Have faith in youth interfaith efforts

It’s going to be exam time in NUS soon, but that didn’t stop me and a group of friends from organizing an interfaith forum last weekend on 2 April 2011. Setting aside the assignments that haunt our waking hours, we students from the NUS University Scholars Programme (USP) and NUS Interfaith went sourcing for speakers, publicizing the event – the list of tasks goes on.

Fortunately, the USP administration and the NUS Malay Studies Department graciously supported us, for instance by providing much needed sponsorship. The forum turned out to be quite a success. More than thirty students turned up, and we had a lively and engaging discussion about religion in Singapore.

A classmate was asking me why my friends and I went to all this trouble. Surely we can’t change anything, he said. We’re not religious leaders, and it’s not like we can convince many of our peers that learning about other faiths is important.

But as I told him, that’s a common misconception about youth interfaith efforts. While youth interfaith leaders may not have the experience and professional credibility that their senior counterparts have, they do have the passion and the technical know-how needed to combat the hatred and ignorance about religion that is too often perpetuated online.

These qualities are particularly vital in today’s world. Just last month, the Florida pastor Terry Jones staged a public burning of the Qur’an, triggering large demonstrations in Afghanistan. Within days, youths across American campuses created online campaigns against Pastor Jones, effectively demonstrating that he was part of a radical fringe that was not representative of American mainstream opinion.

In Singapore, youth interfaith efforts are also urgently needed given that ignorance about religion is sadly prevalent amongst our peers. As educator Phyllis Chew discovered in a study of youth attitudes towards faith, typical comments of secondary school students included sentiments that Islam is the religion where “their marriages take place in the void deck”, Zoroastrianism is the “sign of Zorro”, or that Buddhism is about “filial piety”. Till today, our youth learn little in school about what the religions practised in Singapore are all about.

This situation is all the more dangerous given the unstable social dynamics which have emerged in a post-September-11 world. As Mr Mohamed Imran, a postgraduate student and one of the speakers at our forum, mentioned: we live in a society in which even MRT announcements encourage us to beware of suspicious persons. In an environment where suspicion becomes normalized, even a flippant blog post by a teenager ignorant about religion can threaten to destabilize societal fault-lines.

So what can be done? Perhaps schools can teach students more about the faiths practised by our fellow Singaporeans. This is not unachievable: in the United Kingdom, students study comparative religion, surveying all of the country’s main faiths, and learning about their histories, beliefs, and rituals. This can be done without compromising our own religion; instead we rid ourselves of misconceptions of others’ faiths.

More collaborative activities between youths of different faiths might also be beneficial. As Mr Ameerali Abdeali, honorary treasurer of the Inter-Religious Organization, suggested, we could organize nature walks, or even humanitarian relief missions, for instance to help victims of the Japan earthquake and tsunami.

Of course, youth interfaith forums would certainly be valuable. Ms Angie Monksfield, Vice-President (Member Affairs) of the Buddhist Fellowship, noted that the slightest efforts at interfaith cooperation can have a ripple effect in the pond of society. Perhaps our little forum made just such a ripple, influencing some of our peers to think a little deeper about the role of interfaith efforts in Singapore today.

By Ow Yeong Wai Kit

The writer, 22, is a second-year English Literature major at NUS.

Please click here to read the news report on the event "Religions in Conversation: Reflections on Singapore" .