Saturday, September 10, 2005

[179.1] YOUNGER ASIAN VOICES AIM TO MIX IT IN THE MEDIA

I'm honoured that Sunny Hundal (left), founder of Asians in Media, has linked FaithInSociety on his important new webzine venture, Pickled Politics - which aims to give a range of young, progressive British Asians a stronger voice in the public debate about politics, culture and religion. A background story is here on Ekklesia.

In a piece on Ziauddin Sardar's recent primetime BBC2 documentary Battle for Islam, Hundal wrote: Conservative Asians have a habit of believing that changing religious practice is a bad thing because it is deviating away from the religion. What they don’t realise is that Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism have long traditions of theological debate that encourages re-interpretation of the religious scriptures. This needs to change.

Similar lack of awareness inhabits Christianity, of course, when tradition and scripture are taken to be fixed, restrictive, closed, determined by the past, and prescriptive - rather than dynamic, creative, open, future-oriented, and generative.

Naturally I've added Pickled Politics and AIM to my own blogroll, under newsLinks. They're both essential reading for a different take on life in Britain and beyond.

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