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Mutual understanding the basis of religious sensitivity |
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By Ma Anyi
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Feb. 19 2012 |
“People's cultural and religious beliefs will be the primary source of conflict in future.”
These famous words of Samuel P. Huntington, the celebrated political scientist, lurked at the back of my mind as I watched the National University of Singapore Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) saga unfold on Facebook and on multiple news channels nationwide.
CCC drew flak for posters pasted on the benches near Lecture Theatre 15 in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The initial photograph of the poster, which garnered close to 500 shares on Facebook, implied that Thailand was “a country of little true joy” because its inhabitants were predominantly Buddhist.
The furore over the poster and its accompanying website reached the NUS administration and the Ministry of Home Affairs, leading to an indefinite suspension of CCC activities on campus. The organization has since removed the posters and the accompanying website, and has apologized on its Facebook page.
It seems, though, that the damage has been done. Wai Kit Ow Yeong, a member of the NUS Buddhist Society, said, “promoting Christianity is one thing, but this advertisement is quite another - it sends a negative signal about what Buddhism is.”
Even Christians felt the posters could have been designed with more thought.
“More sensitivity should have been used by the Crusaders. It was definitely not necessary to denounce Buddhism to garner support for their mission trip,” Tan Yan Shao, a Christian not part of CCC, said.
As Tan says, Christian missionary work is understood as sharing the message of the Christian God to other peoples and cultures, rather than an act of imposition of Christian ideals onto others.
From the perspective of CCC, however, it seems that these posters were not intended for public “consumption”. The posters were pasted on tables usually occupied by CCC members, to encourage members of CCC to sign up for a mission trip to Thailand. Therefore, the motive of these posters was not to offend the members of the public- but to inspire Christians to do missionary work. In trying to gravitate the latter group into action, CCC had inadvertently offended the former group.
The fact that CCC did not intend to avail their posters to public eye does not excuse the student club from including the insensitive content in their posters.
Alfred Wan, a first year political science student said, “I was also appalled and outraged by its basis of comparison (between Buddhists and Christians)... but I didn’t pursue the matter because there are people who really didn’t see what was wrong with the comparison when I was involved in the mini-debate of sorts... what to do, when you're faced with an army of believers with unalterable schemas? You let it rest.”
Indeed, unlike political or social beliefs, religious beliefs are frequently “unalterable”. In the words of Huntington, a religious person can’t “meet you halfway” and compromise on the strength or content of his or her belief just so that a compromise might be reached. The unyielding nature of religious beliefs engenders fault lines along which conflicts like the CCC incident erupt.
Religious beliefs are also different from other beliefs in that a paradigm shift occurs when a person crosses the yawning gulf and becomes an adherent of that religion. Such a paradigm shift is often fundamental because of the ontological nature of religions – where what we think exists is no longer limited to material reality but extends far out into the metaphysical realm. Religion has the potential of permeating all facets of life changing one’s worldview.
By this logic, the religious adherent understands the world in a completely different way from his counterparts, and is, perhaps, less able to intuitively understand and appreciate others from different religious backgrounds.
Extrapolating Huntington’s findings on the Singapore society is akin to throwing a wet blanket over the religious pluralism Singapore hopes to maintain. Rather than accept this as a death-sentence for religious harmony, effort must be put in to demonstrate sensitivity to other religions and so protect the freedom of worship we enjoy.
Yes, it is inevitable that slip-ups like this one occur. Yes, the actions of CCC cannot and should not be taken lightly. As a society, however, we must take steps to build a mutual understanding of religious beliefs. We need to overthrow attitudes of indifference and find ways of building inter-religious respect and tolerance.
How? Now, that is the question we need to tackle.
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