Creating a Multi-faith Prayer Space
In 2002 this university appointed a new chaplain as a replacement for his predecessor, who was moving to a new role. At the time the university was unsure if it wanted a replacement, partly because of misgivings about his role. As the new chaplain recalls, “I was treated with a high degree of suspicion when I started, and a lot of academic staff were quite hostile.” He was asked to perform a multi-faith role, but found the role hard to manage—until, that is, the university’s Islamic Society began to make requests for a prayer room. This allowed the different parties to meet, as he explains:
I think the student union probably took it on in 2004/05 as their campaign and I think it was probably ’05 that the college agreed to it. I can’t quite remember and it took a long time to actually happen. But the great thing about that was I was able to be involved in the kind of specifications for it, and so the different religious societies and other groups representing the college did send representatives to be on that committee and that brought people [into contact, so they] actually met each other.
The decision was made to not set aside a prayer room specifically for Muslims, but to create a nondenominational prayer room. That opened in 2007, and is now used regularly by the Catholic Society, the Christian Union, the Baha’i Society and others:
The Christian union does use it and some Jewish students use it, and Muslim students use it, so people have got used to being around each other—so much so that when there’s some times when the Christian union are sort of, not in their full meeting but preparing for their full meeting, Muslim students are happy to say their prayers while Christians are praying in another part of the room, which is a pretty rare thing isn’t it?
The running of the room has not been plain sailing. There have been rumours (untrue) that women are not permitted into the room. The Catholic Society has expressed frustration at territory being “marked out,” with some of the artefacts not being, as the Catholic Deacon comments “put back in the nice and the right place.” the Sufi Society have felt they have been treated a bit coldly by the Islamic Society from time to time. But, as the current president of the Sufi Society notes, the space has allowed them to resolve their differences:
[T]here’s a bit of a hierarchy there…. [But] there’s been a lot of positive dialogue with ISoc members as well, there are these misconceptions, a few misunderstandings about different practice. But once we talk about it and we explain where we’re coming from, then when you do explain they find out, okay, it comes from the same roots and, you know, it’s perfectly plausible and we’ve got a pretty good relationship with them thereafter. So a lot of positive dialogue has come out of it, so I’d say it’s been definitely more positive than negative in any way.
