Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit

The ‘Rushdie Affair’

and

Religious Education

AREIAC 2014

Bradford 1989

• 2014 is the 25th anniversary of the burning of The Satanic Verses

• Bradford became ‘the flash-point for a collision of values of global significance: religion against irreligion, piety against blasphemy, libertarian ideals against exclusive convictions’ (Bowen, 1992, 9).

Consequences

• Two key consequences of the Rushdie Affair: –the development of an Islamic political

identity– an increase in Islamophobia, or anti-

Muslimism.

A view from the Council for Mosques

‘Salman Rushdie has been good for us Muslims’

in the sense that ‘we used to have questions

about who we are and where we are going…

Now we know. We’ve found ourselves as

Muslims.’

(Sher Azam quoted by Kenan Malik, 2010, 28-29).

Identity and Violence

•'…odd presumption that the people of the world can be uniquely categorised according to some singular and overarching system of partitioning.’ •‘None can be taken alone to be the person's identity.’ ( Amartya Sen, 2006, xii)

A more nuanced debate

There is a need to differentiate between:

• the ethnicizaton of religion – Islam becomes an identity marker

•increasing religiosity

•the rise of Islamic fundamentalism

(Samad and Sen 2007, 15).

Islamophobia

‘… a critical defining moment in the

development of non-Muslim/Muslim

relations in Britain’

(Charles Husband and Yunis Alam, 2011, 17).

Addressing Islamophobia

‘There is a naïve and simplifying view that the solution to Islamophobia… is to teach people

about Islam, so they won’t feel that hate or resentment any longer.’

(Robin Richardson, Transcript of the APPG inquiry, 24 February 2014)

What can RE do?

• Identity

• Islamophobia

• Syllabus content, skills and concepts

Identity and RE

• The reification and homogenization of religions

• The socio-political dimensions of religions

• Identity/ies and ways of approaching it/them

An RE perspective on identity?

• Identity seems now to imply membership of a group, through ethnicity, affinity or religion or otherwise. Rather than acknowledging the miraculous privilege of existence as a conscious being… it has reference now to knowing one’s place culturally and historically speaking.

( Marilynne Robinson: 2012, xiii).

Addressing Islamophobia in RE (1)

• Understand Islamophobia as a ‘multilayered ideological construction’ (Husband and Alam, 2011, 126), including Orientalism (Revell 2012)

• Help pupils examine the language of public discourse - ‘fundamentalism’ ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalism’

Addressing Islamophobia in RE (2)

• Understand that media portrayals caricature religious identity as apathetic or fundamentalist (Lee, 1992)

• Help pupils face religious reality: are they encouraged to view Islam through ‘rose-tinted spectacles’? (Robinson, 1992)

Bradford Agreed Syllabus 1996

‘There is a need now people of faith now and in the future to rise above the conflicts of the past, to put aside the heritage of enmity and

narrow-mindedness and co-operate with schools in teaching the need for mutual

acceptance.’

(1996, 1).

Bradford Agreed Syllabus 1996

– It is thematic

– It focuses on commonality as well as difference

– Study units include:

• ‘Religions in Co-operation or Conflict’, with reference

to the Crusades, jihad and Colonialism

• ‘A Community of Many Faiths (a local study)’

Attainment targets

• AT1: understand the potential locally for inter-faith co-operation and conflict

• AT2: – realise that dialogue demands honesty and

commitment to beliefs – develop skills to do with conflict resolution– make reasoned judgements on the value of

different claims

Final question

‘The issue is of the rights of non-European religious and cultural minorities in the context of

a secular hegemony. Is the Enlightenment big enough to legitimise the existence of pre-

Enlightenment religious enthusiasm or can it only exist by suffocating all who failed to be

over-awed by its intellectual brilliance and vision of man?’

(Tariq Modood quoted by Grace Davie, 1994, 65)

References• Bowen, D G (ed) (1992) The Satanic Verses:

Bradford Responds (Bradford, Bradford & Ilkley Community College)

• Bradford Education (1996) Religious Education: Faith in Our Future. Agreed Syllabus 1996 (Bradford, Bradford Education)

• Davie, G (1994) Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without belonging (Oxford, Blackwell)

• Husband, C and Alam, Y (2011) Social Cohesion and Counter-Terrorism: A policy contradiction? (Bristol, The Policy Press)

References

• Malik, K (2010) From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its legacy (London, Atlantic Books)

• Revell, L (2012) Islam and Education: The manipulation and misrepresentation of a religion (Stoke on Trent, Trentham)

• Samad, Y and Sen, K (eds) (2007) Islam in the European Union: Transnationalism, Youth and the War on Terror (Oxford, Oxford University Press)

• Sen, A (2006) Identity and Violence. The illusion of destiny (London, Allen Lane)