War, Peace and Faith: The Ambiguous Role of Religion in 21st Century Conflict

Tonight Sy from Sy's Prints and I attended a fascinating talk on the role of religion in 21st century conflict. The talk was held at The Royal Commonwealth Society in conjunction with the University of Sussex and International Alert. The talk was skilfully chaired by Dan Smith of International Alert and focused on the impact of religion and resolution of conflict.

Increasing Secularisation?
Dr Fabio Petito (University of Sussex) began the discussion by noting that religion is becoming more dominant in politics in contrast to the once prevailing beliefs that secularism would prevail as society became more developed. There seems to be three possible routes of this increasing dominance: the post-Cold War politics of identity in the context of collapsing Cold War states; the rise of religious terrorism; and the view popularised by Samuel Huntington (but unacceptable to Dr Petito) that religion would increasingly and inherently lead to conflict in the post-Cold War period.

Religious Literacy
Aaqil Ahmed of the BBC noted that when people are threatened, they often revert to religion but that there was never really a point in time when vast numbers of people were especially knowledgable about their religion. This lead to one of the key themes that emerged during the evening. Rama Mani (Centre for International Studies) noted that the version of religion most frequently attached to violent ideologies is a reduced version, one that is not especially characterised by a high degree of religious literacy. There comes a point where religion may be the only remaining source of power for the weak.

Religion vs Power
A related theme was whether there wasn't a contradiction in that most religions preach peace but many practice war? Dr Petito notes that we need to ask what kind of religiosity is more violent? Weak, fragile, uncertain religious identity taught not by traditional means such as the family leads to violence. Rama Mani agreed, noting that those who actively seek coherence and the essence of religion reach more peaceful means. Mention was made of the role of the church in achieving peace in Columbia and South Africa and how it seems that when people mobilise, they reach a more authentic, peaceful solution in contrast to the religious elite who often cuddle up to power.

Ms Mani concluded that religion must give up power and embrace justice, equality and critical enquiry in order to play a role in conflict resolution.

Religion and the Shared Experience
An interesting thread that the Guardian's Andrew Brown brought to the discussion is that in order to hold people together around moral values, you need a narrative or story. This was highlighted by the focus of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the concept of Ubuntu as it was applied to emphasise the unity of the South African people. Mr Brown also made the interesting point that there are different secularities, each a product of and a mirror image of the prevailing religion at the time.

It was put forward that both religion and secularism are backlashes against prevailing states and that we may well enter a period of increasing secularism again in reaction to current religious extremes. Not only that, but it seems that political conflicts often result in religious solutions (Columbia) just as religious conflicts often lead to political solutions.

It seems clear though that religion cannot simply be dismissed. Dr Petito concluded with the excellent observation that religion brings shared norms and ethics and we must use these a part of the solution.

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Moving Forward with “A Passion to Understand”

If I had to choose to go forward with only one of my blogs and to delete the other two, I would choose A Passion to Understand which is a bit strange seeing as this is the blog I neglect the most. I have justified that neglect somewhat because I am working full time and studying in the evenings and because those studies will eventually enable me to move forward with some of the themes raised in this blog.

I am a couple of months away from obtaining my AAT qualification and will then move to one of the professional qualifications such as CIPFA or ACCA (those are the biggest contenders at the moment).  My dream is to work in a volunteer capacity in emerging or post-conflict economies and to work towards establishing proper governance and accountability in those countries, whether in the private or public sector.

I’m really happy where I work at the moment and my employer is a global forerunner in establishing these programmes so I am unsure whether the volunteer work would be on short term contracts through organisations such as AfID or whether I’d aim for longer term pursuits. In my dreams, I’m working internal audit for international development agencies.

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Upcoming Themes on A Passion to Understand

Despite having a very good reason for neglect, the fact remains that the themes of this blog are very important to me and I wish to continue learning about them and breaking them down in such a way that others can learn about them too. For this reason, I have formed a plan to cover the following themes in the next 6 – 9 months:

The Arab Spring: I will complete my series on A Decade of Conflict Leading up to the Arab Spring with posts on:

• Israel / Hezbollah War in Lebanon (2006)
• Gaza War (2008 – 2009)
• Book review of The Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era by Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren

Apartheid: I will continue my focus on South Africa and Apartheid with posts on:

• The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg
• Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, Johannesburg
• Book review of Soweto: 16 June 1976 by Elsabé Brink, Gandhi Malungane, Steve Lebelo, Dumisane Ntshangase, Sue Krige

This will be followed by a second series later in the year or early next year focusing on Apartheid laws and the violence during the 80s and early 90s.

Former Yugoslavia: I will spend some time focusing on Bosnia this year and the Bosnian War with posts on:

• Impressions of Mostar and Sarajevo
• Book review of Zlata's Diary by Zlata Filipović
• Book review of The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia by Tim Judah (if I can finish it. It is not light reading)

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Get Involved with A Passion to Understand

There are two opportunities to get involved with the blog at the moment.

Interviews: I contact both author and key contact interviews on the blog and am always looking for new people to speak to. Previous interviewees include Mark S. Smith, author of Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling and Dr. Ajaz Khan of Lendwithcare.org. 

If you would like to speak to me about your work, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Write for us: If you would like to contribute to A Passion to Understand, please email me with your topic and I will consider it for inclusion on the blog. This is open to bloggers, activists, key contacts, students and other interested parties and no commercial links will be considered.

Please email me at the address below or contact me on Twitter @APassionBlog.

 

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On Tolerance and Racism

I've tried for the longest time to get my head around the overt racism and race relations in the UK. I find that people will often say the most offensive things to me, mistakenly assuming that because I am South African I will be racist too. My opinion has always been that it is not that people in the UK have become less racist, more tolerant or accepting of others, but that they've learned to hide their views better.

In this article on institutional racism in the police force, Adam Elliott-Cooper seems to make a similar point.

"The ‘unlearning’ of racism and other forms of discrimination is still rather like a primary school teacher instructing a group of pre-adolescents not to swear. The teacher tells the children which words are unacceptable, and that they may be punished if they do not comply. Equality training generally focuses on learning which words relating to race, ethnicity, gender, physical ability or sexual orientation are/are not offensive to the apparently over-sensitive social group(s) to which they relate." - The Voice, "Anti-Racism Has Been Reduced To Politically Correct Exercise"

It seems to me that in light of this, campaigns such as the one to wipe out racism in sports are always going to miss the mark. Don't get me wrong, I think they are fantastic and necessary. However, the lesson people seem to be learning is to tolerate people of other races (or genders or other minorities) until they fall out of line, in which case they are open to abuse. And that abuse almost always takes the form of heightening and focusing on their race, gender or other assumed defining factors.

At the heart of this is the arrogance in thinking that whiteness is the norm, in casting people as "other" and assuming some fictional right to pass such judgements. Surely it is time to abandon the idea of tolerance?

I don't know what the answer is but I have observed something that was present in South Africa but seems to be missing in the UK. I don't know whether it is political correctness, but in my circles in South Africa, we celebrated each others cultures. I worked with Muslims, Hindis, Tamils, Jews, Catholics and Baptists as well as members of the ZCC and NGK. My colleagues spoke Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, English and Afrikaans. We absolutely learned and appreciated religious holidays, cultures, customs in births, deaths, marriages and naming of children. More than anything, this taught me respect and understanding, appreciation and consideration for others.

While I wish this were infinitely more eloquent, my rather long-winded point is that we learned acceptance and an appreciation of other people's race, religion, creed and culture. While that will never erase the power and class differentials in South Africa, while it can never come close to closing the gap created by Apartheid, it seems to me to be a far better starting point than tolerance and implicit transience of that tolerance.

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The 12 Days of Misogyny

It seems that media and advertising agencies worldwide have really gone out of their way this year to contrive the most sexist, misogynistic advertising campaigns. Laura Bates writes for the Independent and explains precisely why it is neither funny nor harmless and above all, why this matters:

"It matters because we are reaching the end of a year in which we have seen what can only be described as a torrent of reports of sexual assaults, paedophilia and abuse going back decades, many of them excused or ignored precisely because of a culture that made light of and normalized such incidents" - The Independent, "FHM, Virgin and Zoo Australia: The 12 Days of Misogyny"

FHM [Photo source: Huff Post UK]

Virgin [Photo source: Telegraph]

Zoo [Photo source: The Independent]

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Volunteering: A (Former) Child’s Perspective of Visitors to the Home

I’ve been following Adam (@travelsofadam) of Travels of Adam on Twitter for some time now and earlier this week, I noticed a conversation between Adam and Sallie (@pandpvolunteer) of People and Places: Responsible Volunteering.  The conversation was about volunteering in orphanages around the world and how to choose volunteer placements responsibly. I shared my experiences of living in a children’s home when I was younger and how there was a constant stream of visitors which made us feel quite violated.  Sallie encouraged me to tell my story and below is my article that was first published as Volunteering: A (Former) Child’s Perspective of Visitors to the Home at the People and Places blog.

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When I was sixteen and my brother eleven, we were taken out of home by social services and put into a group home. Adoption and fostering were not an option because our mother still played an active role in our lives and so I stayed there until I finished school and my brother until he moved back home at the age of fifteen.

My experiences in the home were overwhelmingly positive. I was finally able to get the nourishment, clothing, material and emotional support to finish school. The same charitable trust paid for me to go to university and everything from fees, books, accommodation and pocket money were paid for. A generous donation from an anonymous benefactor also enabled me to purchase my first car and put down a deposit on my first home.

The cycle of poverty was truly broken but that is not why I am talking to you today. I’d like to talk about visitors to the home and the often negative experiences we had of them. Because my gratitude far exceeds my desire to complain, I will frame this in terms of what we can learn about these experiences.

Let me start off by saying that my home had a lot of visitors. The number of children in the home was understandably large in the post-World War II period and many of those people returned to the home as adults with their children and grandchildren. In addition, the committee was comprised of old residents and members of the community were welcome during religious occasions, festivals and special events.

Be careful what you say to vulnerable children and the labels you apply to them. During one festival, a woman I had never seen before was standing with her very young daughter when a bell went off. The child asked what the bell was for and the mother replied that it was to tell the orphans that it was time to eat. Out of all the children in the home at that time, only one was actually an orphan while the rest of us had living but dysfunctional parents. I cannot begin to tell you how offended I was by being called an orphan, so much so that my indignation still feels fresh over 20 years later.

You may well be volunteering in countries where orphans are still prevalent due to war or political upheaval but the message is that you need to be very careful of the labels you apply to vulnerable children, especially as they fight very hard to establish their identity in a group setting.

Be aware that vulnerable children may have difficulty trusting you and respect their boundaries. There were a lot of visitors that used to come and visit us on weekday evenings. Some came with chocolates and sweets, some just came to spend time with us. For the most part we could tolerate regular visitors because we got to know them but for some reason, some of them I liked and some of them I just didn’t. The ones that made me uneasy (and that sense hasn’t diminished over time) were the ones who were too familiar, who did not respect my boundaries or personal space.

What time does tell me is that these particular people were mostly harmless, that they meant well, but back then it made me uncomfortable. One man bought me jewellery for a dance once, because I wasn’t able to purchase it myself. I could never shake the feeling that he expected something back, even though he never asked for it.

As a mature, responsible adult, you have to respect boundaries but most importantly, you have to make the right decisions in terms of what is appropriate behaviour. As an adult, I would say that an adult male buying a teenage girl jewellery isn’t appropriate because of the power dynamic it exposes between them. This is why responsible institutions are so keen to vet visitors and volunteers nowadays.

Respect that children might not want the sanctity of their home broken. Many of the visitors that were brought around the home were potential donors or benefactors (I am told that I met mine, even though I wasn’t told about it at the time). I don’t think I will ever be able to shake the feeling of being an animal in a zoo as people were lead around to stare at us and some were even so bold as to try touch us or hug us. As an adult, I understand that instinct but as a teenager it was simply appalling to me.

Realise that you are a visitor in their home, introduce yourself to the children and even ask permission to enter their space. It is vital that as a responsible adult, you demonstrate to vulnerable children that a home can be safe and it can be theirs.

Be extremely careful about judging children and never, ever play them off against one another. I’m going to tell you about a grave error in judgement made by a professional visitor to our home to demonstrate not only how easy it is but also the harm in doing so. Half way through my stay at the home, our external group therapist left and a new one took his place. My closest friend and I were nervous, uneasy when we met the new therapist and we were horsing around, talking too loudly and being disruptive. Because his background was as an addictions counsellor, he accused us of taking drugs. For the next several weeks we were woken up early each Monday morning in the dead of winter and forced to provide urine samples.

In the meantime, my “drug problem” was blamed for everything from my moodiness to my falling grades and my friend and I were immediately placed in an “us and them” situation. I’m sure you guessed by now that I was most certainly not taking drugs and hadn’t ever done so by that stage in my life. That feeling of being judged, of being accused of something so serious, so wrong, never left me. It took years to shake that feeling of not being good enough and of leaving a bad first impression on people.

Children horse about especially when they feel like they are on display. They also withdraw, sulk, and act out. Be very careful about judging them and especially about doing it publicly.

Be consistent and be a good role model. There was a lady that exploded into the home one day and latched onto a particularly lonely young girl. In no time at all, the girl was spending weekends at her home and there were even plans for her to join their family on holiday. It is clear to me as an adult that the management of the home should have taken a role in managing this woman, her actions and her expectations because all of a sudden, the young girl was summarily dumped back in the home for alleged theft and behaviour problems. The effect on the girl was devastating and it was also extremely unsettling for the rest of us to see.

There is no doubt about it, children in homes have issues. I can tell you from my own experience that they lie, steal, manipulate, make excessive demands and sulk when they don’t get what they want. There is no such thing as unconditional love in their world and they will withhold their love and friendship until they get what they want.

This can apply in any situation too, such as using sweets to get a child to talk to you or giving them gifts. Once again, it comes down to appropriate, balanced behaviour on the part of the adult and ensuring that you do not enter into a manipulative relationship with a vulnerable child.

Furthermore, as a responsible adult, you have to be consistent and you have to be a great role model. These children rarely have the necessary social skills to interact in the world and you cannot respond to them with more confusion and upheaval.

I hope that you have found this helpful, especially if you are considering volunteering in an orphanage or institution abroad. Remember that children are extremely perceptive and intelligent and these points will apply to children no matter where you might travel in the world. As a volunteer you have so much to offer but you are in a position of power and must take responsibility in that role.

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