Faith Part 3: Case study
In the Stimulus Paper ‘Religion in Higher Education’, Modood and Calhoun identify some of the changes to religion in public life the UK over recent decades. One of the features of this which both authors agree on is the increase in visibility of Islam in society since 9/11 due mainly to politicians, the media and faith groups and charities raising awareness about Islam.[1] Some of the implications of this have been very complex and are mentioned in the Stimulus paper as: increasing importance of Muslim faith among young people; Islam becoming prominent in public affairs; fear of extremism a “major and distorting issue” in which “Muslims are disproportionately targeted”[2] Islam an object of public anxiety. I read the Shades of Noir (SoN) case study in this context, having just read the Stimulus paper previously.
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The SoN case study on faith highlights a situation in which a female, Muslim student of Iranian origin was left feeling “under attack” by her peers in an educational setting. A discussion about artwork which depicted her wearing a hijab spiralled into a situation where prejudiced views, for example, that she must have been forced to wear a hijab and stereotypes of Islamic women as sexually oppressed, were allowed to escalate with the subject of terrorism becoming part of the conversation as well.
There are a range of problems in the case that arose: firstly, a tutor who, in the very first week of term, had declared to her students that she was an atheist without creating an opportunity for her students to discuss or share their own faith beliefs or ideas about religion. For students, lecturers are privileged authority figures who also represent the face of the university for students. From the description of the case, it appears that the tutor declared her view that religions were ‘manmade constructs’ in a hierarchical manner from a position of power enabling her to have ‘the final word’. To make matters worse, this was the first week of term and likely one of the first, if not the first, encounters with this member of staff that her students will have experienced. I would imagine that the student concerned will have found this an intimidating and excluding meeting. In the first week of term most students would probably have been feeling nervous, especially when first meeting their tutor. The statement of the tutor’s atheism, and the manner in which it was delivered to her students, will have set the tone for subsequent discussions.
The situation in the case study further reveals a problem in the handling of the discussion: it failed to interrogate or challenge prejudice and stereotyping when the direction of the discussion was becoming apparent. At this point there was a missed opportunity for a genuine learning experience where media and visual stereotypes could have been explored. If the situation had been handled more skilfully by the tutor, I think an art college environment would be a very good opportunity to do this. Furthermore, a sensitive and adept handling of the discussion could have supported the student in talking about her artwork and the responses of the group and ‘demystify’ their perceptions or unconscious bias. However, the encounter the tutor had with students in the first week of term makes such an approach unlikely, if not impossible, as a very different style of pedagogy was evident in the phrase “left no room for discussion”. Hence the student seems to have been ‘abandoned’ in the discussion by a member of staff who had made her views clear in the very first week. To what extent did this create an atmosphere, or style of teaching, in which the rest of the students felt that it was permissible to talk like this?
The case study includes the information that the discussion “turned very quickly”. It’s possible, in a bustling college setting, that more than one person could have started speaking at once, as well as at speed. The casual informality of studio environments, as opposed to a lecture theatre or seminar room, could have also contributed to laissez faire attitudes on the part of the students as well as the tutor. However, this could have been avoided by the tutor adopting a different style of pedagogy from the outset but also by setting some ‘ground rules’ for meetings such as this, and if this were agreed from the beginning, it could have stopped the situation turning very quickly. I believe there is no harm in a pause during discussion in which everyone has a few moments to think or reflect before speaking.
In other words, my immediate thoughts when reading the case were that a ‘safe space’ had not been created. The resources offered by SoN about how to create a safe space are very useful. Inclusion of a diverse range of artists in a curriculum with the names offered by SoN would help too. My final thoughts on reading the case were: did the tutor ever even know, or come to realise, that the student had been left distressed in this way? Did the student stay on the course? The case, therefore, raises the more general issue of the importance of creating a welcoming environment in which each and every student can feel that they belong.
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The case study also raises serious implications for the college or university institution given that the 2010 Equality Act made religion a protected characteristic as the student in the case study is Muslim. Moreover, there are other intersectional features of the student’s identity: she is also both female and Iranian which add other dimensions to this which also both fall under the categories of a protected characteristics. In the Stimulus paper by Modood and Calhoun, I learnt that in recent years the intertwining of “racial and religious stereotyping in the perception of others” has become a growing issue and is seen “most notably in the phenomenon of Islamophobia”.[3] Or put another way, that Muslims have been “racialised…as if they were a racial group”[4] The paper implicates the media and public discourse in this.
Furthermore, the case study raises the issue of Islamophobia. In a talk late last year, Tariq Modood addressed precisely how Islamophobia might be identified.[5]
Tariq Modood’s 5 tests for determining Islamophobia
Does it stereotype Muslims by assuming they all think the same?
Is it about Muslims or a dialogue with Muslims, which they would wish to join in?
Is mutual learning possible?
Is the language civil and contextually appropriate?
Insincere criticism for ulterior motives?
The subject of Modood’s talk was to distinguish reasonable criticism from Islamophobia and he acknowledges that it is not a litmus test, and that discourse can have a mixed character. Following his 5 tests for the case study I would conclude that this was Islamophobia.
[1] Calhoun, C. & Modood, T. ‘Religion, the public sphere and higher education’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education
[2] Ibid, p. 16
[3] Ibid, p. 11
[4] Ibid. p. 12
[5] Modood, T. Distinguishing Islamophobia from Reasonable Criticism, 19 November 2020 for MEND (Muslim Engagement & Development) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZd-wSUNGnw
Faith Part 1 Religion: orthodoxy or orthopraxy?
“…religious identities so often connect us with some of the very oldest stories we have”.
Kwame Anthony Appiah
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43ds
Kwame Anthony Appiah began the first of his Reith lectures about identity in 2016 with the subject of creed.[1] Creed is a word sometimes used interchangeably with the word faith however Appiah develops his ideas in the talk more specifically by using the term to refer to scriptures as public and authoritative articles of faith. But Appiah also invokes the word “creedal” (credal) in the sense that creed can be enshrined in the traditions, rituals and practices associated with religion as well as sacred texts. These two senses of creed become crucial to the argument that Appiah puts forward in his lecture, that:
“…religion is not, in the first instance, a matter of belief”
Appiah goes on to suggest that every religion has three different aspects: practice in terms of habits and customs; community or fellowship as what is done with religion and finally, beliefs. By distinguishing these aspects of religion, it becomes possible for Appiah to advance his claim that the association of religion with belief, at the expense of these other aspects of religion, mispresents faith, calling it “scriptural determinism”. Indeed, this is what he thinks has happened. On this basis, Appiah makes the distinction between orthodoxy and the lesser-known word orthopraxy, meaning literally ‘right practice’, in other words, he lays emphasis on the rituals of religion instead. So, the central question raised by Appiah’s lecture is whether religion has become a more a matter of orthodoxy than orthopraxy; correct belief or correct practice? Appiah attempts to persuade his audience that this is the case.
Throughout his lecture, Appiah draws attention to the social aspects of identity and religious practices and his starting point in this is his own family heritage. Appiah highlights the intersectional facets of identity which he describes in terms of affiliations relating to nationality, gender, class, race as well as religion. By situating himself in the subject of his lecture, he is able to show the complexities of it as the gay son of a British Anglican mother and a Ghanaian Methodist father. He reflects that, despite his parents differing faiths which “infused their lives” each day, it would be difficult to separate their customs from beliefs.
To support his argument, Appiah refers to a wide range of religions, creeds, traditions and histories: Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, to show how “doctrine is often driven by practice” in society rather than the other way round. He develops this viewpoint by showing through his examples (religious attitudes to homosexuality or women) that religious doctrines change through history as interpretations of them evolve according to changes in society thus allowing them to survive and adapt to the modern world. This line of enquiry leads him to also argue that what characterises fundamentalism (whether in Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish or Muslim religions) is a fixation on there being only one way to interpret sacred texts. This in itself he sees as a relatively new phenomenon in history as a reaction to the advent of the modern world.
Appiah concludes by telling an anecdote about his Methodist father offering the first few drops of alcohol he was to drink to his Ashanti ancestors, something at odds with his Methodist faith yet in keeping with the customs and practices of his community to show the enduring power of the creedal as opposed to creed, stating that,
“…religion becomes more verb than noun: the identity is revealed as an activity not a thing. And it’s in the nature of activities to bring change”.
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The Reith lectures have been long-running annual events since 1948 when they were started as part of the BBC’s public service broadcasting to contribute to the intellectual and cultural life of the county. Appiah’s lecture falls perfectly in line with this and was a personal, anecdotal and yet also a philosophical talk delivered with humour. One of the first things that struck me after listening to it was that, although part of a series about identity and starting by situating his own history and positionality, this first talk was more a statement about religion in society than identity as such.
In presenting his own perspective on religion, he says early on that “we tend to emphasise the details of belief over the shared practices and the communities that buttress religious life”. Who is the “we” that he refers to? Appiah was educated in Britain but lives in New York. The assumption is that he is referring to “we” as him and the British audience for the Reith lectures who likely overlap with the BBC Radio Four demographic: middle-aged and older mostly and I suspect largely white. However, the BBC is listened to around the world, and in a global world, the “we” he invokes is I think actually quite a specific audience not a monolithic mass. Would all British people share his views I wondered?
Listening to the talk through the lens of my own position, for example, as someone white and middle-aged, I wouldn’t agree with his generalisation. My maternal side of the family, the Johnsons, dating back to the eighteenth century, have strong links with the Methodist church since its beginning when a chapel was built in their village; visited by John Wesley himself. The Johnsons had a long history into this century of involvement in the Methodist church until the chapel was closed and my maternal grandmother’s cousin, and mother’s schoolteacher, passed away at 100 years old in 2006.[2] The Johnsons were, by all accounts, pillars of the local community and involved in running both the church and the school and as such their creed also “infused” their daily lives and that of their community but were not dominated by adherence to scriptures instead of the creedal. Religion then has and does shapes communities. I think to make the distinction between “scriptural determinism” and the creedal is somewhat an artificial distinction that wouldn’t be recognised by people of all different faiths. In fact, it seems to me, hard to take the idea of belief out of the equation at all.
Embedded within the many of the rich examples and anecdotes peppered throughout the talk were the relationships between religion, belief, community and culture. Whilst these illustrated well the complexities of the intersections of identities, histories and traditions, I found that it was therefore hard to then accept the more schematic outlines that were made between creed and creedal in his talk. Those distinctions served to draw a line in his talk between religion and religious fundamentalism. Though many listening would probably recognise that religious fundamentalism adheres to strict and singular interpretations of sacred texts, I think it is harder to agree that the customs and practices of religion don’t also play just as much a part of daily life. Appiah himself seems to suggest that once faith is expanded beyond the learning of sacred texts it becomes a wide-ranging matter. One of the issues his talk raised then was to what extent there might be a distinction between religion and belief?
One of the areas of the talk I would have liked to have heard Appiah develop further, especially given the theme of identity, was the fact that religious faith is both a case of personal conviction and identity but also at the same time a shared identity with others. In both instances, religious identity implicates other affiliations to nations and cultures that form and influence identity too. Thinking about this from my own positionality, as a historical materialist, I can see that although Appiah hints at societies shaping religious doctrine (perhaps because this was a general and populist talk) he says little of the political implications of the relationships between religious beliefs, nations, economies and conflict except “…phantom fixities will not help Muslims in this country or their non-Muslim neighbours as they seek together successful forms of cohabitation”. Furthermore, questions of power are not acknowledged in terms of the institutions of religion or who within communities influences the interpretations of religion. The role of the financial and patriarchal dimensions of religions doesn’t get addressed with any nuance.
Finally, the curious thing about the lecture is that, despite making reference to own his own story, he never declares whether he himself has a religious faith!
[1] Appiah, K. A., ‘Mistaken Identities: Creed, Country, Colour, Culture’, Reith Lectures 2016, London School of Economics.
[2] Griffydam Methodist Chapel and Graveyard