Categorising communities by religion is dangerous and counterproductive

"The Conservative party has commissioned a report about national security. One of the findings is that the Government is wrong to communicate with people from ethnic minorities as though they were members of groups rather than individual citizens.
(Read related BBC Story here)

The NSS has been saying this for years. The Blair Government created these group categories – mostly based on religion – to define whole swathes of the population. But the huge numbers who didn’t want to define themselves in this way were left without a voice.

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Maryam Namazie and her recently-launched group, The Ex-Muslim Council of Britain, has vividly illustrated that there is no way that the label “Muslim” can be accurately attached to everyone who has come from a Muslim cultural background."

National Secular Society, 27.07.2007