Interfaith Societies
‘The negatives of a multi-faith society outweigh the positives.’ I disagree with this statement, as the positives outweigh the negatives, one point to make would be because people living in a multi-faith society have an increased tolerance and lower prejudice, an example of this would be when a Christian person lives in a society full of Hindu’s, Muslims and Sikhs, even if at first he would not accept them, he would start to grow a tolerance of their behaviour, their different Festivals, you would probably also get to know more about the Religions that are around you and start to take an interest in them, tis in turn will cause an increase in Tolerance hence a decrease in prejudice. Secondly, In a multi-faith society, there is a Freedom of Religion, yes this is already one of the human rights in the declaration of human right, but you can only have true freedom if you have a variety to choose from, for example, if someone wanted to become religious and at the same time lived in a multi-faith society, he would have a wide array of Religions to choose such as: Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikh etc, this means that he will be able to pick which ever one he feels to be right for him without any backlash from anyone as it is a multifaith society, though if you lived in a single-faith society and wanted to become religious, you would be pressured to choose the majority religion if you do not think that one is exactly right for you, this shows us that there is a freedom of religion in a multi-faith society, penultimately, in a multi-faith society there will be masses of diversity, meaning that there will be many customs, many festivals, different food etc. all of these things makes it exciting to live in a multi-faith society, for example, if you lived in a society with the Hindu faith, the Christian faith and the Buddhist faith in it, you would be treated to all sorts of colourful and extravagant festivals from Hinduism such as: Diwali (festival of lights), Onam (particularly southern Indian), Bhogi (bonfire) etc, from you will be treated to beautiful weddings and great big Buddhist statues which look gorgeous, this is compared to you doing the same things everyday and you living in a society who all believed in the exact same things, my final point is do with the fact that different people could learn new things about the religions that are around them, an example of this would be when a Christian person is living in a multi-faith including Hindu’s and Muslims, each person would learn things from each of those religions, from this they could find out about different teaching and worship techniques, these could be used in their own religions and some teachings could be used to answer philosophical questions they would have, an example of this would be Christians as some Christians have taken up Buddhist forms of meditation, this shows us that it good for different religions to learn from other religions.
Though, of course, some people may disagree with me as they believe that the negatives do outweigh the positives, a point for this case could be that it would be difficult to meet the needs of every religion in the society, an example of this would be if there was a society with Jewish and Muslims and Hindu’s then any schools in the society would have to provide both halal and kosher food alongside regular dietary needs of Hindu’s (No beef), this would be a hassle for schools and would be expensive, this shows us that there might be some sort of difficulty in catering for the needs of each religion in the society. Another problem they may have is Marriage, what I mean is if two people of different religion fall in love and want to get married, their might be different problems that may arise, such as: what type of wedding (if the bride and groom are Christian and Hindu respectively, then will it be a Hindu or Christian wedding), what religion the children should be brought up in, or maybe even the fact that the parents might not agree to the wedding as a whole, this could happen to an Exclusivist Christian family, they only wan their son/daughter to marry a good Christian person, this shows us that there might be difficulties when it come to the conflicts in religion over weddings and who they should marry.
In conclusion, I believe that the positives of a multi-faith society outweigh the negatives of a multi-faith society, in amount (form what I have discussed) and in importance, how significant is each point, this is what I believe but I know that some people will disagree with me.
