A new Civitas essay calls for the teaching of Nathan the
Wise in schools to promote mutual tolerance and
understanding between those of different faiths.
Full report (embargoed): Exploring
Religious Pluralism in the Classroom: How to use religious
education in schools to combat violent extremism
Religious education should be better harnessed to
combat violent extremism, a new Civitas paper urges.
Rather than focusing on the teaching of ‘British
values’, R.E. lessons could draw on the teachings of
different faiths to promote shared values and mutual
tolerance.
David Conway, professorial research fellow at
Civitas, suggests that classes should read and
discuss the 18th century play Nathan the
Wise, in which characters from each of the
Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam –
come together to transcend their differences.
In the essay, Conway says that such an approach would
do more to foster mutual respect between different
faiths than the recent emphasis on teaching ‘British
values’, which may alienate some.
‘The teaching of religious education could be
harnessed to combat religiously-motivated acts of
violent extremism in a much more inclusive way than
by insisting on presenting the appropriate tolerant
and moderate values we would like all our young
people to acquire through their schooling as somehow
the special preserve of Britain and the British,’ he
writes.
Conway sets out the potential value of teaching
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan the
Wise, particularly the section which presents
the ‘Fable of the Three Rings’, which recognises the
universal values that are espoused and shared by
Muslims, Christians and Jews alike.
At the end of the play, set in Jerusalem around 1191,
characters from each of the Abrahamic religions join
together in an embrace of mutual amity and
friendship, all potential friction arising from their
adherence to different faiths having been
transcended.
‘Combatting religiously-motivated violent extremism
through what is taught in schools would stand a much
better chance of success if it could draw on the
religions of the young people whose immunization
against radicalisation is being sought,’ Conway
writes.
‘Those concerned today about the radicalisation of
young British-born Muslims often speak of the need to
develop an appropriate counter-narrative that will
help to immunise them from the possible appeal of
Jihadism and Salafism.
‘Yet however admirable such an aspiration might be,
any prospect of success for the development of such a
counter-narrative is immediately threatened if it is
constrained to be framed, as the British government
has lately demanded it be, as requiring Muslims to
recognise the need to embrace British values.
‘As many have noted, the requisite values in question
are universal, and have long been espoused in
moderate and mainstream versions by all three
Abrahamic faiths.’
Conway urges the current Commission on Religious
Education to consider how the subject might be better
used to combat extremism than the approach emphasised
in recent years of teaching British values.
‘Religious education still remains a compulsory
school subject whose resources for combatting
religiously motivated violent extremism have hardly
begun to be tapped. There is hardly a better time
than now for considering how it might be made to do
so, given that the subject is currently under review
by a special independent commission.’
Notes
David Conway is a Visiting Professorial Research
Fellow at Civitas. He is a former Professor of
Philosophy at Middlesex University’s School of
Philosophy and Religious Studies.
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