Songs of Praise is to remain Christian despite calls for it to be turned it into a multifaith programme, the BBC’s first Muslim head of religion has pledged. Aaqil Ahmed said that it was vital that religious programming promoted “diversity” but insisted that Songs of Praise would always remain Christian.
Last week, in a small room on the first floor of a rabbinical college, my family gathered to say morning prayers with the students and staff.
It was a normal Thursday service, and as light streamed into the tiny synagogue we celebrated the ancient rituals. My brother said blessings in Hebrew. We sang songs. And I carried on my shoulder the heavy scroll on which was inscribed in Hebrew the text of the first five books of the Bible.
I circled the room, and each participant touched the scroll with their prayer shawls and then kissed the dangling fringes of the shawl.
And all the while I thought of my father, who died last summer, and the many occasions we had been together in services like this and how, at the best of times, he’d never much liked carrying the scroll, until, at the end of his life, increasingly unsteady on his feet, it became impossible for him to do it any more. And I remembered the many hours I’d spent as a child sitting next to him as the service went on (would it ever stop?) and I would tie his prayer shawl fringes together and fiddle with them until he got fed up and told me to stop.
[...]
It had been a lovely morning, warm, familiar, comforting, a moment to sit and remember, but also to realise that, painful though it was, ours wasn’t the only loss and that life will go on for generations just as it has gone on for generations. We felt among friends and shared a ceremony we knew well, even though most of us at the college that day had never met before.
But there is, of course, another way that you could look at it if you wished. A group of strangers mumbling Hebrew to each other, even though quite a few of us don’t understand it completely; repeated prayers that make assertions about the supernatural that are highly improbable and would be unlikely to survive scientific investigation; absurd carrying and kissing with scarves as if what we were carrying and kissing was more than mere pen and ink.
You could look at it like that if you wanted to. But I don’t want to.
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A multifaith Songs of Praise? Not on my watch says BBC religion chief
Songs of Praise is to remain Christian despite calls for it to be turned it into a multifaith programme, the BBC’s first Muslim head of religion has pledged. Aaqil Ahmed said that it was vital that religious programming promoted “diversity” but insisted that Songs of Praise would always remain Christian.
Media Monitoring
It’s easy to mock religion, but then what?
15th February 2012
Last week, in a small room on the first floor of a rabbinical college, my family gathered to say morning prayers with the students and staff.
It was a normal Thursday service, and as light streamed into the tiny synagogue we celebrated the ancient rituals. My brother said blessings in Hebrew. We sang songs. And I carried on my shoulder the heavy scroll on which was inscribed in Hebrew the text of the first five books of the Bible.
I circled the room, and each participant touched the scroll with their prayer shawls and then kissed the dangling fringes of the shawl.
And all the while I thought of my father, who died last summer, and the many occasions we had been together in services like this and how, at the best of times, he’d never much liked carrying the scroll, until, at the end of his life, increasingly unsteady on his feet, it became impossible for him to do it any more. And I remembered the many hours I’d spent as a child sitting next to him as the service went on (would it ever stop?) and I would tie his prayer shawl fringes together and fiddle with them until he got fed up and told me to stop.
[...]
It had been a lovely morning, warm, familiar, comforting, a moment to sit and remember, but also to realise that, painful though it was, ours wasn’t the only loss and that life will go on for generations just as it has gone on for generations. We felt among friends and shared a ceremony we knew well, even though most of us at the college that day had never met before.
But there is, of course, another way that you could look at it if you wished. A group of strangers mumbling Hebrew to each other, even though quite a few of us don’t understand it completely; repeated prayers that make assertions about the supernatural that are highly improbable and would be unlikely to survive scientific investigation; absurd carrying and kissing with scarves as if what we were carrying and kissing was more than mere pen and ink.
You could look at it like that if you wanted to. But I don’t want to.
Too read the full article (subscription required
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/danielfinkelstein/article3320315.ece