Dr Iona Hine, Programme Manager for the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, interviews Professor Esra Ozyurek, Academic Director of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values. Discussion begins by considering how Esra's research on interreligious relations in Turkey and Germany may be applied to the UK. They discuss the impact of historical empires, British and Ottoman, and how imperial management of diverse groups and historical actions affect modern interfaith relations, policy, and governance. Past injustices and material realities impact on present conflicts. The conversation also highlights the value of cross-disciplinary partnerships and the erosion of shared values in today's socio-political landscape.

Part of the UK Interfaith Futures series, November 2024.

00:00 Introduction to the Cambridge Interfaith Programme

01:15 Esra Ozyurek's Research and Its Relevance to the UK

02:09 Historical Context of Interfaith Relations

04:31 Modern Implications of Historical Conflicts

08:01 Religion and Global Challenges Initiative

11:18 Collaborations and Unexpected Partnerships

15:05 Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values

17:47 Conclusion and Future Prospects

[Music]

Hello, I'm Dr Iona Hine and I'm Programme Manager for the Cambridge Interfaith Programme based in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. My remit includes forging meaningful partnerships with organisations outside the university and supporting colleagues to design, deliver, and disseminate innovative research.

With me for this interview is the Cambridge Interfaith Programme's Academic Director, Professor Esra Ozyurek.

Esra holds the prestigious position of Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values at the University of Cambridge, having previously served as a Professor of Turkish Studies at the London School of Economics and taught Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.

We've chosen to record this Interfaith Futures conversation as part of our UK Inter Faith Week activities, and therefore the focus is primarily national.

Your own research until now, Esra, has been largely international, or at least it's focused outside the UK, principally on inter religious relations in Germany and in Turkey, and the ways that personal histories of migration and change are affected by state policy, and indeed vice versa.

So I want to start by asking, how do you think that your findings translate to the UK? What are the equivalent questions scholars of religion are and should be asking about religious lives in modern Britain, and how might this impact policy and governance? Maybe we'll come back to that last nugget of a question.

Thank you, Iona. You know, as you have said, I'm relatively new to the UK, maybe no longer so new, but I never so far wrote about the UK. My research has been on Turkey and Germany. Interesting that I would say Turkey is more similar to the UK in the sense that its understanding of a glorious empire, having ruled large parts of the world and having managed, religiously and ethnically diverse communities, does shape its understanding of today.

Even though it is so far from that reality. So I feel like that is something Turkey shares, with the UK. They both have today nostalgia about that empire and also their ability to have managed these diverse groups while holding on to their superiority.

And in a way, during the Ottoman times and maybe during the British Empire times, some of the areas that are now quite politically difficult were more harmonious.

And it is interestingly, a lot of the period, areas that were controlled by the Ottoman Empire then got controlled by the British Empire. So I think the way in which they manage communities probably spoke to each other. So in a way British have learned from the Ottomans how they were managing communities, but at the same time they transformed them.

And then the way in which we understand how communities should relate to each other or can potentially relate to each other, have a lot to do with this understanding. Especially after the First World War, we developed, I think, due to the understanding of the British or the end of the British Empire, we developed an understanding that different communities, when they are together, they will get into conflict with each other.

So based on that idea, for example, when the Balkans were separated from then Ottomans, there were population exchanges that was based on the idea that Christians and Muslims cannot live together in peace. We had the same thing in India and Pakistan, and also the same thing Israel and Palestine, also Cyprus.

So these are all previously Ottoman and then British, and then you know, independent areas. So I think this understanding that different communities are inherently in conflict with each other, and that relationship should be managed in a way while keeping them together, I think still really shapes our understanding of interfaith relations.

So I would say, theoretically, it doesn't have to be the same . All around the world, different people have lived together. But also we are living in this post First World War, Second World War reality where there is a lot of religious and inter ethnic conflict. And we need to think about them, to understand how to live well together.

Okay, so is there anything particularly around how that impacts modern Britain? Is there anything particularly around policy and governance?

Maybe an important part is that this religious plurality or ethnic plurality is sometimes dealt as a cutesy thing that can be celebrated in its multiplicity, which it is, right? Like, as humans, we exist because we differentiate and we find different ways of living. We attach different meanings to things. You know, if it was one way, we could have never survived.

But at the same time, the conflicts that different groups have are not because of this cutesy difference. But these differences also have something to do with how empires have been managed, how some things were given to them, some things were taken from them, and then people are given a sense that the group, they are meaningful as a group. Land was given to them, taken to them, populations were moved.

So the existing conflicts have deep and historical connections. And sometimes only bringing them together, making them know each other can help. Reminding them that now they live in the UK. And then they don't live in India, Pakistan, they don't live in North Cyprus, South Cyprus. So these things may help.

But at the same time, if those things are not addressed, what has happened in the empire, what has been taken, what groups have taken from them, what kind of genocides have been committed...

Yeah, I feel like by ignoring the past injustices, it is more difficult to deal with today's conflicts.

So, past is always part of the present, would be my approach.

So if I can paraphrase, I think you're saying that people's histories and identities need to be engaged within conversation and encountered rather than taking an idea that something innate in religious identity per se, or in the character of a set of religious beliefs that is inevitably going to polarize individuals from different communities.

Exactly. So belief is part of it, but also, resources. Like how land was appropriated, also people, then slavery, and also genocides. So how things were taken and given is also part of it, like a kind of materialistic approach is also part of the conflict. It's not only at the surface level of beliefs.

Okay, so when you came to Cambridge you arrived with a profound vision of the study that's needed to face the future. That's our Religion and Global Challenges Initiative. I wanted to ask what kinds of investigation have been generated already as a result of that vision and then really what's the value of the kind of cross disciplinary or cross sector working within these kinds of investigation, in relation to global challenges?

Yeah. So I think it is, again, the same idea that I have: religions as belief systems are definitely fascinating. It is one of the most valuable, complex, systems of thoughts humans have generated. And, you know, keep generated so only we can study them in themselves. And it is fascinating and it really gives us an amazing understanding of the human potential.

But at the same time, I'm also always interested in how these belief systems are also very connected to the contemporary realities and material realities of the world that we are living in.

As individuals are meaning maker creatures, that is one of our most important characteristic, if we want to engage with the global challenges that are existential. Right? Climate change, the health issues in front of us, drastic inequalities, immigration. So in all of these, we engage with them through the systems of meaning that we have also created. And at the same time, again, the religious, the material, the everyday reality, are all enmeshed.

So if we just separate them, and then think, oh, we people have the religious cute, or sometimes uncute, irrational religious beliefs, but at the same time they have the climate crisis, and these are two separate realities. It doesn't work like that. They are all connected to each other.

So in order to live and face climate change, we need to engage with the religious beliefs, religious communities, they're not also only beliefs, right?

They're these communities, they're institutions, they're organized structures: how we can engage them? And also, these communities also do engage and have complicated thoughts about the environment in which they live and they have been living.

So I think these connections I am finding quite fruitful.

And through our research at CIP, we're finding out how they have been disconnected.

So we have been working with the water companies and talking about how belief is an important part in how we engage with water. And also our environment, but also it would be the same with immigration, our understanding of what counts as just, what counts as unjust.

Yeah, these connections prove to be very fruitful points.

Okay, and do you think something like working with a water company, which maybe is an unexpected kind of collaborator for somebody based in a Faculty of Divinity, do you think that those kinds of maybe unexpected partnerships have something important to offer into this kind of global challenges space?

Definitely. As you said, this came to us unexpectedly when the water companies came to us and they wanted to work with water usage and how to decrease water usage in faith communities. So we were a bit surprised, but the more we started thinking about it, we realized what a major deficit is there in how people think about climate change, what are the challenges, how can they be improved, in including people into it as people with beliefs, with meanings, with capacity to change. Yeah, so without including people as believing and meaning maker beings. we cannot solve any of the global challenges in front of us.

It's really interesting and just sticking with that example of the water project, the language in which the initial problem was presented, which is one of water efficiency, belonged very much to a kind of economic capital marketization of things. And I know that some of the learning that has been articulated from the industry perspective was to remember that for all that necessarily the way the system is means that you're talking about customers because everybody in the UK needs to be a customer in order to get their water. At the same time, these are whole people with complex value systems. And that in order to encourage somebody to use or tend to water differently, what you might need to engage with is not necessarily a kind of a customer- oriented message about efficiency or the amount of money in your pocket, for all that those are important things in a time when we're challenged by cost of living. Actually there may be more meaningful ways to engage collectively, than that kind of, “we just need to get the message right”, to send it out to the customer, sort of framework.

Right, if people were acting only based on their pockets, a lot of the decisions that they are making would be different. You know, clearly there are lots of other ways of thinking that shape how people act in relation to each other, in relation to the material world in front of them. Yeah. So by the kinds of methods that we're proposing, it tries to bring them together.

Yeah, and I would think, that this is not something that's going to be peculiar to any one industry, right? So it's part of the way in which we have societally and indeed globally got into the habit of talking and thinking a lot in terms of economics, and capital and material, without reference to other value systems, which rather neatly brings me to, to my next question.

So your professorship is defined in terms of “Abrahamic faiths and shared values”. Can I invite you to reflect on the relevance of that framework for interfaith futures and how you see your work? I'm wondering, do you see the job title as inspiration, as limitation, or perhaps even a bit of both?

When I applied for this job, I have thought you know, part of my work is about Holocaust memory, and then I have approached that as a shared value. How the Second World War, especially the Nazi antisemitic racist approach have destroyed, you know, large sections of the world that caused massive suffering.

And after that , United Nations, the world community developed some shared values about how minorities should be treated, how refugees should be treated, lots of international law, how genocide became a crime. So a set of international and global shared values came into being. And I thought to myself, Oh, great, I really fit for this job.

So the shared values for me is neither an inspiration nor a limitation. My approach always is to try to understand what is happening. Then the other, maybe, idealistic phase of, okay, how should be, has not been my focus. I do have ideas about how things should be, but I feel like it is really, really important to notice what is happening.

If we can understand right now is a moment where shared values are collapsing, I think it is really important to understand it and how that is happening. Then we can see if we can change anything.

Thank you. I think that's the anthropologist in you ever observing and analyzing and seeking to read the now, which can give us a hint of what may come next and especially what we really need to be paying attention to.

Exactly.

Thank you very much for this conversation in our Interfaith Futures series . I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes out of these diverse connections with people in academia, with people in interfaith practitioner roles, and so on. So, yeah, thank you very much, Esra.

Thank you.

Thank you, Iona.