Tak­ing the road less trav­elled, the learned Mem­ber of the House of Lords UK, In­dar­jit Singh, ably han­dles the sen­si­tive is­sue of death and may­hem that fol­lows vi­o­lence of re­li­gious ter­ror­ism. Al­lud­ing to the fun­da­men­tals of the Sikh ethos, he frames a path to be fol­lowed by com­mu­nity lead­ers and politi­cians, be­yond the rou­tine and per­haps use­less in­ter­faith meet­ings which are high-sound­ing but de­liver lit­tle.

Recent ter­ror­ist out­rages in Man­ches­ter and at Lon­don Bridge re­mind us that we have a lot to learn about the way re­li­gion can be ma­nip­u­lated to lead to the de­lib­er­ate killing of in­no­cents.

What gen­er­ally passes for re­li­gion, is in fact a com­plex mix of su­per­sti­tion, rit­u­als, cul­ture, group his­tory and up­lift­ing eth­i­cal teach­ings. Eth­i­cal teach­ings are ex­tremely easy to state, but dif­fi­cult to live by, and in prac­tice, greater em­pha­sis is of­ten place on cul­ture and rit­u­als, and a per­versely uni­fy­ing be­lief, that God favours our faith over that of oth­ers.

This sort of ar­ro­gance is not new and has been ev­i­dent through­out his­tory. It has led to bar­ri­ers of sup­posed su­pe­ri­or­ity be­tween our dif­fer­ent faiths, and a naïve be­lief that the Cre­ator of all that ex­ists, has favourites, and takes sides re­gard­less of merit. As Guru Nanak re­minded us: “the one God of us all is not the least bit in­ter­ested in our dif­fer­ent re­li­gious la­bels but in what we do to serve our fel­low be­ings.”

“Guru Nanak re­minded us: “the one God of us all is not the least bit in­ter­ested in our dif­fer­ent re­li­gious la­bels but in what we do to serve our fel­low be­ings.””

This big­otry of be­lief, wide­spread and very real, is not con­fined to Is­lam as some would have us be­lieve. In its milder, ‘fac­tion sup­port­ing’ form, it can lead to near racist sen­ti­ments like those by Is­sac Watts, the au­thor of one of my favourite hymns, the beau­ti­ful and mov­ing: ‘O God our help in ages past—’. He also wrote:

O Lord, I as­cribe it not to chance, but to Your Grace

That I was born a Chris­t­ian and not a hea­then

Or a mem­ber of the Jew­ish race

At the time, such sen­ti­ments would not have raised an eye­brow, but in to­day’s more in­ter­de­pen­dent world, they are clearly un­ac­cept­able. The dic­tio­nary de­f­i­n­i­tion of ‘hea­then, is ‘some­one who is not a mem­ber of the Abra­hamic faiths, in­clud­ing Sikhs like me. In In­dia, this sort of re­li­gious and cul­tural su­pe­ri­or­ity led to the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of a large sec­tion of peo­ple as ’un­touch­ables’ and to a com­monly be­lieved su­per­sti­tion that those who left the shores of In­dia, would be pol­luted for ever.

As­sumed su­pe­ri­or­ity, leads some to be­lieve that God looks favourably on those that kill and mur­der in His name, and to hor­ren­dous crimes and sav­agery not only be­tween faiths but within the same faith, and to in­creas­ingly fa­mil­iar ter­ror­ist out­rages in the name of re­li­gion.

“To­day, de­spite all the lip ser­vice to in­ter-faith un­der­stand­ing, there is vir­tu­ally no di­a­logue be­tween faiths to ex­plore and un­der­stand their dif­fer­ent re­li­gious teach­ings, with each re­main­ing smug in as­sumed su­pe­ri­or­ity.”

To­day, de­spite all the lip ser­vice to in­ter-faith un­der­stand­ing, there is vir­tu­ally no di­a­logue be­tween faiths to ex­plore and un­der­stand their dif­fer­ent re­li­gious teach­ings, with each re­main­ing smug in as­sumed su­pe­ri­or­ity.

I have been a mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment funded In­ter Faith Net­work of the UK (IFN) since it was founded in 1987 and of other bod­ies com­mit­ted to re­li­gious di­a­logue. Meet­ings rarely go be­yond pi­ous state­ments, and aca­d­e­mic dis­cus­sions on safe pe­riph­eral con­cerns. The one taboo is ex­plor­ing the teach­ings of sis­ter faiths.

Re­li­gious lead­ers come to­gether, de­plore the vi­o­lence in the world, share tea and samosas, and then go back to their con­gre­ga­tions to preach ex­clu­siv­ity and su­pe­ri­or­ity. I re­mem­ber go­ing on to an in­ter­net web­site on Is­lam and see­ing a then se­nior Vice-Chair of the IFN say­ing ‘I feel sorry for the fol­low­ers of other faiths, as they are all go­ing to hell.’ On an­other oc­ca­sion, I at­tended a meet­ing of the three Faiths Fo­rum where Chris­tians, Jews and Mus­lims were talk­ing in a su­pe­rior way about the three monothe­is­tic faiths. The open­ing line of Sikh scrip­tures is: ‘there is one God of all hu­man­i­ty’.

“To­day, there is an ur­gent need to look at the en­vi­ron­ment in which the can­cer of ter­ror­ism thrives. We will never get any­where un­til we are bold enough to at­tack and break down false bar­ri­ers of ar­ro­gance and su­pe­ri­or­ity be­tween and within dif­fer­ent re­li­gions. If we do this, we will find core eth­i­cal teach­ings have much in com­mon.”

To­day’s re­sponse to ter­ror­ist out­rages is frankly pa­thetic with state­ments like: ‘the vast ma­jor­ity of Mus­lims are de­cent law abid­ing peo­ple’. Of course, they are. So are fol­low­ers of other faiths. But what of smaller num­bers who earnestly be­lieve mur­der­ous ac­tion against fel­low hu­man be­ings is jus­ti­fied by their re­li­gion? State­ments like, ‘we must all stand to­gether, or, that ‘those that seek to di­vide us will never win’, are fine, but they, and pledges to in­crease se­cu­rity and in­tel­li­gence, do noth­ing to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing causes of re­li­gious ter­ror­ism.

To­day, there is an ur­gent need to look at the en­vi­ron­ment in which the can­cer of ter­ror­ism thrives. We will never get any­where un­til we are bold enough to at­tack and break down false bar­ri­ers of ar­ro­gance and su­pe­ri­or­ity be­tween and within dif­fer­ent re­li­gions. If we do this, we will find core eth­i­cal teach­ings have much in com­mon. We will also find can­cer­ous cul­tural prac­tices that at­tach them­selves to re­li­gion con­don­ing bla­tant dis­crim­i­na­tion against women and oth­ers, who are in any way dif­fer from the norm. Such at­ti­tudes, ques­tion­able even cen­turies ago, have no place in the world of the 21st cen­tury and should be un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously dis­carded. Not easy. It re­quires re­li­gious lead­ers to de­clare that op­pres­sive cul­tural at­ti­tudes, and his­tor­i­cal en­mi­ties em­bed­ded in re­li­gious texts, have no rel­e­vance to the world of to­day.

“If re­li­gions pre­sume to tell us how we should live, move and have our be­ing, they must be open to chal­lenge. Open and hon­est di­a­logue and ques­tion­ing is clearly nec­es­sary to bring light and un­der­stand­ing to the hate filled dark­ness of po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness in which ter­ror­ism breeds and thrives.”

To­day, whether we like it or not, we live in an in­ter­con­nected and in­ter­de­pen­dent world. We can no longer af­ford the uni­fy­ing lux­ury of look­ing down on oth­ers.  The need of the hour is to break down walls of prej­u­dice and false su­pe­ri­or­ity and talk openly and hon­estly about be­liefs and prac­tices that con­cern us. A long over­due spring clean­ing of neg­a­tive be­liefs and prac­tices is ur­gently needed to make re­li­gion more rel­e­vant to the world of to­day.

Sec­u­lar so­ci­ety, which some­times shows an aloof su­pe­ri­or­ity to war­ring re­li­gions, should also en­cour­age more open di­a­logue. With the best of in­ten­tions, we skirt around ques­tion­able be­liefs and prac­tices by us­ing coded cam­ou­flage words to ad­dress symp­toms, rather than look­ing to the un­der­ly­ing causes of vi­o­lence and hate. Words like ‘Is­lamists’(in­sult­ing to Mus­lims), rad­i­calised’, ‘ex­trem­ist’ or ‘fun­da­men­tal­ist’ are loaded eu­phemisms or vague in­nu­en­dos, de­void of real mean­ing. 

The ab­sur­dity of such lan­guage is il­lus­trated by a true story of a visit to my home by two Scot­land Yard of­fi­cers early one Sun­day morn­ing in the mid-80s I had spo­ken out against, now proven, In­dian gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment in mob vi­o­lence against Sikhs, as I have done and con­tinue to do, against the per­se­cu­tion of other mi­nori­ties across the world.  I was asked if I was an ex­trem­ist or a mod­er­ate. I replied, that I was ‘ex­tremely mod­er­ate’. Clearly con­fused, they then asked if I was a fun­da­men­tal­ist. I replied, ‘well I be­lieve in the fun­da­men­tals of Sikh teach­ings like the equal­ity of all hu­man be­ings, gen­der equal­ity, con­cern for the less for­tu­nate, yes, I sup­pose I am a fun­da­men­tal­ist’!

If re­li­gions pre­sume to tell us how we should live, move and have our be­ing, they must be open to chal­lenge. Open and hon­est di­a­logue and ques­tion­ing is clearly nec­es­sary to bring light and un­der­stand­ing to the hate filled dark­ness of po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness in which ter­ror­ism breeds and thrives. The same open­ness will help bring valu­able un­der­ly­ing eth­i­cal guid­ance, the essence of true re­li­gion, back to the fore in help­ing us all  work for a bet­ter, fairer and safer world.