The Fall and Rise of Religion
This was published in the June edition of EMEL Magazine (apologies for the delay in posting it up).
Religion is not important; not in the daily life of almost three quarters of the British public. The French exhibit similar levels of irreligiosity. By contrast, the Muslim populations in both countries say that religion is important to almost 70% of them. Can this vast gulf in the belief of the importance of religion ever be overcome? Will Muslims along with other faith groups follow the wider public into religious oblivion? Or will the believers be able to persuade the public of the value of religion, and if so, how will they do it?
In May 2009, Gallup published the Coexist Index, designed to measure global attitudes toward people from different faith traditions. Spanning 27 countries across 4 continents, the report gave special focus to attitudes and perceptions among Muslims and the general public in France, Germany and the UK about issues of coexistence, integration, values, identity and radicalisation.
Religion is not important in the daily lives of the French and the British, and there is an indication that the general public's view of religion is that religion itself is not of value. The UK, France and Norway, the three countries that came bottom of in rating the importance of religion in daily life, also showed lower ratings on two related issues: whether 'religious faiths make a positive contribution to society' and on the indicator of whether they had 'learned something positive from a person of another faith' in the last year. It seems they are becoming less and less respectful and impressed by religion.
There was a time in the near past when it was enough to point to something as condoned or recommended by religion to gain approval and understanding. Now, adding the label 'religious' seems a hindrance rather than a positive attribute. No wonder then that Muslims have gained little sympathy when they have stated that they have found certain books, cartoons and other incidences to be offensive. Religion itself no longer carries inherent respect. In fact, there is a palpable fear of religion, particularly visible in the UK where 26% of the public felt that people of different religious practices threatened their way of life.
Muslims, like others to whom religion is important, need to think carefully about how to express their religious values to the wider public, and how to convey how dear those values are to them. At the moment, the methods and language used do not seem to be working, and Muslims see themselves quite differently to how the wider public see them. 82% of British Muslims thought that Muslims were loyal to the UK. That figure fell to 36% amongst the British public.
Of course the fear-mongering whipped up in the media and by the far right must take a great deal of blame for this mistrust. They must be held accountable for the constant and lie-laden coverage of Muslims and for whipping up a frenzy of phobia and hatred. What the data also doesn't indicate is whether this level of mistrust applies to other faith groups too, although my suspicion is it would be at significantly reduced levels, if at all.
Working with the mainstream media, politicians and policy-makers is essential in changing widespread opinion, and reducing this chasm of misunderstanding. However, there are other clues in the research as to how Muslims can make proactive change.
One of them is getting involved in civic society. Muslims polled significantly lower than the general public in France, Germany and the UK on whether volunteering in organisations serving the public was important. Shockingly, in the UK only 24% of Muslims versus 64% of the public felt this was important, the lowest across all three countries. If Muslims don't invest in the public sphere then on a purely selfish level they will not weave themselves into the fabric of society. But this is not about being selfish: alongside belief in the Creator, a Muslim's purpose is to serve other human beings and work towards social justice. Showing disregard for involvement in public organisations ought to be anathema to Muslims.
Muslims need to step up fully to the civic engagement and responsibility that are part of their faith heritage. They need to be engaged more in these activities - not just as much as their public counterparts, but more so. This is because they are people to whom religion is a part of daily life; and religion is about making a positive contribution not only to your own daily life, but to the lives of those around you.
Religion is not important; not in the daily life of almost three quarters of the British public. The French exhibit similar levels of irreligiosity. By contrast, the Muslim populations in both countries say that religion is important to almost 70% of them. Can this vast gulf in the belief of the importance of religion ever be overcome? Will Muslims along with other faith groups follow the wider public into religious oblivion? Or will the believers be able to persuade the public of the value of religion, and if so, how will they do it?
In May 2009, Gallup published the Coexist Index, designed to measure global attitudes toward people from different faith traditions. Spanning 27 countries across 4 continents, the report gave special focus to attitudes and perceptions among Muslims and the general public in France, Germany and the UK about issues of coexistence, integration, values, identity and radicalisation.
Religion is not important in the daily lives of the French and the British, and there is an indication that the general public's view of religion is that religion itself is not of value. The UK, France and Norway, the three countries that came bottom of in rating the importance of religion in daily life, also showed lower ratings on two related issues: whether 'religious faiths make a positive contribution to society' and on the indicator of whether they had 'learned something positive from a person of another faith' in the last year. It seems they are becoming less and less respectful and impressed by religion.
There was a time in the near past when it was enough to point to something as condoned or recommended by religion to gain approval and understanding. Now, adding the label 'religious' seems a hindrance rather than a positive attribute. No wonder then that Muslims have gained little sympathy when they have stated that they have found certain books, cartoons and other incidences to be offensive. Religion itself no longer carries inherent respect. In fact, there is a palpable fear of religion, particularly visible in the UK where 26% of the public felt that people of different religious practices threatened their way of life.
Muslims, like others to whom religion is important, need to think carefully about how to express their religious values to the wider public, and how to convey how dear those values are to them. At the moment, the methods and language used do not seem to be working, and Muslims see themselves quite differently to how the wider public see them. 82% of British Muslims thought that Muslims were loyal to the UK. That figure fell to 36% amongst the British public.
Of course the fear-mongering whipped up in the media and by the far right must take a great deal of blame for this mistrust. They must be held accountable for the constant and lie-laden coverage of Muslims and for whipping up a frenzy of phobia and hatred. What the data also doesn't indicate is whether this level of mistrust applies to other faith groups too, although my suspicion is it would be at significantly reduced levels, if at all.
Working with the mainstream media, politicians and policy-makers is essential in changing widespread opinion, and reducing this chasm of misunderstanding. However, there are other clues in the research as to how Muslims can make proactive change.
One of them is getting involved in civic society. Muslims polled significantly lower than the general public in France, Germany and the UK on whether volunteering in organisations serving the public was important. Shockingly, in the UK only 24% of Muslims versus 64% of the public felt this was important, the lowest across all three countries. If Muslims don't invest in the public sphere then on a purely selfish level they will not weave themselves into the fabric of society. But this is not about being selfish: alongside belief in the Creator, a Muslim's purpose is to serve other human beings and work towards social justice. Showing disregard for involvement in public organisations ought to be anathema to Muslims.
Muslims need to step up fully to the civic engagement and responsibility that are part of their faith heritage. They need to be engaged more in these activities - not just as much as their public counterparts, but more so. This is because they are people to whom religion is a part of daily life; and religion is about making a positive contribution not only to your own daily life, but to the lives of those around you.
Labels: comment, EMEL, faith, Integration, Islam, religion, spirit21
posted by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at 15:20
4 Comments:
Good calculation you have described through out the world. SKFacademy(Muslim community center) is working for Muslims in USA for good Muslims behavior to tell people that religion is important part of our life.
A holistic education with cosmic understanding is definitely the way to go...
This raises some interesting points, I would like to give some comments on how I see Muslims as part of my community and would be interested for any Muslims reading to comment, I will use 2 examples.
I am currently studying at university and have noticed that all of the Muslims (probably about 30-40) in my group always sit together. If the lecture is boring, they will leave at the break, not a case of some leaving and some staying, they will either stay as a group or leave as a group. Similarly they are the only group not to participate in friendly football matches or other contests (such as Hindu v Sikh matches etc). This may not reflect of loyalty to the UK, but does present an impression of wanting to be insular or seperate and may well account for why non Muslims see them as possibly disloyal or perhaps as having more loyalty to their own kind.
The second example regards recruiting for the Taleban and other groups that oppose Western armies in Afghanistan. Without getting into the politics / ethics of that war, many of the recruits will no doubt claim that they are going to fight out of loyalty to Islam, but it is a simple fact that most of the people they will be attacking / killing are not western soldiers but Afghan soldiers - i.e. other Muslims. And the fact that Afghan soldiers will be opposing them suggests that there are a good many Muslims who don't want them there. So, this begs the quesstion, do they go there out of loyalty to Islam itself, or for other reasons relating to internal power struggles and politics within Islam. My own view is that if this sort of action is seen as loyalty to a religion then it is mistaken, and that when you adjust for this the comparison of numbers of loyal followers between Islam and other religions may be a lot closer.
Your example of the group at university sounds exactly that - a group dynamic where people who feel an affinity to each other start hanging out and showing crowd behaviour. In this sense it's probably no different to other groups that hang out together, it's just that they may be more visible because of perhaps the way they look or the language they employ. I am wary of drawing the conclusion that it is because they are Muslim that they behave in this way, because the symptoms you describe are fairly ordinary signs of group-behaviour. Having said all of that, I do feel that those who do not circulate amongst a variety of audiences - particularly at university where the opportunity to meet a diverse range of people is at its optimum - are really missing out, and are disadvantaging themselves from the enormous experiences that are presenting themselves.
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