A rare occurence for me yesterday, a saturday off. Doesn't happen terribly often and, much like Tony Bourdain feeling guilty about the ease of his new life post Kitchen Confidential I did have the odd twinge of anxiety about leaving the kitchen behind on what's normally our busiest day of the week. Not enough to stop me though, as I was indulging the other part of my split work personality, getting back to being a writer for once.
Yup, yesterday afternoon found me upstairs at the mighty Ship and Mitre (Coastalblog passim) reading away from my last chapbook "Delete, recover, delete". Fun enough in and of itself, and it felt good to be stretching the poetry muscles again, but a reading's only as good as the other readers, and sin this case I was in excellent company. Honourable mentions to Colin Winborn, but the show was stolen by Sarah Crewe and Sophie Mayer, reading from their joint work "Signs of the Sistership" (availablehere). Both compelling readers, and it was good to hear work that's angry and political, without being worthy and dull. One strand was running through it was the bible as viewed from a female perspective, and I was amused when they drily noted that they pretty quickly "ran out of women". Which started me off thinking about religion, not normally my preferred topic. I have friends and family who are religious, though a confirmed atheist myself I tend to keep my opinions to myself around them purely out of good manners, and also the fact that once started, I find it difficult to stop. So I operate a lazy, massively lapsed protestant and distinctly unrigorous atheism. Much like most of you do, I imagine.
As is so often the way when you've got one theme echoing round your head, you start seeing it everywhere, and I was barely out of bed this morning before I heard of the news that mosques today will hear a reading condemning child abuse as abhorrent. My first thought was surely no-one needs to be told that, my second, fleetingly guilty thought was yes, I imagine most Muslims think that, too. This worries me slightly for a number of reasons. Firstly, were I Muslim, I would be deeply dismayed that this sermon will (in the public mind at least) explicitly draw a link between Islam and child abuse. Islamophobia in his country, post Lee Rigby, is increasingly becoming the bigotry which is happy to speak its name, it doesn't need help. Secondly, despite the (rightly) high profile of the child abuse cases in Rochdale, Oxford and Nottingham, it is statistically inaccurate to label this an Islamic (or even more shamefully generally "Asian") problem. HM Prison service gives the percentage total of sex offenders of Asian origin at 5.6%, which almost precisely matches the population share as a whole. 81% of child sex offenders are white (down slightly on the population as a whole, at 85.7%). Thirdly, the high profile given to the grooming cases is focusing on religion ahead of ethnicity. There is a statistical case to be made that these particular grooming cases are predominantly a Pakistani and Indian problem (though as has already been shown not sex offences overall), there is no statistical case to be made for this being an Islamic problem. A bogeyman is being constructed by certain sections of the media, and I fear that, in bending over backwards in order to show willing, the Islamic community as a whole has just given them more ammunition.
Yup, yesterday afternoon found me upstairs at the mighty Ship and Mitre (Coastalblog passim) reading away from my last chapbook "Delete, recover, delete". Fun enough in and of itself, and it felt good to be stretching the poetry muscles again, but a reading's only as good as the other readers, and sin this case I was in excellent company. Honourable mentions to Colin Winborn, but the show was stolen by Sarah Crewe and Sophie Mayer, reading from their joint work "Signs of the Sistership" (availablehere). Both compelling readers, and it was good to hear work that's angry and political, without being worthy and dull. One strand was running through it was the bible as viewed from a female perspective, and I was amused when they drily noted that they pretty quickly "ran out of women". Which started me off thinking about religion, not normally my preferred topic. I have friends and family who are religious, though a confirmed atheist myself I tend to keep my opinions to myself around them purely out of good manners, and also the fact that once started, I find it difficult to stop. So I operate a lazy, massively lapsed protestant and distinctly unrigorous atheism. Much like most of you do, I imagine.
As is so often the way when you've got one theme echoing round your head, you start seeing it everywhere, and I was barely out of bed this morning before I heard of the news that mosques today will hear a reading condemning child abuse as abhorrent. My first thought was surely no-one needs to be told that, my second, fleetingly guilty thought was yes, I imagine most Muslims think that, too. This worries me slightly for a number of reasons. Firstly, were I Muslim, I would be deeply dismayed that this sermon will (in the public mind at least) explicitly draw a link between Islam and child abuse. Islamophobia in his country, post Lee Rigby, is increasingly becoming the bigotry which is happy to speak its name, it doesn't need help. Secondly, despite the (rightly) high profile of the child abuse cases in Rochdale, Oxford and Nottingham, it is statistically inaccurate to label this an Islamic (or even more shamefully generally "Asian") problem. HM Prison service gives the percentage total of sex offenders of Asian origin at 5.6%, which almost precisely matches the population share as a whole. 81% of child sex offenders are white (down slightly on the population as a whole, at 85.7%). Thirdly, the high profile given to the grooming cases is focusing on religion ahead of ethnicity. There is a statistical case to be made that these particular grooming cases are predominantly a Pakistani and Indian problem (though as has already been shown not sex offences overall), there is no statistical case to be made for this being an Islamic problem. A bogeyman is being constructed by certain sections of the media, and I fear that, in bending over backwards in order to show willing, the Islamic community as a whole has just given them more ammunition.
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