ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Available for over a year

Good morning. From today, public authorities including schools, prisons and NHS trusts will have a legal duty to prevent extremist radicalisation taking place within their walls. Well in these confused times we're all bewildered in knowing how best to tackle extremism, whether religious or ideological. Some years ago I attended an inter-faith occasion where ministers from various world faiths read in turn some verses which each had chosen from their sacred scriptures. An Iman, a Hindu priest and the vicar who was hosting the occasion each read some uplifting verses. So far so good. Then the vicar explained that, sadly, the Jewish rabbi who'd wanted to be with us was ill, but that he'd sent his chosen verses to be read out. They were from Psalm 137 "You devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!" There was a stunned silence. A couple of weeks later I met the rabbi at another gathering and asked him, "why ever did you choose that lamentable psalm when there are so many inspiring verses in the Hebrew scriptures which you could have chosen? " "That's the point", he said, "All world faiths have irenic passages in their scriptures, but the truth is that all our scriptures also have difficult, or even scandalous passages, and we won't make real progress in inter-faith relationships until we have the courage to discuss those with one another." As a Christian, it made me think of the leader of the Jonestown community, who, before they committed mass suicide, was fond of quoting to the Christian followers of his extremist sect the words from St Luke's gospel, "Whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters cannot be my disciple". It's commonly said that people committing atrocities are not real members of the faith that they're dying for or killing for. But that is certainly not their own understanding; they're feeding on certain verses in their sacred scriptures or events in their faith history which encourage them to act in extreme or even violent ways. Well the truth is that any world faith doesn’t have a single colour to its understanding of God and the world, it’s a spectrum of colours. That's why it's difficult to put our finger on what is real Christianity, or real Islam, or real Judaism, or even real Britishness. The religious or political extremist focuses on just one of the colours and pushes it to excess or even destruction. To combat extremism we need to encourage one another to be open to the total breadth of our faith inheritance, however uncomfortable that may be. By having an honest conversation about the difficult parts of scripture within our faith communities, those people who use them to justify violence today might find it harder to hide behind them tomorrow.