There’s a bit of a storm in a teacup brewing downunder over some comments made by a couple of Muslim blokes hoping that polygyny might be made legal in Australia. My first reaction was “be patient and wait until gay marriage is legalised, then there’s no problems with polygyny.” But apparently it’s got more than a few people’s knickers in knots.

I used to belong to the “polygyny is outrageous” camp, and I remember my ears going red and my cheeks puffing out when someone suggested that there might be a credible argument made for it in modern times. But, after coming to know a few women in polygynous families, I started to have a more relaxed attitude. Not all of those relationships have been hunky-dory all of the time, but I figure if they want to and can make it work - who am I to say no. Consenting adults and all that. I have to confess it now seems strange to me that we live in a permissive society that says “take as many mistresses as you like, but just don’t do the honorable thing by them and support them and the children you have with them.”

Anyway I got asked to do a piece for the local rag on the topic, so here you go.

It’s taken me a while to appreciate there are many good things I can honour from my Baha’i upbringing. My parents taught me to believe in God; that racism was evil; that we should seek after world unity; that men and women are equal, all because of their Baha’i approach to life.

So, despite my occasional narkiness towards certain bureaucratic institutions of my parents’ religion, I do occasionally manage to pull myself together and note the positives in my natal faith. Does this conflict with my being a follower of a different religion? I don’t think so. Christians and Jews who convert to Islam, still have a place for Jesus and Moses (peace be upon them), but for a Baha’i reverting to Islam, the attitude to the founders of the Baha’i religion is a little more ambiguous. Your choices are:

Read the rest of this entry »

About every six weeks I have a faith column published in the Sunday Age. For some reason they don’t put the faith columns on the online version.  So here is my latest column:

I hope I don’t sound like too much of a wowzer but I do find the Christmas holiday season a bit tricky to navigate. Growing up, I remember pine-trees with tinsel and lights, Carols-by-Candlelight, wrestling with wrapping-paper whilst wearing pajamas, full-blown hot English dinners for Christmas lunch, visiting the extended relatives and friends and eating cold left-overs on Boxing Day. My family observed the traditional non-religious Aussie Christmas, but without the beer.

We didn’t go to church (or drink alcohol) because we were Baha’is, and strictly speaking we weren’t even supposed to celebrate Christmas. It was my earliest introduction to the issue of belonging to a non-Christian religious minority living in a relatively secularised but still Christian-majority country. My parents were pretty easy-going Baha’is, however, and felt it was important us kids didn’t feel left out, Christmas being an important Aussie holiday and all. My brother and I benefited from this by getting presents at Christmas as well as at the Baha’i New Year in March.

The family Christmas got a bit quirkier when I grew up. I got married to an Irish ex-Catholic, lapsed-Baha’i, began practising Islam seriously, and my natal family started having Christmas lunch at the home of my mum’s best friend, who happens to be Jewish. It almost sounds like a knock-knock joke: what do you have when a Jew, a Muslim and a Baha’i celebrate a Christian holiday? Whatever is the punchline, it might explain why I do well at interfaith gatherings.

After becoming Muslim, I started to seriously think about what Christmas means to me, or not as the case may be. Now I should clear something up. This whole ‘banning Christmas from kindergartens because of Muslims’ is a real furphy. While most Muslims don’t put up trees in their homes and swap presents between themselves, I have yet to meet a real-life Muslim who minds anyone else celebrating Christmas: Santa and his ho-ho-ho included. As far as I can make out, the War on Christmas is located entirely in the mad imaginings of some do-gooder public servants and bored journos looking for an easy story.

The more important issue for me is not whether a shopping centre puts up a Nativity Scene, but on the whole commercialisation of Christmas — an issue I share with many believing Christians. I would much prefer an Australia where there was a bit more spirituality and a little less debt at Christmas time. To that end, I hope this holiday season brings you extra special time with your loved ones, and the optimistic renewal of hope for good things to come in the new year.

My latest faith column makes it onto the online version of the Age this week.  I’ve been writing for the faith column about once every six weeks for a year now, and up until now you’ve only been able to read it in the physical ‘real-life’ version of the Age.  But, it seems with the new makeover, you can now read me on the web - woohoo.

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On a chilly Saturday morning a few weeks back, I trundled up a city street to meet Nicholas Brunton, Australia’s only representative of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. I had become intrigued with the idea of a marriage between progressive politics and religious folk, and Brunton, children in tow, had kindly agreed to meet me and explain what it was all about.

Under threatening grey clouds, he told me of his involvement with the network created by Rabbi Michael Lerner, who was frustrated by the failure of the political left to recognise the vital role that faith and spirituality play in creating a healthy society.

Many of us perceive the societies around us undergoing a spiritual crisis of selfishness and materialism, where worth is judged in terms of money or power. Despite this, there is something in human beings that wants to reconnect with the sacred, to find meaning beyond a bottom-line mentality.

Lerner, in his book The Left Hand of God, describes two types of religion: one that paints the world as a scary place, in which there is a need to dominate and control others before they do the same to us. This type of religion has forged an alliance with the political right, speaking of fear and hatred, borders and security, war and aggression.

Alternatively, in the great religious and philosophical traditions, there is a notion of the loving, kind and generous spirit of faith, one that is more closely aligned with progressive
values and concerns such as providing for the poor, saving the environment, protecting human rights, fighting for social justice and ending torture and war.

Lerner passionately argues that progressive and secular individuals on the political left cannot afford to let the only voice for religion be the one that is aligned with the conservative right. Rather, lefties have a responsibility to bring to the table a coherent spiritual-political alternative. The Network of Spiritual Progressives is one such attempt, comprised of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and even those who do not consider themselves religious in the traditional sense.

As the first few raindrops pattered down, I thanked Brunton and his family for their time and left feeling hopeful that, despite the cacophony of strident voices, each claiming God for their side in a never-ending war of hatred, there appears to be a growing
number of people who are willing to stand up for a different type of politics, and a different type of religion.

My latest faith column in the Sunday Age:

Many readers will have heard the old joke: “A Jew, a Christian and a Muslim walked into a room….”  Actually, last weekend it was no joke as nearly fifty ladies gathered together for the inaugural Jewish Christian Muslim Association women’s residential conference. 

Not only were the three great religions represented, but participants came from a diversity of denominations within the traditions.  At any moment you could see a Catholic nun sitting next to a Progressive Jew or a Sunni Muslim sharing a cup of tea with an Anglican priest.  Read the rest of this entry »