Once again it has been a while since I have put fingers to keyboard and predictably this has been due to the fact that there has been nothing of particular merit to say...until now.
At the end of the Christmas vacation I was having a trawl around the charity shops of York in search of books and vinyl records. (May I say at this point that the Micklegate branch of 'Oxfam' is a fantastic treasure trove on both counts!) The main purpose of my visit was to see it I could find a suitable introductory guide to Hinduism. My girlfriend is a Hindu and having not studied the religion since year 8 R.E. classes, I felt it would be interesting and beneficial to do some updating.
In this task I was lucky enough to come across a suitable text, which coincidentally my girlfriend approved of quite highly. It was not that book however which is the key to this blog post, but rather the one sitting to the right of it. As a disinterested observer of most topics it was almost impossible for my interest not to be tweaked by seeing the words 'The God Delusion' written in big red font on the spine and 'International Bestseller' on the cover.
Over the coming weeks I only read the first couple of chapters due to concentrating the majority of my efforts on my psychology. In recent weeks though my leisure time has been limited and so I began to peruse it further a few weeks back. It was here that the problems started. Not unsurprisingly for a higher education institution I tend to read whenever and wherever I get the chance to and so therefore I read most of it in public areas. It would be fair to say that the response to this was less than welcoming.
During the course of three consecutive days I was verbally abused twice, asked to go and read it somewhere else once and also had someone try and snatch the book off me with the express intention of binning it. I was well aware for reading it that both the author and the book are not exactly popular in religious circles and that I was reading it in a Catholic College. However, in the prospectus I read before starting my degree I read that the college was one which welcomed students of all faiths, religions, belief systems and backgrounds. It was on this basis that I decided to approach the College 'newspaper' in order to bring the matter to public attention.
For that meeting I undertook some fairly intensive preparation. The last thing I needed in the home stretch of my degree was to provoke a public backlash against me. I therefore made sure that I emphasised two key points in the interview:
1. That I was an utterly disinterested observer. I had no views to defend or push. I was simply reading the book because I thought it would be an interesting read.
2. I was in NO WAY trying to make a religious issue out of the matter, rather I felt it was one of an educational nature. In an higher education institution students have to face people and issues that they will disagree with. The skill of the higher education student is to be able to assimilate both sides of an argument and move forward through learned discourse.
In at least three cases, I'm pretty sure that the 'assailant' was a student. In the case of being asked to read the book somewhere else, I was confronted by a woman in her late 20s/early 30s. In none of the four cases did I in any way recognise the person. If I had, then I would have been quite happy to 'name and shame', so that the relevant authorities could deal with them.
Even despite all these measures I was still a little uneasy about the course the interview took. At one point I was asked whether it would be okay to include the story about going shopping for a book on Hinduism, 'in order to make it look like I wasn't against religion'. My response was a very curt, 'Yes I do, because emphasising that I am a disinterested observer should be enough to do the job'.
As a precaution (From previous experiences with journalists) I asked to be able to see a draft copy of the article. The next issue is due out on Friday and I will keep the blog updated. In the meantime, if anyone has any advice or points they wish to make then feel free - I would welcome it!
