Solving religious illiteracy key to security challenge n HIV study highlights difficulties for teens n Hydropower should help local people n High cost credit first option for many n China beats Russia at innovation n Better prisoner visiting vital n


NEWS


Burglary risk highest for least advantaged groups n The appeal of constituency campaigning n UK Asylum appeals inconsistent n Cyber threat is making everyone less secure n No social mobility from life-long learning n Autism guidance for legal profession n


NEWS


Solving religious illiteracy key to security challenge


P


OOR RELIGIOUS literacy in the UK is a widespread and substantial problem which inhibits an effective


assessment and response to religion- related security challenges, according to recent research into the relationship between religion and society. “During the two-year project we


explored two concepts that people find tricky: religion and security and how they interact with each other,” says researcher Professor John Wolffe. “What emerged is the importance of ensuring that responses to ongoing security challenges are informed by a more sophisticated understanding of religion and of the subtleties in how religious groups operate. “Equally clear is that while people can see religion as a threat to security, very often it may actually be part of a solution to social and community tensions,” says Professor Wolffe. Religiously-motivated groups and individuals have played substantial roles in peacebuilding and conflict prevention. Such work tends to be under-reported. It is much easier – and superficially more interesting – to report and analyse a conflict that did happen than to assess the extent to which


ongoing patient interventions have prevented one that did not happen. The study dismisses any notion of


a simple ‘cause and effect’ perspective whereby ‘dangerous’ or conflicted religious ideas lead people to violent


“


in organised religion has halted or even gone into reverse. Committed religious minorities will persist, and are liable to have difficult relationships with wider society in a climate of widespread religious illiteracy.


Religiously-motivated groups and


individuals have played substantial roles in peacebuilding and conflict prevention


action. Rather, research points to a complex combination of circumstances that can spark violence. Hence, seeking simple and short-term solutions is likely to prove counterproductive. Lessons from the Northern


Ireland experience need to be better understood in other parts of the UK, says Professor Wolffe. “It is significant in highlighting the counterproductive consequences of alienating whole communities by measures to control an ‘extremist’ minority; and of the long-term risk of achieving coexistence by segregation rather than integration.” The study points out that it is unrealistic to anticipate that secularisation will provide a long-term solution to religious conflict. In some locations, notably London, the decline


Better understanding of religion is


needed in policy thinking and among the public. Government needs to develop more effective mechanisms for taking religious factors into account in domestic and foreign policy development by, for example, establishing a unit/office which draws on insights from academia and religious groups. “This could be important as the UK looks to the wider world following Brexit,” says Professor Wolffe. n


” i Contact Professor John Wolffe,


The Open University Email john.wolffe@open.ac.uk Web www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/religion- martyrdom-global-uncertainties Telephone 01908 655916 ESRC Grant Number ES/K00025X/1


SUMMER 2017 SOCIETY NOW 3


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