Has Humza Set Off a Prayer Bomb?
Everything about Humza's public act of prayer in Bute House was off-key. If it leads to more public religiosity we'll all be the losers.
In the hit TV series set in Scotland, ‘Outlander’, the hero Jamie Fraser describes politics as “a game of chess on a grand scale.” Pity for the SNP they’ve just chosen a leader who would struggle to master chequers. How else to explain the series of mis-steps Humza has already made .
By the way, here’s a picture of the actor who plays Jamie Fraser, Sam Heughan, for no other reason than to remind ourselves Scotsmen can look quite the thing. Now back to the empty, calculating eyes of Humza Yousuf.
Or not quite yet. Outlander is all about time-travelling with Jamie and Claire whooshing through the centuries trying to undo the damage of the Jacobite defeat in 1745. Humza too has been doing some time-travelling, but he’s been taking Scotland with him, as he whisks us all, unwillingly, back to a time we all hoped we’d left far behind when private religious belief was public center stage
One reason the Union was embraced so enthusiastically by the likes of David Hume, Adam Smith and other leading figures of the Enlightenment was they saw it as a means of Scotland leaving behind it the violence and bigotry of the country’s embrace of a hard-edged, unforgiving Protestantism. Scotland got religion bad in the 16th century and, like the cholera, it kept coming back.
My county of Ayrshire was an epicentre of the Covenanters, the rebels who held out for the sort of pure, militant Protestantism that had driven the Scots to take sides and enter the English Civil War (or War of the Three Kingdoms as it’s more commonly known now). When Charles II took the throne the Covenanters were still agitating and were hunted down and slaughtered, during the ‘Killing Times’. There was a macabre streak in the movement that’s summed up for me in the ghoulish mask of one of its leading preachers, Ayrshire-born Alexander Peden, worn as a disguise as he wandered through southern Scotland, preaching in fields.
Who wouldn’t want to leave such strange and angry stuff behind? As it turned out, ordinary Scots. Away from the intellectual centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh, it took a long time for the hot energy of Protestant revival among the so-called ‘common people’ to fade. Peden was buried in unconsecrated ground. The locals promptly started using the ground around it as their burial places, turning his grave into the centre of their new graveyard.
It’s because Scotland had such a serious bout of religious fervour that so many liberal Scots, like me, are wary of religiosity. There is no evidence that Humza has ever shown the slightest interest in Scottish history or culture so, to be generous, he was unlikely to realise what a big fat religion bomb he may have set off.
Secular sensivities were one reason Kate Forbes got such a bad press for sticking to her guns on her faith. But imagine the hullabaloo if she’d posted images of her and her family mumbling Gaelic prayers of thanks to God for her appointment on her first day in Bute House. It was completely unimaginable she would do such a thing. Now, why should she not, if she wins next time?
Some friends on twitter complained I was being unfair in criticising Humza. Bute House is now his home, they argued. Why should he not pray in his own home? I don’t know anyone who cares whether Humza prays in Bute House or anywhere else as long as he does it in private. Public prayer is an entirely different act.
We should mention, while we’re here, that photograph. Apparently his mother may be the bit of white sleeve peeking out behind Humza. I don’t know enough about Muslim prayer etiquette to know whether the suggestion the sexes are kept apart during prayer, even in the home, is true. Nor whether it was this expectation among fellow Muslims that drove the need to keep his mum hidden. Either way, it’s a funny kind of choice for a photograph. Either it’s all men. Or it’s all men bar his mum who’s kept hidden from view.
That apparent shade given to women also has uncomfortable echos in Scotland’s religious past. Who can forget your man John Knox, upbraiding Mary, Queen of Scots, in the recent film of the same name.
That apart….what are we to say about a man who says he “leads my family in prayer”. Who do you think you are Humza….Moses?
I’m only half-joking. One of the things that marked out Scotland’s religious dark ages of the 16th and 17th centuries as so stifling and barbaric was how it empowered dull, mediocre men who used their faith to give themselves airs.
They too used public prayer to proclaim their closeness to God, their “leadingness”, if you like. And isn’t this why public prayer is so problematic: it’s always a way of saying the individual doing it is a bit busy right now…..talking to someone more important than you and me. Yes, I’m on the phone to God.
It reminds me of a show I made with Alan Yentob once. We were filming in Florence and every time I went to start the camera rolling, he’d make a call he’d just remembered he absolutely needed to make. It was always a celebrity ….
Hi David…. (….Bowie).
Hi Mick ……(….Jagger).
Hi Kelsey….(…Grammer)
We all concluded it was his way of showing how important he was. Humza is doing the same. It’s the ultimate showing off.
Don’t get me wrong, public prayer can no doubt join a community together. In a church or mosque I can see it must be a powerful collective act. Performatively praying at people the way Humza just did is nothing like that. It’s …look at ME. I’m breaking fast. I think I’ll directly talk to God now and thank him in person.
How do we know public prayer like this, where you know you’ll be seen, *is* political? One act of prayer that wasn’t even photographed by her and placed with hoo-hah all over social media recently led to Isabel Vaughan-Spruce being arrested. Her prayer was silent and she said it wasn’t a protest. No defence. You’re nicked.
Personally, I don’t think you should be able to stand by an abortion clinic entrance praying or doing anything else and I support buffer zones round them. The Westminster Parliament recently rejected an amendment that would have made an exception for silent prayers.
Ironically, the SNP has yet to introduce its bill to impose buffer zones. During the leadership contest Humza spoke out in favour of them. You can bet he will want Scotland’s zones to be at least as strict as England’s. So how will the man who prayed in public in Bute House justify the act of banning silent prayer in public near a clinic?
Surely, the only answer is that the act of prayer can indeed be political. But if it’s political for Ms Vaughan-Spruce it must also be for Humza when he shows off his communicating with Allah skills.
Perhaps it’s because Scotland is now such a secular society that we’ve forgotten just how powerful an act public prayer can be. I don’t mean that the prayer itself works. Obviously. But the people doing it can use the social act of public prayer to galvanise people, shape discussion and even set an agenda. Take for example the new legislation that’s just been passed in Uganda, which introduces the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”. It’s the culmination of 2 decades of campaigning by an organisation called International House of Prayer. They are an organisation (American…obviously) that believes the power of prayer can change the real world through prayer. Here’s one of their leaders encouraging prayers for Uganda.
The group keeps a 24 hour prayer “engine” running in its global headquarters. Now we of the secular orientation are inevitably tempted to dismiss all this…as empty ritual. No one is at home, we mutter. But what IHOP are doing with their overt praying is similar to what Humza and the abortion protestor are doing. They are saying we are in touch with you know who and He is listening to us. Even if we do not accept that this is true others may do. Like Christians, say, or others who are susceptible to the idea of God…in Uganda. And woe betide if you start arguing they’re not talking to God. I’m not actually sure if someone pointed that out in the UK it wouldn’t fall foul of Hate Crime law.