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I have just been reading this article with interest. It discusses clashes between different religions, and between religion and secularism, mainly on the subject of physical objects. For those who don't know my background, I was raised Jewish and practised for some years until realising a few years ago that I am an atheist, at which point I stopped attending synagogue as I don't like religious hypocrisy. I believe in freedom of expression including freedom to practise a religion, but I also believe that religions shouldn't get a Get Out Of Jail Free card when it comes to human rights, and these two beliefs can conflict with each other until the cows come home. My Jewish background will always be with me and it does colour my attitudes. For example, like other Jews I really don't like proselytisation. Some people might see it as leading lost souls to God. I see all its history of destroying cultures, forcing people into hiding, fuelling violence, encouraging bigotry.
For the examples given in that article, I agree with some and disagree with others. If Malay Christians really have been using the term Allah for centuries, and surely that shouldn't be too difficult to establish, then I see no reason why they shouldn't continue to do so. If they're deliberately borrowing the word now as part of an attempt to proselytise, much as the Romans did, then it would be more tactful for them to refrain, although legally they can do what they want. I see no problem with minarets as long as they obey any local laws about skylines or what have you, and personally I welcome seeing the spires of mosques as well as the spires of churches. If nothing else, it sends out a hopeful signal of multiculturalism in a city. I can't for the life of me see how the traditional architecture of a place of worship could be primarily political, and if you judge purely on aesthetic grounds then we could do with a lot more architecture this elegant. Banning the construction of inadequately-funded decaying concrete monsters, such as the local university here has always gone for, would be more like it.
When it comes to crucifixes in Italian schools, I am all for removing them. I had no idea that it was a legal requirement for them to be present, and I am horrified. It might be a tradition, but it's a religious tradition rather than one that applies to all Italians, and there are plenty of churches and private homes where crucifixes may adorn the walls quite happily. I'm not just responding to this on the theoretical basis that religions should not be imposed on non-members, it's an emotional issue as well. Do these people arguing that crucifixes aren't really Catholic know what it is like to go to stay with someone, be shown to your bedroom, and find a crucifix or picture of Jesus looming over the bed? It sends out a very simple message, loud and clear: this is what you are expected to conform to, and if you don't then you're not welcome here. You are an intruder, a heretic. It causes fear of anti-Semitic attacks, and trust me, those are still common enough for us to fear them. I've been lucky that the worst I've experienced has been verbal abuse, but there's been plenty of that from childhood on and there have been occasions where I've been afraid that it would develop into physical violence. And quite apart from all of this, a crucifix is a symbol of painful death and if it doesn't carry religious significance for you then it's frankly rather a depressing thing to have staring you in the face. Putting these in public places that are secular in nature reinforces the message and makes it the status quo. And no, I don't want to see the Ten Commandments in courtrooms either, particularly since biblical laws are the last things we want to be followed. There's that nice one about how any woman raped in a town should be put to death, for instance. We need to move away from the equation of morality with religion, just as we need to stop measuring the worth of a society by how many couples pair-bond for life.
I don't like it when I go to the middle of town in December and have to pass an enormous nativity display in the main shopping street. I think it's inappropriate and it makes a huge propotion of Edinburgh's inhabitants feel like outsiders. I went to a primary school where literally half the kids were Jewish, and we still did nativity plays. I felt confused and uncomfortable with them at the time. Looking back, I'm furious that we were made to do this, because it is a method of inculcating young children with an unwanted religion, teaching them a religious story as if it were fact and teaching them that this is what they should believe, not to mention that teaching them that Christianity is what they will have to fit in with. It's better than the other primary school my parents looked at, though, which had a Jewish quota. At secondary school, about a third of the school was Jewish and there was also a large Asian component, mostly Indian. I believed at the time that Christians were actually a minority, though I may have been wrong. Mondays and Fridays were general assemblies, when we'd sing the hymns that didn't mention Jesus and the headmistress would say snootily, "Those of you who will, say with me the Lord's Prayer." The pressure to join in this Christian prayer was so strong that many of the strict Orthodox Jewish girls would join in. On Wednesdays we'd split into Jewish assembly and Christian assembly, and the girls who were neither Jewish nor Christian could choose which to go for. They most often tagged along to the Jewish assemblies as they were more relaxed, although I now wonder how comfortable they felt with Jewish prayers. The Christian assemblies got the main hall, the head of music playing the organ for their hymns, proper organisation. I went along to one once because a cellist friend of mine was performing in two movements from Bachianas Brasileiras, and was amazed at the quality of the assembly and the fact that they had musical performances of this nature. The Jewish assembly was plonked in a gym and was taken informally by the schoolgirls, with the most formal part being a unified muttering of the Shema at the end.
I've also been singing in choirs since the age of nine, and a huge chunk of choral music is religious. I remember angsting a bit about whether I should sing Christmas carols when I was nine, as I really didn't feel comfortable with them. I eventually decided that I'd sing them if it was for musical purposes and not if it was for religious purposes, and this served me fairly well. (My mother got round the problem of school hymns by singing everything except the word "Jesus".) If you truly want to avoid Christian music, you can't be a vocal musician and you'll likely run into trouble as an orchestral one. I'm used to it, and Bach will reconcile you to an awful lot, but I've always felt it was a pity that the beautiful and haunting musical tradition of Judaism has never been allowed to develop past the point where it's astonishing if you find the odd bit of music written down. Oral traditions may be great in some ways, but in a dwindling community they get lost, the music gets corrupted or forgotten, and you can't build much on a melody when it's unaccompanied (there's a common Jewish prejudice against organs or pianos because they allegedly "sound churchy"), half of the congregation is singing in another key, and the other half is singing a different tune altogether. The head of music at my school did make an effort to represent non-Christian sacred music, even with our annual oratorios. One year we sang Tippett's humanist oratorio A Child of Our Time, and another year we sang Mendelssohn's Elijah, which deals with events from the Hebrew Bible. Like several other composers, Mendelssohn was born a Jew but converted to Christianity for social and professional reasons, though this didn't stop his music from being banned and his statue from being destroyed by the Nazis a century later. Nice tradition we've got there.
The last lines of the BBC article are,
But even without court rulings some Italian Christians suspect that long-established traditions are under threat by the changing atmosphere.
Among the casualties, they complain that schools are abandoning nativity plays for fear of offending people from other faiths.
Yes, Mr Unbiased Reporter, nativity plays actually do offend people from other faiths, and you can stop implying that they're making a fuss about nothing. Moving nativity plays from secular schools to church groups will not harm the Christians and it will make the non-Christians a lot happier and safer. Forcing one religion upon all the children in a country is what leads to children telling other children that they're going to hell because they don't believe in the right God, that they're evil. It leads to the children who don't belong to the dominant religion feeling out of place, that they have no self-worth, that their moral system is not acceptable, that they are barred from entering the establishment because that belongs to the dominant religion. It's the non-Christians who are "under threat" and "casualties" here, not the Christians. Religion should be a choice. It should also be about joy and community, not about oppression.
For the examples given in that article, I agree with some and disagree with others. If Malay Christians really have been using the term Allah for centuries, and surely that shouldn't be too difficult to establish, then I see no reason why they shouldn't continue to do so. If they're deliberately borrowing the word now as part of an attempt to proselytise, much as the Romans did, then it would be more tactful for them to refrain, although legally they can do what they want. I see no problem with minarets as long as they obey any local laws about skylines or what have you, and personally I welcome seeing the spires of mosques as well as the spires of churches. If nothing else, it sends out a hopeful signal of multiculturalism in a city. I can't for the life of me see how the traditional architecture of a place of worship could be primarily political, and if you judge purely on aesthetic grounds then we could do with a lot more architecture this elegant. Banning the construction of inadequately-funded decaying concrete monsters, such as the local university here has always gone for, would be more like it.
When it comes to crucifixes in Italian schools, I am all for removing them. I had no idea that it was a legal requirement for them to be present, and I am horrified. It might be a tradition, but it's a religious tradition rather than one that applies to all Italians, and there are plenty of churches and private homes where crucifixes may adorn the walls quite happily. I'm not just responding to this on the theoretical basis that religions should not be imposed on non-members, it's an emotional issue as well. Do these people arguing that crucifixes aren't really Catholic know what it is like to go to stay with someone, be shown to your bedroom, and find a crucifix or picture of Jesus looming over the bed? It sends out a very simple message, loud and clear: this is what you are expected to conform to, and if you don't then you're not welcome here. You are an intruder, a heretic. It causes fear of anti-Semitic attacks, and trust me, those are still common enough for us to fear them. I've been lucky that the worst I've experienced has been verbal abuse, but there's been plenty of that from childhood on and there have been occasions where I've been afraid that it would develop into physical violence. And quite apart from all of this, a crucifix is a symbol of painful death and if it doesn't carry religious significance for you then it's frankly rather a depressing thing to have staring you in the face. Putting these in public places that are secular in nature reinforces the message and makes it the status quo. And no, I don't want to see the Ten Commandments in courtrooms either, particularly since biblical laws are the last things we want to be followed. There's that nice one about how any woman raped in a town should be put to death, for instance. We need to move away from the equation of morality with religion, just as we need to stop measuring the worth of a society by how many couples pair-bond for life.
I don't like it when I go to the middle of town in December and have to pass an enormous nativity display in the main shopping street. I think it's inappropriate and it makes a huge propotion of Edinburgh's inhabitants feel like outsiders. I went to a primary school where literally half the kids were Jewish, and we still did nativity plays. I felt confused and uncomfortable with them at the time. Looking back, I'm furious that we were made to do this, because it is a method of inculcating young children with an unwanted religion, teaching them a religious story as if it were fact and teaching them that this is what they should believe, not to mention that teaching them that Christianity is what they will have to fit in with. It's better than the other primary school my parents looked at, though, which had a Jewish quota. At secondary school, about a third of the school was Jewish and there was also a large Asian component, mostly Indian. I believed at the time that Christians were actually a minority, though I may have been wrong. Mondays and Fridays were general assemblies, when we'd sing the hymns that didn't mention Jesus and the headmistress would say snootily, "Those of you who will, say with me the Lord's Prayer." The pressure to join in this Christian prayer was so strong that many of the strict Orthodox Jewish girls would join in. On Wednesdays we'd split into Jewish assembly and Christian assembly, and the girls who were neither Jewish nor Christian could choose which to go for. They most often tagged along to the Jewish assemblies as they were more relaxed, although I now wonder how comfortable they felt with Jewish prayers. The Christian assemblies got the main hall, the head of music playing the organ for their hymns, proper organisation. I went along to one once because a cellist friend of mine was performing in two movements from Bachianas Brasileiras, and was amazed at the quality of the assembly and the fact that they had musical performances of this nature. The Jewish assembly was plonked in a gym and was taken informally by the schoolgirls, with the most formal part being a unified muttering of the Shema at the end.
I've also been singing in choirs since the age of nine, and a huge chunk of choral music is religious. I remember angsting a bit about whether I should sing Christmas carols when I was nine, as I really didn't feel comfortable with them. I eventually decided that I'd sing them if it was for musical purposes and not if it was for religious purposes, and this served me fairly well. (My mother got round the problem of school hymns by singing everything except the word "Jesus".) If you truly want to avoid Christian music, you can't be a vocal musician and you'll likely run into trouble as an orchestral one. I'm used to it, and Bach will reconcile you to an awful lot, but I've always felt it was a pity that the beautiful and haunting musical tradition of Judaism has never been allowed to develop past the point where it's astonishing if you find the odd bit of music written down. Oral traditions may be great in some ways, but in a dwindling community they get lost, the music gets corrupted or forgotten, and you can't build much on a melody when it's unaccompanied (there's a common Jewish prejudice against organs or pianos because they allegedly "sound churchy"), half of the congregation is singing in another key, and the other half is singing a different tune altogether. The head of music at my school did make an effort to represent non-Christian sacred music, even with our annual oratorios. One year we sang Tippett's humanist oratorio A Child of Our Time, and another year we sang Mendelssohn's Elijah, which deals with events from the Hebrew Bible. Like several other composers, Mendelssohn was born a Jew but converted to Christianity for social and professional reasons, though this didn't stop his music from being banned and his statue from being destroyed by the Nazis a century later. Nice tradition we've got there.
The last lines of the BBC article are,
But even without court rulings some Italian Christians suspect that long-established traditions are under threat by the changing atmosphere.
Among the casualties, they complain that schools are abandoning nativity plays for fear of offending people from other faiths.
Yes, Mr Unbiased Reporter, nativity plays actually do offend people from other faiths, and you can stop implying that they're making a fuss about nothing. Moving nativity plays from secular schools to church groups will not harm the Christians and it will make the non-Christians a lot happier and safer. Forcing one religion upon all the children in a country is what leads to children telling other children that they're going to hell because they don't believe in the right God, that they're evil. It leads to the children who don't belong to the dominant religion feeling out of place, that they have no self-worth, that their moral system is not acceptable, that they are barred from entering the establishment because that belongs to the dominant religion. It's the non-Christians who are "under threat" and "casualties" here, not the Christians. Religion should be a choice. It should also be about joy and community, not about oppression.
