Tony Blair has announced that the only Muslim organisations who will be allowed to dine at the government trough will be those that espouse an interpretation of Islam that the State approves of.
Religious groups will have to prove their commitment to integration before being awarded taxpayers’ cash, Tony Blair said today, as he reignited the row over Muslim headscarves.
Of course, the real issue is whether a government should be taking so much money from its citizenry that it can afford to engage in these sorts of social and cultural engineering projects; using money that it has confiscated from taxpayers as a carrot to entice Muslim organisations to say what the government likes. One would suggest not: that the citizens themselves are the best people to decide which causes, religious organisations and charities they choose to support with their hard-earned money.
As to whether such incentives would work, look at this claim from the so-called British Muslim Forum.
A GOVERNMENT-BACKED Islamic organisation is teaching young Muslims that dying while fighting for the British armed forces is an act of martyrdom.
The British Muslim Forum (BMF) explains to young people that even if a Muslim soldier dies in combat while fighting in an Islamic country such as Afghanistan, he will still be regarded as a martyr and a hero for this country.
The reasoning?
“We are calling him a martyr because he died fighting for his country. Islam teaches us to be loyal and abide by the laws of the land. We believe fighting for Britain is not being a traitor. And young people are getting the message,” said Khurshid Ahmed, the BMF’s chairman.
If the government makes funding conditional on organisations proving their fealty to Blairite objectives, then this sort of absurd posturing is what we can expect. Incentives do matter.
7 comments ↓
This is a great opportunity for English Muslim groups to remove themselves from the government teat and look to their support base for funding and direction. The majority of British society would welcome British Muslims funding their own organisations than depending on the public purse
(I also believe the British united Muslim Forum’s is more correctly abbreviated to “BuMF”)
The funny thing, is that the area in Scotland I am from “bumf” means nonsense, or spam (mail), that type of thing. Couldn’t think of a better word to describe this whole thing!
I’m not sure why government funding should be such a hot topic for you. People like Khursid Ahmad who is involved, is well respected and not some government toady. Why should that be such an issue?
I’m sure they will do a good job, perhaps its the quality of people which is more important than the source of funding.
Muslims in england pay taxes too, so why cant they be supported by the government?
The issue with government funding is that it encourages rent seeking and it naturally leads to a situation where organisations are more committed to pleasing the government than the community they represent. The reasons are fairly obvious: if you don’t make sure that the government is happy with your activities, you lose your funding and then you lose your job or your organisation ceases to exist. It doesn’t matter what the Muslims might think of your ideas, activities or projects because, after all, they don’t pay the bills. If funding is attached to particular values — such as the British example cited above — you will have organisations competing for funding by trying to demonstrate those values. If one of those values is thought to be fealty to the foreign policy objectives of the State, you will surely find Muslims willing to sign up to those objectives in return for the government’s coin.
As for your comment about Muslims paying taxes, then that is, of course, true. However, the tax isn’t paid voluntarily to the government but seized forcefully so we have, to begin with, a degree of injustice. The government then takes all of this money that it has confiscated and decides how to spend it. However, when it comes to spending on religious and cultural projects, the question is who is best able and most qualified to decide how one’s money is spent? Is it the person who earned that money and whose sweat was expended in acquiring it or is it some person who is far removed from you, your community and your thoughts on the matter? The government thinks the latter but I think it is the former: that individuals should make their own decisions on what organisations they want to support and what religious ideas they want to promote with their money.
Great point Amir - the nonsense we have to put up with here with ‘our’ various peak bodies scrambling over government funding, while ignoring the communities they say they represent, is a typical example of the situation you described above.
It is almost farcical if it wasn’t so depressing.
This is exactly the same a priori generalisation that was (and is) made about government-funded universities - and it ain’t necessarily so. It depends on the - for want of a better term - “institutional ethos”. Government-funded universities generally maintain a very high standard of quality research (rather than being shirkers), and indeed have ben most critical of government s when they are most dependent on them for funding! Ironically, as universities are increasingly de-funded, having to rely increasingly on competing for “external” funds, researchers and lecturers are now actually becoming more obsequious, uncritical rent-seekers than ever before - exactly the opposite to the simplistic pronouncements of economics textbooks.
An interesting point, but there are some differneces between the tradtional funding of universities over serveral hundred years, the codefied relationship between them and executive government. Funding is transparent, it is audited and is for a manifestly apolitical process
The dicretionary funding between ministerial level of government and the leadership of a religious group is without precent as far as I am aware. This money is not for schools, nor for social welfare but rather to pay for opinions it wishes to cultivate and that is a worrying precedent.
Ironically It is more common of the corrupt third world country and influnce peddling in Asia then in a western liberal democracy.
In a secular state Government must not fund opinion.
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