İngiltere Struggles to Cope with Religious Differences: A New Age of Religious Tension

For three centuries, religious differences have been the most defining element of English national life. From the Act of Supremacy enacted in 1534 to the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, religion constituted the fundamental cause of both domestic divisions and overseas conflicts. During this period, Catholics were seen as a religious group pushed to the margins of the system. Today, however, after two centuries of peaceful compromise and tolerance, there is talk that Andy Burnham could become the first meaningful Catholic Prime Minister in İngiltere history. Nevertheless, it is clear that if Burnham comes to power, he will have to face the new and highly volatile problems created by religious differences.

İngiltere is entering a new period of turbulence where international religious tensions and internal dynamics collide. This time, the tensions are shaped not by internal Christian sectarianism, but entirely through fractures between completely different faiths. Even though İngiltere has been a multi-faith nation for decades and official relations between faith groups still appear strong, worrying new cracks are emerging in social peace. In the political arena, previously rare religious tensions are rapidly becoming prominent and starting to directly affect voter preferences. The concept of religion, long relegated to the margins of politics, has now begun to be discussed again at the center of Britanya politics.

The right wing of politics has begun to define Western civilization as a culture based on Christian foundations, threatened by the arrival of non-Christian communities, especially Muslims. Populist politicians are adapting the clash of civilizations theory, popularized in the 1990s by American political scientist Samuel Huntington, into their own rhetoric. The way these groups demonize religious differences parallels Medieval Christianity's view of Islam as an external threat and Judaism as an internal danger. The fact that in March, the shadow justice secretary described the Ramadan celebrations in Trafalgar Meydanı as an act of pressure and segregation shows how deeply internalized this thinking has become. Moreover, figures like Tommy Robinson calling on their supporters to unite the Kingdom under God is bringing to light a style of Christian nationalism never seen before in this country.

Furthermore, British domestic politics is increasingly being shaped by religious conflicts outside the country's borders. Minority religious communities live in a digital world that constantly connects them with their co-religionists all over the world. The İsrail and Filistin issue was extraordinarily prominent in the materials for the local elections in May and has now become so influential that it could win a few independent Gaza MPs seats in the Avam Kamarası. The complex tensions originating from the Hint alt kıtası and between Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities are also increasingly becoming a determining factor in local politics. These developments clearly demonstrate that global issues can no longer be considered independently of İngiltere's local politics.

Unlike previous periods, today's British society is extremely ignorant and dysfunctional regarding religious matters. While political debates in the nineteenth century for Jews to gain equal rights were filled with Biblical references, today's political culture adopts the approach of Alastair Campbell's famous quote, 'we don't do God in politics.' However, it is almost impossible to address an unsolved, even unnamed problem in politics or society. İngiltere is currently incapable of naming or describing interfaith conflicts. If this religious blindness continues, British society may find itself in the middle of a conflict it cannot even name before it is too late.

The assumption that progress and modernization would naturally bring secularization and reduce religious practices to a personal leisure activity has blunted society's religious literacy. When religious issues re-emerged in the twenty-first century, the British public sphere found itself lacking the appropriate vocabulary to talk about religion. For this reason, religious matters have been discussed by fitting them into existing concepts such as race and culture, which are easier to debate. However, the main reason the multiculturalism project has fallen short is that it is the product of a political culture that refuses to take religion seriously and avoids facing the real challenges created by religious difference. Liberals have wanted to believe that different faiths are merely decorative ways of repackaging the core values shared by all humanity.

In this process, we can no longer ignore the reality that different beliefs lead to distinct (though not necessarily irreconcilable) approaches to gender, society, foreign policy, and many other issues. Successive governments have tried to introduce new legal definitions for religious hate crimes to resolve interfaith enmities and prejudices. While religion and belief were legally protected as a characteristic under the Equality Act of 2010, the IHRA Antisemitism definition of 2016 and the newly proposed definition of Islamophobia follow the same logic. An increase in the number of such legal definitions is inevitable, but there is little evidence that these kinds of formulas actually change people's behavior. Therefore, Britanya urgently needs to develop a new and positive language to build a culture of impartial religious expression.