Over the last six months, I have been participating as a fellow in the Centre for Inter-Faith Understanding‘s (CIFU) Hard2Heart Series. CIFU was set up to promote interfaith practices, drawing from both academic works as well as the lived experiences of community members. The Hard2Heart programme brings CIFU’s works into wider society by engaging interested participants in a series of lectures and breakouts on topics ranging from inter-faith marriages to even proselytisation. As someone looking to build their facilitation muscle, especially on thorny community issues, I found the series extremely valuable both to gain content awareness as well as to learn how to engage honestly with a diversity of views.

Rising Levels of Complexity

Those belonging to the older generations in Singapore will often point you towards the race riots of the 1960s as a visceral example of the consequences of taking a lax attitude towards managing diversity on the island. The Maria Hertogh riot demonstrates the amplification possible when a religious tone is added to the mix.

On one hand, it is a fair comparison, given that we are still organised by racial and religious lines in a number of institutional arenas such as the National Census or housing policy. On the other hand, the issues are more complex, given the rise of interfaith marriages, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism and a decrease in traditional religious adherents. Within the city-state, there is simultaneously an urgency to protect religious freedoms as well as a campaign to stall the expansive influence of religion (for specific strands as well as in general) where it is no longer valued, understandably by different groups of people.

Within interfaith conversations, therefore, it is important to recognise nuance and multiplicity. This became salient in the CIFU dialogues.

From the Personal to the Social

In the CIFU Fellowship Programme, we were sorted into diverse groups that would journey together over the six-month period. I appreciated that the academic speakers invited to share on topics such as Gender or Inequality did not shy away from controversy. For this post, I will focus on the topic of proselytisation as a focus area on how interfaith dialogues can build deeper empathy.

Proselytisation is legal in Singapore, as it is in a number of democratic societies, because it is a form of religious expression. Of course, the right to proselytise operates within a system of rights and protections that also protect against the intent to incite harm or enmity, as well as ensures public order. This explains why in parts of the US or Europe, street preachers often stand away from the traffic and focus on engaging willing and interested individuals who come up to their booth rather than to brazenly interrupt people in the course of their day, although the latter style of approach definitely still continues.

What was of value to me was the ability to hear honestly the views of the Fellows in my group about how proselytisation has deeply harmed their view of other religious groups in Singapore. Whether to do with deathbed or post-marriage conversions, religion can often be used with dramatic context to coerce individuals to adopt a faith. It has gotten to the point that the Buddhist community has had to come up with a resource to support Buddhists in politely declining efforts to convert.

One of the Fellows shared how one of their grandparents was concerned that no one would be able to perform their last rites when they passed on, because everyone else had converted to a different faith, and succumbed to converting themselves just so that they could die with some certainty that their family members would bury them.

Some groups may see proselytisation as the highest calling within their faiths, as a means to benefit and redeem others. This is their truth as well.

These stories demonstrate the importance and influence of faith in a lot of Singaporeans’ lives. It also demonstrates why proselytisation for its own sake can become extremely dangerous when the converted does not understand the faith they adopt. Resentment can grow and groups may become a lot more defensive and protective of their own interests. Yet, without active dialogues to recognise and address these issues, individual interactions can have ripple effects on how society evolves to operate.

Interfacing with Interfaith

The world of interfaith issues will continue growing and I am only just beginning on my journey of building common spaces for such conversations. For now, I have identified three convenient principles that I believed played an important role in the CIFU series.

Start from a place of respect

It is commonly understood that some faiths believe that they worship the one true god and therefore other faiths must be misguided. The reality is that if you engage others on these terms, whether explicitly or implicitly, you are bound for a difficult conversation. We must honour and recognise that each individual is on their own faith journey, and while we can offer to share our own journey as part of building trust and transparency, we will lose the plot if we focus on pointing out perceived flaws or differences in each other’s beliefs. Instead, respect for the individual allows us to acknowledge their boundaries and only operate from a place of trust, consent and care.

Recognise that faith is simultaneously universal and culturally adapted

Most religions are global. They may have origins in a specific part of the world, but especially here in Singapore, most of them are imported. Therefore, we need to recognise that when we think about faith and religion, we can reference concepts that are broadly accepted, as well as concepts that are localised to a specific community. One could even go so far to consider perspectives that only the individual or a group of individuals hold. For example, the consumption of certain food items is often culturally adapted and can differ from region to region despite operating within the same faith. In interfaith dialogues, we cannot be stubborn to only operate on one level. We must recognise the complexity of how religion operates and appreciate that at the end of the day, each individual will ultimately refer to their own lived experience as their most confident source of truth.

Develop a curiosity

Interfaith work cannot function well if you do not venture out of your comfort zone. You must operate on the edge of your own boundary and challenge what you think you know. For example, I was exposed to the idea that race, whether employed in Singapore or elsewhere, has origins as an essentialist idea, without much foundation in actual data. Its reification is a product of media portrayals and public policy. Therefore, when we engage with others, we must challenge our own biases and allow our assumptions to be knocked down. The porosity of our own boundaries will have a direct impact on how much value we take away from interfaith conversations.

The Journey has just begun

I really valued the small community we built for ourselves within our CIFU dialogue group, one that incrementally grew in trust and comfort. The marker for me that we had become a safe group was when one of the participants openly challenged a possible bias in the group and shared her vulnerability through a story. Such moments are where growth happens. In our increasingly complex world, building the muscle around facilitating conversations on diversity will become more important, so that we can continue achieving such growth for each of us. I am excited for the journey.