Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Professor Mona Siddiqui OBE, professor of Islamic and interreligious studies, University of Edinburgh.
Professor Mona Siddiqui OBE (Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, University of Edinburgh)
Presiding Officer, thank you very much for inviting me to lead time for reflection once again.
Yesterday, I delivered my inaugural lecture at the University of Edinburgh. I felt both proud and humbled, and I thought about how much this moment would have meant to my parents, were they alive today. When my parents came to this country over 40 years ago, they came for the sake of education and they stayed for the sake of education. They saw their children’s achievements through the accumulation of O-level, A-level and university degree certificates, but those were only the outward trophies. The essence of learning meant something far more profound because they knew that, in an uncertain world, a good education is the one thing that no one can take away from you. Perhaps that is why the Qur’anic prayer, “God, increase me in my knowledge” resonates so powerfully with me.
For my parents, learning was not only a means to a better life, but a means to a more reflective life—a life in which the individual does not just better themselves and their own place in society but, through thought and action, develops a vision for the whole of society. It is not unreasonable to hope that all that is good in our world can be improved, and all that is bad can be made a thing of the past. T S Eliot said:
“It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time—for we are bound by that—but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.”
I have lived in Scotland for almost 22 years. This is my home and my children’s home, so what happens in Scotland matters to me as much as it does to you. There is the reality in which we live, and there is the country of our imagination and our hopes. What kind of world do we want our children to be part of, where they have a sense of belonging and where doing is always about making better—a continuum in life, not a destination? This demands commitment from adults to engage with young people, to encourage them to transfer what they know to what they can do, to work with them with both passion and compassion, and to have the wisdom to know that the most rewarding life is a life of giving.