Tag: Discrimination

An employment tribunal case being heard this week illustrated just how serious an issue religious bigotry is becoming in schools.  Nicholas Kafouris, who claims he was forced out of his job at Bigland Green Primary School in east London, was accused by one parent of believing that “Christianity is better than Islam”. She said he had made an “insulting” remark about her daughter wearing a headscarf in class.

A secular campaign group has lodged a formal complaint against Cherie Blair for allegedly sparing a violent criminal from jail because he believed in God. The wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, and a current judge who sits under the name Cherie Booth QC, said that she would suspend Shamso Miah’s prison sentence because he was a “religious man.”

You may remember the story of Nadia Eweida, the British Airways check-in worker who was banned from wearing a small cross on a chain. This modest manifestation of her faith was as important to her as a turban or hijab to other workers. Yet the airline accommodated these other items without, perhaps, embracing the underlying values that would have protected Ms Eweida and anyone else from the blundering assertion that “rules is rules is rules”. After a public outcry that included secular, religious and political voices from across the spectrum, the airline modified its uniform policy. But not before Ms Eweida had been off work for months without pay, and crucially, without accepting the ethical and legal principle that would protect her and others of all faiths and none in the future. Worse still, BA instructed an international law firm strenuously to resist her claim of religious discrimination.

As a conference on untouchability gathers, is discrimination based on someone’s ranking in society still an issue within some religions in the UK?

Almost two thirds of the Church of England General Synod believe Christians are the victims of discrimination in the workplace.