Talking about Religion
By and large, we found university students keen to discuss religious faith, and to get the questions it raises out in the open:
“I find that it’s a bit frustrating sometimes that people are scared to have very frank and honest discussions about religions and how religions have been placed with different cultures as well, because there is always this fear you are going to be accused of being racist, Islamophobic or anything.”
(Undergraduate student, north of England, atheist)
(Undergraduate student, north of England, atheist)
“Yes, I think a discussion where both views are involved is very important, not only, you know, the “cultural” but the religious views as well, because that way we can see how it works together.”
(Undergraduate student, north of England, Muslim)
(Undergraduate student, north of England, Muslim)
This is a perception shared by some university staff too:
“I think it’s the confidence that [...] is more needed, the ability for people to know themselves and to have the confidence to relate to difference in a way that [...] has a level of civility, but also a level of honesty where possible… For a while I’ve felt that we haven’t worked hard enough to think of the changing demographic nature of our students and how we actually don’t just talk about celebrating diversity as an empty rhetoric, but we actually work at sharing diversity.”
(Member of staff, north of England)
(Member of staff, north of England)
However, many staff and students remain highly ambivalent about the issue. Some have concerns about how the subject can be broached within a university setting:
“[Religion is] hugely important, a heck of a lot of people in the world are religious one way or another, and I think to pretend that it doesn’t have a massive effect on the socio-political, economic interactions of the world, you know it’d be… Yeah, I think it plays a very big role. But how does it get into the curriculum? [L]ooking at, you know, the … social relationships that occur in religious organisations and all that is very important but I think somehow I feel that it doesn’t actually touch on what religion is from the view of the practitioner; it doesn’t touch on it.”
(Undergraduate student, London, no religious affiliation)
(Undergraduate student, London, no religious affiliation)
In some cases, concerns emerge about the difficulties of bridging the divide between scientific and religious ways of looking at life:
“There are a lot of drawbacks to this approach—in the sense that if you want to debate, in particular, evolution, then the Islamic scholar must have a background in biology, otherwise they’re going to be blown away by the biology. At the same time, the evolutionist has to have a knowledge in religion, otherwise he’s going to dig a hole for himself when he’s talking about religion. So there are a lot of flaws in that approach.”
(Undergraduate student, north of England, Muslim)
(Undergraduate student, north of England, Muslim)
