Narratives and counter-narratives as ways of creating religious tolerance

Abstract

This article explored the utilisation of counter-narratives in tertiary education settings with regard to pseudo-events connected to big world events. The occurrence that this article focused on was the pseudo-events connected to the Israel–Hamas war that started in October 2023. These pseudo-events refer to a surge in Islamophobic and anti-Semitic hate crimes in countries outside the warzone. Two narrative examples are given that can be utilised within education settings; however, educators can look beyond the given examples and utilise other counter-narratives. Creating awareness of surges in discriminatory occurrences with the use of counter-narratives may increase humanisation and intersectional awareness in students. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article was written from a religious studies perspective, with the aim of increasing religious tolerance within societies. This article is based on a quantitative literature review and narrative theories.

Keywords

• religion
• education
• tolerance
• narrative
• counter-narrative
• israel-hamas war
• islamophobia
• antisemitism