Human rights are for human beings not religious ideology! This country already has freedom of religion and despite what Labour want you to believe Islamophobia is not an accepted definition of discrimination as it only seeks to protect Islam and those who practice it from any accountability for their own prejudices. The same isn’t true for other protections such as antisemitism which protects Jewish people from racial discrimination and is not about protecting the Jewish religion from criticism. Religion is the only protected characteristic that is allowed to openly discriminate against other protected characteristics such as biological sex, race and sexual orientation, ironically it’s also the only protected characteristic based on personal choice and factually and scientifically inaccurate stories about the nature of reality. In the 21st century ludicrous claims of flying horses, walking on water and deities getting new elephant heads should always be open to the ridicule they deserve. Religion is also responsible for hundreds of millions of human atrocities and the subjugation of women committed in antiquity and contemporary times across the entire world including the west where republicans in America are restricting women’s right to safe abortion in their push to turn the states into Gilead. Let’s also not forget here at home Arooj Shah’s administration recently ignored major Jewish and Hindu religious celebrations failing to even acknowledge them while simultaneously using public money, the civic centre and the councils communication channels to promote her chosen Islamic faith. Religion is a major driver of poverty, over-population and instability across the world and in Oldham it creates and expands poverty and contradicts many of the values and liberties it took centuries to achieve. Arooj is always going to sell herself as the victim of discriminative attitudes never answering for her own questionable decisions and associations always conforming with archaic religious attitudes but never challenging them.
