There’s a bit of a UK theme to Pharyngula’s posts recently – what with blogs about a councillor calling for creationism to be taught in Lisburn (NI) schools and a reminder that schools are legally obliged to have a broadly Christian-themed assembly. Talk about making us look at the mote in our own eye.

It’s good to be reminded that religious idiocy is as liable to appear in the self-satisfiedly irreligious UK as in what we can too easily see as the ranting fundamentalist USA.

Most of the UK comments on the post are saying either that UK schools’ obligation to provide a religious assembly is more honoured in the breach than the observance or that having had it made them atheist anyway.

I admit to having been completely confused by a seemingly serious comment by Monado that ended with the odd words:

OTOH, I didn’t do me any harm to proclaim “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to my Queen and country” every morning.

You can say what you like about the enormous variety of forms of “assembly” in UK schools, but one thing that never happens is a “pledge of allegiance.”

I can say this with a strong certainty as my own childhood memory from living on the north American continent for a couple of years was of a 7-year-old’s shock and revulsion at having to salute a flag and repeat a pledge every morning. In fact, I used to intone my own subversive anti-mantra, confident in the knowledge that noone could understand my Bridish accent even if they had heard me.

One commenter pointed out that a much more currently serious matter – given that the effect on belief is either minimal or negative – is the rush to provide even more faith-supported “faith” schools. Ironically, these don’t share the obligation to provide broadly Christian assemblies, which would be a bit of a problem to Islamic schools and would be like telling boiling water to be hot to Catholic and Protestant schools..

I see the spread of Islamic schools as part of a general provcess of ghettoisation.

I live in an area which has recieved huge quantities of EC money for reconstruction. This area has clearly been zoned as Muslim ghetto. Many empty houses have been reclaimed as “sicial housing”. There is now a Muslim family in every one. No new families have moved into the area who are not Muslims. White, black and mixed families are just getting housed elsewhere.

Any refurcished shops have become Muslim grocery stores or callshops or cafes. Muslim community centres have been established. A fair number of the kids wait for special school buses that hint that the madrassa operates at other times than the weekend. A fair number of women in my street are veiled or never appear in the street.

Until recently, there were plenty of Muslim individuals and families in the area. They just mixed with everyone else. It was an area where people from anywhere and of any type or ethinicity could feel reasonably comfortable – at least that they wouldn’t get picked on just for who they were, which is far from the case in the rest of the city. (There were plenty of other causes for trouble. I didn’t say it was paradise. Its name was once well nigh synonymous with urban unrest.)

The chances of this natural integration happening get slimmer by the day. With blanket Muslim residence, the power of the local mosque’s influence gets ever greater.

This is not an accident. There have been deliberate local and national government policies – directed, I assume, at buying the support of “community leaders” – that have made vast amounts of public money available for concentrating muslims in a ghetto. If this boosts the power of the saudi-supplied imams, our politicians seems completely unconcerned.

And now, faith schools are another segregation tactic. I don’t think the politicians are doing this on purpose. They just want to buy a few votes. They think they are meeting the needs of diverse communities. It doesn’t occur to them that this sort of thing is giving up the goal of achieving real integration.

We are indeed “sleepwalking into segregation”, to quote Trevor Philips, if we send UK society down that mad Northern Ireland route of keeping kids from natural contact with other kids who have been taught different beliefs. That faith school worked out so well in Northern Ireland, didn’t it?

Let Muslims and Catholics and Protestants and scientologists or whatever do their indoctrination to their own time and spend their own money on it.

Wrought’s comment on Pharyngula’s post reminded everyone who lives in the UK to sign the anti-faith schools e-petition. I would like to say the same, although the track record of these e-petitions is pretty abysmal.