the Necker cube has something to tell us here. Normally you see it one way or the other. Or you can try to see it as just twelve lines on a page and say that this is what it 'really' is, but that's just to put a third, minimalist, interpretation on it. Robinson seems to have been saying that contemporary man can't help seeing the cube in one way – the reductionist way, as 'only' twelve lines.

But that's not how it is. We differ in how we perceive reality, and it doesn't seem there's any guaranteed 'right' way to see it. The theological realist may say that God sees it the right way, but then how do we know that there's a God? Seeing that there is would be part of the 'right' way of seeing things, but it's that which seems to elude so many of us.

Iain Robertson
iainro@tiscali.co.uk

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109 – For the Common Good

Contents

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Editorial

Letters to the Editor

One Law for All – 3 Reports

Honest to God

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