Toby Howarth: Test of faith in humanity and tolerance thanks to Donald Trump

Mr Trump appears on TV prominently flanked by a Christian Vice President and a Jewish son-in-law and adviser. He denies that this is a ban on Muslims. But Rudi Guiliani, a close associate, has confirmed a direct connection between the President’s campaign rhetoric and his Executive Order.

Ironically, as the Home Secretary and others have correctly pointed out, this dangerous narrative is shared by al-Qaida and Daesh. The propaganda from their media outlets claims that the Christian and Jewish West hates Muslims and 
will ultimately destroy them. Therefore, they cry, Muslims should fight the West and pledge allegiance to the so-called ‘Islamic State’.

My own experience as Bishop of Bradford is different. Muslims are my co-citizens, colleagues and friends. Yorkshire is our shared home. We stand or fall together.

At the very time that this story was breaking, last Sunday evening, Jews and Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus were joining Christians and people of no faith to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in Bradford Cathedral. Many wept as we heard the chair of the Bradford Synagogue, Rudi Leavor, speak movingly about his childhood escape from the Gestapo and his family’s welcome as a refugee to a country where he, along with so many other immigrants, have contributed immeasurably to our common life.

But the Trump travel ban also shook me because America has always represented the triumph of diversity. All Americans are ‘hyphenated’. They are African-Americans or Irish-Americans or Mexican-Americans and Silicon Valley, for example, sucks talent from across the world, irrespective of race or religion, to design the iPhones and search engines that have transformed our daily lives. But last week Google was scrambling to fly its executives back to California, worried that they might have been kept out by the new Executive Order.

In the US, the UK and across the rest of Europe a new wind is blowing. Electorates are concerned about globalisation and immigration, and border restrictions are being tightened. But it is dangerous and wrong to make religion a criterion for keeping some people in and others out.

Political rhetoric that creates fear of Muslims stokes the hatred that leads to attacks on mosques. The dreadful shooting of Muslims at prayer in Quebec is an attack on the diversity and creativity that makes Canada such a great nation and should be a warning to all of us 
that we tolerate hate-fuelled ideologies 
at our peril.

But standing up to hate speech is not enough. We also have to create spaces in our cities and towns where people with different backgrounds, religions and cultures can meet and talk and work together for the good of our neighbourhoods.

Today I will be meeting in Huddersfield with clergy and others from across West Yorkshire to share ideas of how we can encourage our congregations to reach out in friendship to people of different faiths. We will hear, for example, from those who are working to bring people and communities together in the wake of MP Jo Cox’s murder.

Last week I was part of a panel on BBC1’s The Big Questions debating, 
among other things, the role of religion 
in politics. Ethical and transcendent values are not a monopoly of religious people, but the presence of an established church in this country helps to hold a space for those values in the heart of our public life. One of the great roles that religion in general and the church in particular can play in our nation is to remind us that the state cannot command our highest loyalty.

Loyalty to any democratic state 
is of course crucial – something that 
must go hand in hand with loyalty 
to our fellow human beings, 
wherever they come from and 
however they worship.

The Right Reverend Toby Howarth is the Bishop of Bradford.