Tony Blair Faith Foundation

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation Religion & Conflict blog series tackles a theme that is contested at a number of levels. On the one side, there is the constant refrain that the real cause of a particular conflict is not religion. On the other, the impression, reinforced by the mass media, that religion is today the number one vector of a virus of hatred around the world.

On the 22nd of July 2011, my family and I were driving from the east coast of Norway to Oslo. We happened to stop by a road café to have some food, when one of our daughters got a message on the phone. There is a bomb blast in Oslo – and not much later – there is someone killing young people at a Labour party youth camp at Utøya. This, to us and to most Norwegians, was unbelievable. It could happen elsewhere, but not in our country. Before we found out who this person was, rumours were developing and spreading. It is a Muslim!

The attack by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Malala Yousufzai—the young girl from Swat— for advocating girls’ right to education has drawn attention to the role of religious education in creating conflicts. Pakistan is the second largest Muslim state in the world with a total population of 180 million, of which 96.4% follow the religion of Islam. Their religious identity is reflected in the twin spaces of ibadat (worship) and muamalat (civil interactions and transactions).

On the sad occasion of the attack on brave daughter of Pakistan Malala Yousufzai, I would like to salute the students of Face to Faith Peshawar, Pakistan who participated on International Peace Day. This school is also in North of Pakistan. I pray for the safety of these Malalas.

Far right, Monica Duffy Toft at a recent Tony Blair Faith Foundation event. Several years ago while I was teaching a course, Religion and Global Politics, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, a student asked me why my co-instructor, Professor Bryan Hehir, always wore the same thing: a black suit and collar. I explained that Professor Hehir was also Father Hehir, an ordained Catholic priest and that his outfit was his “priest’s suit.” Although I had been aware that religious illiteracy was high, this exchange reinforced this awareness.

When one thinks of the phrases ‘rural’ or ‘hard to reach’areas, it is easy to relate such phrases to the provincial areas, known for its usually agronomic inhabitants, such as Pujehun, Kialahun, Bonthe and Kono.

Think of Sierra Leone and images of the Hollywood blockbuster 'Blood Diamond' come to mind - a film that, beneath its glamour, shows a country torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebel forces. Coupled with the ferocious and desolate account of one of the many children who were turned into professional killers, you can see why people have a certain view of the country.

Shortly after being elected in 1959, Pope John XXIII told his private secretary about his idea to hold an ecumenical Council of the entire Church. Unforeseen consequences, dangerous, a bad idea, was the predictable response. Pope John rebuked him; did he not know that he went forward in faith? Three years later on 11 October, fifty years ago, Pope John XXIII assembled the world's Roman Catholic bishops for an ecumenical Council in Rome. It came at an extraordinary moment in 20th century history.

“Today is United Nations Older Person's Day. 'The family', a receptacle for both motherhood and apple pie, is a term that prospers from vagueness. It invariably gets a good press from religious leaders and politicians - a less good one from psychiatrists and anthropologists. Only the latter two will risk defining it too closely.     Today's default position is usually that a family is made up of parent/s and children, in other words the appropriately named 'nuclear family', increasingly fissile and labile in the 21st Century.

Stephanie Vogelzang, from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation wraps up our blog series, Perspectives: Religion and Public Life. Perspectives: Religion and Public Life is a series of short blogs on questions about the relationship between religion and secularism, you can find the rest of the series by clicking here. Policy experts, political scientists, human rights lawyers, philosophers, moral theologians and religious leaders took part in the Religion & Public Life blog series.