-“Religion as a public good”.
This made me think of how mosques and Islamic charitable institutions were to the forefront of delivering aid during the pandemic to communities beyond their congregations.
In lieu of adequately funded local public services, religious institutions provide a social safety net- despite being poorly funded themselves. In the case of Islamic institutions, this work went unrecognised by the state- during the pandemic the majority of these institutions did not receive funding or support for their work. They were also responsible for public health messaging around the pandemic; again without support or funding from the state.
Islamic institutions have also been heavily scrutinised by the state through Prevent and held accountable for acts of terrorism. The Didsbury Mosque in Manchester, which functioned as a food bank during the pandemic, was used a “scape-goat” for the Manchester Arena Bombings.
-“Religion is intertwined with race and ethnicity, not only because religion is more a feature of ethnic minorities than of the white British, but also because it can be a feature of minority identities and especially of how minorities are perceived and treated.”
-this was starkly apparent during the pandemic: the disproportionate death toll experienced by ethnic minority groups- could also be mapped onto religious groups. The Muslim community had the highest COVID-19 mortality rates by faith group.
2 responses to “Faith: Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education”
Hi Katherine, I find this a really interesting response to this essay and I agree wholeheartedly.
Two things come to mind for me here – the first is a text I often come back to by political ecologist Andrea Nightingale, who provides a few ways of thinking about the state that I’ve found helpful in the past. Nightingale describes how the boundaries of the state are perpetually being re-negotiated at a range of levels, and uses ‘feminist conceptualisations of power’ to ‘show how the exercise of public authority always contains acceptance and refusals that mean power is rarely simply dominating’ (2018, p. 704). In light of your post here, this leads me to think that there is theoretical work to be done to conceptualise the state in ways that could identify the vital contribution of faith organisations.
The second thought that your post raised for me was a significant blind spot in my own reading. Having had a limited engagement with work that looks at unpaid, often gendered, care and how it is exploited by neoliberal political economies (McGee, 2020), I’ve not encountered, or sought out, texts that outline care from the perspective of faith groups.
McGee, M. (2020) ‘Capitalism’s Care Problem: Some Traces, Fixes, and Patches’. Social Text. 38 (1 (142)), pp. 39–66
Nightingale, A. (2018) ‘The Socioenvironmental State: Political Authority, Subjects, and Transformative Socionatural Change in an Uncertain World’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(4), pp. 688–711.
You made a thought-provoking point about how Muslims are scapegoated, despite the social good and support their communities provided during the pandemic. I also share your discomfort with how the Prevent programme disproportionately targets Muslim students and creates an atmosphere of Islamaphobia (FOSIS, 2020), despite the low numbers of student referrals – 15 in 2018 – to the Prevent rehabilitation programme (Office for Students, 2018). This hostility is at odds with a report which found that 85.6% of non-Muslim students agreed that “The majority of Muslims are good people” (Guest & Scott-Bauman et al., 2020, p.27). The report also reveals that Prevent creates a chilling effect where students and staff fear discussing Islam freely.
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I wonder how we might start creating an atmosphere welcoming our Muslim students. For example, knowing where prayer spaces are on campus (I will make it my priority to find out where these are at LCC – I only know of the general Quiet Space), acknowledging Ramadan (and understanding the mental and physical stresses of this time on their studies, and providing appropriate support)
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Office for Students (2018) Prevent monitoring accountability and data returns 2017-18
Evaluation report. Available at: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/860e26e2-63e7-47eb-84e0-49100788009c/ofs2019_22.pdf
FOSIS (2020) Statement from the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, 16 July. Available at: https://www.fosis.org.uk/news/prevent-report/ (Accessed: 21 July 2023)
Guest, M. and Scott-Baumann, A et al. (2020) Islam and Muslims on UK University Campuses: Perceptions and Challenges. DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.32005.78560.