Kwame Anthony Appiah (2014) makes the case for not being so definitive in what we see religion as: “there is no such thing as religion to be good or bad” (Appiah, 2014). He argues this because there is no definition of religion which satisfies all aspects of religion (or faith). For example, globally we would somewhat all agree that Buddhism is a religion, and yet the Dalai Lama (the spiritual leader of the Gelug school Tibetan Buddhism) often jokes that he does not believe in ‘god’, and is one of the worlds leading atheists (ibid.). Appiah then uses an example of his Asante heritage, that certain aspects of their spiritual practices could be included or counted as faith or religion, going further to suggest that belief in certain things offers a spiritual lens but it doesn’t fall into the neat categorisation of religion when referring the Abrahamic religions (ibid.). This calms me, and I refer to my own spiritual beliefs for reason: I belief that there are things at work within and outside our world, and at times I drift between agnosticism, atheism, with a pagan lens. I mention this as there is a comfort in realising that to be spiritual does not mean I am religious or ‘of faith’, (both personal classifications I would staunchly disagree with).
Jawad (2022) argues for faith-based accommodations for sporting events, particularly within their LSE academic setting. Which are of course very important, yet what strikes me, which I find both interesting and intriguing, is that to be inclusive of certain aspects of particular faiths — for example women only spaces for sport (Jawad, 2022) — they need to be both intentionally and literally exclusive to those who embody a certain protected identify (namely in this example gender or faith, or both). Which on the surface I find almost a paradox. This, as I understand it, is where the Inclusive Mosque Initiative’s (2016) intersectional work comes in where they are trying to break down barriers and offer potential paths from some of the intersectional challenges faced by those who are of faith, but also intersect with other identities such as sexuality, gender, or race.
I wonder how might faith based accommodations work within the arts HE environment — one example could be to avoid possible trigger warnings, such as the obvious nude life drawing, or inform students ahead of time so they can decide. As explored in the intervention, I am interested by visual references within lessons — how do we enable ourselves to be acutely aware of the immensely various beliefs of our global student body and what imperceivable impacts an unintentional trigger might have? Simply, I think it would be wise to be aim to learn and minimise triggers as much as possible, and I reference a statement from the first IRL session on the IP Unit: defend not the intention, but accept the impact. When accepting the responsibility of the impact, learn, reflect, and apologise if any harm is caused.
References
Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Youtube [Online]. 16 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY (Accessed: June 23, 2024).
Inclusive Mosque Initiative (2016) Our Mission [Online] Available at: https://inclusivemosque.org/our-mission/
Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online]. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2022/09/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/
National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) (2018) Kimberlé Crenshaw: What is Intersectionality? Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViDtnfQ9FHc (Accessed: June 22, 2024).
Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp779–800.
2 replies on “Blog Post 02: Faith”
I think this idea of faith-based accommodation in terms of curricula and content is really interesting, such as your idea to inform students about content ahead of sessions. Were any other changes/ accommodations that you thought of?
thanks for your comments, its interesting you pick up on this! This position is also reflected in your writing about ways of reiterating and signposting and wayfaring students to some of the resources available, such as the multi-faith spaces, and the Choudrey (2016) intersectional resources. In terms of teaching materials and curricula I think it might be interesting to open a discussion about the history of the institution and its inherent colonial past, analysing it with one of the Blog 03 resources through the lens of “optical diversity” (Garrett, 2024)