So does religion promote war or peace?
Jagraj Singh joins us who used to be in the British Army,
now he video blogs about Sikhism.
Welcome to the program.
I just want to pick up that point about religion being hijacked.
Yasmin, do you think the Archbishop has a point when he says that?
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
I went to Mosque two weeks ago
and I have never heard - I belong to a Shia community -
and we’re very liberal and so on.
I’ve never heard so many people come up to me
and say " we will we survive".
These guys are absolutely slaughtering everything that’s good about Islam
and hate other religions.
So I think we are in a bad place with religion at the moment.
Hard to justify it.
Jagraj, you are a former soldier, as we said,
and you’re a practicing Sikh.
I wonder sometimes whether those two conflict.
Whether the religion and war catch up against one another.
They don’t conflict in terms of..
In terms of loyalties obviously the loyalties of a person are to the country, as a soldier.
I often thought about this.
Many people dissented from going to war because they felt that that wasn’t right.
I guess, when a government decides to go to war,
they obviously made a decision but they are bound to certain conventions.
The Geneva Convention for example.
Every soldier is taught that you cannot carry out an illegal order
which conflicts with the Geneva Convention.
So that always reassured me to think that that was a convention I could sign up to.
You have to make your own judgment.
It’s not just clear from outside that you must do exactly what the officer says.
Actually I was the officer - so I wasn’t able to give illegal orders.
The fact was that you had to always make a judgment
and you are a moral agent at all times.
But didn’t you find that the morality of your religion sometimes conflicting with the morality of your job?
Not in my case.
I think Sikhs are quite blessed in the sense that our faith is very progressive.
It’s very much about respecting other people, and everybody’s rights.
Now obviously there are times where soldiers have carried out questionable acts,
but that has been dealt within the British Army
and I felt the British Army is a place where actually you are able to confront
certain things that in other places, other countries or any other governments are brushed aside
and just say let’s not discuss about that.
But actually the British government has been quite rigid about making sure that’s the laws are followed.
So I was very happy in the British Army
and I think British values are very enlightened values so go in line with Sikhism.
Sikhs should join the army.
Obviously, on a personal level there are situations like you’re far away from your family
but everybody soldier faces that.
But I think for a faith community it’s harder.
But it doesn’t conflict in terms of values.
Thanks very much for that.
Owen, you’re an atheist, is that right?
Yes, that’s right.
Do you think that religion is a force for good?
and that both and for example what Jagraj really sits comfortably?
or what we’ve been seeing with Islamic State is it hijacked?
Well it’s is being hijacked in that sense.
And it is interesting that many British Jihadis who’ve been going abroad to Syria,
what do they order on Amazon before they went over?
"Islam for dummies" is what they ordered,
which shows their knowledge of Islam is fairly limited to say the least.
The point I make is religion isn’t automatically a force for good or force for bad.
It has been used to justify anything.
If I think of Christianity, to justify socialism and
I’ve got ancestors who were proud Methodists and Socialists.
It was used to justify right-wing dictatorships
like General Franco in Spain.
What happens is people pick and choose bits of religion,
take it out of context maybe or
focus on particular areas to justify their own preconceived ideas.
For me the important thing as a secularist,
is that the state just keeps its nose out of the affairs of religion
and religion keeps its nose out of the state.
Can they keep its nose out of religion when there are acts of atrocities
which are being carried out, James, in the name of religion?
Yes well, you have to rephrase that question.
What is that you are asking me?
Well, if we are looking at the Islamic State for example.
The reason why people are sticking their nose in is because they are using...
No, no, no.. I just mean is that we should have an established church for example.
I’m saying we should keep the state and organised religion as separate identities
Respect each other’s different religious beliefs
but not allow religion to intrude on the states sphere,
in order to protect everybody’s rights - believers or non-believers.
Not saying, obviously but the Islamic State *inaudible*
I think we’re in danger of agreeing with each other.
The problem I think, is why I was so shocked, I was agreeing with Owen Jones.
Let’s not make a habit of this, James.
I know, it’s very worrying but I feel you look at all the great wars in history for example,
you see that..
or the great cataclysms caused by humans.
Mao’s Famine which caused 50 million deaths, perhaps.
That wasn’t caused by religion.
The Taipin Rebellion was about religion that killed about the same number of people.
I’d say that irreligion kills as many people as religion does.
It has become fashionable, post Richard Dawkins, to say "yes religion causes wars."
"That’s why we must ban religions," I don’t buy that’s line.
I think some religions are good, some religions are bad,
some religions get perverted.
I think what we see going on in Northern Iraq right now, is clearly bad religion in action.
I think religious people can be good or bad.
We shouldn’t be scared of confronting people who are religious but are doing the wrong thing.
When you start feeling that you don’t want to confront this person
because they might get offended about you criticising their religion.
That’s when we have problems like what we have now
where actually this should have have been nipped in the bud a long time ago.
Let’s not forget most Muslims look at Islamic State and are disgusted as anyone else watching.
We are going to get back and join Bobby Frictions at the London Mela