Inter-Faith week: Leading with humanity

The month of November marks Inter-Faith week, a time to take stock, pause for a moment, strengthen ties between communities of different faiths and celebrate the UK’s religious diversity

 
By Nafisa Nathani

The month of November marks Inter-Faith week, a time to take stock, pause for a moment, strengthen ties between communities of different faiths and celebrate the UK’s religious diversity. This is needed now more than ever, with conflicts abroad becoming a lightning rod in widening social divisions at home. Over the last couple of years, we have endured unprecedented stretches of isolation, unfathomable amounts of grief and a generalised sense of uncertainty. These uncertainties aren’t going away. Young adults are reporting increased rates of loneliness, anxiety, and depression. We are living through an age of immense change, and change creates insecurities that are easily translatable into suspicion and hate. In this world, faith and wisdom can shine as a beacon of light in an increasingly conflicted climate providing a prism for understanding the world today. Now more than ever, do we need to amplify the message of religious tolerance and reconciliation.

There are hundreds of interfaith organisations that now exist throughout Britain, creating friendships across boundaries of faith and ethnic communities. Our great religions celebrate identity in stories, rituals, celebrations, prayers, and redemption. Growing up, my parents ensured I was raised with a steady diet of teachings from poets, moral philosophers and religious leaders including the Aga Khan, Aristotle, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Plato, Rabbi Sacks, Rumi – to name just a few. These great thinkers informed my character and outlook of the world today. Recent times have also taught us to revere not just these great visionaries but also the unsung heroes of our hospitals, schools and local communities who were key in keeping our social fabric together during the pandemic. They remind us that happiness lies in what we give to the world not what we take from it.

Having a religious identity, is one way we can find ourselves at home with the ever changing world today. It is within these identities that we learn to live, love, create communities and cultivate responsibilities. Research shows how affiliation to a religious community is the best predictor of altruism and empathy. When people in a society share a strong moral code there is greater trust, solidarity, collective pride and common purpose. I can think of nothing more important and urgent for all of us right now as a society and industry to work together to create a culture of justice, fairness, kindness, and compassion. In Britain, our religious tolerance and genuine respect for other people’s religious beliefs or lack of them is what Rabbi Sacks called “the dignity of difference”. Our differences are exactly what makes us human and a society that has no room for difference has no room for humanity.

In this age of clashing sound bites, diminishing attention spans, angry voices and polarised politics, tribal warfare is contaminating society. It’s making us forget what really matters in life

In this age of clashing sound bites, diminishing attention spans, angry voices and polarised politics, tribal warfare is contaminating society. It’s making us forget what really matters in life. Families, friends, and communities are all being fractured and poisoned by hostilities fuelled by social media. We live in a time when reacting has become almost too easy and convenient. Rage spreads easily, along with hurt, disappointment, and panic. Information and misinformation seem to flow at the same rate. Our thumbs and tongues become very easy vectors of our fury. Despite being the most connected generation than ever before, we seem to experience the most disconnection. The more we communicate, the harder it can sometimes be to evaluate what we are saying. We have placed a premium on being first and getting attention, rather than listening to others and earning respect. This increased pace of human interaction means that we encounter strangers more often, and more directly. Even for the most tolerant among us, difference, more and more, can be up close and in your face. This can be unsettling. We are struggling to survive in a world that is changing faster than we can bear and becoming more unstable by the day. Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples’ cultures, values and faiths are essential to our very survival.

Without a shared morality we are left as anxious individuals, lonely, vulnerable, and depressed. Since civilisation began, morality has been humanity’s internal satellite navigation system. It has taken different forms, but it is always about caring for the good of others not just ourselves, decency, honesty, faithfulness, and self-restraint – treating others as we would wish to be treated. ‘Virtue’ as Aristotle noted is the basis of strong societies and we can each make a contribution. As a society, we need to celebrate both our commonalities and our differences because if we have nothing in common, we couldn’t communicate. And if we had everything in common, we would have nothing to say. It is our differences that both define us and connect us. At the very heart of the Islamic faith is a conviction that we are all born “of a single soul.” We are “spread abroad” to be sure in all of our diversity, but we share, in a most profound sense, a common humanity.

Love, friendship and influence are things that only exist by virtue of sharing. This is so underrated in leadership today in and even as an industry it feels like we have placed too much emphasis on assertiveness and strength

Our compassion for others and volunteering, is part of the unsung greatness of Britain today. We care. We want to give. Kindness and compassion lies at the core of our humanity. Giving back, whether it’s called civic patriotism, Seva, Sadaqah, Tzedakah is the foundation of a lot of faiths. The paradox of volunteering is that the more we give, the more we are given. By lifting others, we ourselves are lifted. Love, friendship and influence are things that only exist by virtue of sharing. This is so underrated in leadership today in and even as an industry it feels like we have placed too much emphasis on assertiveness and strength. We have replaced our humanity with rigid hierarchies. The world doesn’t need more leaders who are thick-skinned, but we deserve leaders who care. Helping a neighbour matters. Lending your time and energy to a cause you believe in matters. Speaking up when you see a person, or a group of people being denigrated or dehumanised matters. The problems around us are only compounding. We need to rediscover our trust in other people, to restore some of our lost faith – all that’s been shaken out of us in recent years. Little of it will happen if we isolate inside our pockets of sameness communing only with others who will share our exact views, talking more than we listen.

As a society and as an industry, we need to get back to telling out stories about who we are, what principles we live by and defining the common values which drive our behaviours. We all need to feel a sense of pride in our identities and have a collective responsibility to shape our future. We desperately need leaders who are committed to the betterment of self and society, build bridges of peace and understanding with others and individuals who generously share their time, talents, and material resources to improve the quality of life of others. Religion has nothing to do with power but everything to do with the pursuit of justice and compassion. We all have influence, whether we seek it or not and this changes lives. Goodness can be contagious and comes from within, and it makes the people around us better or worse than they might otherwise have been. Our faith has the potential to bring us together if we let it, to move us to heal some of the fractures of our much-injured world. We need this more than ever. Together as a society and industry, we can face any future without fear so long as we know we will not face it alone.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nafisa Nathani is Intersectionality Lead for Multi-Faith Network, Network Rail’s faith and belief network, as well as Southern region lead for Cultural Fusion, Network Rail’s race network. Both networks are available to everyone who works in the transport sector, regardless of race or faith. To join, email multi-faithnetwork@networkrail.co.uk

 
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

DON’T MISS OUT – GET YOUR COPY! – click here to subscribe!

The post Inter-Faith week: Leading with humanity first appeared on Passenger Transport.

​