Multiculturalism: Interfaith Dialogue

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, my noble friend’s debate begs the question: why do we need interfaith dialogue? After all, no religion preaches hatred of our fellow men. Indeed in ancient times, Rabbi Hillel famously summarised the whole of the Torah with the words,

“What is hateful to yourself do not do to your fellow men. The rest is but commentary".

This compassion is emphasised across all the major religions, so the answer to my question is that it is not the faiths that need dialogue, but the faithful. It is people.

Like the grandfather of the noble Lord, Lord Young, I came here aged five—yes, from Lithuania. I am ancient enough to remember people being openly anti-Semitic, openly talking about the Jewish conspiracy to gain control of the world by corrupting non-Jewish society. The Council of Christians and Jews recognised that dialogue could help deal with this, and it has been arranging dialogue ever since I can remember. Vatican II was also the result of dialogue. Thankfully, this dialogue has been extended to the shared values which apply to all three Abrahamic faiths.

I do not say that anti-Semitism has entirely gone away. I agree with my noble friend Lord Mitchell: it is much reduced; it is not expressed openly any more. It is sometimes expressed in terms of criticism of Israel and it has also gone on to the internet. What has replaced it is Islamophobia. This is discussed openly. In 1997, the Runnymede Trust coined the expression to capture the already growing animosity towards Muslims. In a way, Islamophobia has replaced anti-Semitism. It is as dangerous to our society and our civilisation now as anti-Semitism was then and it should be fought with equal determination.

How do we fight the ignorance and prejudice of the faithful? We do it with dialogue. The work and initiatives of my noble friend Lord Mitchell’s Coexistence Trust and others is crucial. Then there is the law. As my noble friend has said, we have very powerful laws on the statute book regarding hate crime and they need to be enforced and made more known. We are also a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which has plenty to say about respecting each other’s faiths and traditions. The faith communities themselves must try to understand their own communities better. I declare an interest as Honorary President of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, which is using the recent census and a parallel survey to better understand the nature of the Jewish community. This work is important because the data can be used to both inform dialogue within faiths and inform interfaith work and policy.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Mitchell that publicly funded faith schools act as a barrier to dialogue and the Government should not encourage them. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Rees, will tell us that science can help. Maybe modern genetic science, modern body chemistry and our better understanding of behaviour can help. Most important is the internet, as a means both of dialogue and of expressing prejudice. The Arab spring and the recent riots have demonstrated what a potent force it is and the power that it gives to the internet generation.

My approach to interfaith dialogue was inspired many years ago by Isaiah Berlin. There are no moral absolutes, he said. There is no absolute mercy, no absolute justice, no absolute compassion. We just have to work it out together—through dialogue.