Interfaith Photovoice: an Example of Muslim-Christian Engagement in Canada
By Catherine Holtmann, Emma Robinson and Roman Williams
Summary
Religion is highly visible in the daily activities of Canadians yet the visibility of religious diversity has become a source of tension and conflict. The Interfaith Photovoice (IFPV) Initiative harnesses the visibility of religion and uses the photovoice process to strengthen relationships between Muslims and Christians, bridge cultural divides, encourage mutual advocacy, and engage communities around questions of faith and religious diversity. This article highlights the work of IFPV participants from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada through the qualitative analysis of thirty-nine images and six interviews with Christian and Muslim university students utilising a theoretical framework of deep equality and lived religion. The results of visual content analysis, which focused on cross-photo comparison, are supported by evidence from the interview data. The findings are explained under the themes of public religious spaces, religious and symbolic clothing, and institutions and gender. The IFPV process facilitated the development of agonistic respect between religiously diverse women and men on a secular campus in a pluralistic city, showing that religious freedom must include the choice to be seen as religious.
Introduction
In 2019, the provincial government of Quebec, Canada introduced an ‘Act Respecting the Laicity of the State’ or what has become known as Bill 21. It declares Quebec as a lay state characterised by religious neutrality, makes a distinction between the state and religions, promotes the equality of all citizens as well as freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Bill 21 prohibits public workers such as teachers, day care workers, health and dental care providers, and public transit workers from wearing religious symbols such as turbans or hijabs while at work. It also specifies that in order to give or receive public services, a person’s face needs to be uncovered. In promoting French secularism, or laicité, through banning the wearing of visible religious symbols by public workers and citizens who seek public services, the Quebec government is attempting to control the visual expression of religion and religious diversity in the public sphere. There have been four different legal challenges mounted against Bill 21 claiming that it is unconstitutional, and all have been rejected by the Quebec Court of Appeal (Montpetit 2019). A research poll indicates that while 59% of Canadian voters outside of Quebec disapprove of the law, 41% of Canadians approve of it as well as 64% of Quebecers (Authier 2019).
The division of public opinion over Quebec’s Bill 21 is indicative of the challenge that growing religious diversity presents to members of Canadian society – a country often lauded internationally for the success of its official policy of multiculturalism. We begin with the controversy of Bill 21 because it highlights the social significance of visible expressions of religious diversity. Religion is highly visual and rooted in the material realities of people (Williams 2015). Examples of the visual nature of religion are everywhere including, most obviously, the distinctive architecture and interior design of churches, mosques and temples and religious themes in the visual arts (McDannell 1995). Less obvious are the collective and individual reliance on religious objects such as sacred texts, idols, icons, amulets, medals, prayer beads, tefillin, tarot cards, and kirpans, to name a few. In addition to the contemporary public and scholarly focus on the visibility of Muslim women who wear the hijab (Hoodfar 2012), niqab or burqa (Selby 2014), the connections between personal and group identities and religiously symbolic clothing as well as religious markings on the body through tattoos (Doherty and Koch 2019), for example, are being highlighted by social scientific research on religion. Morgan and Promey (2001) argue that the material, and by extension the visual (buildings, objects, clothes and bodies), is not merely decorative or additive to religion but constitutive of religion. Religious objects and images facilitate communication between humans and the divine. They create a sense of community between people who share the same religious culture. Visual objects shape memory and indicate what is important to particular religious groups and are integral to the socialisation of children and youth. Images play a key role in the ways that religious people make meaning and understand the purpose of their lives. Pink (2007) invites scholars to contemplate the relationship between the visual, the visible and reality. Material objects have a visual presence that informs the human imagination. In other words, understanding the power of the visual in religious cultures is central to understanding religious people. The highly visual presence of ethno-religious minorities has become a flashpoint for controversies concerning religious diversity in Canada and elsewhere, but we argue that religion’s inherent visibility can also be harnessed for the work of increasing understanding between people of different faith traditions.
The Interfaith Photovoice (IFPV) Initiative explores the use of photovoice as a tool to facilitate engagement between Christians and Muslims. It is difficult for people of different faiths to break through political rhetoric and get to know one another. Typically, interfaith dialogue takes place between leaders of different faith traditions resulting in formal statements in relationship to issues or is the initiative of religious leaders when members of different faith groups cooperate to address shared concerns in a particular local context (Williams et al. 2019). In both of these instances, religious groups are assumed to have unified beliefs and practices (Beaman 2017) and the dialogue is directed towards solving a social or environmental problem rather than on the complex identities (Ammerman 2003), religious and secular, of the people addressing it. The IFPV Initiative investigates whether photovoice can strengthen relationships between Muslims and Christians, bridge cultural divides, encourage mutual advocacy, and engage communities around questions of faith and religious diversity. The IFPV Initiative is led by Williams and Holtmann and religious leaders in three research sites. Two sites are in the US: Richmond, Virginia, and Grand Rapids, Michigan; and one site is in Canada in Fredericton, New Brunswick – a province bordering on Quebec. In this article we present the IFPV process along with an analysis of the data generated by participants in the Fredericton project. The analysis of visual and interview data from a group of Canadian Muslims and Christians highlights themes of religion in public spaces, religious and symbolic clothing, and institutions and gender. The IFPV process enabled the Canadian Muslim and Christian participants to engage in deeply personal conversations about their religious practices and meanings. They were able to present their concerns regarding the barriers to religious freedom and gender equality in ways that raised awareness in the community and contributed to individual change. We show that the visible components of religious identities and practices are fundamental expressions of religiosity in contemporary society, whether or not these are apparent to onlookers. In essence, freedom of religion in a pluralistic and multicultural society must include the choice to be seen as religious.
Theoretical and Methodological Approach
Our analytical approach relies on two concepts in the sociological study of religion: lived religion and deep equality. Lived religion as a concept and methodological starting point takes seriously individual religious and spiritual practices and the meaning that these practices provide. Individual practices may or may not have a relationship with institutionalised forms of religion. McGuire (2008) argues that the boundaries between the practices considered properly religious and those considered non-religious or cultural have always been contested by religious and political powers. Religious identities are socially constructed in the midst of religious and secular institutional pressures. Individuals in North America choose from a plethora of religious and spiritual practices available in our pluralistic and networked societies in which there are no pure forms of religious practice and belief (Ammerman 2007). We seek to understand Muslims’ and Christians’ religion-as-practiced in the contemporary milieu where the boundaries between religion and secular culture are blurred.
The division of opinions concerning the Quebec government’s attempts to limit the visibility of religion in public stem from suspicions about the impacts that recent growth in religious diversity have on so-called Canadian values. Political and public debates about immigrants, immigration policies and processes of integration, are part of the social construction of what it means to be Canadian. They reflect relations of power and domination in their attempts to define who and what we value as a country (Wilton 2010, 93). Federal election campaigns in 2015 and 2019, Quebec’s controversial Bill 21, the ongoing state violence against Indigenous peoples (Fleras 2017), and the number of hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims and Jews (Moreau 2020) defy state claims that Canadians value multiculturalism, tolerance, peace, and social justice (Wilton 2010). Public discourse concerning tolerance and the accommodation of religious minorities comes under scrutiny for its latent assumptions of White Christian hegemony (Selby, Barras, and Beaman 2018). Highly visible members of ethno-religious minority groups have become targets for those who are uncomfortable with the ways in which Canadian society is changing. As an alternative to the accommodation of difference, Beaman argues for deep equality:
Deep equality is not a legal, policy, or social prescription, nor it is achievable by a magic formula that can be enshrined in human rights codes. It is, rather, a process, enacted and owned by so-called ordinary people in everyday life. Deep equality is a vision of equality that transcends law, politics, and social policy, and that relocates equality as a process rather than a definition, and as lived rather than prescribed (Beaman 2017, 13).
The process of deep equality involves ongoing ‘fragile negotiations’ between individuals and groups who desire to live with what Beaman refers to as agonistic respect. Negotiations of equality between religiously different people are fragile in the face of histories heavy with hostility and hatred that exert pressure on groups and individuals. Christian and Muslim Canadians are not the same: they have distinct religious objects, practices and beliefs that have a dynamic relationship with particular cultural contexts. They also manage multiple identities in addition to their religious ones, including gendered, sexualised, and ethnic. Yet, Beaman argues, there are many examples of how Muslims and Christians live together respectfully in Canada if we are willing to look for or facilitate them. The IFPV Initiative is one such example of a ‘fragile negotiation’ – a set of limited social interactions that can propel participants towards micro-moments of deep equality (Beaman 2017, 15).
When considering people’s gendered identities, for years most feminist scholars practically ignored religion. They were, at best, ambivalent and, at worst, hostile towards the notion that the study of religion could be a source of legitimate knowledge about gender. Religious women were depicted by feminist scholars as victims of patriarchal domination rather than as agents (Rinaldo 2017). Social scientific analyses of the lived experiences of women in conservative Christian, Muslim, and Jewish groups helped to answer feminist questions about why women are drawn to them (Avishai 2008). Some claim that religious practices and beliefs empower women to deal with the harsh forces of modernity (Davidman 1991; Gallagher 2004). Others argue that women do not fully comply with religious tenants and obligations, choosing to adapt, subvert and resist them (Winter, Lumis, and Stokes 1995; Griffith 1997), sometimes doing so for non-religious ends (Gallagher 2007). More recently, sociological research on gender and religion is acknowledged for its contributions to understanding how religion shapes the social construction of gender and how cultural gender shifts impact how religions do gender (Avishai 2016). Our deep equality approach accommodates an intersectional feminist lens, interrogating how the intersection of gender, sexuality and ethnicity create complex inequalities as well as valued differences (Walby 2009) that shape the experiences of the Muslims and Christians from Fredericton.
The use of visual methods in sociological research on religion lags behind other fields of inquiry (Williams 2015), and this is one of only a handful of projects to use photovoice for interfaith engagement (Williams et al. 2019). The photovoice methodology foregrounds the participants’ lived religion and gives them a process for discussing their experiences with one another in order to choose appropriate interventions for their communities (Delgado 2015). This methodology aligns with our lived religion analytical approach, foregrounding religion in everyday life, and facilitates an atmosphere of deep equality between members of different ethno-religious groups. Photovoice was an effective way to transcend language barriers (Wang and Burris 1997), especially for the Muslim participants, all of whom were recent immigrants.
IFPV Fredericton
Following the approval of the University of New Brunswick’s Research Ethics Board, Muslim and Christian university students were recruited by Holtmann to participate in the Fredericton IFPV Project. Invitations to participate were sent to individual emails, campus e-news, and circulated via social media (Facebook and Twitter) to on- and off-campus academic, faith and international student networks. The six individuals, four of whom were Muslims (3 women and 1 man) and two of whom were Christians (1 woman and 1 man) who consented to take part in the photovoice research attended a series of five meetings. After the first week’s introduction to the project, participants were asked to take 5 to 10 photos or screenshots in answer to a different question for three subsequent weeks. These questions were:
(1) Where do you see religion/faith in your everyday life?
(2) What are some of the challenges you experience as a person of faith?
(3) What changes do you think are necessary to make Fredericton/UNB a better place?
Participants shared and discussed their images each week prompted by the acrostic S.H.O.W.E.D. (Wang 1998, 188):
S: What do you See?
H: What is really Happening here?
O: How does this relate to Our lives?
W: Why does this situation, concern, or strength exist?
D: What can we Do about it?
The students were encouraged to think about similarities and differences between their images. Through researcher-facilitated discussions, eventually they identified a series of themes that arose from the weekly conversations about the images. During the fifth meeting the participants collectively curated the images, selecting 39 to be exhibited in a public gallery. Participants wrote one- to two-sentence descriptions to accompany each image. The images were resized and printed on 24 by 33- inch foam core. They were exhibited thematically along with the students’ descriptions and their first names at the University of New Brunswick Art Gallery in Fredericton from November 16 to 14 December 2018 (Figure 1). Following the exhibition, all of the participants were interviewed individually by Holtmann about their experiences of the IFPV project. The group held a second exhibition at the Fredericton Public Library during the month of February 2019 as part of World Interfaith Harmony Week events.
Analysis
While the participants developed their own series of themes to represent the images they selected for the exhibitions, Robinson conducted a secondary analysis, utilising a method borrowed from Oliffe
the image’ (Oliffe et al. 2008, 533) as represented by the title and caption associated with the image along with interview data. Then, she revisited each image, adding her own interpretations, and noting any inconsistencies between the content of the image and the participant’s caption. Next, she examined the collection of images in its entirety, comparing and contrasting images, and sorting them into categories. Lastly, she analysed the images using our a priori theoretical al. (2008), to further elucidate meaning from the visual data. Drawing from Barthes (1964, 1977), Pauwels (2010) urges visual researchers to consider both the denotation (what is literally represented by the image) and the connotation of the image (its symbolic significance). Photographs are not simply a window into participants’ lived experiences, but rather are specific forms of representational practice that include and exclude elements at the discretion of the photographer (Pauwels 2010). Reflexivity is also an important part of visual analysis, as connotation may vary among viewers, and may even deviate from the creators’ original intention. Pink urges researchers to attend to how an image is produced, the meanings given to it by viewers (its social context), as well as the image’s internal meanings (2010, 186).
FIGURE 1. IPFV Fredericton Exhibition at the University of New Brunswick Art Gallery. Photo credit: Denise Rowe.
Oliffe et al.’s (2008) method of visual content analysis consists of four steps: preview, review, cross-photo comparison, and theorising. Robinson began the analysis by examining the content of ‘each photograph along with the participant narrative directly related to the image’ (Oliffe et al. 2008, 533) as represented by the title and caption associated with the image along with interview data. Then, she revisited each image, adding her own interpretations, and noting any inconsistencies between the content of the image and the participant’s caption. Next, she examined the collection of images in its entirety, comparing and contrasting images, and sorting them into categories. Lastly, she analysed the images using our a priori theoretical frameworks: lived religion and deep equality. We present our findings from the cross-photo analysis and theorising steps of our analysis, both of which were informed by the process of preview and review.
Findings
The most common subject of the participants’ images is public religious space (featured in 10 of the 39 images), generally involving churches and mosques but sometimes including digital religious space as well. Interestingly, Christians use images in this category differently than Muslim participants, using images of public religious spaces connotatively to address controversy and stereotypes about their communities. Muslim participants, on the other hand, use images of public religious space to address more pragmatic concerns such as the inadequate size of the city’s only mosque to meet the needs of their community.
The second most common subject is religious or symbolic clothing, representing 9 out of the 39 images. Muslim women are disproportionately represented in this category, having submitted 8 of the 9 images. This category, for Muslim women, plays a similar role to public religious space for Christians in its symbolic depth. Other prominent subjects include recreation activities, nature, and secular institutions.
We highlight the third theme of institutions and gender in our findings given the debates in Canada on the Quebec government’s regulation of the visibility of religious diversity in public and our participants’ experiences of discrimination or marginalisation because of the intersection of their religious and gender identities.
Public Religious Spaces
Christian participants use images of public religious spaces symbolically to challenge and explore controversy within and surrounding their faith communities. For example, Brandon uses images of physical and digital church space to challenge accusations of racism against his community, sharing a celebration of multiculturalism at his church and an article condemning racism posted by his denomination on Instagram. Likewise, Emma uses physical church space to symbolise ideological divisions within and between Christian communities, sharing images of rainbow streamers hanging over a church exit (symbolising LGBTQ+ exclusion) and a flood covering the road between two churches (symbolising denominational divides). Even when church space is not used symbolically to address controversy and conflict, the Christian participants present it as somewhat contested. In a mirror image of one another, Brandon submitted an image of his modern church auditorium (Figure 2), asserting that the space is still sacred, despite its contemporary appearance, while Emma submitted an image of her traditional church sanctuary (Figure 3), explaining that, despite its old fashioned architecture, it still has contemporary relevance and appeal.
The Muslim participants, on the other hand, use images of public religious space almost exclusively to emphasise the physical inadequacy of the Fredericton mosque, which is too small to serve their growing community. Participants do so through captioned images of the local mosque that emphasise the need for a larger space (Figure 4), as well as images from the Middle East featuring a mosque in Syria and an Instagram screenshot of Mecca (Figure 5) to illustrate more appropriate or spiritually significant examples of public religious space.
Almost all of the Muslims in Fredericton are immigrants, the majority of whom have arrived in the past decade. In 2016 the Muslim population increased dramatically as the province received more Syrian refugees per capita than anywhere else in the country (Jones 2016). Student concerns about the need for a larger mosque reflect the needs of the local Muslim population. This is likely the first time they have shared a mosque with Muslims of diverse religious, ethnic and class backgrounds (Holtmann 2016). The image of the Syrian mosque may reflect nostalgia for the familiarity of home while the image of Muslims on pilgrimage in Mecca symbolises a desire for unity in the midst of Muslim religious diversity.
FIGURE 2. Despite having screens and lights, contemporary church is still a sacred and special place to meet with God. (Brandon)
Despite the rapid increase of the Muslim population in New Brunswick, the majority of newcomers are Christian which is the religion of the Canadian-born majority. The religious and class diversity of Christians is visibly evident in the many churches in Fredericton – they do not need more space. It is the ethnic, gender and sexual diversity within those public religious spaces that is the focus for Christian participants in the project. For the Muslim participants, religious objects, such as religious clothing or copies of the Qur’an – its presence in a home (Figure 6) and its conspicuous absence in a campus library (Figure 7) – carry much more symbolic weight than images of public religious space.
Religious and Symbolic Clothing
The female Muslim participants frequently draw attention to clothing in their images and captions to challenge stereotypes about Muslim women, symbolically illustrate their cultural and religious identities and assert their full participation in Canadian society. Unlike the Christian participants, who do not appear in any of their own images, the Muslim women in the project often shared images featuring themselves, their friends, or their children wearing modest dress and enthusiastically engaging in recreation activities such as swimming or skating (Figure 8), or as central figures in a natural or outdoor landscape.
The symbolic role of clothing in images by female Muslim participants extends beyond religious symbolism. For example, Salsabel uses an image of modest clothing to symbolise the importance of self expression. The clothing shown in Figure 9, which she indicates was bought by her father for her from their home country, is not her fashion taste. Interestingly, the image showing the clothing behind a store window is one of the few examples of clothing not being worn by the subject of the image. In another example, a photo taken at the Fredericton mall, Abeer expresses frustration with the limited local options for purchasing stylish, modest clothing.
Furthermore, while Quebec’s Bill 21 emphasises the religious symbolism of certain pieces of clothing, such as the hijab, our Muslim participants draw attention to the symbolically rich clothing in secular Canadian culture as well. Abeer uses an image of a graduation cap to challenge the stereotype that Muslim women are not well-educated. Similarly, Widad uses an image of her children dressed up for Halloween (Figure 10), with her daughter wearing a tiny witches’ hat atop her hijab, to illustrate how her children are able to embrace the traditions of a new culture while remaining true to their own. Thus, for the female Muslim participants in our project, clothing represents, not just a religious identity, but self-expression, gender equality, and the experience of immigration and becoming Muslim-Canadians.
FIGURE 3. This is my church. If you look at the bottom right, you’ll see a paper airplane – a reminder of new life in an old, traditional space. (Emma)
The participants are fully aware that there are differences between the religious practices, objects and beliefs of Muslims and Christians but in the individual interviews all of them spoke to Holtmann about how through the \Fredericton IFPV project they learned that they hold much in common. In the interviews, several of the participants spoke about how the photovoice process shed light on the shared struggles that Muslim and Christian women encounter in public when clothing symbolises their religious commitments. For the Muslim women, all of whom wear the hijab, they learned that some Pentecostal women from Fredericton choose to wear long skirts and not cut their hair for reasons of faith and that they face discrimination for these choices.
I’ve heard like negative comments and stuff. And even like, I’m the only one in my family who’s Pentecostal and I’ve, even people in my life have said stuff about Pentecostals like, “They don’t, they don’t look that flattering” just because of what they wear. And I’ve heard other people say stuff or they’ll identify them as like, the Holy Rollers or something like that, make jokes like that. (Brandon)
Some woman [at the exhibition] like she said to me, “We [Pentecostals] have to wear a long dress until here and cover all the body, but she didn’t like wear a hijab they just do it like … [Holtmann: Put their hair up?] Yes. That’s new for me. (Abeer)
FIGURE 4. The Muslims in Fredericton need a bigger mosque in which to pray in a special way. (Abeer)
An important difference between the Muslim and Pentecostal Christian women in New Brunswick, however, is the intersection of ethnicity and gender, which complicates the basis of discrimination against Muslim women. While the intersection of ethnic/racial and religious discrimination in the lives of Muslim women was not raised by the participants themselves, it is an important component of the Fredericton context, rendering Muslim women a ‘doubly visible’ minority (Holtmann 2016). The female Muslim students did use the images of themselves to talk about their feelings of vulnerability and also spoke about their attempts to reduce their visibility and the risk of experiencing discrimination. When asked if participating in the IFPV project changed her, Salsabel replied:
Yeah, I felt more comfortable because, I felt like there’s a lot of people that want to understand more about us – I felt like this is very important… And I felt more comfortable because now we talked about it, like religion, and we were all happy together so I felt more [like I] fit in the community here at UNB, and when I saw a lot of people came to the art gallery and asked us questions, I felt more comfortable so people now understand us… [At] first I would go to class early because I don’t want people to look at me but now it’s okay, I go like, if it’s late, I don’t care. I don’t care if people look at me. It made me feel more… like, I trusted myself.
FIGURE 5. The holy place of Mekkah is a prominent symbol for Muslims. (Widad)
Salsabel describes the IFPV participants as ‘all happy together’ as a result of discussing the challenges and opportunities that arose for them as Christian and Muslim students, including the Muslim women’s choice to wear the hijab. Her interaction with people who attended the opening of the IFPV exhibition at the university art gallery provided her with further proof that other non-Muslims are interested in her experiences and identity. Knowing that the Christian students and other non-Muslims want to better understand her provided a boost to Salsabel’s self confidence and helped her to feel more comfortable.
Institutions and Gender
In applying a deep equality and intersectional feminist lens to our data, we find differences between how the men and women in our project situate their religious identities relative to secular institutions. For example, male participants tend to express frustration with the lack of religious representation in secular institutions such as universities and government, as well as the reputation of religious institutions in the media. Female participants, on the other hand, while sharing these frustrations, tend to frame them as opportunities to embody and create space as a person of faith in secular or non-religious space (as highlighted in the section on religious and symbolic clothing). Additionally, female participants differ from male participants in their focus on both ideological and pragmatic challenges, such as overpriced halal meat (Figure 11) and the lack of adequate recycling services in Fredericton.
FIGURE 6. The Qur’an is very important to Muslims. It is important to have one in every home. (Abeer)
In a vivid visual example of these gender differences between the two Christian participants, both Brandon and Emma created images of the same building (the provincial Legislative Assembly), but from different angles – in a literal and ideological sense. Brandon uses his image (Figure 12) to highlight his concern over the federal government’s addition to the student summer job grant that requires organisations to agree that they support women’s reproductive rights and freedom from discrimination (including gender identity and sexual orientation) in order to receive funding (Connolly 2018). He feels that this change is unfair to some Christian communities that may oppose those policies on moral grounds and could signify an erosion of religious freedom that these communities feel compelled to oppose.
The female Christian participant Emma, on the other hand, submitted an image that she had taken of protestors outside of the Legislative Assembly (Figure 13) during the Fredericton Women’s March, which was conducted in solidarity with the Women’s March in Washington, DC, following Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States. Key issues for the March were defending reproductive and civil rights, including those based on gender identity and sexual orientation (Hartocollis and Alcindor 2017). Emma used her image to highlight her solidarity with these causes as a Christian. While Brandon and Emma problematise their relationship with the government, Brandon saw friction between the government and his faith community as detrimental to religious freedom, whereas Emma labelled creating friction as an act of faith.
In another photo submission, Brandon expresses concern about Christians losing their influence within secular institutions – using an image of two trees growing apart from the same base to symbolise this growing divide. In contrast, both male and female Muslim participants express frustration with a lack of representation within secular institutions altogether – specifically emphasising the need for more classes or opportunities to learn about religion on campus. Nonetheless, we see similar gender differences in visual and interview data from the Muslim participants. In another illustrative parallel, a male Muslim participant, Ahmad, uses an image of library shelves at the university (Figure 7) to express his concern that he could not find a copy of the Qur’an there, symbolising a broader lack of representation within the institution. On the other hand, one of our female Muslim participants, Widad, shares in her interview that she had taken part in a living library project at the Fredericton Public Library. She did so because she felt it was important to engage in one-on-one discussions with non-Muslims so that she could offer them a rich description of her life and experiences as an immigrant, a mother, and a Muslim. While Ahmad found the absence of the Qur’an in the library troubling, Widad saw a lack of representation as an opportunity to become a resource herself. In her interview, Widad also speaks about countering stereotypes in everyday non-religious spaces, sharing a conversation she had while getting her car serviced at a garage:
I went to … the car company and I was waiting there for more than one hour. And there is a guy, he’s an old man … He started, “Hi ma’am, from which country?” So I start talking to him and he was impressed. He told me, “Your English is good. Are you Syrian?” I said, “No, I’m not Syrian.” So he said, “Your English is good. You are educated.” And he was asking me about lots of things about the situation in our country, about the hijab. So he was amazed. He said, “I don’t believe the media anymore.” (Widad)
FIGURE 9. My father bought me clothes from another country but I didn’t like their style. (Salsabel)
Finally, as a result of the conversations incorporating images of sacred public and private spaces shared during the interfaith project, Christian participant Emma explained how she now sees the city with a new lens:
I was up at the mall last week and I was walking around looking around at clothing, and I was seeing it through the lens of modesty, which I don’t to the same degree. And I was like, “Wow, this would be really alienating.” Or when I was doing groceries, I was like, “Wow, this halal meat is really expensive.” (Emma)
FIGURE 11. There is a growing demand in grocery stores for a variety of halal meat at reasonable prices. (Widad)
While these spaces may have previously seemed ‘neutral’ to a white Christian, the conversations between Christians and Muslims during the IFPV allowed Emma to recognise how these supposedly non-religious spaces could be alienating for the Muslim participants. In the popular imagination, shopping malls, grocery stores, libraries, government buildings and auto repair shops are secular spaces, but for those looking through the lens of faith, these spaces present opportunities for engagement and increased understanding between Christians and Muslims because this is where they live their religion.
FIGURE 12. Christians currently enjoy religious freedom, however at any time we could lose this freedom as we saw with federal summer grants. It is scary to know of the power that the government has to remove that freedom. (Brandon)
Discussion
The goals of the broader Interfaith Photovoice Initiative include bridging cultural divides, encouraging mutual advocacy, and engaging communities around questions of faith and religious diversity. We discuss the findings of the analysis of visual and interview data from the six university students of the Fredericton IFPV project in light of these goals as they relate to the participants’ concerns regarding barriers to religious freedom and gender equality. Given the small sample size, we are unable to generalise these findings to include the experiences of all Christian and Muslim university students at UNB or other secular universities in Canada. Nevertheless, the findings can be useful for university faculty, staff, administrators, and campus ministers who work with members of these groups.
FIGURE 13. Part of living my faith as a Christian is speaking truth to power and standing with marginalised people. (Emma)
The Muslim and Christian university student participants experience barriers to the expression of their intersecting religious and gender identities. Photovoice enabled them to share their unique experiences of these barriers and realise that other members of both religious groups struggle. The Muslims struggle with religious and ethnic/racial stereotypes and discrimination by non-Muslims. The Christian participants struggle with accusations of racism and intolerance for sexual diversity from progressive Christians and non-religious persons. The discussion of individual images depicting their unique struggles led them to understand their commonality as students who are religious and struggle on a secular university campus in the midst of a pluralistic city. Thus, a bridge of understanding was built between the Muslim and Christian student participants, which they highlighted in the exhibitions under the theme of challenges they face as people of faith in Fredericton.
Understanding was also deepened between the Christian participants. The individuals represent aspects of the polarisation that exists within Christianity based on issues of ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The photovoice process enabled the young adults in the project with very different beliefs to introduce them visually and explain them non-confrontationally. This was a rare opportunity for Christians, one that required courage and respect. In her writing on deep equality, Beaman (2017) cautions against the essentialization of all religious people and the erasure of their unique differences in her call for agonistic respect. Agonistic is an appropriate adjective for the respectful understanding between the Christian participants that emerged through the Fredericton IFPV process.
The double visibility of the ethno-religious differences of the hijabi Muslim women participants was paradoxically foregrounded in their images. This is paradoxical because although their visibility in the public sphere heightens their risk of experiencing discrimination, they used it in the photovoice process as an opportunity to express their agency as Muslim women. This relates to Harper’s (2002) assertion that people see different things in the same image due to different cultural lenses. Not only did the Muslim women from Fredericton use their images to illustrate their choices to live as well-educated, Canadian Muslims but this interfaith photovoice project increased their self-confidence through building bridges of understanding with Christians. Evidence of seeing fashion through a new lens is revealed when a Christian became aware of the lack of modest clothing choices at the local mall for all women. The visibility of the Muslim women’s choices in expressing their religiosity, despite the risks, draws attention to their strategic exercise of religious freedom and gender equality.
The two exhibitions in Fredericton are examples of how the goals of mutual advocacy and community engagement were achieved with the project. Both exhibitions were viewed by many people of diverse cultural backgrounds. The exhibition at the UNB Art Gallery prompted several interviews of project participants by the news media and university students for their coursework. This exhibition functioned as a step towards realising the participants’ desire for increased visibility of religion and religious people as well as opportunities for religious dialogue on campus. The exhibitions made visible the latent structural inequalities between majority Christians and minority Muslims on campus and in the broader city by drawing attention to issues of gender inequality as well as the inaccessibility of religious texts and affordable food.
Conclusion
Bridges of understanding were forged and strengthened between the Canadian research participants and the researchers through the photovoice process, but emotional bonds were also created during the project. The participants developed greater empathy for the challenges that each of them faced, partly because they could identify similarities in one another’s challenges but also because of respect for differences. The images highlighted a diversity of religious practices and beliefs amongst the Christians and religious and ethnic diversity amongst the Muslim participants. Curiosity about photovoice as a method brought together people who would likely not have talked about faith in another context, even though they shared the same religion. Interestingly, none of the participants had prior experiences of interfaith dialogue. The project was able to harness young adults’ skills and interests in visual modes of communication to engage in deeply personal and potentially polarising conversations. Future research can investigate the effectiveness of photovoice for interfaith engagement and understanding in other secular contexts such as workplaces, high schools, and community organisations.
The process of interfaith photovoice was respectful of differences because the discussions about religious differences focused first on images rather than on the beliefs of individuals or groups. The images have multiple layers of meaning as a result of the conversations that took place between the research participants and during the curation of the images for exhibition. The images highlight the complexity of the individual and collective experiences of the Christian and Muslim students. We believe that the visual nature of religious identities and practices are fundamental expressions of religious diversity in contemporary society, whether or not these are apparent to outsiders. The freedom to be seen as religious (or nonreligious), should be protected in a pluralistic and multicultural society. In contrast to the Quebec government’s attempts to create social cohesion through the erasure of visible signs of religious diversity, the Fredericton IFPV project built bridges of understanding and encouraged advocacy and community engagement by harnessing the visibility of the lived religion of a small group of Muslim and Christian students.
Notes
[1] Consent included the use of the participants' first names and the inclusion of all participant generated photographs and researcher generated photographs of the research participants by the research team in the dissemination of the findings including publications and on other blogs of ours.
[2] Three additional men (1 Christian and 2 Muslims) participated in only one or two sessions but did not contribute photos.
[3] The questions were developed by the IFPV Initiative research team and used in each site.
[4] Images from the Fredericton students can be viewed with those from the US sites on our gallery page.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the Louisville Institute [2017104].
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