Inclusive Practices Blog 2 – Faith

“By holding back one’s testimony for fear of this perception, there is a clear ethical harm to the religious speaker, who loses out on an opportunity to participate in knowledge-building projects and offering a religious contribution as a knower. But there is also an epistemic harm. There is risk of further distorting or impoverishing social knowledge, whereby the complexity of one’s religion is distorted from view in the social imaginary”

Jacklyn Rekis 2023

Faith is more than belief, it is a lens for understanding the world and place in it (paraphrased from Rekis, 2023). Yet in academic and creative spaces that prize critical thinking, faith is often met with discomfort or suspicion. Aziz (1997) notes that difference is framed as deviance when dominant ideologies only recognise majority expressions of identity. This marginalisation can erode belonging for students of faith, an issue that demands attention at UAL.

Simran Jeet Singh, a Sikh academic and educator, reflects on the everyday burden of being visibly religious in the West. Post-9/11 Islamophobia and racialised media narratives continue to associate turbans, brown skin, and visible religious markers with threat or extremism. Singh, though not Muslim, often contends with anti-Muslim sentiment. He describes how he challenge bias, and deliberately employs disarming tactics by engaging others in conversation surrounding shared family values, using warmth and empathy to disrupt prejudice, and brings this mindset and worldview into his classroom: “If we can try and understand where people are coming from… that allows us to really engage with difference in a constructive way” (Singh, 2016). However, dominant secular norms continue to shape institutions like UAL, rendering other faiths hypervisible and policed (Riedel and Rau, 2025).

Appiah (2016) offers a cautionary reflection on the misuse of religion across history, particularly in war, colonisation, and opposition to science. But he also warns against dismissing faith altogether. In secularism, while distrust of religion is not unfounded and often viewed as progressive, can perpetuate epistemic injustice by treating religious perspectives as irrational or unacademic. This can lead to self-censorship among religious students and staff, and diminished engagement in knowledge production. Kidd (2017) argues that assuming belief in the supernatural reflects epistemic error contributes to exclusion in knowledge production. This may explain why religious students self-censor, and why institutions rarely collect attainment data by faith (UAL, 2024).

Examples of this disconnect are everywhere. A news anchor mistook Joe Biden’s Ash Wednesday mark for a bruise, showing how even white Western faith expressions are misunderstood (Daily Mail, 2010). If subtle Christian markers are misread, how much more scrutiny must visible Muslim or Sikh students endure? Ramadan (2021) discusses how Muslim women academics often perform reactive and proactive da’wah—representing their faith positively, working harder to counter bias, and navigating gendered and racialised scrutiny. If racialised and religious people are preoccupied with handling discrimination and constantly validating themselves in spaces where they feel they must work harder to belong and progress, how much growth and innovation can realistically occur under these pressures?

As an employability educator at UAL, I see how race, nationality, gender and religion intersect to shape opportunity. Ramadan cites Butler (2012), where some Muslim women only found work after removing the hijab, showing me that racialised and religiously marked students, especially Muslim women, face compounding scrutiny, a ‘triple penalty’ (Berthoud and Blekesaune 2007), which can lead to internalising feelings of self-doubt and self-blame. Much like Singh, they shoulder the burden of “representing” their entire identity group. This added labour is unpaid and unacknowledged, thereofre justifies positive action initiatives, which in turn support my area of work. Although Creative Access (2024) confirms a decrease of graduate opportunities and positive career trajectories in its THRIVE Report, highlighting declining career equity for underrepresented graduates in creative industries.

While platforms like Creative Access advocate for equitable employment and create positive action (Government Equalities Office, 2019) programmes, their THRIVE Report 2025 (Creative Access, 2024) signals a downturn in inclusive hiring and positive career trajectories, impacting the diverse range of graduates I support. As an employability educator, I must remain attentive to how faith shapes lived experience, institutional trust, and future opportunity, and inform my practice to better support and improve their horizons. A truly inclusive university environment must recognise and support faith not only as identity, but as an epistemology, a value system, and a driver of resilience and meaning, however UAL does not include religion in its attainment gap data, so we cannot fully know how epistemic injustice is reflected in academic failures.

References:

Appiah, K.A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Available at: https://youtu.be/X2et2KO8gcY (Accessed: 21 May 2025).

Aziz, R. (1997) ‘Feminism and the challenge of racism: Deviance or difference?’, in Mirza, H.S. (ed.) Black British Feminism: A Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 70–77.

Creative Access (2024) THRIVE 2025: An industry in flux. Available at: https://creativeaccess.org.uk/thrive-2025-an-industry-in-flux/ (Accessed: 21 July 2025).

Daily Mail (2010) Kay Burley sorry for mistaking Joe Biden’s Ash Wednesday cross for a bruise. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1251794/Kay-Burley-sorry-mistaking-Joe-Bidens-Ash-Wednesday-cross-bruise.html (Accessed: 21 July 2025).

Government Equalities Office (2019) Positive action in the workplace: guidance for employers. GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/positive-action-in-the-workplace-guidance-for-employers/positive-action-in-the-workplace (Accessed: 21 July 2025).

Kidd, I.J. (2017) ‘Religious diversity and epistemic injustice’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 9(2), pp. 59–79. https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v9i2.1952

Ramadan, A. (2022) ‘When faith intersects with gender: The challenges and successes in the experiences of Muslim women academics’, Gender and Education, 34(1), pp. 33–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2021.1893664

Rekis, J. (2023) ‘Religious identity and epistemic injustice: An intersectional account’, Hypatia, 38, pp. 779–800. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2023.86

Riedel, M. and Rau, V. (2025) ‘Religion and race: the need for an intersectional approach’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2025.2476300 (Accessed: 21 July 2025).

Singh, S.J. (2016) Challenging race, religion, and stereotypes in the classroom . Trinity University. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CAOKTo_DOk (Accessed: 21 May 2025).