Living with Religious Diversity

Sonia Sikka, Bindu Puri, Lori G. Beaman

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138639720
• eBook ISBN: 9781317370987
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Looking beyond exclusively state-oriented solutions to the management of religious diversity, this book explores ways of fostering respectful, non-violent and welcoming social relations among religious communities. It examines the question of how to balance religious diversity, individual rights and freedoms with a common national identity and moral consensus. The essays discuss the interface between state and civil society in 'secular' countries and look at case studies from the the West and India. They study themes such as religious education, religious diversity, pluralism, inter-religious relations and exchanges, dalits and religion, and issues arising from the lived experience of religious diversity in various countries. The volume asserts that if religious violence crosses borders, so do ideas about how to live together peacefully, theological reflection on pluralism, and lived practices of friendship across the boundaries of religious identity-groupings.

Bringing together interdisciplinary scholarship from across the world, the book will interest scholars and students of philosophy, religious studies, political science, sociology and history.

Part I
Negotiating Difference in Practice

1
Religious other or Religious Inferior?

LINDA WOODHEAD

The academic debate about religious diversity, and how Western and other societies deal with it, is now extensive – and often rather ‘flat’. By ‘flat’ I don’t just mean boring – though it can be – I mean overly abstract, and insufficiently attentive to the contours of inequality. The language of ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’, which is privileged in this discussion, can have the unfortunate effect of making it seem that people of different religious and non-religious persuasions meet to discuss their ‘cultural differences’ on a level playing field. This problem is bound up with the abstract and theoretical way in which discussion of the governance and negotiation of religious diversity is often conducted. Whilst this is appropriate for legal and political approaches looking at the issue from ‘top down’, it is important also to take account of case studies of how difference is actually negotiated on the ground – including in the vast mass of interactions which are in some sense resolved before they ever come to the attention of a judge or legislator.

Here I want to suggest that taking the micro- as well as the macro-levels of society seriously while looking at religious diversity makes it easier to be watchful for the power differentials which are always operative in such situations. The most obvious differential is that between religious majorities and minorities locally, nationally and sometimes transnationally. Most talk about the ‘accommodation’ of difference that has as its backdrop this differential, for it is a religious majority which has to do the accommodating when that is posed as a problem; religious minorities are constantly adjusting themselves to fit in with the norms of the majority, but that is not normally discussed as ‘accommodation’, since it does not constitute a ‘problem’ for the majority. As well as religious majority–minority differentials, other intersectional inequalities are often at work in religious encounters, including those of class, gender and race. And then there are the less generalizable negotiations of face-to-face ‘dignifying’ or ‘putting down’ at play in such situations – often better captured by the novelist or film-maker than the academic scholar, but not wholly outside the latter’s purview.

Before offering some concrete examples of the kind of approach I am advocating, let me thank Lori Beaman for inviting me to do so and, more importantly, for exemplifying the kind of approach I am trying to commend. Through the large Canadian research initiative on religious diversity which she leads, Professor Beaman has done more than anyone to encourage this sort of work. In her own writing, her attention to the contours of particular cases – including those in the court room – has encouraged others to think similarly (Beaman, 2008). Her refusal to discuss diversity without also mentioning equality, and her careful dissection of apparently neutral language about ‘cultural symbols’ and ‘accommodation’ to reveal the ways in which they mask privilege, is a provocation (Beaman, 2012: 101–38). It is because of her that I will now discuss a small selection of cases of religious diversity from the large British research programme, the Arts and Humanities Research Council Religion and Society Programme, which I directed between 2007 and 2013, as well as from my own research, including that undertaken in connection with an European Union (EU) project looking at how Muslim dress is dealt with in different European countries (Rosenberger and Sauer, 2011).

The importance of taking power relations, including majority–minority relations, seriously in discussions of ‘difference’ is apparent in the simple fact that religious minorities are likely to face the most serious difficulties in countries with large, settled (for many generations) and fairly sedentary national majorities who have clear ethnic and religious identities. This obviously helps to explain why Europe has more of a ‘problem’ with minorities than countries formed by relatively recent migrations, like the USA, Canada or Singapore, or by more long-standing diversity, like India. It also helps explain why some countries – like Denmark – which have large and very homogenous ethno-religious majorities have more of a problem in integrating minority religious communities than others even within Europe. The difficulty is exacerbated where the minority, as in the case of Muslims in Europe, is both sizeable and lower in power and status than the majority, both in terms of socio-economic status, and because of having a history as colonial subjects. Here an intersection of inequalities act together and are further exacerbated when the minority has a clear and assertive religious identity, even to the extent of resorting to terrorist violence. In such situations, a cycle of reaction and counter-reaction, of identity-rejection and identity-assertion can begin to operate, drawing in both individuals and whole communities.

Let me start to explore these issues with a research project from the Religion and Society Programme led by Navtej Purewal, which studied sacred shrines and their uses in the Punjab region today, but using the boundaries of pre-independence Punjab before it was divided between Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India (Purewal and Kalra, 2011). One striking finding is how many of these shrines continue to enjoy sacred status and shared usage by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs of various hues, and how many sacred songs and other practices remain common to them all. Yet on both sides of the border, particularly in Pakistan, there are regular attempts to cleanse the sites of mixed popular practices and to privilege the practices of a purified majority religion. Such attempts are made both by agents of the state, including the police and army, and by agents of religion, including priests and other guardians of orthodoxy. There are regular clear-outs. Yet people keep returning, like a tide rolling back in, colonizing these spaces for popular practices, time after time. The dimension of gender and class is clear too; often it is women and people of the lower classes who recolonize the space, only to be ejected by men of higher standing.

As with this case study, it strikes me that the idea of ‘religious traditions’ or ‘world religions’, as highly differentiated from one another, separated by clear boundaries, teachings and practices – and, therefore, prone to problems of encounter – is one which is most often defended by religious and political elites who have interests in preserving religio-political differences. By contrast, the everyday realities of religion lived by ordinary people are often much more diverse, mixed and ‘confused’ – and hence less subject to ‘problems’ of encounter. Certainly, there are counter-examples, as in the case of minorities in positions of injustice or insecurity who come under pressure to bind and define and differentiate their religious identities in order to secure them. Nevertheless, research like Purewal’s reminds us that the idea that religions are always clear and distinct from one another, and hence inevitably subject to problems of ‘difference’, may itself be a construct which serves some people’s view of religion more than others.

Turning now to the United Kingdom (UK), we come to a context in which religious diversity is much less deep-seated than in India. With the exception of Jewish citizens, Britain had little experience of dealing with religious minorities ‘at home’ until after the Second World War, and the largest of Britain’s religious minority populations, Muslims from former colonies (most of whom have full British citizenship), has only grown to around five per cent of the population in the twenty-first century.

Rather than beginning with an example of Muslim minority encounter, however, let me begin with the case of Lilian Ladele, a black Christian Pentecostal woman, whose controversial desire to manifest her religious belief became the subject of a long-running legal dispute which has only recently concluded. Ladele was employed as a registrar of marriages in a civil registry office in London prior to the UK passing legislation to allow civil partnerships between people of the same sex in 2004. After the legislation was passed, Ladele told colleagues that she could not, in good conscience, conduct civil ceremonies for gay people because it offended her Christian conviction that sexual relations should only take place between married heterosexual couples. At first, an amicable solution was arrived at; other members of staff would stand in for her to conduct such ceremonies, whilst she in return would take on some of their duties.

Thus far, a solution had been arrived at without recourse to law. In 2006, however, the UK introduced a new equality law which afforded protection against discrimination not only on existing grounds of gender and ethnicity but also on the grounds of disability, age, religion and sexual orientation. One result is that cases of alleged discrimination against religious people, which would previously have been settled out of court and in the local context in which they arose (whether satisfactorily or not), can now be taken instead to a tribunal hearing. And so it turned out with Lilian Ladele. Her refusal to treat same-sex couples led to her being harassed by some colleagues who disagreed with her stance, and thence to difficulties with her employer. In the end she resigned, or was forced to resign, and took her case to an employment tribunal, arguing that she had been discriminated against because of her religious commitments.

Ladele’s case ended up going right through the courts – first to an employment tribunal which upheld her claim, and then to an appeal court, where she lost. In the meantime, conservative Christian opinion in Britain was mobilizing, partly in a direct response to the introduction of equality law. A number of organizations like ‘Christian Concern’ came into being at around this time (2008–10), with the intention of highlighting and supporting the cases of individuals whose religious freedom they believed to be threatened. They supported Ladele in taking her case to the highest court of all, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Four cases of alleged infringement of religious freedom in Britain were considered together by this court in 2013. On three of them, including Ladele, the court found no reason to overturn the domestic decisions (on one, concerning an employee’s right to wear a cross, the court found against the UK). However, there was a dissenting opinion in relation to Ladele, which argued that the case involved a matter of conscience, and that

instead of practising the tolerance and the ‘dignity for all’ it preached, the Borough of Islington [Ladele’s employer] pursued the doctrinaire line, the road of obsessive political correctness. It effectively sought to force the applicant to act against her conscience or face the extreme penalty of dismissal.¹

So Ladele v Islington Council is interesting for a number of reasons. One is that it is a case in which the arguments for and against are rather evenly balanced, with merit on both sides. In Ladele’s favour, she trained as a registrar before civil partnerships were introduced, so they were a new and unexpected part of her duties. She has a right to hold her beliefs, and her conscience – which here was simply a desire to sit on her hands and do nothing – should be respected. Moreover, because there were other people available to conduct the ceremonies, no harm was done to gay or lesbian people, and an apparently amicable solution had been reached with which all parties should have been happy. On the other side of the argument, however, a law had been passed which prohibited discrimination against people on grounds of their sexuality. Ladele is a public servant and, like anyone else, she is required to act in accordance with the law. The fact that a person disagrees with a law is no defence; whilst they can campaign for a change in the law, they cannot break the law. So it was proportionate to dismiss Ladele if she could not carry out duties which are an important part of her role.

The case is also interesting because it illustrates the difference the law can make in the negotiation of religious difference. Had there been no anti-discrimination law, the negotiated local solution would probably not have been challenged. That might have been a better outcome, since Ladele’s conscientious objections would have been respected and no gay couples would have been harmed. However, the mere existence of the law probably influenced those who felt they could complain against Ladele (no one disputes she was bullied), and she and the complainants now had a ‘higher’ forum in which they could negotiate their differences. Is that a better situation? If real harm were being done to anyone in this situation, it surely is. What happened in practice, however, was that a campaigning group ‘used’ the case of Ladele to highlight their concern that conservative Christian opinion is being ignored in the ‘liberal’ UK, and that Christians are being ‘persecuted’. So the law becomes a stage for wider religious and political campaigning, not merely a means to work out the justice of a particular case.

Finally, the case is interesting because of the many power relations in play. Ladele is a female member of a black Pentecostal Church and holds opinions about homosexuality which are objectionable to majority liberal opinion. In other words, she belongs to a religious minority whose identity-difference is heightened by its opposition to mainstream secular and liberal Christian opinion. Does this mean that there is more reason to be careful to protect her rights, including the right to express religious opinions which many people view as homophobic? Or does it mean that someone with views at odds with those of the majority must bear some cost for acting against a settled view which has been enacted in law? And what about the rights of gay and lesbian people, who would also claim to be a minority, have historically been victimized – even if many now have a higher status than someone like Lilian Ladele in terms of class, wealth and ethnicity? There are no simple answers, and the issues are further complicated by the fact that Ladele’s case is championed by more wealthy and powerful, often male and white, conservative Christians, who have their own reasons for wishing to uphold norms of heterosexual sexuality and the traditional family.

Let me turn next to a case from my own research into the wearing of hijab (head-covering) and niqab (face-covering) in the UK. The broader issue (which the EU project, of which this work was a part, was exploring) is why the wearing of such dress, even full face-covering, has been relatively easily accommodated in a few European countries, including the UK, but outlawed in others. In the course of exploring this topic I interviewed a young Muslim barrister, Aisha Alvi, whose personal story is part of the wider narrative of how hijab-wearing was negotiated into mainstream British life in the late 1980s (Hadj-Abdou and Woodhead, 2011: 150–76).

Aisha and her sister had been pupils at Altrincham Grammar School near Manchester – a state school with a high academic reputation. They wore hijab to class despite the fact that it violated the school’s dress code. The school objected, and after negotiations with the headteacher broke down, the girls were suspended. ‘We went home’, Aisha told me, ‘and we just thought, “this is wrong!”’ You know, ‘we love hijab and we want to wear hijab!’ They were teenage girls; this was their rebellion, as well as their piety. Far from being coerced by male members of the family, it seems that their father told the girls to be sensible and do what the school required. But Aisha and her sister felt this was a matter of faith and freedom; so they decided to defy the school and go to class wearing hijab.

Because this was the first case of its kind in Britain, it attracted media attention. Soon there were camera crews camped outside the girls’ house, waiting for them to go to school and be ejected each day. This was the point, Aisha explained, when the dispute began to turn. ‘It was an out-of-court battle won by the media’, she later said. The school was in the limelight for the wrong reasons, not for their usual academic reputation, but for being intolerant of Islam. As the case was publicized, the Alvi sisters won support from the Commission for Racial Equality (a government body), the National Union of Teachers, the Jewish Gazette and the Manchester Council of Mosques. The pendulum was beginning to swing in their favour. Eventually, the headteacher and governing body backed down, and the sisters were allowed to add hijab to their uniform. From then on, the issue ceased to be controversial in Britain, even though fuller covering of the face and body did provoke a few disputes. Nevertheless, hijab, niqab, jilbab and burqa are common sights in British cities, and there has never been any serious pressure to ban them.

I include this example because I was struck by Aisha Alvi’s self-aware acknowledgement of just how important her family’s socio-economic status and educational background was in this controversy. ‘We were articulate, middle-class English girls, from a good school’, she said, ‘and that made it much easier’, She ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• PART I NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCE IN PRACTICE
• PART II RELIGION AND CASTE
• PART III RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
• PART IV INTERROGATING LIBERAL SOLUTIONS