YOUR articles (Bryan Appleyard, Is it time to take God out of the state? Focus, last week and Minette Marrin, Let us pray we have an end to faith schools, Comment) are timely. A large proportion of the population is not religious. We are happy to tolerate religious beliefs but please don’t ask us to respect them and do not force them onto us.

We should not pay for faith schools, which discriminate against us and our children, and all state funding for faith schools should cease.

It is morally indefensible to indoctrinate children into a particular faith; state schools should discuss all the main faiths in religious education as well as the moral perspective of non-believers, such as humanists. If Professor Richard Dawkins’s latest book, The God Delusion, were made a part of the RE curriculum I think we would have a more ethical and tolerant society in a generation.

David Keeling
Oxford

FALSE WORSHIP? You are right to raise the debate over religion (Time for a secular state? Editorial). We don’t need it. Religion had its place centuries ago when humans needed “unworldly” explanations for things they didn’t understand. As you say, there are so “many gods”. So, by definition, there cannot be “the one God” that each religion claims as their own.

From there stem the differences, first of belief, then action, then ultimately wars. Apart from the areas where purely tribal conflicts persist, all other conflicts in the world today are religion-driven.

John Chamberlin
Ashbourne, Derbyshire

SECULAR LESSONS: What is so deeply depressing is that the issue has remained unresolved for so long. I have been rereading a Fabian Society pamphlet, Religious Education in State Schools, by Bridget Brophy, published 40 years ago. It argues, very clearly, for the ending of state-funded faith schools, using many of the same arguments as Marrin.

Will Stevens
Bristol

POLITICAL THEOLOGY: The problem of faith schools is in fact one of Islamic schools. Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism etc have been amenable to secularisation and a philosophy where religion is personalised — their adherents and institutions thus sit comfortably with the political positions of liberalism, conservatism, socialism, democracy and capitalism, so integration has not caused problems.

However, Islam is more than a religion or a theology; rather, it is a rising political ideology that is faith-based. This is the cause of the tensions we see in British (and European) societies.

The way forward is not to address individuals (Aishah Azmi) or institutions (schools) but to begin a debate on the values of this society and the Islamic values in order to achieve consensus.

Instead, politicians take the easier route of vilifying the Muslim community.