The role let play in the more don't charge. Into the song. Fandom enough with a boy. Oh. The song. Camisole. So you. Come with. A set or a sense of. How out. With. Me. I'm. Glad I. Was. At the out. To our. Campus. Mr himself the out. Of the Sarasota. The out there and I was also asked the hour Obama out. On the. Oh the years appreciate. The lovely voice of just so on and I fell in love with a boy this week marks the end of Scottish interfaith week encouraging us to open our doors to eat and share together I Kirk project and September put this into action taking representatives from the charts on the Muslim community here in Scotland to Ghana to explore had the West African country manage its interfaith relations the results were both educational and inspiring according to 2 members of the delegation Dr Yahia Barry director of the olive tree majority at intra and Reverend John Stewart a prison chaplain at Castle Huntly done d.c. Good morning to you both good morning want to catch you here 1st of all tell me how you get involved in this enterprise. It was back in February last year when I met with the interfaith office of the Church of Scotland Mirella and the only one we have to you know give a big shout out to she said that there was a project by the Church of Scotland to take some faith leaders to Ghana for what she outlined as a transform and connect and to price and I was very much on board and look forward to it and what about you and why did you decide to take part this idea was partly that as well as there being $68.00 of the trail of us being Muslim and 6 being Christian church Scotland we would look at poor streams within that civic representation education gender justice and prison chaplain see so I was a prison chaplain that I was invited to go through it seemed and I said this is yeah so I was gonna chosen as the destination for the project. Ghana's very good history well established history of promoting good relationships between the Muslim and Christian populations even compared to some other countries in that region so it was felt that we could learn from the experience but also learn just from traveling together for the time that we were there and what is the trip involved yeah what do you do I mean you coming along as effectively to strangers but you want to be part of adrenaline just witness things Yeah definitely so if you look at Ghana is surrounded by so many other countries where you know there are some problems like this a freeze on the 5050 divide in Nigeria where there's a lot tension. And prior to us going there were terrorist attacks and book in a fossil book you know just one of the countries bordering on a so you just have this this kind of almost model nation standing out and it involved us going there and just kind of discovering the secret to or I suppose you've touched on it there yeah kaput Can you give us a sense of the religious makeup of Ghana the vast majority are Christian percentage of museum is higher in Ghana than it is in Scotland but there are still a minority in Ghana However overall it's a religious country it's not a secular Scotland with guitar selection of signs that you collected from your travels across Ghana and I think that really puts across the rich of the culture and indeed the strength of faith there to let's just listen to it. The way I. Was was. The hero. And the person. Who. My. My my the it was. Around noon was. My am. Hearing. You. Send the choir there it's just a blip that worship and what was noticeable to you but the wake the Christian faith is practiced in Ghana as I see it as a less secular country so it was more obvious everywhere you went to even. Show up Swede have like some 23 plumbers or something you know number plate car number plates Jesus is Lord printed on the number plate and Muslim versions of that as well the church service we went to in the Sunday. I loved it but it was born a quarter is long and if we if we were to introduce a Scotland I think I may know belive so. Are Muslim friends and come with us here attended some of them had been to church and Scotland for and were asking is always a church near saying no one's going to know and so yeah I thought if I print had choirs and bands and and the great African colors too that they werent or quote seems would go back about us and when you come back home and everything else as I had a celebrate getting isn't it and we had a young boy reciting the Qur'an as part of the century recorded what struck you about it young children sense of their Muslim identity. Yeah it was really interesting so part of the trip involved going to a madrassa or the court in Ghana my car into. And just just looking at how the kids study alongside some of their Christian colleagues as well who would be enrolled to some of the same schools and I did find myself one point just standing up and having to kind of give a short dress and it was it was one of those really kind of a key moment for me to the larger trip where I confronted a field mine a fear of basically not being accepted by my own people so I being black African Muslim going to God in a context I am Gambian myself and during the trip I did feel sort of like. My position in all of this you have to understand I'm the only black African within the group so the remaining members of the delegation are white Scots or Pakistani Muslims so I did stand out and throughout the trip I did feel with some of the children who were interacting with theirs that there was an element of kind of like an almost inferiority you know the fact that they were confronted by white Europeans again you know the kind of colonial narrative if you had just been to Elmina Castle with a whole history of of slavery and when I heard comments such as all wow I wish I was white or of Wow you people are so you people are so beautiful I just had the urge to just stand up was a look I am black and I'm African among these people and the color of your skin should not determine you know what you can achieve in life and I hope the message was taken well. That's quite powerful it is a perfectly liberal group we're keeping in mind so we're here very purple indeed and you also had an inspiring encounter with a famous old Kenyan bishop called Nathan read me while you were there didn't you that's correct and I ended up making some lines up. I am towards the end of the trip to share with the group. Just showing this old man coming from Kenya and another interfaith retreat or or summit that he had there and you would expect him to come home and to relax but instead he got in his car came to receive us hosted up at his house I arranged a birthday cake for some for one of our members whose birthday it was and just you know said you know this is part of our cation Parmar work and seeing the tiredness and his face and his voice and I would just like well if this man can dedicate a life to interfaith relations to bettering communities understanding each other then then what about us in a you know somewhat privileged lives you know. The human element in all of us conceptually in situations like that because you know you are leaders represent your path of faith or your tradition. How do you would you describe the way that people conducted themselves in terms of their own identity and what it can teach us about it that retaining your sense of identity but sharing at the same time an understanding which I presume was part of the reason of this this trip I suppose in a way before I read it I was imagining it was a bit like Big Brother t.v. Series that were going to be. Part of the purpose perhaps was that we were going to see what would happen if if. Trail of religious leaders from Scotland had to live together travel together. To be fair I'm not sure that that was but that was what was imaginable for the way of Scotland they should enough we spent a lot of time together but I was nervous nerves on the bus when they were 10 every one of us another day were actually trailed by reason of us into 2 rows of sex Irish with a visit in between the conversations during that table and in the evening we met together and 100 flexions we just learned so much from each other and came to understand each other's 5th much more deeply somebody theological discussions some more discussions just to do with her reap practice our faith practicalities of it of practicing our faith and then of course a lot of discussion about it back home in Scotland what we learned in Ghana immediately translate back in Scotland with the b. Things really would have to add up to a big thing in Ghana is one of the ways they promote unity is to emphasize that they are Guinea and fresh and foremost and after that is the McChrystal or whatever other religion we reflected that in Scotland but all human beings what kind of country do we want this to be we want it to be a nice country will get along and then we're Christian or Muslim or secular or whatever we are as opposed to essentially for you that was successful and much will come from that which will filter through in your work but at any time you. Did you feel that there were periods when you felt the faiths were irreconcilable. No there was no play when I felt that the phase were irreconcilable to be completely honest in that rather I saw that there was some challenges and I suppose I don't know I'm a bit unusual I love challenges that if you see presented as like a problematic maybe some of the Muslim women complain that they jab was not so welcome in certain arenas of life in Ghana and the north is that you know with all respect you know because Christians dominant religion 70 percent of the representatives that were taking us around tried to kind of you know. Just kind of brushed over and kind of not make it such a prominent issue and you know if it was an issue that you know it should have been discussed and it just highlighted to me that yes gone is a very successful model but it's not perfect there are you know issues that need to be refined and that's why humanity is about that we have our problems and how do we deal with them well thank you for coming in and telling us about your trip and catching up you know day student on one another said see a September 8th trip to Ghana and Stewart and say yes and you know here you're going to keep me company for a while get lots more to discuss it let's have some music this is sand and she's in . You're listening to some to morning with. Radio Scotland where you can also hear some interesting thoughts on climate change as the planet warms just like everywhere else Scotland's climate is changing this is fixable only if we act immediately and aggressively now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions how exactly do animals react to these changes and why out of doors brings you a series on climate change we have as a nation as a world got to improve the way we live we grow our own for invades and it's got a carbon footprint of a 100 meters nature based solutions which can and can really if we get it right be a world leader and so all the power source comes from the turbine up on the Hill So what does that mean for bills for you listen Saturday mornings from 630 on b.b.c. Radio Scotland or subscribe to Scotland I tourists on b.b.c. Signs growing up in an upper middle class family in the a delay kid English tine of Windsor a very different life was expected for my next guest perhaps the priesthood or an army officers life awaited poll killer but instead the allure of London's 1906 counterculture and eastern spirituality took hold as he became more and more involved in the stomach culture in the arts he converted to the faith and set up the successful world of Islam festivals he took the name poll killer and he's written the book a rethinking Islam and the West which he beats speaking about later today in Glasgow's Andalus center he joins me good morning welcome to the program made Thank you very much now before we go on to talk about the book just to let's talk briefly about what it was like going from middle class life to sixty's London and then how Islam for standard that picture Well it was. Really a matter of timing extraordinary timing I was born in 142 so I was exactly 18 in 1960 and I was really well the last generation that was completely educated for Empire by the time I was 18 the empire was no longer the shock of the sixty's was phenomenal and it was phenomenal for me because I didn't go to university I went to drama school and I happened to go to the drama school which was the the home of the new drama The ground of contar and also born and the drama which was completely shredding the old established means of which of course I was had been there you know Brett as a member so I went through this extraordinary experience which I thoroughly enjoyed the acting part of it and then of course at the end of the sixty's we had this great rejection if you like of the whole modern infrastructure and world with when that when the would be needed was love so by the end of the sixty's I was very far from where I was when I was a child and important was that that do you to Islam Well again it's one of these extraordinary coincidences I didn't sort of I wasn't looking for a religion or anything I was basically involved in the arts and I met a. Wonderful musician from from Delhi in 1968 and it was through his music that I entered into the realm of Islamic culture so I had the idea of the world of Islam festival which was to show the Islamic culture. And the unity of that world so for 7 years. I was basically being introduced by the greatest experts in the field to the wonders of Islamic art and culture and by the time it was 6 months before the Festival opens I just was comfortable and enjoyed and loved that world that had sort of grown up and and so 6 months before the festival I became a Muslim well indeed and if I can turn to your book now the book chronicles the relationships between some in the West going back some 1400 hears and some might say these words were not too dissimilar What was it that happened to take them on such different paths you could say it is the real nasals and the Reformation and these 2 events completely transform the west Islam continued but the West went on another trajectory and the West went on a trajectory which was at all odds with all the traditional civilisations but of course the relationship with Islam being the neighbor. Meant that. As we come to our time now that relationship I believe this is the most important and the food title of the book is The rethinking Islam and the West a new narrative for the age of crises Let's talk about the crises that you believe we're facing and how With arrived at this point well I call it the age of crises because when the atom bomb was produced humanity crossed the threshold and for the 1st time had created something that was capable of its own in the hellacious. And since then the number of ways in which we have reduced possibilities of our own extinction are phenomenal and of course now we are actually facing the threat of global warming so if you imagine that. All around us we have this endless crises which the scientists out of whose Lavoro choose the crisis has emerged it is the scientists who are warning us who are telling us. Informers danger so I want what I'm calling it the age of crises simply because that is what determines our world at this time and we only have to look at the response of children. At this time the worry the concern of children to realize that this is the overwhelming reality of the time we're living in you also you talk about me sound in the book if I'm pronouncing it properly. Which is a hugely interesting concept of Fame balance and harmony but also his study in talk about how we measure success for example in the West it's about advances in science and medicine technology and so on almost how we're seen from the outside whereas in terms of Islam it's more about the parish than what's going on on the inside that we can't see it tell me a little bit more about this and how. This concept of miss an impact and affects us it's a very interesting question and a very big one fundamentally you could say that. Balance is absolutely if essential to everything on on Earth I mean all life on Earth when things are out of balance they become either aberrational or Finally they collapse so the concept of balance in Islam. Which incorporates by the NZ justice measure. And is also a term which is permeated by the spiritual is really beautifully enunciated in that one of the sort I was when it says how almighty God created the world in balance and that we have to act and not destroy or upset that balance we have to act with justice so I think at this time this concept is very very valuable in trying to understand our situation because one thing that I think practically everyone would agree is that we are out of balance when it comes to the question of nature it is self-evident that we are simply out of balance with nature where no longer a part of nature in the sense that we integrated or you know in gauge with nature in the manner in which sustains nature but on a practical level how do you think that can be adopted because you're talking about a massive cultural shift aren't you. The book is created or I've written a book in order simply to try to understand a situation in this age of crisis I think what is happens is that the ideology of progress which underpins the modern world the idea of growth of progress is so imbedded in the way we think and the way we judge everything. That you're quite right in order for us to step out of it and you know see the darkness that we've entered into the purpose of the book is simply to try to clear the fork and actually understand our situation because once one understands one's situation then one can act in an intelligent way that's fascinating Many thanks for joining us I've met Paul Keeler rethinking Islam and the West as published by press and poll will be a Glasgow's and aloof center at 5 pm today it's a mixed color is say still here listening to that what his thoughts on pole was talking about it's a massive concept and it's very very interesting but you know what do you feel about it for me one of the things that I found interesting was I couldn't help but notice 2 things looked at separately Islam and the West Amar process that has always been to critically think about it has not always been the case I mean in some of the field research that I've done looking at Islamophobia in Europe and in Scotland in particular one of my one of the women I talked to she said before the land was it was the land of God you know to address the fact that nationalism is something that is new that we've imagined and so therefore it raises the question Ok. How did these constructions come to be to the point that we've reached where we are where we look at the west and we look at the east and is there any way of thinking that we could use to bridge this gap because poll was talking about this idea of Miss and or balance do you think on a practical level we can actually follow in practice this in our daily lives. Yeah I mean I have quickly read the book prior to coming here and his concept of Meason is quite complex I mean he he mentioned is a kind of triad made of 3 parts there's a what it calls the ontology core triad the vocation or try and the Platonic and these things are dynamic and how that can be you know made use of in everyday life is a question I mean. The general argument that he's forwarding is that we need to live more balanced lives and that's certainly true Islam has certain solutions for it and other traditions have solutions for and always try to advocate Ok can we come together and study these alternatives and can we as a humanity say Ok we can about this we can adopt that but we can't adopt this it's just getting it had rained to 2 isn't it