Until I read Jaclyn Rekis’ article on religious identity and epistemic injustice (Rekis 2023), it was very difficult for me to engage with the subject of faith as part of the course. The term epistemic injustice, coined by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007), provided me a way into understanding the importance of acknowledging learners’ religious identities, and moreover, the harm that overlooking them might do. 

Of the recurring themes in all the provided resources, I found the most important to my teaching context to be firstly, the possible integrity of someone’s religion and all other aspects of their life, and secondly, the deflation of a person’s credibility due to their religious identity. As both Kwame Appiah in his TED talk and Jaclyn Rekis in her article emphasise, for many people, there is no separation between religious ways of knowing and e.g. scientific ways of knowing (Appiah 2014, Rekis 2023). Therefore, for epistemic justice, we must attribute credibility to religious speakers when they speak from their theological resources and concepts. This is important not least because attributing credibility to a religious speaker helps the speaker to live with integrity (Rekis 2023, 793-794). The unjust deflation of a person’s credibility due to their religious identity, however, often happens before a person even gets a chance to offer a testimony. More often, the deflation can already happen due to prevailing stereotypes and certain associated visual religious features, e.g. muslim women wearing a veil, sikh men wearing the dastar. Simran Jeet Singh talks about the importance of challenging such stereotypes in the classroom by developing empathy, and engaging with difference (Trinity University 2016), while Jaclyn Rekis refers to the observations by Alia Al-Saji: “… the simultaneous denial of veiled Muslim women’s voices and persistent view that equates the veil with oppression itself makes it so “the veiled woman is at once hypervisible as oppressed and invisible as subject” (Al-Saji 2010, 891)” (Rekis 2023).

Even though by now I recognise my own faith-related prejudices in my teaching practice and strive to challenge them, it also pains me to realise how I’ve been affected by them in the past without questioning them. The clearest examples of this have to do with the intersection of religion and gender, and with the associated stereotypes of oppression and incredibility. I was particularly struck by Rekis drawing on the experiences of veiled muslim women to exemplify the intersection of faith and gender, but perhaps even more strongly, I was affected by her drawing on the example of Sojourn Truth, in whose case we can discuss the intersection of race, gender and faith (Rekis 2023). In this example, Rekis makes a strong case about Truth’s ways of knowing being rooted in her Christian faith. 

In my own teaching, I can identify with the issue of avoiding certain topics and themes out of fear of having to address the different life experiences and sources of knowledge my students might possess due to their faith. I recognise now, that avoidance is also injustice – the possibility to interpretate religious experiences is ruled out in the academia, and so their credibility is not deflated but removed altogether. By doing so, we are practicing injustice towards the religious students, but also, we are losing the potential to diversify the understanding of secular audiences. So how to encourage the sharing of knowledge that is rooted in faith? How to give time and space to discussions that grow empathy and engage with difference?

Bibliography:

Al-Saji, A. (2010) The racialization of Muslim veils: A philosophical analysis. Philosophy & Social Criticism 36 (8): 875–902.

Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Youtube [Online]. 16 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY

Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online].

Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp779–800.

Trinity University (2016) Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom. [Online].