- Religion, belief and faith identities UAL website
When I read through the religion, belief and faith identities UAL website, it gives me a lot of thinking and reflection about how to respect the different backgrounds of the students in the religions, belief and faith. Historically, religion has played an important role in the economic history. People’s different religions largely influenced for the economic growth, and the ‘deep roots’ of larger economic behaviours differences between regions and religious communities. As the different religion and belief people hold may also result in the different economic decision-making or consumption behaviours. Normally the economic history in fashion business, we are more looking at the stories from the initial theory innovated countries-the US and the UK. According to the textbook, the consumption behaviours more talking about the neutral people, which assumed they do not have any beliefs. This may largely ignore the multicultural background of the students. For example, the arbitrage behaviours are commonly observed in the markets in the Western countries however it is forbidden in the Islamic countries as they have the different religions and beliefs to the Western countries. As we talk about the teaching at the UAL, it actually advocates us as lecturers to think about how to create a safe space for students to freely speaking out their thoughts and actively engage the students in the class activities with more respecting to their cultural backgrounds.
2. Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education
By reading the paper in religion in Britain, the idea of religion as a public good is quite crucial to the society, and also in the education system.
- Western European moderate secularism
- Religion as a public good
The importance to view the religion as a public good could bring in the ethical voice, wellbeing, and it is the cultural heritage. From time to time, we could see a lot of arts and designs, the original intuition is from the bible, from the stories of religion. In the economic theory, it also exists the Islamic economic and finance theories, which were originally developed based on the religions. As in the education system, to view the religion as a public good, it could build a social capital and make it thrive with the cultural. Rather than strict separation, we could think about more in how the religion impacts for the theory development and how we could recognize this heritage as public good to foster students to be more open-minded and creative in the academia.
- Religion and dissent in universities
As it mentioned in the article, “free speech is an important value for universities.” However, this concept is challenged because of the tension and concerns about the conflicts happened in the ‘extremist’. In this case, people show the intolerance and feel anxiety about the religious speech and prevent the voice from the religious from being heard. The biggest challenge for the university to face is the conflict between the tension relations in two different religions in the university. However, as an educator, if we are fear of talking about or acting to adopt the different religions in the university, if we simply ignorance about the differences, nor motivating students actively to secure harmony among the different religions, the misunderstanding or intolerance may even become more worse in the university.
Based on the reading article, my question is, how we could create a more harmony among the different religions’ groups in the university, and how we could make our efforts to motivate students to promote more knowledge about the religions and understand others by their own? Is there something that we can do as tutors in the UAL?
3. Creed Kawame Anthony Appiah-Mistaken Identities
Listening to the talk by Kwame, it inspires me about many conscious biases in the religions which most of us influenced and became bias by the social media nowadays. When Kwame talked about the religions, he joked about his parents are harmony as the beneficial of variety which they joined the different churches on every Sunday. After that, I was inspired by what he talked about the fact that the Pakistan which the Muslim religious country empirically had more female presidents than the US. The conscious bias from the religion was originally from the social media or the news we read, for example, how the women in Islam was dominant by men. This reminds us how the conscious bias began when we ignored the truth with the fact and attached the ‘tags’ to the different people with different faith. How we could reduce the unconscious or conscious bias generated from what we learned from our resources especially we are as the educators in the university. It is quite important to review and reflect from us right now and to think about how to cultivate the students to be more critical thinking about the knowledge they gained inside and outside the classroom.
4. SoN: Expansion the conversation
In the expansion the conversation, the diverse in the religions would thrive the creativity among the students. At the same time, UAL also has Religion and Belief Champion, to response the different religions and create the harmony among the different religious groups of students at the university. The university also provides the counselling services to the students. It is quite interesting to learn even though we are talking about different religions in the university, it also transfers and increase creativity among the academies. Even though in the conversation, it argued the different religion to increase the creativity but more based on the individual level. I think it is the tutor playing the role to encourage students and to show the supportive if they show they would like to be more creative initiated from their religions.
Bibliography
Appiah, K. A. (2016). ‘Mistaken Identities: Creed’ The Reith Lectures [Podcast]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43ds
Shades of Noir (2017). Expansion the conversation. Higher Power: Religion, Faith, Spirituality and Belief. pp. 29-p33. Available at: https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/higher_power
UAL (2022). Religion, Belief and Faith identities in learning and teaching. Available at: https://religiousliteracy.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
Modood. T, Calhoun.C. (2015). Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education. Leadership Foundations for Higher Education. Available at: 6379_lfhe_stimulus_paper_-_modood_calhoun_32pp.pdf (tariqmodood.com)