Klass, ras, etnicitet eller tro?

När jag var student på IMER, Malmö Högskola, diskuterade lärare och elever om det är "klass" eller "ras" (med "ras" menades hudfärg, snarare än etnicitet) som är den primära kategorin för att förstå samhället. Race first eller Class first. Få betvivlade just då och där möjligheten att det inte var någon av dem. Frågan om religion var ytterst marginell. Och få kunde då, i mitten/slutet av 90-talet, ana att religionen skulle göra en så stark comeback. I islams blodbesudlade fotspår försöker kristendomen återta förlorad mark och i Storbritannien gör judendomen sig till åtlöje i en infekterad strid om religiösa friskolor. Där är inte frågan om ras eller klass det viktigaste, utan striden står mellan de som menar att judendom bygger på tro eller blodsband.

The New York Times rapporterar:

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts.

Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application.

That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

Alltså. I Storbritannien får man inte diskriminera på grund av ras eller etnicitet, men däremot får man diskriminera på grund av religion. Domstolen tar ställning och menar att skolan gjort sig skyldig till etnisk diskriminering, medan skolan menar att det handlar om laglig religiös diskriminering. I Storbritannien har de därmed tagit ställning till vem som är jude - den som tror på judendomen, inte den som fötts av en judisk mamma.