Blog Task 2 : Intersectionality and Faith.

Within the provided resources we hear multiple accounts of how faith intersects with other identities such as race, gender and socioeconomic status. The examples are broad in scope and cover various religious identifies whilst exploring the complexities of faith and the social injustices that surround it.

Analysing the Resources.

The first video clip ‘Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question)’ is a 2014 Ted Talk presented by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. His argument is that societies have evolved beyond religious doctrine and incorporated science, technology and other ways of understanding the world into more nuanced belief systems. He discusses how colonisers could not understand the world outside of Christianity and that this is because of the specificities of Christian doctrine. Appiah’s broad goal is to highlight the injustices that arise from reading the world through the narrow lens of outdated religious doctrine. His closing remarks echo the title of the Ted Talk as he concludes that religion can not be ‘good or bad’ as ultimately it does not exist.

In the journal article “Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account’, Reki, J. (2023), argues for an intersectional understanding of faith identities to better analyse epistemic injustice (Fricker, M (2007)), against religious individuals. Reki proposes two perspectives on religious identity: as a social identity and as a worldview. From a social identity perspective subjects face epistemic harm when their religion is racialized, or if their gender and dress are used to predict their beliefs and practices. From the Worldview perspective they face Epistemic harm when the significant connections between the subjects religion, race and gender are not fully examined.

In the LSE blog article, ‘Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women’, Jawad, H. (2022) explores various motivations and challenges for Muslim women in sport. She explores Islam’s support of women’s participation in sport so long as it aligns with their religious principles. She also highlights tensions between the physical demands of sports and the religious requirements for Muslim women. She then goes on to explore various inclusive practices that might be required to encourage greater participation of Muslim women such as education and training for sports administrators and further support from the Muslim community.

In the final video clip ‘Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom’, Trinity University (2016), Simran Jeet Singh discusses various inclusive educational practices that he uses in the classroom for challenging religious stereotypes and for provoking nuanced discussions about race and religion. He highlights the importance of not painting all communities with single brush stroke, the encouragement of empathy and the need to challenge stereotypes to prove the ‘normality’ of people of colour such as himself. He also champions the use of political analysis in order to give students the tools they need to make their own interpretations of these subjects.

Thoughts on how to apply these ideas to FACA technical teaching.

In analysing these examples I can extract some extremely useful ideas and techniques for ensuring that both the technology and context for the technology that I teach, is not exclusionary and that the environment in which I teach caters for a diverse student body. I believe that these two areas of concern and development are the following.

Technical Delivery.

• Workshops timings could take into account breaks for prayer or other faith related activities, allowing students not to miss out on sessions.
• Ensuring that technical resources such as our Sharepoint on-boarding and learning guides are sensitive to diverse religious needs and clearly signpost prayer rooms, quiet spaces and support.

Technical Context:

• Software used for avatar creation could be tested for diverse character representation – for example hair and physical traits and options for clothing types.
• Discussions around the ethics, historical practices and politics of certain technologies and their developers / manufacturers should be factored into technical sessions and workshops to highlight the complexities of working with technology such as Ai or videogames technology.