Lesson video

Hi, my name is Miss Speakman.

We're on lesson five of 14 at the Human Rights unit.

And in today's lesson, we're going to be looking at religious freedom and censorship.

So in our lesson today, we look at religious freedom in the UK, including the British background to the freedom of religion.

We'll be understanding Christian teachings on freedom of religion, Islamic teachings on freedom of religion and consider what censorship is.

Let's make sure that we are ready for our lesson first of all, though please.

We need a pen or a pencil, a piece of paper, or an exercise book, and a different coloured pen ready for corrections.

We also needed quiet, clear working space.

So making sure TV and music off, phone to one side, if you're not using it for the lesson, and a nice quiet space to work in.

If you need to get yourself together, or get any of those things, please pause the video now, then unpause when you are ready to move on.

Amazing, thank you.

Let's get started then.

So some two key definitions that we're going to need, in today's lesson, are persecution and censorship.

So persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or a group.

And censorship is the suppression of words, images, and ideas that are deemed offensive.

What I'd like you to do please, is to write down both of these definitions.

So pause the video now, write these down, then unpause when you're ready to move on.

Okay.

Thank you for writing these two down.

So persecution is more than just treating somebody unfairly.

It's more than just discriminating against on one occasion.

Persecution is systematic.

It continues, it's persistent, and it's also often more than just discriminating against in one area.

It might be that person, a person or group is mistreated over a long period of time in all aspects of their life.

Or perhaps, maybe even people are violent towards them.

And censorship is used in many different ways.

In our lesson today, it would be censorship of religious ideas or censorship from religion.

But essentially when you suppress words, images, and ideas, because they're seen to be offensive.

So you take them away from public use or public access.

So the UK law of religious freedom.

Where does the UK stand on it? So in the UK, it's actually legal to express any religious or nonreligious belief.

So you can say whatever you like in terms of, I believe this, I don't believe this, as long as it does not incite violence or express hatred for others.

That's where it crosses the line.

So you're free to say that you don't believe in a religion, or you do believe in a religion, or to make religious claims, or non religious claims. As long as that, then doesn't go into inciting violence or expressing hatred for others.

It's interesting, actually, the UK government actually had an advertising campaign specifically in places like London on buses recently, which essentially said, it's not just offensive, it's an offence to say, you know, when people are offensive, incite hatred, or express hatred, and incite violence or express hatred.

It's not just offensive to some people, it's actually cost as an offence.

It's seen as illegal.

It is also though, forbidden to persecute others from another faith or none.

Sorry.

So you can be prosecuted, sorry.

You can be prosecuted for persecuting people, based on their faith or on having no faith.

And it is something that's covered in the universal declaration of human rights.

So it covers freedom of religion.

So the UK law protects religious freedom, but also acknowledges that where someone incites violence or expresses hatred, that that is an offence.

And not just offensive towards somebody personally.

So the UK law is, you are free to have any religious or non religious belief and to express those, as long as it is not expressing hatred for other people.

However, it is really important to acknowledge that this hasn't always been the case.

So historically, oh no, this, so sorry.

No, I've sort of skipped ahead.

I got ahead in my mind.

We're going to do some multiple choice quickfire questions there.

Silly me.

So what I'm going to do, is I'm going to give you, you've seen a glimpse a bit already like, ooh, you've got an idea of what's going to go on.

I'm going to give you a question.

There are two possible answers.

I count down from three, and I expect you to either say out loud or to point to the screen, which one is the correct answer.

I give you the correct answer.

We move on.

It's a really good way of testing understanding so far.

There's only a couple of these, just to get us thinking about the UK law and religious freedom.

And then, I'm going to go into the bit, where I say it's not always been the case that we've got religious freedom in the UK.

Here's some examples.

So we'll do the quickfire questions first.

Then we'll move on to that.

So I need to get myself back in the game, while you're doing this.

So I'm going to disappear.

It is legal to express any religious or nonreligious belief in the UK.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

Good, that is true.

It's legal for you to express those views.

It is legal to express any religious or nonreligious belief in the UK, even if it incites hatred.

Is that true or false? Three, two, one.

That is false.

If it incites hatred or it is offensive in some way then it is actually an offence according to law.

Now we're going to look at the history in the UK.

So, I'm just going to wait for my camera to appear.

There we go.

So we're going to look at the history of religious persecution in the UK.

Because as I said, it hasn't always been the case that people have had religious freedom.

So in 1534, Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic church.

He disagreed with the Roman Catholic church.

Some people say it's because of the fact, that he was not allowed to divorce his wife.

But when his daughter, Mary was later on the throne, she restored England as a Catholic country.

And those who objected, or wanted to continue with the Church of England faced being burned at the stake.

Now in this time, 280 people actually were burned at the stake for objecting to go back to Catholicism.

So you can say there, we can see some example of not having religious freedom.

When Elizabeth I, her younger sister, was queen, she reinstated the Church of England and created the act of uniformity.

And this essentially meant that people could be fined 12 pence for not going to church.

So in modern money, that'd be equivalent to about 11 pounds.

If they fail to pay, they could have property taken off them or face prison.

So although she'd reverted back to what Henry VIII instated, the Church of England, she also still essentially discriminated against those who did not go to church and fined them for doing so or imprisoned them.

And then throughout the 18th century, many new churches arose, which didn't follow the Church of England.

And this caused controversy in this course, a bit of upset as well.

And there have been a number of conflicts between members of different churches, such as in Northern Ireland, where we see conflict between Protestants and Catholics.

So we do still see some sort of tension between different churches, and therefore religious freedom in the UK.

Although now, we do of course have human rights and the equality act, which gives freedom of religion.

No longer will people be fined for not going to church, for example, or burned at the stake.

Thank goodness.

So what we're going to do now, is do something to bring this together, so you've got a nice explanation of my summary of religious freedom, religious persecution history in the UK.

So, I'm going to disappear so we can do that.

And let's go.

So, I'd like you to copy and complete the following sentences, spending about five minutes on this, with updated information about the UK and religious freedom in the UK and the history.

So there has not always been religious freedom in the UK, because, and you give some examples.

Some differences of religion have caused what, in terms of conflicts.

And the current UK law and religious freedom is, and talk about human rights.

So I'd like to pause the video now, please.

And then unpause when you are ready to move on, when you have finished.

Okay.

So please have different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

We'll correct together.

We'll go through the answers, make sure we've got them all correct.

Make additions to where we need to.

And let's have a look at them then.

So there's not always been religious freedom in the UK, because Henry VIII wanted to break away from the Catholic church.

When his Catholic daughter, Mary took to the throne, she threatened to burn anyone who refused to convert back to Catholicism.

Later when her sister, Elizabeth I came to the throne, she reinstated the Church of England and fined people for not attending church regularly.

Some differences in religion have caused conflicts, such as the conflicts in Northern Ireland.

And also the Crusades, which I didn't mention earlier, which were between Christians and Muslims. And the current UK law and religious freedom is that everyone is free to worship as they wish.

And no one is allowed to be persecuted for their belief or for having no faith.

If you need to make any corrections, please pause the video now and do so.

And then, what we'll do when you unpause, is we'll move on to looking at Christian views on religious freedom.

So, I'm just going to wait for my camera to appear, again.

It takes a while.

So your Christian views on religious freedom, then.

Going to look at two specific teachings in particular, because I think it is a really nice way of bringing out Christian views on religious freedom.

The first one is a teaching of Jesus, which is called "The Great Commission." This is where Jesus instructs his disciples, go and spread the good news of Christianity and to bring people with it to Christianity.

So he says to them, "Go throughout the whole world and preach the gospel to all people." Many Christians believe that in order to go to heaven, you must believe in Jesus and his sacrifice.

And so many Christians believe that it is part of their duty as a Christian, to evangelise.

What we mean by this, is go and spread the news of the gospel, teach people about Christianity, and hopefully convert them to Christianity.

This is done out of genuine care, because if they believe which many of them do, that you need to believe in Jesus' sacrifice in order to be saved, they're going to want people to be saved, to go to heaven, to be, you know, to enjoy heaven.

And so many Christians believe it's a duty for them to go out and spread the gospel, to tell people the good news.

Some people may interpret this as sort of forcing people to convert to religion, to Christianity, but Christians would never say that they see it this way.

They would say that actually, telling people about the good news of Christianity is just educating them, telling them, not forcing them.

So many Christians say that people are completely free to choose their religion, but that they have a duty to tell people about Christianity.

And then we've also got the verse within Galatians, which I've used plenty of times in these lessons.

But if you haven't seen all my lessons, I think this verse is so good, for different views on this human rights unit.

"There is no difference between Jews and Gentiles you are all one in union with Christ Jesus." Now Jews and Gentiles, Jews obviously, people who practise Judaism.

Gentiles means non-Jew.

This verse is specifically saying, there's no difference between them.

So no difference on these two people, based on their religion.

They are all one in Jesus Christ.

The idea that many Christians believe that all humans are of equal value regardless of their religion, their race, their gender, etc.

And they're all loved and cared for by God.

So that many Christians would say, it's fine to have your own religion or none, because God loves all people equally.

What we're going to do, is do a couple of questions just to bring this together and to make sure it's really clear for you.

What Christian teachings on religious freedom are.

Then after that, we'll move on to looking at Islamic teachings on religious freedom.

So are you ready? I'm going to disappear.

So answer the following questions, spend about five minutes on this.

Explain what these quotations teach Christians about religious freedom.

So you've got, "He said to them, 'Go throughout the whole world and preach the gospel to all people.

'" And, "So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, you are all one in union with Christ Jesus," which is from Galatians.

So, to answer these questions, to write in full sentences.

Spend about five minutes on this.

Pause video now, please.

And then unpause when you are ready to move on.

Okay, please make sure you've got a different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

We'll go through this together.

Don't worry, if you found this really tricky, or you found it a little bit tricky, because we'll go through the answers together, we'll make it nice and clear.

So I hope you feel more confident with it.

So let's have our different coloured pens out, ready to have a look.

So the first one, this quotation is called "The Great Commission" and Christians believe this is when Jesus instructed the disciples to spread the good news of Jesus to all nations.

For many Christians, this shows the importance of evangelism, but that they should not be forced.

People are free to practise the religion of their choice, but should be shown the teachings of Jesus.

So again, sort of reiterating that yes, evangelism is seen as a duty, as part of Christianity, but this does not mean that that religion should be forced on people.

And the second one, this quotation may teach Christians to treat everyone equally, regardless of their faith.

A Gentile is a non-Jewish person.

So essentially showing that everyone is equal, regardless of their faith.

If you need to make any corrections, can you please make sure you do that now, by pausing the video and making those corrections.

And then unpause when you're ready, and we'll start looking at Islamic teachings on religious freedom.

Okay, so again, I'm going to pop up on the screen.

Okay, so Islamic teachings on religious freedom.

We'll start off with the first verse from the Qur'an which says, "There shall be no compulsion in acceptance of the religion." So compulsion means you have to do it.

So if something's compulsory, you have to do it.

Essentially, this Islamic teaching is clear that you cannot force someone into a faith, that you can't make someone a Muslim.

You can't make someone a Christian.

Many Muslims believe that people are born Muslim, regardless of the faith that they grow up in.

And so when people, let's say we might use the term convert someone to a religion.

In Islam, they would use the term revert, so going back to the original way that they were made.

Many Muslims believe, that in order to look to revert somebody, you can not speak to them more than three times about the faith, in terms of getting them to become a Muslim.

Teaching them about Islam, encouraging them to come to the faith, because Muslim's believe that you should not force someone into the faith.

And they believe that you are therefore free to have any faith you want.

So many Muslims believe it is important to help someone to understand the basics of Islam, in case they wish to become a Muslim themselves.

And then there are many verses in the Qur'an which often cause a lot of controversy.

We can't shy away from that in both the Bible and the Qur'an.

They're often very difficult passages, that when we read them at first glance, you might think, "Oh, that seems pretty violent." Or, "That doesn't seem to be very fair." And that comes, or should come along with understanding about context.

When these passages were revealed, what was the meaning behind, what's the context of the story around it? It's really easy to go into a book, such as the Bible and the Qur'an, take out a specific verse, which there you can see is just one verse.

And then say, "Look at this, this looks really bad, doesn't it?" Without thinking actually there's a wider context.

That verse has been taken out of a particular story, a particular teaching.

Or another particular verse, there might be a sentence after that, which actually then goes, you might say, "Oh okay, it doesn't sound as bad as it is." So this verse says, "Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day." When you take that out of literally, just looking at that, it does seem, doesn't it, at first it's saying those who don't believe in Allah, those don't believe in an afterlife in the same way that Muslims do, should be fought, should be killed.

However, that is not actually the way that it should be interpreted many Muslims believe.

Many Muslims believe this was revealed to Muhammad when they were being persecuted by the Romans.

And that people were being killed.

And essentially, this verse refers to, as many Muslims believe, Allah specifically saying to fight those people, the Romans, who, sorry, my phone decided to interrupt me.

How rude of it.

I don't know what it's reacting to.

Anyway, I'll start that again.

So Muslims believe that is referring to a time when the Romans were persecuting Muslims. And essentially Allah gives this direct instruction to kill those people, to fight against those people who were persecuting them, who were not letting them practise Islam.

Not as a generalised teaching for the rest of time.

So many Muslims would acknowledge, yes, at one point Muhammad and his followers were told to fight those who don't believe in Allah, but it doesn't mean it's a generalised teaching that all Muslims would therefore follow for the rest of the time.

So looking at context is a very important thing, when we look at both the Bible and the Qur'an, and also lots of other religious teachings too.

So what we're going to do, is do some questions to bring that together.

Just like we did with Christianity, just be able to explain what these verses mean and what they show about religious freedom.

So I'm going to disappear so we can do that.

So, complete the following questions spending about five minutes on this.

Explain what these quotes teach Muslims about religious freedom.

"There should be no compulsion in acceptance of religion." And "Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day." So spend about five minutes on this.

Please pause the video now.

And then unpause when you are ready to move on.

Okay, please make sure you've got a different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

And as normal, we will go through the corrections together.

So even if you found that a little bit tricky, then we can stop, we'll check that we've got all the answers correct.

And it will be fine.

So this quotation, the first one may teach Muslims that no one should be forced or coerced into following Islam.

Many Muslims also believe people have free will.

And this includes freedom of religion.

The second one, quotation at first implies no freedom of religion, but context of the verse needs to be taken into account.

Not many Muslims would interpret this to mean there is no freedom of religion today.

If you need to make any corrections, please do so now.

And then what we're going to do, is move on to looking at censorship.

What I'd like you to do now, is to complete the following questions.

Spend about five minutes on this.

These are essentially, your own personal opinions.

There's no right or wrong answer, but I do want you to start thinking about these questions, just so you can start thinking about the idea of censorship before we look at the specifics.

So should you be allowed to express any view, even if it's offensive? Where do religious views come into this? So, should you be allowed to express any religious view, even if it might offend somebody else? Is there an appropriate place to express religious beliefs? And is there an appropriate place to express offensive beliefs? These are all quite tricky questions, in terms of, you've probably not ever given them much thought before.

I do want to give them some thought now.

As I said, there's no right or wrong answer, as long as you can explain your answer well.

But it will help really help us to get some ideas down about censorship, before we move on to it.

So I'm going to pause the video now.

Please spend about five minutes on this.

And unpause in a moment, and we'll start talking about censorship.

So, I'm just going to appear up on the screen, again, it takes a while as always.

There we go.

So what is censorship? So essentially, the practise of suppressing and limiting access to materials considered offensive or a threat to society.

So, one example is that in Saudi Arabia, it's actually illegal to distribute copies of the Bible.

As they believe it goes against essentially, Islam being the state religion, that people are encouraging people to convert to Christianity.

So there are cases across many countries where certain books might be banned, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, just because perhaps the government believes that it is an offensive text or a threat to security.

In some countries, certain websites might be sensitive.

They believe that are offensive or a threat to security or society.

And even in sort of a lesser scale, some schools, for example, might ban certain books from being in the library, just because they believe that they are perhaps maybe inappropriate for children, for example.

So censorship, essentially limiting access to material, suppressing them, because either they're considered offensive or a threat to security or society.

So what about censorship of religious expression? Are there any examples of this? And the answer is actually, yes.

So in places like France and Sri Lanka, it is against the law to wear face coverings.

What we mean by this, is anything that covers the face that you can't be easily identifiable.

In those countries, it's the idea of security.

Being able to tell someone's face.

For example, in Sri Lanka, not too long ago, there was a terrorist attack.

And so, the Sri Lankan government then passed this law to ban face coverings.

That in cases of terrorist attacks, then it makes a person more easily identifiable.

And you know if they're wearing a face covering, they wouldn't be identifiable.

Many people have taken this to be essentially against freedom of religion, because there of course in Islam, and other religions too, which require, or can require a face covering.

And many Muslims believe that they should be wearing a face covering.

And in these countries you would not be allowed to wear that face covering, often called a niqāb or a burka.

So, it is against the law to wear any sort of face covering in those countries.

But of course, this may be, for a lot of people be censorship of their religious expression, things that they would do to express their faith.

In some countries around the world, people who follow certain religions, are persecuted.

I wonder if I asked you just randomly, which religion do you think is the most persecuted religion out of all of them? What would you say? Okay well, would you be surprised if the answer was Christianity? Christians are the most persecuted religion.

And in many countries, such as like North Korea, you can be sometimes killed for following Christianity or another faith.

And there was a case in America where a boy was banned from wearing rosary beads.

I've actually got an example of rosary beads here.

Linked with all of my things from Disney.

But this is an example of rosary beads.

They're a big example.

Essentially, a boy in America was wearing those around his neck as a sort of reminder, because his grandma was very ill.

And he wanted to wear it as sort of like a, almost like a good luck charm.

It sort of comforted him in this really difficult time.

And in the school in America, actually banned him from wearing his rosary beads.

As, at the time there were gangs in the area, which were also wearing rosary beads as gangs symbols.

So he said it was censorship of his religious expression that he was not allowed to wear his rosary beads, when his grandma was going through such a tough time.

The school said that it was because it's related to gang related issues.

So, what about censorship from religion? So within religion to censorship.

Some faith groups have actually censored certain books over in history on the grounds that they go against religion.

So Charles Darwin, Galileo were all censored by the church at some point because they believe that they were going against the teachings of the church.

And more recently, some parents have called for books containing homosexual couples to be removed from schools, believing them to be inappropriate, and going against the faith.

And also sorry, again, if you heard my phone reacting to me speaking.

I don't know what is going on with it today.

Anyway, going back to this.

Some faith groups have censored books over history, because of believing that they go against the teachings of the church.

So what we're going to do now is to pause, and bring that together.

So I'm going to disappear again.

So I want you to answer the following questions.

Spend about five minutes on this.

You're going give me two examples of censorship of religious expression.

Do you think it's right to censor religious expression in these cases and why? Give two examples of censorship from religion.

And do you think religious people are right to censor these things in these cases? So I want you to answer these questions, spend about five minutes on this.

Unpause when you are ready.

Okay, please make sure you've got your different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

And we'll go through this together.

So, examples of censorship of religious expression are, in France and Sri Lanka, it's illegal to wear a face covering.

In some countries, people who follow certain religions are persecuted, such as North Korea.

There was a case in the U.

S.

where a boy was banned from wearing rosary beads, as they were said to be a gang symbol.

And also, which I didn't mention about that at here it is for you, in French schools, no child is allowed to wear a religious symbol.

Of course, your personal opinion, whether these were right or not is completely up to you.

These are just the examples you could have talked about.

If you need to make any corrections or make any additions, please pause the video now and do so.

And then if not, we'll move on to the next question.

So, examples of censorship from religion.

Some faith groups have censored certain books on the grounds they go against religion.

So the works of Charles Darwin, Galileo and Chaucer were censored by the church.

And more recently, some parents have called for books containing homosexual couples to removed from schools.

Again, if you've got to make any corrections, you can pause the video down and do so.

And the personal opinion part, we won't go through, 'cause that's your personal opinion.

So, just waiting for me to appear again.

Oh, it's taking long, oh there we go.

So, thank you so, so much for taking part in our lesson today, We've looked at religious freedom, the views on it, the historical ideas within the UK on religious freedom.

Christian and Muslim views on religious freedom.

We've looked at censorship and all different examples of it.

We've covered a lot today, and you've done really, really well.

I'm super, super impressed.

I want to apologise again for my phone.

Keep thinking that I'm talking to her, rather than talking to you.

It's not done it before.

And I don't know why, because when I want to try and get her to do something in the car, when I wanted to skip music, she never listens.

But when I were not talking to her, she's listening.

I don't understand.

Anyway, I'm going to go away, and sort of sort out those settings.

You're going to go away, and hopefully say to people, "Well, I've learned loads today about religious freedom and censorship.

So thank you again for working so hard.

Goodbye.