Religion in the United Kingdom

Lord Hameed Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hameed]

My Lords, I am immensely grateful to my noble friend Lord Singh for initiating this timely debate. Through centuries of human history, up to our present day, one of the most divisive elements is religion. That was never meant to be so but extremists in many faiths are bent on exploiting religion for their own nefarious, political agendas. As we know, religion can be a force for peace or war. It can heal or hurt. It can create or destroy on a scale unimaginable to previous generations. Human history is filled with episodes involved with religion and of misguided believers responsible for the slaughter of fellow humans on the altar of religion.

Although there is warmth and friendship here this afternoon, there is fear and hatred outside in the world. We cannot be discouraged, for there is enough commonality in world religions to enable us to reach out to our fellow humans. Although humans have demonstrated their genius for creativity and achievement, we have lost none of our ability to destroy and kill fellow humans with impunity. When extremists inflict violence on society in the name of religion, the innocent are often their main victims. That has to be resisted by the community at large. Voices must be raised in protest and we must withhold the robe of sanctity when it is sought as a cloak for violence and bloodshed, even if the perpetrators are from our own faith. As human beings, we are all more alike than different—irrespective of our physical make-up and self-created labels which might suggest otherwise. The challenge before us is to respect and understand others without compromising the bedrock of our own faith.

Let us now look at the philosophical analysis of religion, which relates to logic that the human can understand and relate to. Religion and politics speak to different aspects of the human condition. Religion binds people together in communities, and politics helps to mediate peacefully between their differences. One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century came when politics was turned into a religion. The single greatest risk to the 21st century is that the opposite may occur, not when politics is religionised, but when religion is politicised.

Finally, in the vision of the modern thinker, trade would do for a man what politics could not; that is, tame passions and change the outlook of man from aggression to consumerism and production, thus integrating nations for mutual benefits from trade and finance. All these notions, however, do not answer man’s curiosity about himself. His sense of comfort, however, is well manifested in his loyalty to his tribe and community. Economics does not explain his quest for self-knowledge and identity. Religion answers this human dilemma. No other system explains, as religion does, our reason for being on this planet.