By Anna Averkiou
Religious education should be part of the national curriculum but with a rebranding to reflect world views and lived experiences, according to a leading theology and religious studies academic.
Dr Opinderjit Kaur Takhar, president of Theology and Religious Studies UK (TRS UK), told the fifth Religion Media Festival at JW3, north London, that the terms “religious education” or “religious studies”, are outdated and “world views” is a good way forward.
She told of her passion to ensure that the subject is given a degree of seriousness in schools and is part of the national curriculum as not all children across the UK get an equal insight into the various religions around us today.
“‘World views’ encompasses what we want to do in the classroom. We don’t just sit around a table praying to a god or divine being. We actually talk about ethical issues, morality, religion, politics, history … It’s moving away from the textbook and very much focusing on lived experience,” she explained.
It also brings other views and perspectives into the classroom such as humanist, secular or no faith, she added, stressing that the term religions or faith must still be in there or the discipline would be too broad and at risk of being diluted again.
Dr Takhar, who is also director of the Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies at Wolverhampton University, said she was the first president of colour in the history of TRS UK, which showed how much British society had changed.
She said terminology was important regarding how faith groups were represented, particularly in the media; and that in her community there was a continuing dislike of the term “Sikhism”.
“The ‘ism’ on the end of a number of faiths is a very colonial way of looking at faiths — especially those that sit outside of the traditional Abrahamic faiths,” she said.
Responding, the Religion Media Festival host Hannah Scott Joynt asked Dr Opinderjit to explain what the alternative is.
“There is a growing preference to use ‘Sihki’ — which very nicely encompasses what the Sikh faith is all about,” she said. “There is a whole issue around religion or way of life and the Sikh faith actually falls into a ‘darum’, which is a way of life. To refer to me as a religion doesn’t necessarily always work, so we are pushing for more resources that are used in schools and diverse organisations to use the term Sikhi rather than Sikhism.
“It is very important how my community is represented by the media. In 2023 there is still a lot of misunderstanding around the outward identity of Khalsa Sikhs who have taken initiation and therefore required to not cut their hair and to wear a turban and beard.
“The whole mistaken identity of a Sikh is mostly now as a repercussion of 9/11. Images everywhere featured a turban and a beard equals terrorist and that’s still carrying on today.”
She pointed out that the first victim of 9/11, in terms of society, was a Sikh petrol station owner in Arizona who was attacked because of his turban and beard. During the Covid pandemic, she said, Sikhs were almost being forced to trim their beards because of the protective equipment being used and that again came down to a lack of religious literacy.
Dr Takhar condemned the recent report, Does Government Do God, by the government faith adviser Colin Bloom, as damaging to the reputation of the Sikh community and highlighting it as misogynistic and bullying. “I wouldn’t be here as a Sikh woman if my community was a bunch of misogynists and bullies,” she said. “The Sikh faith absolutely puts a female on a total par with a male and there is nothing according to Sikh philosophy and teachings that a woman can’t do physically that a man can.”
She added that the report also introduced a new range of terms such as being “pro-Khalistan” — a separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs — as opposed to Sikh extremism.
“What is particularly worrying to me, as someone who teaches in higher education, is that our students quote from these kinds of reports that present images and representations of a community with a disproportionate amount of time being devoted to so-called Sikh extremism, which Bloom talks about as not being a major issue in the UK.”
She conceded that out of the report’s 22 recommendations, the one about faith literacy was absolutely welcome: not only for the Sikh community, but also for religious literacy on a wider level.
“Those of us who are concerned with how religion is represented in media have been constantly calling for the faith literacy of journalists, and in diverse organisations and schools. Faith literacy should form a part of journalism degrees and journalism qualifications as well so that we can actually move away from that horrible term of ‘tolerance’, which we use again, and again.
“We tolerate somebody because we have to put up with them. However, if we replace that with peaceful coexistence, with understanding and respect it will make British society a much better place. Where that starts is at school level, where we teach children about faith, about belief, about culture that is around them.”
Dr Takhar advocates a world views approach in schools, which also brings in the perspective of other children in our classrooms including those of no faith.
“If I take the Punjabi context, for example, there are many families who sit on the boundaries of defining as both Hindu and Sikh. Those who teach in diverse areas, such as Hounslow and Ealing in London, will have a number of children in their classes who actually sit on those fuzzy boundaries between those different faiths.
“When we try to box faith, identity and belonging into these rigid categories, some of the issues arise in terms of not belonging. Many of the children in the classroom are not actually being able to express what they think and feel.
“Traditionally in the ethics part of religious studies, we would take each one of those six faiths and we would explore what each one has to say about an issue such as abortion. ‘World views’ will also bring in the secular and humanist approaches and different ideas to the main faiths as well.”
She concluded that there was still a lot of misconception around the “world views” approach, but bite-size resources were being produced over the coming months to help with understanding of what it meant.
