Religion

I live in a retirement complex that used to be called the 'Jewish Care Home.' Some bit of legislation - EU or UK, I don't know - stopped that exclusiveness a while back. I don't know how many residents are Jewish these days. It's not my business and besides I don't care. All I ask is a peaceful life with good neighbours - and they are. On a Monday evening, I hear a bit of chanting because that's when some of the Jewish men meet for prayers in the lounge. I feel quite at home here. I know the traditions because my uncle Max was Jewish, even if he said on his deathbed: Don't let the Jews get my body. (We cremated him).

A few of my elderly Jewish neighbours (who by the way have lived in Scotland all their lives, and in many cases their parents before them) tell me they are quite freaked out by the Brexit vote and subsequent racist attacks on other Europeans. They say they don't feel safe. I try to reassure them, but they remind me the synagogue next door has had to employ security staff for quite a few years now. They hear Farage, Boris Johnson and now Trump all spouting an outright racist point of view - and making it acceptable - and, given their history, they fear for the future.

I think I was 13 when I rejected religion. Ever since, I've listened to people of many faiths telling me how important religious belief is. Oddly enough, the one group that have never tried to indoctrinate me are the atheists.

I don't go for religion. That's my right in a civilised democratic society. I've seen nothing in life to change my mind.

This week I've been reading about how anti-Christian UK 'society' is. It seems Christians feel under attack. One letter in the newspaper I take even described anti-Christian feeling in Scotland - Scotland - as 'violent.' All I can say is: show me where this is happening. Give me proof.

If Christians mean that in UK society they are not entitled to be heard before anyone else, then yes, they are being challenged and I can only ask: why shouldn't your beliefs be challenged? They are not truths but just your beliefs. You are not more important than anyone else in our society. And why can't you accept that people of other faiths - and people of no faith - live in Scotland? I reject the attitude that this is a Christian country. This is a country where many religions have taken root over many years. No one should have that sense of entitlement that lets them think the country is the unique property of one religious sect or another.

As a woman, I have faced the same kind of idiotic problem with some men: they used to have it so easy: plenty of jobs (and their pay was way above what women got - and that's not changed), an entitlement to respect just because of who they were, top dogs in politics, etc. And boy, have we been hearing about it ever since, because things changed: round about 1980, the backside fell out of the employment market, skills got downgraded, unskilled work just vanished. Meanwhile, women got out of the house into the factory, the office, the hospital. No choice there, because, since the 1980s, families can only survive if they have two incomes.

The big problem that I see is that society is adapting faster than religion. Communities have accepted same-sex marriage without a qualm and the same thing seems to be happening about transgender people, abortion and all the other so-called moral dilemmas that bother religious groups but don't trouble most of the rest of us at all.

Given that only 48% of people in Scotland now say they have any religious belief, isn't it time for all religions to adapt to a new world?

Then maybe poor Asad Shah won't have died in vain.