Episode 8 The Big Questions

Today on The Big Questions: Misrepresenting Islam,

reincarnation, and marriage - is it what you make it?

Today we're live from Heartlands Academy in Birmingham.

Welcome, everybody, to The Big Questions.

The activities of Islamist extremism across the globe have killed many

more Muslims than people from other faiths, as we saw yet again

earlier this month, when 80 worshippers were killed and 250

injured by an Islamist suicide bomber at the Sufi Muslim shrine,

Last week Pope Francis declared that Muslim

Just as no-one puts the blame on Christianity when Christians

engage in violent or criminal activities, so neither

should Islam be blamed for the crimes of Islamists.

Good morning, everyone. Sammy Yacoub, who is guilty of

misrepresenting Islam? -- Salma Yaqoob. Who does it? I think right

now it is a bit of an industry. Research done by a Californian

university found that millions of dollars a year are paid out to

people paying them to run these kind of stories. What kind of stories?

Saying negative things about Muslims. The issue you referred to

was a reality. The people that carry out these atrocities, it is their

responsibility and of course it is right to talk about it. Can I stop

you there? You are immediately blaming the west. But you asked me a

question. Shouldn't you say that the people who misrepresent Islam are

the people that join Isis? The people who slaughtered the

cartoonists... You are actually interrupting me halfway through that

very sentence. I was talking about that very issue. The people that

carry out these atrocities they first, primarily and mainly

responsible. For me as a that is very important. Here in Birmingham

we have organised protests in Muslim communities, saying not in our name,

and we reject these people who carry out this kind of violence. But the

Pope has a point. When violent activities occur, we shouldn't blame

a whole religion. That was an atrocity in Pakistan and my family's

roots are in Pakistan and of course I feel strongly about what is

happening there, but you haven't mentioned that this very weak

hundreds of Muslims in Burma have been killed by Buddhists. I wouldn't

say this about Buddhism, of course I wouldn't. There are people around

the globe, in a Iraqi and Afghanistan, where millions of

Moslems were killed, but they still would not blame Christianity. The

soldiers themselves may have claimed that faith, many of them. It is

wrong to blame a whole religion. Does it mean that all religions are

progressive? No. It doesn't mean they are all reactionary? No. It is

a spectrum. You will see extremist and all backgrounds, atheists and

religious, and it is important to say that. Sadia Hameed, is it

important people say they are doing it in the name of a faith? Yes. I do

think we need to start talking about some of harmful elements of Islam.

In the Koran it does advocate violence and rape even. And we are

not addressing that. We are doing Muslim is a disservice, really. We

do misrepresent Muslims, but Islam is not misrepresented. There are

very violent and harmful passages within the Koran. Talking about

slavery? Yes, and social and sexual and domestic violence. But the study

has shown there is a two to one ratio of Ireland versus peaceful...

Did Muhammad have sex slaves? Yes, and his followers, and it is still

advocated today. I think last week of the week before Doctor Jonathan

Brown was talking about slavery within Islam and he was talking

about how they feed their slaves and they sheltered them. There is sex

trafficking in the modern day. We don't excuse it. I think for Sadia

Hameed to quote the Koran without knowing it at all is unfair. I

didn't interrupt you. There are verses that talk about war and

peace. It also that marriage and relationship. In the life of the

Prophet, it is not true that he had sex slaves. He had been married to

many women. Most of his wives were divorcees, and elderly people, and

at that time, in those days, people were not given protection in that

way in the patriarchal society they lived in. The grant is very explicit

about relationships. -- the Koran. When we confuse the verses of

warfare, which of course appear in the Koran, against our notion of

peas and justice of violence, of course it creates confusion. It

requires interpretation, doesn't it? But who says your interpretation is

right and somebody else's is wrong? I am not saying mine is right. I am

saying it is very simple. In the Arabic language there is a common

dictionary you can pick up and understand and it is about common

sense. It is a language that is very rich with a long history. There is a

science of interpretation so you cannot interpret willy-nilly the

sayings of the Prophet. Refer to the part, contextualise it in the time

you live, and back it up with science most importantly. If your

God wants peace in the world and he gives you a book, I would expect it

to say very explicitly be peaceful. It does. It shouldn't take any

interpretation to pick those bits out. The points you raise is very

important, Nicky. Do we misrepresent? And we do by giving

the wrong understanding. The word Islam means peace, and the entire

lifestyle is one who submits to peace. I think we have got to make a

very important distinction between Islamist extremism and Muslim people

in general. The two are very different. We need to focus on the

extremists, who as you rightly said her primarily targeted fellow

Muslims, who don't conform to their particular interpretation of Islam.

With regard to whether atrocities and outrages should be labelled as

Islamic or not, when it came to the Crusades, it would be absurd to say

they had nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity was the

motivation of those crusades and those atrocities against the Muslim

world, and likewise a very small minority of Muslims are misusing and

abusing, or in some places they would be following interpretation of

the Koran, and doing things in the name of Islam, and we should not

deny the connection. Let's not deny the cultural here. Islam is not just

one thing. It is hundreds of thousands of different types and too

often it is put in one box and that this incredibly similar stick. An

ICM poll shocked people. The theories about 9/11, that Jewish

people did it, and some people think it is a creditable poll, but 50% of

Muslims thought that homosexuality should be illegal. Illegal? But I

would contend that is not necessarily to do with Islam but to

do with cultures within Islam. Cultures that practice Islam from

less socially progressive societies, no? They don't tolerate

homosexuality within Islam. A lot of religions don't tolerate

homosexuality. Right from a very young age, being told it is not

acceptable within Islam, they are going to grow up into adults

thinking it is not an acceptable lifestyle. Now we do have, as the

Council of ex-Muslims, we do have people who come to us who are

homosexual, who have had to leave the faith, because the entire

community, their entire families have turned their backs on them.

What about people who abandon their faith? If Islam was so peaceful, we

wouldn't have people coming to us telling us their lives were at risk

and we wouldn't have honour killings and forced marriages and those

things still happen. Let's hear from Salma Yaqoob on that. Is there a

problem in Islam within apostasy? I think there is a problem in all

religions and belief systems when it comes to orthodoxy, who claims the

mainstream and who claims the fringes. We have talked about

homosexuality. But can we not leave other religions with less bother and

threat? No, because an exception is being made, and it is important to

contextualise. Your whole life you have been campaigning for gay rights

and you are not given in an Islamic country campaigning for gay rights,

and we see Donald Trump using right conservatism is backed by the

right-wing Christian churches in America, attacking the progressive

rights of gay and lesbian people. This is not a uniquely Muslim

cultural issue and that is what I take exception to. Peter? On this

point, most Muslims get it fundamentally wrong. The Koran has

no explicit condemnation of demisexuality and it prescribes no

punishments. That is based on an interpretation that leads many

Muslims to condemn homosexuality. If you believe in the Koran, the Koran

itself says this is the word of Allah and it requires no

interpretation and no perdition. It is not in the Koran that

homosexuality is explicitly wrong and it prescribes no punishments,

and so Muslim south no authority to condemn LGBT people. Sacred texts

are being interpreted by different people through their own cultural

prison. Or prism. Some thoughts from the audience. Apostasy, what are

your thoughts on that? There are many examples historically during

the time of the Prophet where people did decide to leave the faith and

said it wasn't part of them and they lived in absolute harmony with the

Muslim is at that time. What I think is happening... Can I ask you a

question? You obviously have great knowledge and faith. You can

understand somebody in the so-called Islamic State being fed the line

from the Koran on apostates if they turn back, take hold of them and

kill them wherever you find them. They might say that means what it

says. That has been taken out of its historical essence and context. That

is the problem, isn't it? What Islamic State are doing is taking

Koranic interpretation in a literal and puritanical sense. Arabic has

many layers. When you interpret Arabic. I work in counter extremism

in Birmingham and I run an organisation where we tackle

radicalisation and we provide the evidence to show where

contextualisation of the Koran can cause more damage. What we are not

seeing today is the fact that cultural infiltration within the

faith has caused a huge amount of problems when it comes to

interpretation and the actual expressions of faith as we are

seeing it today. That needs to be removed. People need to go down and

understand what is representative of the faith and what is not. Thank

you. A couple more points. David and then at the back. Ajmal, always

wanting to take part, but we have two more good ones coming up. About

cultural issues, when you look at Islam, every part of the world you

look at, you have Muslims in all part of the world, including white

English. It is about the culture. Islam is opposed to supersede

culture. If you go to Africa, Gambia, Senegal, you see Muslims

openly practising witchcraft and voodoo which violate Islam and then

you go to Pakistan and you see people who practice on a killing and

stuff. But that is not Islamic. We Muslims here are struggling to fight

and explain to our co-workers and friends that these are not Islamic.

They are cultural issues. Every point that has been made here, Islam

is not the problem. It is Muslims misrepresenting Islam.

I have got a list of people who want to talk. That point leads us quite

nicely onto this because we are talking about specific cultural

influences and how that influences how people practice a religion and

it muddies the water. Look at countries like Iran and Turkey, they

used to be secular, not in the irreligious sense, but secular

countries where women used to go about, they did not have to cover

their faces, many people find it obscene and dehumanising, they were

very different societies from how they are now. Turkey, led by a man

who is a creationist, he thinks all creatures were created just as they

appear now on the earth, clamping down on human rights. What went

wrong? To be honest, I am personally tired of this dichotomy of culture

versus authentic interpretation. We have been talking about this for the

last ten minutes. Almost every single contribute talked about the

importance and significance of culture and the ways in which our

cultural particularities determine our interpretive strategies but not

its single person talked about the importance of the political

structure. I do not think the Muslim world right now requires a

theological revolution. The Muslim world requires political reform.

Some of the ideas you are talking about, we may waste many weeks

talking about narrative, this is the correct interpretation, that is an

incorrect interpretation, but it is irrelevant. The question we need to

ask is why in 2017 some of the ideas that the vast majority of Muslims

regard as problematic, why they managed to find political agency?

Why do they manage to be effective? What paved the way for them to

become transformative politically? It is not about competing

perspectives. It is not about competing interpretations. It is

about the prevailing political structure which unfortunately

unleashed these ideas. I compare it with anti-Semitism in Europe. It

unfortunately has been part and parcel of European history for a

very long time. But you have seen different manifestations of

anti-Semitism in different historical phases. Europe did not

all of a sudden become more anti-Semitic in the 30s when we saw

the atrocities of the horror Holocaust. -- the Holocaust will

stop it was a political problem. Political institutionalisation of

it. It set the stage for the atrocities. That is what is

happening right now. Political distortions. This is completely

ignored and we waste our time about it being a wrong interpretation and

correct, and we are not paying attention actually to the cause of

the problem and we are obsessively only looking at the symptoms.

APPLAUSE Excellent point. Christopher, your

book sounds fascinating. You have not paid me to say that. The author

of The Islamic Enlightenment. When we look back, we see great

scientists, we saw great scientists in Islam 1000 years ago who predated

Darwin's fairy of evolution. It was called by Charles Draper at the

time, the Mohammed theory. -- theory of evolution. Fantastic geometric

art and actual art representation of people and of animals which is

frowned on now. The great mathematicians. Is this question

legitimate? What went wrong? It is a question that comes up again and

again, it is a legitimate question and I agree that we have to look at

the political and historical reasons behind it and we should not obsess

over what the Koran says. For the individual believer, that is

important, but in the grander scheme of things, history is what counts

will stop history tells us that not only 1000 years ago in Baghdad and

Persia and across the Middle East, there was a great efflorescence,

upsurge, of knowledge, and the contribution made by Islamic

cultures to human knowledge, not Islamic knowledge, it is beyond

question. The other thing that the great black hole is in our

historical understanding comes in the 19th century and early 20th

which is when modern ideas entered the Middle East and wired to an

extraordinary extent absorbed and taken on board -- were too. We have

discussed slavery this morning, it disappeared within a matter of

decades in the Middle East. The venerable old Islamic institution

effectively disappeared. The segregation of men and women ...

1964, slavery disappeared in Saudi Arabia. That is an aberration and

Saudi Arabia did not exist in the time I am talking about. The

advances in the 19th century in the Middle East were immense. There were

two revolutions, both of which, no one knows about them in the West, a

revolution in Turkey and in Iran, they brought in parliamentary

systems of government, before the First World War, the first Turkish

constitution, 1876. What went wrong? To my mind, a lot of what went wrong

is in instead -- is external stimulus. The Brits invaded Egypt, a

very nasty revolution going on which would have meant the British control

and British influence over Egypt would have been greatly reduced. In

1914, it came to a head with the First World War which obliterated

the region physically. We do not talk about the number of dead in the

Middle East in the First World War, but it was absolutely extraordinary.

It left behind famine and the complete obliteration of borders.

After that, Britain and France carved up part of the region and the

other part of the region, in order to avoid being swallowed up Colonial

league, it found these very strong secularising regime is... --

Colonial leaf. Can I borrow this down as a jumping point? There has

been based of the cetacean and because of the external geopolitical

influences, the Islamic world has stopped generating and is merely

reacting? Would that be fair? I think the default mould of catch-up

and how we react to things entry from the West has taken over. --

mode. There was a strong sense that what comes in from the West does not

necessarily mean it is Western or anti-testicle to Islamic culture, it

is perfectly possible it is the human heritage of humankind --

antithetical. It was much easier to advocate Darwinism at the turn of

the 20th century in Cairo than it is today. Something has seriously gone

wrong. I agree. But I think we need to look to our 20th century for the

reasons and they are mostly political. How interesting.

APPLAUSE Which country, Salma, you nodding

through that, which country do you believe, Muslim majority country,

which shows Islam at its best in the world? That is a really difficult

one. I do not think that there is an Islamic State and nor do I think

there should be an Islamic State. There are countries where people

happen to be majority Muslim. If you were to ask me the same question,

for example, which is the best Christian country? There might be

majority Christian countries, but I would not necessarily think like

that. You can say which country is the best secular country, you can

easily say that. The most religiously tolerant. That places

like Indonesia which are the most populous Muslim countries but most

people would think of Saudi Arabia. The politics, it is countries like

Saudi Arabia who are propped up by our country and by the US and they

actually do export violent extremist interpretations of religion. That

has been used as a political way to control their own population as well

as legitimising their existence. There is a dangerous mix of politics

and theology in countries like Saudi Arabia which I totally accept and I

am totally opposed to. Which... In Bosnia, majority Muslim country, in

Europe, people lived side-by-side with their Christian neighbours.

This has been going on for five centuries, 500 years, native

people... Slobodan Milosevic. He carried out a Christian crusade but

even now we should say, we should not blame Christianity. There was a

genocide of Muslims in the heart of Europe. These are important

political issues. Palestine and Israel, land or resource, people use

the excuse of identity politics in the guise of religion to carry out

those atrocities. A last question and a quick thought and answer,

which is the best country in the world today to be a Muslim? I would

say the UK. There we are. APPLAUSE

England or Scotland or Wales. If you have something to say about that

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have we all been here before? So get tweeting or emailing on those

topics now or send us any other ideas or thoughts you may

have about the show. Friday was the Great Night of Shiva,

or Maha Shivaratri, commemorating when the Hindu god Shiva

is believed to have saved It's a festival dedicated

to overcoming darkness and ignorance But it's also a moment when Hindus

believe their worship of Lord Shiva might help them attain moksha,

their release from reincarnation, the eternal cycle

of death and rebirth. Not to this school, we haven't!

Seriously, Suraj, George Harrison would have been 74 this week and he

was a devout follower of Krishna and in one of his songs, keep me free

from birth, is that the ultimate aim, to stop the cycle of

reincarnation? I think it is important to look at it from the

Hindu angle because people's interpretation of Hinduism or their

recognition of it is that it is reincarnation and we have hundreds

of gods and thousands of gods, it is a very mature religion in the sense

that we have monotheism, people of non-religion, people who do... It is

a broad church. That is entirely the wrong term! What is universal is

they believe in the end of the knowledge and they all have their

interpretation, reincarnation is central and the theme is that we are

spiritual beings on a material existence and in that sense, it

chimes across all of the major religions. Have you been here

before? We have. The purpose is to end the cycle of birth and death by

getting moksha. We have been here before from the Hindu angle, we have

been around and around through different beings. Do you have any

sense of the beings? I read that maybe you fell out with Krishna.

Tell me about that, that sense you have of why you are here.

Personally, I followed the Harry Krishna movement. I am on earth, I

am not with Krishna, where I should be, which is a translation... Why

are you not with him? Because I wanted my own independence and free

will and I was granted that by God out of his kindness and I have come

here now to come out of the cycle of rebirth and re-death. The importance

is on the human body. Reincarnation again, people have interpretation it

is just human reincarnations. Spiritual being is eternal. The

dinosaurs were here for 170 million years on our planet. When there were

no people here, why dinosaurs being reincarnated as dinosaurs? What was

going on then? It is a very complex issue and essentially that is the

theory of evolution... Believe you me, the dinosaurs were here and

there were no people. Before there were people, what happened? We can

only go back 5000 years because Hinduism has been around 5000 years.

They do have everything written, it means the end of knowledge and we

have all of the information. We have added to the knowledge. We have. We

have information on pregnancy and things like that. You have looked

into this, what do you think of it? I wanted to say two things. There is

no reference to reincarnation. People, when they die, there are

various interpretations of where they go in these beautiful poems, in

some of them, your eyes go to the sun, your breath goes to the wind

and you disperse. Basically, when you die, you followed the first man

to die who then went to this heaven where it was very pleasant and there

were lovely trees and music and water running. The greatest God,

they ruled the heavens. Subsequently, the death poems about

what happens at death, how you cremate or there is a very beautiful

burial hymn. There is no reference to health. There is a deep dark hole

where you get sent. Is this a cultural... We have to move on. Is

it a cultural belief? It grew historically, this idea. People

thought, if we are going to live on the Earth, we will die again,

re-death. We had a whole lot of changes occurring in the tradition

and the development of very strong mystical traditions.

David, you are past life regression therapist. You were an Irish boy who

drowned on a boat on the way to Atlantic. That was one of my lives.

And you were a smuggler in Devon. How did this come out? I went into a

regression and I explored what happened will stop the smuggler was

one where people feared me. I was part of a gang in the West Country

in England. People feared me. You have still got the beard! It is

interesting. Maybe you are here as a reaction to that, as part of your

learning process. What made you realise that they feared you or made

you think that? During the regression I was aware of myself

sneering at people around me a lot. I was aware of how they behaved.

Eventually I was captured by soldiers and I was eventually

killed. In another life, I was a general in a Persian army, where I

was one of those going over the top first personalities. I inspired

people and empowered people. When was this? Probably over 1000 years

ago. I didn't follow the dates. I don't particularly because my motive

is for therapy. You know roughly when. Excuse me. A general in the

Persian army. We offer here I was Cleopatra, I was an Egyptian slave

girl, the French revolution is popular. But you were a boy on a

boat drowning. A normal, common person. Most regressions are normal,

common things, where there is a particular issue they are working

on. Alison, come in on this from the humanist society. Your thoughts?

This is a very real experience. For David it is a very real experience

and Pussy Riot Sam as well. -- and for surround some aren't... Those

images are incredibly real for these people. If you can picture your

front door, you can beat it imperfect reality. It isn't there in

front of you. -- you can picture it in perfect reality. The human brain

is very powerful. I can see why these people think these experiences

are very real but I would argue that they are not. There is no evidence.

There is evidence? Yes. I want to hear from the audience in a minute.

University of the junior has done field cases for 50 years. This is

peer reviewed scientific evidence? Going round the world talking to

children who have spontaneous recall of what appears to be past life, and

they verify the details. Children talk about their other mummies, the

house they lived in, whatever, they goes and they check it. This is

revolutionary stuff. With science and mounting evidence, there would

be a possibility of a Nobel Prize because it would change all of our

thinking. The gentleman there. Let's get some more thoughts on this about

whether we have been here before. Good morning. Let's take an example,

as humans, we can bite everyone. A snake can only bike two people but

humans can bike in such a way that we destroy the whole body. -- bite.

We have the intensity of lots and lots of animals inside us. As

humans, we tend to bark as dogs. That person is bad, all that stuff.

And how shall I say? Without meditating in. 'S name, we are like

the snake, biting other people. This life is an amalgamation of loads and

loads of lives. I have got you. The accumulation of knowledge. The lady

in the blue shirt? Do you think we have been here before? No, I don't

think so. There is a reason why we associate reincarnation with

religion. With religion, we need to believe in something. And I think

believing that we can come back and we have been here before gives us a

purpose, a justification for some actions. It might be memories, it

might be dreams, something we are thinking about, but we haven't been

here before. Almost wishful thinking. Justifying our actions,

justifying our memories, but I don't think it is anything greater. Bishop

David, good morning. The thing is sometimes people speak in different

accents and different voices and even different languages. What is

going on? The Christian viewpoint generally speaking, and the Islamic

and the Jewish one, is that we are here in this life, we sort out our

future in this life, our spirit leads to a future life, not a

comeback. From my experience of people doing this, there is a

psychological effect but we would say there is a spiritual deception.

That is a demonic lie, where spirits are speaking to their spirits. That

is where you get spiritualism from. Even though they speak in these

languages, it doesn't mean it is genuine. It is the devil's work. If

you want to see it like that. But there is evidence. How can you

explain that a child who barely talks is talking about their other

mummy and you can check it out? It is called the imagination. But when

there are facts that check it out it is more than imagination. I am very

open minded. I accept that there are aspects of life that we don't yet

have scientific understanding. But I don't believe in reincarnation or

past life regression and I don't believe there is any scientific

evidence bases. There is no credible, corroborated scientific

evidence to say that reincarnation or past life regression exists. Is

there any evidence at all? There is very interesting work done with

children, especially people like Stevenson who did a lot of work with

children in India particularly, who remembered other families, and they

have actually met each other. There is a certain amount of evidence of

that sort. The other thing we haven't touched on in this

discussion is the ethical thing. This has been described as the

world's most logical way of looking at the problem of suffering.

Absolutely logical. If you behave in a certain way, then you are going to

have to pay back. There is an automatic cause and effect system,

just as if you put your hand in a hot stove, you will get burned. I

think it is a very logical thing. One woman told me that the reason

she had had polio and was lame was because she had done something wrong

in a previous life and a mystical person told exactly what it was.

That got Glenn Hoddle the sacked as England manager when he tried to

articulate that. That was seen as terribly shocking at the time,

blaming things on a previous life. Do we get another chance in hell?

You have worked in therapy, haven't you? I am a psychotherapist. For me,

what is interesting is a belief system that helps you to be more

conscientious and conscious of what you do and don't do in this life...

If you feel there will be a consequence, and it is not just

about the number of years that you are here. Yes, as a Muslim, I

believe in an afterlife and I am not going to look to science to justify

that. There are some things that are not measurable and they are unseen.

Things described in the Bible, the Koran, other religious scripture is,

there is a leap of faith involved. And we have a choice in that. We

have a choice to believe and not to believe. The test is whether it

makes you a better human being, not whether you believe in God or not.

If you believe we are here not just to serve ourselves but for the

people. It makes society better. Yes. And if you believe in that, all

power to you, good. And if you have a desire to be in heaven or a desire

to be reborn in a better state, my only issue with the idea of

reincarnation is the victim blaming element. If you are poor, disabled,

suffering... Because you don't have a memory of what you did, so how can

you learn? I agree with you in terms of bringing about a better society.

But when you look at it in terms of reincarnation, it is not the end

goal. We need to look at the purpose of reincarnation. It is to break out

of the cycle of life and death. We don't want another life. We want to

go back to God and achieve self-realisation. It is about being

better people and being compassionate to other people. If we

are not creating more compassionate society is then we failing. I really

respect that. Where it is constructive, fantastic.

Unfortunately ideas like this can be used to justify institutionalised

hierarchies. Every religion can. Yes, that is why it is important to

unpack that and contextualise it. The caste system, it is not

referenced in any Hindu, any Hindu scripture, it is like comparing the

idea of a gently to crusades and Islam and terrorism. The caste

system has no justification in any of our texts. Thank you very much.

You can join in all this morning's debates by logging

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Or you can tweet using the hashtag bbctbq.

Tell us what you think about our last big question too.

And if you'd like to apply to be in the audience at a future show you

We're in Newcastle-upon-Tyne next week, Canterbury on March 12th,

On Tuesday, a heterosexual couple lost the latest

round in their battle with the courts to be allowed

Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan said they wanted to formalise

their relationship in a social institution "which is modern,

which is symmetrical and that focuses on equality,

which is exactly what a civil partnership is".

They're now taking their case to the Supreme Court.

But is marriage still the patriarchal institution it once was?

Or is marriage today what you make it?

Peter, what is your problem with this? Well, right from the get go...

I have asked him that many times! When the Labour government in 2003

proposed civil partnerships for same-sex couples, it was to block

the growing demand for same-sex marriage. It was to buy off the LGBT

community but I stood with my colleagues from the Outrage group,

the LGBT campaign group, against the prohibition of opposite sex civil

partnerships. From the beginning, we said if there are going to be civil

partnerships, they have got to be open to everyone. And in those days,

ironically, it was only a gay organisation that stood for equal

civil partnerships and we have been fighting that cause ever since. I am

so glad that this latest court judgment narrowly lost. It came very

close to winning. All the judges accept that it was discrimination

and it was not sustainable. The government has got to end this

discrimination in the near future. I am just sad that the majority was

two to one against rather than in favour. Since gay people can get

married, why not end civil partnerships for gay people? Have

the full shilling. Why not? Because there are some gay and straight

people who don't like the institution of marriage. Why not?

Some people feel it has a sexist, patriarchal history. They think that

civil partnerships are more modern, egalitarian, more suited to the

modern age. Whether you agree with them or not, I think people should

have the right to make that choice. If civil partnerships exist, as a

democratic principle of all being equal before the law, they should be

open to everyone, I think. Marriage itself, as a humanist

celebrant, it is what you make it. It is not off-the-shelf, it is

tailor-made. Made to suit you. Yes. I think I would want to answer the

question to say yes and no. The no part of it is very much in line with

what Peter has been talking about, the patriarchy of the history of

marriage, barnacles on human relationships, it emerged

historically under conditions where the subjugation of part of the

population, broadly women, was brought about by broadly men. Women

became like chattels to be owned by another human being. The answer, is

marriage what you make it, in relation to that aspect of the

definition of marriage, definitely the answer is no, you cannot make it

what you want to make it because it is an institution. If we take

marriage in the common-sense understanding of human beings

choosing to make a relationship with each other, to bond with each other,

the answer is most definitely, yes, marriage is what you make it. All of

those antiquated laws have been thrown out of the window. Even with

a formal religious marriage, you are to each other what you want to be to

each other. No, I don't think so. It is not free for you to choose. No.

We are living with each other by consent, civil partnership which is

a legality, secular wedding which is a foul and faith which is a

covenant. The whole of the concept of our law, even today, and the

marriage act, it is marriage is only marriage where there is consummation

of sexual intercourse between two and so the civil partnership

actually excludes that because... Marriage can be about cherishing

each other, mutual comfort, it does not have to be about six. The law of

the land, you're not married if you cannot consummate the marriage if

there are no sexual relations, the marriage can be annulled. You cannot

say there are just four aspects to marriage. Bonding between human

beings, committing publicly in front of your community, friends family,

it goes back way beyond any religion. In the Bible, he went in

and knew her, had intercourse. That was the marriage. I want to talk

about briefly if I can talking about marriage before it was a social and

state contract, looking at it in terms of the human species. This

business of humans relating to each other, striving and yearning for the

best possible human relationships they can build, witnessed by public

community, their families, it goes back, there is evidence for it in

prehistory, those types of ceremonies, those rituals, they are

very deep. They make covenants with each other, not just illegal

agreement, you get the car and I get the television. They make them.

Isn't marriage legitimate if there has never been sexual relations?

Under British law, no. Under biblical law... Compassion comes in,

two disabled people, compassion comes in. Compassion? You say, you

do not fulfil the law. The law is marriage must be consummated. I am

on about the law. You have a disabled couple who cannot

physically consummate their marriage, you out of compassion with

a...? Why does the compassion fail when it is a same-sex couple? Your

faith will tell you if you can do that. Same-sex people cannot

consummate a marriage. Neither can two disabled people. Why is it

different? Ajmal Masroor, are there certain obligations within an

Islamic marriage, clearly defined roles? Daesh it is defined by a

partnership between man and woman, consensually, of course, partnership

in the sense of partners of two equals, to create a safe space for

people to grow, emotionally, spiritually, most of us concentrate

on physically and the other two are missed out. Creating a space where

love and compassion and mercy can flourish. It is a space where you

can be reflective. You can be who you want to be. You make the

marriage work or fail. People fail marriages because they do not invest

time. There is this amazing idea that marriage will be completely

formed in the heavens and dropped on your lap. Do you believe in falling

in love? Of course. You may not fall in love. Full out of love? You may

not be in love and be married. It is not all about love. Is it better to

have a few relationships before you get married? Is that fornication? In

Islam, you're not allowed to have sexual relations outside of

marriage. You should get married to settle down and start a family. The

most important principle is that it creates a safe space in which

tranquillity, peace, happiness and partnership can grow, children can

grow, the future progeny can grow, but more importantly, in marriage,

where we fail is we do not communicate well, we do not evaluate

our marriage well and we do not look at one another, we look at what we

need rather than what we want to offer. Speak for yourself! One of

the most important thing is young people fail, they want, me, me, me.

The selfish culture is destroying marriage. Marriage is about

spiritual connection between two people. Love is not material, it is

not tangible. If you cannot spiritually connect, there is a

problem. Love should grow with time. What does spiritually connect mean?

Can you quantify love for me? It is spiritual. I love my wife every day,

more. Some days I may feel rotten and I don't love anybody. I'm

allowed to do that. There is also a false dichotomy within our own

understanding of marriage and that is you marry to take -- you married

to stay together for ever. Rolling contract, every ten years. Maybe,

you should renew it. Would you like to renew yours? I don't know. Yes!

What are you saying? You can indeed do that. With humanist ceremonies,

you can organise to renew your vows. You can make a choice to say, I want

now to have a public ceremony with friends and family where we come

together at the end of ten years and we renew... I have been to a couple

of those and it is sometimes a bit of a sticking plaster. Let us renew

our vows. Very shortly after that, am I speaking out of turn? I am

sorry if those friends are watching the programme this morning! We say

that in our discipline, every seven years, ask your husband or wife, how

are we doing? Can we do things better? If you do not talk and you

get stagnant, you are made for disaster and misery. Going back to

what you said, in Islam, husband and wife are not equal. They are. In

Muslim societies, maybe they are not. Are you like that at home? Very

happy with my wife! If you have a falling out with your wife, you can

admonish her, stop having sexual relations with her, beat her. A wife

is not allowed to beat her husband. They treat the wife as if she is in

the area and as though she is a child. You admonish a child if they

have done something wrong. Rather than advocating a healthy adult

discussion, if you are having some kind of disagreement, they advocate

violence. Not only that, they also say... Back to the first debate, the

cultural reasons, you are only allowed to hit your wife with a

toothpick. There is a very clear... Bus in the Koran that says, it is a

metaphor, garment is a metaphor for partnership, not fights. -- there is

a very clear verse. The lady there. A couple of points. First, I find it

really hard but we cannot get behind the idea that we can progress from

something. Marriage is a patriarchal institution. I do not understand why

in a day that we are striving towards equality of all

descriptions, between men and women, between different sexualities,

different religions, different skin colours, all of that, why can't we

understand that marriage can progress? It can be a more equal

institution. Personally, I do not necessarily feel that marriage would

be anything other than equal. I certainly do not subscribe to the

patriarchal institution. The other point I want to make is that in

terms of disabled people being able to be married but not apparently

able to consummate, in legality, there are lots of different things

that come to mean some sort of sexual practice. Lots of different

things mean consummation? Not just one particular... It is all about

legally and spiritually. We not condemning. You may say the law is

an as. What is the definition of consummation? Penetrating six. That

is what it is under the law. Can I suggest we might think about

starting all over again? For those who want marriage or civil

partnerships... The first debate, you mean?

LAUGHTER Do the whole show again? The Daily

Politics... Start again. Wipe the slate clean. For those who are happy

with marriage and civil partnerships, fine, but they are the

same model, marriage by a different name. Let us start again with a new

framework. I would say that there should be an alternative to marriage

and civil partnerships for those who want it, namely that a person cannot

make any significant other in their life as next of kin or beneficiary

and it might be a partner, but if they are single, it might be a

lifelong best friend. Packs dodge? No. -- tax dodge. When it comes to

loving relationships, people should be able to pick and mix from a menu

of rights and responsible at ease to make a partnership agreement

tailor-made to their needs. That is to try to take into account that

nowadays people live in many different types of relationships.

Some partners live together, some think paying independence, some have

kids, some do not. Let people make their tailor-made partnership

agreements and if they have to go through a check list point by point,

I think they would think more seriously about their obligations

and commitments. APPLAUSE

Blue jumper, hello. I would like to ask, when somebody proposes to get

married in a church, the Anglican Church, the Methodist Church or the

Quakers, where I have come from, they have to have a discussion with

the Minister or vector, I really do find it hard to understand what type

of discussion they might have to have before they get married. --

Victor. We do a nine week preparation course, talking about

sexuality, covenants... Sexuality is none of your business? It is. I am

very good at it. I don't doubt it, David. Sexuality is part of our

spirituality, if you do not hold it in your spirituality, it is secular.

It is not. Do you want to come in here, Salma? Defer to your learned

colleague. I have been through marriage and divorce and it was not

an easy thing to do. I believe in love. I believe in commitment. I am

a mum. It was the most difficult thing I have been through, I would

say. Reflecting on it, for me, marriage yes, it is about what to

people make it and what goes on in your house, but the real test is

what happens when things do not work, what rights are you left with?

That is why it is important about how we as a society do it. I think

the UK is fantastic for that. At least if you have a registered

marriage, your rights are clear. No one party gets discriminated against

and it reflects an Islamic approach. As a woman, I can enter the contract

with whatever condition I want to put. It is not about you have to be

this or that. But if someone does not adhere to that, what happens? If

someone is abusive? That is why it as a society is important to have

rules. We have to leave it there. Thank you for your participation. We

must leave each other there. Debates continue on Twitter. Next week we

are in Newcastle upon Tyne. See you then.