Moderating Religious Identity and the Eclipse of Religious Wisdoms: Lessons from Hans Frei

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Ben Fulford http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2653-0790

Notes

1. Haddad and Golson document a longer history to this development, going back to the growing tensions between Muslims and so-called “indigenous” Europeans in the 1980s and 1990s, catalysed by public protests by Muslims over the US bombing of Libya in 1984, the Rushdie Affair in Britain in 1989 and the headscarf affairs in France in 1989 and 2004, and the integrative policies which sought to address the “Muslim problem” (pp. 489–494). Ironically, these policies which for a long time encouraged Muslim communities to rely financially and spiritually on transnational networks in order to encourage the repatriation of Muslim immigrants. The negative state and public reaction to public protest by Muslims over what they saw as their right to religious expression over these issues resulted in “mutual distrust and misunderstanding” (2007, 492).

2. The Review recognized that Prevent had securitised the government's integration strategy and should not, and that it had in effect drawn distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable kinds of faith (3, 6). The document still evinces signs of the same goal, however—the moderation of British Muslim identity—and distinguishes between legitimate religious beliefs and extremist ideologies which oppose universal human rights, equality before the law, democracy, and full participation in society (1). This followed a series of critical reviews culminating in the report on Prevent by the House of Commons Select Committing on Preventing Violent Extremism in March 2010, whose criticisms the Review reflects. On that report and its criticisms, see Bartlett and Birdwell (2010).

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Ben Fulford

Ben Fulford is Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Chester (UK). He is currently working on a monograph on Hans Frei provisionally titled God’s Patience and our Work: Hans Frei on Freedom and Modern Theology. He is also the author of Divine Eloquence and Human Transformation: Rethinking Scripture and History through Gregory of Nazianzus and Hans Frei (2013) and other articles on contemporary and historical theology.