This week is Interfaith Week, a period of celebrating integration, promoting acceptance and understanding, but within the last two weeks the world has exposed a much bleaker depiction in relation to our level of acceptance. There has been excessive discontent in the world with the recent Paris attacks and thus rising anti-Islamic mentality. There have been attacks from Glasgow to the small region of Fife, where in Methil, 15 men attacked a Muslim couple who owned a shop. Giving these current situations, I feel myself and others of comparable thought questioning what are people doing to promote better understanding between individuals and improved acceptance within diverse belief systems within our local community? Especially the Islamic religion
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Shazia and Frank find this area somewhat humorous, particularly people 's want to, as is Frank’s example, change the word ‘christmas fair’ to ‘winter fair’ in an effort to become more socially aware of others thus limiting the risk of offending other religious beliefs. It’s really having the opposite effect. ‘We have done it ourselves’ Shazia summarises. ‘Political correctness gone mad’ they both say. Shazia describes her husband’s Christmas spirit, ‘he’ll have his Santa hat on and the lights up!’ her argument being that people are not insulted by other cultural festivities, in fact they want to experience it. She points out that Jesus is a prophet to Muslims so they want to celebrate his birthday. Frank speaks about the Muslim owned shop from where he lives and states that they sell Christian Christmas cards. Shazia takes us back to her days in school, her experiences with integration then, ‘On Wednesday you went to the church or the minister came to school, you sang the hymns, you just took part in all that’. They chat about going to the same churches but praying to your individual perception of god, Frank puts it well ‘ As far as I’m concerned, that god, you call him Ali, we call him something else but it’s the same God, just a different way of looking at …show more content…
At the commencements of Fife Interfaith there was a tree planted in Beverage Park. Positioned in the centre is a pole with four different languages on it reading ‘May peace prevail on earth’ Shazia and Frank are passionate when they tell me about the garden. It is a place where all faiths are invited to come together, have picnics, sow seeds for plants and have universal peace with one another in a significant place of meaning. There are 100,000 peace gardens worldwide, that’s a lot of peaceful spots. Though not everyone is so appreciative and cultured, ‘We have had a lot of vandalism unfortunately; we lost our cherry tree’s. ‘This last part strikes at the heart. Cherry trees are a prominent icon of peace and calm, not hate and ignorance. Shazia takes a optimistic attitude though, ‘ We.ve got the peace garden, how can we build on it
Shazia and Frank find this area somewhat humorous, particularly people 's want to, as is Frank’s example, change the word ‘christmas fair’ to ‘winter fair’ in an effort to become more socially aware of others thus limiting the risk of offending other religious beliefs. It’s really having the opposite effect. ‘We have done it ourselves’ Shazia summarises. ‘Political correctness gone mad’ they both say. Shazia describes her husband’s Christmas spirit, ‘he’ll have his Santa hat on and the lights up!’ her argument being that people are not insulted by other cultural festivities, in fact they want to experience it. She points out that Jesus is a prophet to Muslims so they want to celebrate his birthday. Frank speaks about the Muslim owned shop from where he lives and states that they sell Christian Christmas cards. Shazia takes us back to her days in school, her experiences with integration then, ‘On Wednesday you went to the church or the minister came to school, you sang the hymns, you just took part in all that’. They chat about going to the same churches but praying to your individual perception of god, Frank puts it well ‘ As far as I’m concerned, that god, you call him Ali, we call him something else but it’s the same God, just a different way of looking at …show more content…
At the commencements of Fife Interfaith there was a tree planted in Beverage Park. Positioned in the centre is a pole with four different languages on it reading ‘May peace prevail on earth’ Shazia and Frank are passionate when they tell me about the garden. It is a place where all faiths are invited to come together, have picnics, sow seeds for plants and have universal peace with one another in a significant place of meaning. There are 100,000 peace gardens worldwide, that’s a lot of peaceful spots. Though not everyone is so appreciative and cultured, ‘We have had a lot of vandalism unfortunately; we lost our cherry tree’s. ‘This last part strikes at the heart. Cherry trees are a prominent icon of peace and calm, not hate and ignorance. Shazia takes a optimistic attitude though, ‘ We.ve got the peace garden, how can we build on it