By Anna Averkiou
The influence and significance of religion on world affairs and how it is reported was the focus of a panel discussion chaired by the broadcaster and journalist Roger Bolton at the Religion Media Festival in north London.
Referring to Pew Research Centre figures that 84 per cent of the world was religious and likely to rise to 90 per cent by 2050, Mr Bolton started by asking guests about some of the widely believed myths and misunderstandings that they think should be debunked.
Sheetal Parmar, a former BBC World Service and Asian News Network reporter, said India was not a poor country, and despite the pockets of deprivation, was far more of a superpower than it was often given credit for in terms of gross domestic product, employment and manufacturing.
“Divisions between groups of people in India are not always religious — although we are led to believe that because of its history,” she said. “However, there are nuances which are often ignored by the media. India is not just about Bollywood and yoga. There is far more than those two cultural icons.”
Muddassar Ahmed runs the Unitas Communications agency and is founder of the Concordia Forum, a diverse community of Muslim leaders in a variety of fields including business, finance, law, politics, arts and culture, sports and entertainment, religion and academia. It organised the G20 interfaith summit in Bali last year and, more recently, an interfaith conference in Riyadh, Saud Arabia.
“The number of misconceptions that journalists had about the rapid change of pace in Saudi Arabia was fascinating,” he said.
Chine McDonald, director of the Christian think tank Theos, was asked about the widely held assumption that Christianity was a declining force in the world. She said there was some truth in a decline in religious affiliation in the UK, but globally most people have some kind of religious faith, so the myth is that the world is secular.
“When Theos started in the early 2000s, the narrative was around the ‘new atheists’. You would have thought that by 2023, religion would have been pushed out of the public sphere, privatised; but we haven’t seen that,” she said.
She also debunked the myths that religion could exist solely in private life and did not leak out into political life; and that the decline in religious affiliation was because science had eradicated it. She agreed that a significant number of scientists tended to be religious and quoted the evolutionary psychologist, Robin Dunbar, who said physicists tended to be religious because they operated in a world where there was an unknown and the idea of mystery.
She said there was another myth that if you didn’t have or want an affiliation to a particular religion, you were an atheist and that everything other than religion was neutral. “We all bring our own kind of world views belief baggage. Nobody stands nowhere,” she said.
Michael Wegier, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said there were an estimated 270,000 Jews in the UK. However, detailed data showed that most people, including Jews, had no idea how many there were and thought three to four million.
“That tells you something about how myths and stereotypes have some danger. Numbers have declined since a peak of 450,000 about 30 years ago, but are actually starting to rise again and we’re seeing a change in the demographic picture largely due to fertility rates within the Orthodox community.
“Globally, Jews, like most other people in the West and much of the developing world are having fewer and fewer children. Interestingly, the state of Israel and Orthodox Jews generally around the world buck that trend,” he said.
He described a second important myth that characterises Judaism as only a religion. “There are many, many Jewish people who do not think of themselves as a religion but think of themselves as an ethnicity. My own preferred word is a people. We are a people, which has an ethnic dimension, a national dimension and Jewish religious dimension; but it’s perfectly possible to be 100 per cent Jewish, have zero faith in God and not be religious. “
Mr Wegier was also critical of the way British media often portrayed Jews only with pictures as ultra-Orthodox men. “Ultra-Orthodox men are 100 per cent a legitimate portrayal of the British Jewish community, but it represents about 15 per cent of British Jewry or Ultra-Orthodox people in general. And there’s been some quite good work on that recently trying to encourage media to be a little bit more broad-minded about how Jews are represented.”
He added that the Jewish Board of Deputies represented and was the voice of the wide British Jewish community, had many deputies who were secular and would not describe themselves in any way as religious.
Mr Bolton asked the panel about where they thought religion had a significant impact or effect on world events.
Ms Parmar explained that, constitutionally, India was a secular country, but even before the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in India there was a sense that Hinduism was being pushed aside. That could be political as the Congress Party had been in power for many years and enacted the secularisation of India. The BJP’s whole ethos had been to bring Hinduism to the fore, she said.
“I was aware that British and US Indians were saying Islam was getting too much attention for them. What about Hinduism? There were lots of things going on politically, socially, and economically where it was felt there was a need for Hinduism to be brought forward, to have a national identity that was much more Hindu. The BJP has already strengthened its Hindu base because its ideology is Hindu and Hindutva … and wholeheartedly believes India should be Hindu.”
Mr Bolton suggested that could not happen ultimately without terrible conflict. Although the British had a large level of responsibility, hatreds between faiths went back before the British were in India.
“Nuances often aren’t discussed about divisions between Hindu Sikhs and Muslims. On the whole, there was a level of acceptance and they lived side by side. This was exploited by the British Raj and we are seeing the effects of that still. I’m not going to be that person that says it is all down to the British Raj but I will say that the British Raj had a lot to do with the divisions and how they were cemented,” Ms Parmar said.
She added that India’s massive soft power, Bollywood, was a very developed industry that created billions of dollars around the world. Since the last two elections it had been infiltrated by government powers and influencers actively producing propaganda through films about specific moments in Indian history. A lot of money seemed to be available for certain types of films, but funding dried up when you wanted to do anything challenging.
Mr Ahmed discussed the issues around the current lack of understanding about religion among journalists reporting of the Arab and Middle Eastern world. He cited citing the recently re-elected Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan’s enduring popularity, China’s suppression of the Uyghurs and how it played out, costing it vital support internationally, to not understanding that in Indonesia there was a Muslim movement that has 120 million members, was in government and was running and calling shots in the country, and that 20 per cent of Russia was Muslim.
He accused some leaders of being unimaginative in not sending a dedicated ambassador to the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, second only to the United Nations in size. Russia, China and the United States all have representation there.
“From a British perspective, it’s very important to understand how a lot of people in places like the Foreign Office feel that we have completely not understood the role of religion in world affairs. The enduring power of religion in the Muslim world, and its ability to shape politics is something that I feel, as a country, we need to do a much better job of engaging with and understanding.”
Mr Ahmed said Muslims in Britain, the US and Europe, entirely secular but with a religious background, were shaping policy, media and politics in interesting ways. And through the Concordia Forum they were pushing on issues of joint concern in a transatlantic way that had not been done before. He agreed that Britain was coming out of the “all Muslims are terrorists” narrative with a lot more positive stories emerging.
“This is leading to a sense of confidence and a sense of belonging that we’re going to see rocket over the next few decades. What’s interesting for me is how Muslims are redefining their own identity in fascinating ways in the West and are contributing to culture, politics, music and film and this in turn is creating an exportable identity,” he said.
Mr Wegier talked about the intense debates and complexities of issues around Israel and the current demonstrations against what is seen as an attack on Israel’s democracy. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people had taken to the streets over the past five months showed it was about the future soul if Israel and it was an enormous story that was largely being missed.
He gave context to the growth in Israel of Orthodoxy — still under 20 per cent of the population. Israel was facing an enormous challenge as to how to integrate the Ultra-Orthodox into both the workforce and the army. Most important is the education system as large numbers of Orthodox children receive only a rudimentary education.
Mr Wegier said he understood the nervousness and difficulty for British journalists and people generally in understanding the line between criticising Israel and antisemitism.
“There is no problem whatsoever, if you wish to criticise the actions of the Israeli government, as you would the actions of any other country in the world. Israelis criticise the Israeli government and anyone should.
“The problem comes when instead of criticising the government, you either criticise the very idea of the state of Israel, or people fall into classic antisemitic tropes about Jewish power. An example is the rock star Roger Waters talking about people being controlled by their paymasters in Tel Aviv. Those things are profoundly antisemitic and should be avoided at all point.
“Please understand, the overwhelming majority of British Jews are profoundly connected to and committed to Israel, because we read Jewish history and we understand what happened to the Jewish people when there was not a Jewish homeland. That is a non-negotiable for the overwhelming majority of British Jews. What that state should look like? Should it be criticised? Those things are entirely open questions as they should be to any liberal democratic society”, he concluded.
The discussion turned to Christianity’s influence in the world. Ms McDonald observed that UK had an established church, as seen at the King’s coronation, and they dress and look a particular way.
She said: “This kind of narrative about Christianity being white and European tends to creep out into quite a lot of religious coverage. Actually, there’s lots of diversity and vibrancy when it comes to looking at religion and the global picture.”
Mr Bolton asked about the central importance of Christianity in the United States and whether it would be possible for someone to be elected US president if they declared they were an atheist.
“Not yet,” Ms McDonald replied. “The US might be the exception in terms of secularisation and that kind of separation of religion, and politics. That moment will come because the US, as well as the UK, has seen a massive decline in Christian affiliation, although something like 88 per cent of US politicians will say that they are a Christian because they have to. It’s obviously strategic because they know without those votes they won’t get elected.”
She added that the intertwining of nationalism and Christianity had become so ingrained within American culture that it was probably more important than the actual religion itself. She concluded that as they sought election, political leaders around the world needed the votes of religious communities — and that was part of why religion had such an influence.
The panel talked about the unreported impact of faith communities around the world in all aspects of society and daily life. Ms Parmar reported that 70 per cent of Sikh youth in India’s Punjab state had been affected by drugs because of the massive opium trade. Mr Ahmed talked about how freedom of belief was a powerful issue for faith communities most active in foreign affairs and the unreported story was the role of emerging western faith-inspired communities that were influencing foreign policy and spending money to shape things as far afield as India.
Ms McDonald added: “The ways in which we tell stories about religion globally is insufficient. We need to think much more creatively about what religion is, as lots of lots of people are doing (including the BBC) about what faith looks like in the world and how we tell stories about religion and its impact globally. We need to understand that religious belief isn’t just about a belief that exists in your head — it has an impact on how we think human flourishing should play out.”
Mr Wegier said British Jews were pretty tired of talking about antisemitism. That didn’t mean the matter should not continue to be taken very seriously; the media did a really good job at representing the concerns of the Jewish community around antisemitism, especially over the Jeremy Corbyn years. But in fact, there was so much exciting stuff going on in the British Jewish community today, around religion, culture, environmentalism, support for refugees from the Ukraine and elsewhere.
“This is a golden age of the British Jewish community,” he said. “And although it might not be headline news, the story of British Jews is so much more than antisemitism or worrying about what’s going on in Israel. They are important issues, so please don’t think I’m minimalising them; but there is so much more that the media could do to tell the story of the diversity, the richness, the vitality of our community. That’s what I would love to see more of in the media.”
