On religious intolerance

Birthday gifts

If all goes to plan and they succeed in getting to Luxembourg for the funeral on Saturday, the boys will be away for Ann's birthday. So when they came round last night to collect Edwin's passport and funeral garb for their trip tomorrow, they also brought Ann's birthday present, insisting she could open it while they were there. It was a gift of three of her favourite wines, each attached to a gift wrapped book relevant to the region or type of wine. That was so thoughtful, and we both look forward to reading their selection.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, a woman of exceptional talent and ability, has reminded an opposition member in the House that she was all too well aware of religious prejudice, having been subjected to Paki-bashing at school, and having to fight her way up a very difficult ladder to succeed. This type of prejudice is all too apparent in films such as East is East, and Blinded by the Light.

Some while ago, Edwin and I were invited to the Royal Society of Medicine to see a presentation to the neurosurgeons who had treated Malala following her severe head wounds. We had the privilege of meeting Malala, the activist for female education and youngest Nobel Prize laureate, with her parents, and also a representative from the Pakistani embassy who gave a glowing presentation about his country, leaving us tempted to visit. Her "crime" was to believe something others did not - in this case, that girls should recieve an education.

Malala at the RSM

As a medic, I have had to work with people of many different nationalities, and generally people are no more nor less varied in one culture as they are in another, whatever their racial characteristics, or what beliefs they cling to. As has been stated many times, it is not differing religions or race that trigger hatred, but intolerance of those who are different. The current unrest and protests round the world against racial discrimination led us to think about aggressiveness in general, so much of which is driven by religious intolerance, examples of which abound.

The nature of being a spiritual person is not how we worship, or who or what we worship, but to acknowledge that there is some power beyond that which can be seen. I am not particularly religious, but would describe myself as spiritual. Girders in the Sand presents a picture of the evolving god. As the elements are beyond their components of protons, neutrons and electrons, so are the proteins, genes and chemistry above them in variety and form, and the living cells are above them in complexity as individuals are above the cells that compose them. So an evolving god is as much beyond anything that can be imagined as human societies are beyond the individuals that comprise them.

We can but approach the unknowable through human representations: Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, Budda - all figures suggesting something beyond imagination. Religious wars and intolerance are fights against human imagination, therefore against ourselves. Yet beyond this, something remains - beyond our power of thought, yet drawing us forward, through music, art and architecture to something beyond ourselves. Perhaps then, when we see the unity of all things, racial and religeous intolerence will fade away.