ROGER Utting, over at Roger’s Realm, has made an unsettling discovery: there is a petition currently running on the official 10 Downing Street website calling on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to make the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday a National Holiday in the UK.
British Muslims are calling on the Prime Minister to make Muhammad's birthday a National Holiday
The petition reads:
The Muslims in the United Kingdom feel that they require a national holiday to celebrate the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad. This day can be used as a public awareness day about the Prophet Muhammad and utilised as an event to create greater understanding and tolerance between communities. This is currently done in many countries world wide, Muslim and non-Muslim. AFRICAN COUNTRIES: Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Togo. MIDDLE EAST: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestinian National Authority, Syria, United Arab Emirates/UAE, Yemen ASIA: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan. OTHER: Fiji, Guyana (source: MQ International).
Says Roger:
Now, I’m not going into a rant here as it’s not appropriate. The Government monitors web activity promoting these petitions and any promoted in a seditious or otherwise inappropriate way will get rejected. So, I’m just going to calmly say that I firmly believe this to be wrong, and have raised a counter petition. My petition reads:
This is to counter the petition raised by Tahseen Khalid petitioning the Prime Minister to make the birthday of Muhammed a national holiday. Britain is largely now a secular nation, and honouring Muhammad in this way would be inappropriate and offensive to a vast majority of the population. The undersigned all feel there are many more British people deserving of a national holiday, such as Darwin, Newton, Churchill – all of whom would be more appropriate for a day to honour them.
Roger adds:
I’m not going to coerce or cajole, I’ll just say that if you are a British Citizen and agree with me that a day honouring Muhammad would be inappropriate, follow the below link, register with the site and sign the petition. The original petition runs out on 12th August 2008, mine on 8th September – so please sign now.
You can sign Roger’s counter-petition here.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
August 9th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
A day off is a day off, innit?
Well, ok, perhaps if we want to encourage secularism then this would not be terribly appropriate. Fine. I’ll sign the counter-petition.
August 9th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Thanks Sam – let’s stop this wedge at the thin end !!
Rog.
August 10th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Wouldn’t this event shove religion down peoples throat and violate their right to freedom from religion?
August 10th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I already signed it and everything, but a thought occurred to me today;
We get days off for Christmas and Easter. Should we, by the same arguments, be petitioning against those too?
August 10th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Sam,
Fair point – but the point of my petition is to stop an additional religious holiday, rather than changing the status quo.
But, you do raise a good point. Easter means nothing to me, but I must confess that, even tho I’m a pracitising atheist, I do rather like Xmas. I view it as a holiday to celebrate my friends and family. Nothing at all to do with religion, but it would be a shame to move it – the lights going up as the nights draw in is magical whatever your religious or secular viewpoint.
Taking it a step further, of course, the whole calander could be de-religionized. We’re in the year 2008 AD….but as atheists we don’t believe in God – so Anno Domini is meaningless….should we go for AD as after Darwin ?? Origin of the species was published in 1859 AD, so do we call that year 0, in which case we’re in 149 ?? It’s a big change….but not one I’d rule out !!
Rog
August 10th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
There is an atheistic description of “BC” as “Before Common Era”, which oddly enough i heard from an RE teacher. Dates after that simply have no suffix at all
August 11th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Christmas is our midwinter festival. I wouldn’t want to lose that. Can’t Muslims celebrate the birth of Mohammed then, too? After all, it isn’t Jesus’ birthday.
I like a spring festival too but Easter’s a bit of a pain because it’s a moveable feast. Would be good to tie it down to a specific date in the year. If they want to call that Mo’s birthday then why not! Cancel East and instead have a 2-day holiday called Mo’s birthday in the middle of April each year. That should stir things up a bit!
The Mo petition only has 414 signatures. But I signed the counter petition anyway.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Christmas religious? That may have been its origin, but these days its a secular festival of family togetherness.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
@all:
xmas/easter? Religious holidays my ar..e. thieving christians stole these from pagans and their mid-winter festivals and harvest festivals.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Well, technically, isn’t the UK still a christian country (in that state and church are not completely separate)? I imagine it’s because no-one is entirely bothered by that fact and it hardly affects our day to day affairs. In any case, it’s foolish to increase religiousness in a supposedly modern thinking country.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:07 am
pls remove this pic holy prophet mohamed (alivasallam)
British Muslims are calling on the Prime Minister to make Muhammad’s birthday a National Holiday
happy with this but
pls remove the pic !!!!!!!!!!
March 10th, 2009 at 4:09 am
pls remove this pic holy prophet mohamed (alivasallam)s pic
pls remove the pic !!!!!!!!!!
March 10th, 2009 at 10:02 am
No, no, no Mirzan! This is an ATHEIST site, and we will not be constrained by the foolish religious sensitivities of others. The picture stays!
March 25th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
what ever mr Barry Duke
u have to take off this pic
we don’t want to know about this site
we are requesting to take off this pic
March 25th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
nasmi fouzil, you can request till you are blue in the face, but the picture will not be removed. If you don’t want to see pictures of Mohammed, don’t come here. You have no rights over the image in question.
It is very rude of you to persist in asking it to be removed.