Spirituality, social change, and forging a better planet together

Friday, 18 December 2020

Tayyaba Khan​ stands in front of a class of schoolgirls, not dissimilar to her, and explains what life’s been like growing up Muslim in a post-9/11 world.

Those girls, bombarded online with messages on religion, are often too petrified to engage in religious discourse. She hopes opening up the dialogue can change that hesitancy.

“That’s the aggressive nature of conversation you see online now … It’s not appropriate to dehumanise them, there’s no room for good conversation to take place to see different perspectives. It’s all about shutting down the conversation,” Khan, chief executive of the Khadija Leadership Network​, says.

She knows how harmful the impact of online aggression can be to young people forming their identity, having experienced it herself. All that aggression does, she says, is create further anger and resentment between people.

**READ MORE:

* The Resilience Project: The Kiwis looking to God for guidance during crisis

* How to be Christian without being religious

* Israel Folau and freedom: Religious leaders want freedom - not a right to discriminate

* Marc Rivers: The man with Fonterra's fortunes in his hands

**

“We don’t need to go through that cycle. We need to create a world of effective communication skills.”

Khan is helping the Religious Diversity Centre, which works to create constructive spaces for conversation away from the information-saturated Internet.

“We need to be connecting with people in real time. Old-school values like sitting in a lounge having a cup of tea, taking time to talk about the world and philosophy. Genuine human-to-human connection … We need to go back to that. All faith talks about that,” she says.

“Why does a church exist, why does a mosque exist? They are places of connection. We need to really rejuvenate those spaces.”

While it’s not as “sexy or trendy” as going online, it should reduce polarisation, she says.

“We as individuals need to become a sanctuary within ourselves. The moment you can achieve that you can create a space … for other people.”

‘Compassionate disruption’

Edwina Pio​ is New Zealand’s first professor of diversity, as well as the director of diversity at Auckland University of Technology.

She says global social cohesion must go “beyond handouts”. “I prefer to focus on interdependence, and encourage individuals and organisations to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps … Teach a person to fish, rather than giving them fish.”

Pio feels a peace-based culture can be achieved through “compassionate disruption” – work she does every day with her own students. “It’s not aggression, it’s not violence, it’s not desecrating someone else’s knowledge. Rather it is reciprocity in relationships.”

The world is more multi-cultural, but also more politically correct than ever before, Pio says. To move forward together, there must be a shift away from standardised Western ways of thinking and colonial mindsets.

Pio says people must reflect on when it’s appropriate to listen, act and withdraw.

She quoted the Persian poet Rūmī, who said people should sell cleverness and buy bewilderment. The idea is to keep learning, unlearning and then learning again with the changing times.

To do that, people need be quiet, she says, and have time away from technology. “Buddhists and Christians speak about the need for quietness, for the chakra to settle down. We need to get to the core of who we really are.

“We don’t know how long we’re on this universe. There’s a saying from the indigenous people in America, ‘What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset’.

“I might fall down tomorrow. My belief is each of us does have a responsibility putting back for the privilege of living on this Earth.”

‘A divided world cannot survive’

Sione Tu’itahi​, executive director of the Health Promotion Forum, says society

must start focussing on the wellbeing of all, rather than the wellbeing of one’s own nation or family, if civilisation is to progress.

The world has adequate wealth and resources to meet everyone’s needs, but billions of dollars and resources are wasted because of humanity’s inability to regard one another as neighbours through systemic issues such as racism, Tu’itahi says.

“Humanity is one … [but] our diversities have become barriers rather than bridges. These are strengths that need to be embraced.”

Through the years Tu’itahi has noticed some change, albeit slow change. Communities are becoming more philanthropic, and dialogue addressing institutional racism has started.

Tu’itahi says the global population being more diverse than ever before is a strength. With diversity, there is room to focus on similarities which unite people, rather than differences which divide.

“A divided nation cannot stand. A divided world cannot survive.”

Faith is ‘fundamental’

Tahere Siisiialafia-Mau​ is chairperson of the Pacific Youth Council and says having faith is more than just a belief in any divine figure. Rather, faith is about applying religious teachings to daily life.

“This is not to say that we are perfect beings, but rather, we strive day by day to better ourselves.”

Within her own research, which addresses the inequalities Pasifika young people face, Siisiialafia-Mau found that, with youth, faith is “fundamental” to their work.

While some withdraw from traditional religious spaces, such as churches and mosques, because they disagree with traditional practices, they have not lost faith in the teachings of their religions.

“What can make our work different depends on how our moral standards and behaviours shape our environments and consequently mould our societies.”

With any work, Siisiialafia-Mau asks herself two questions: why is she doing the things she does, and in what spirit is she doing those things? “These prompt me to reflect on my motives.”

In a chaotic world, we do have control of ourselves

Marc Rivers​, chief financial officer at Fonterra, says he’s noticed a significant increase in diversity and inclusion in the corporate world, which he says reflects people’s spiritualities filtering into the workplace.

Rivers, who is from the Bahá'í faith, which believes in the essential worth of all religions, says the idea of one human family resonates deeply with him. “All religions are really chapters of the same holy book, they’re all connected … one isn't right, others aren’t wrong.”

Rivers spends his life aspiring to the pursuit of excellence, the ability to forgive and forbear: “I’m not that, but I’m aiming for that … I fall short of that every day, but it gives me a direction.”

In a chaotic world that’s impossible to control, Rivers says we do have control of ourselves. His advice for a more cohesive society is for people to see the divinity in things, make each situation a learning moment, respect the environment, and be a good role model to children.

Focusing on positive qualities is the key to building authentic, genuine relationships, he says. But above everything, Rivers says there’s deep profoundness in the power of love.

In all faiths, there are notions of the physical world reflecting the spiritual world. “Everything we see here has a corresponding spiritual truth. The way the universe is configured, the importance of attraction.

“A nucleus, an atom – the whole universe operates on the law of attraction.

“What’s the spiritual correspondence? Love. There’s absolutely something to that.”