Why honest conversations matter more than polite harmony

It was a short taxi ride, 15 minutes at most, but it stayed with her for years. When a driver asked if she “knew how to make bombs”, Nazhath Faheema felt the sting of being seen through a stereotype. Yet, the moment that lingered was not the hurt itself.

It was the silence that followed, the sense that she had walked away without understanding what had informed his assumptions. “I realised I could have approached it differently,” she says. “I had lost an opportunity.” 

She wished she had told him, calmly, that the remark was hurtful, or asked how he arrived at that view. This reflection led her to a question that continues to guide her work at hash.peace: How do we keep someone in conversation long enough for change to be possible? 

This tension is evident among young Singaporeans today. There is a clear push for honesty about race and faith, rather than relying only on what Faheema calls “polite harmony”. “Many are no longer satisfied with polite harmony because they can sense its limits,” she says. “If difficult truths are avoided, the harmony feels fragile.”

In her experience, “there is actually more self-censorship today”, driven less by laws than by fear of being cancelled, doxed or harshly judged. A wariness of being misunderstood has seeped into private channels, too.

Even WhatsApp conversations have become more cautious, she notes. Young participants are eager for honest dialogue, but often unsure how their words will be received.

This mix of desire and caution requires careful handling. She often reminds participants to consider timing and readiness. “It is okay to pause and ask ourselves whether being more frank today will help or whether it might hurt the relationship before it is strong enough,” she says. 

When curiosity is not enough

Her commitment to understanding others did not begin with structured dialogue. In 2016, Faheema began organising intercultural and interfaith activities under hash.peace, with the idea of setting aside one Saturday a month to visit different communities.

“It started as something very personal,” she says. At the time, hash.peace was a solo effort, with her children and family often part of those visits.

What began quietly later grew into hash.JalanJalan, now led by youth volunteers who explore temples, festivals, and traditions unfamiliar to many Singaporeans.

Watching participants engage with these encounters strengthened her belief that understanding must come before dialogue. But learning about one another was only the first step. The more complex work, she realised, came when conversations moved beyond curiosity and began to test people’s assumptions.

She had faced that difficulty herself. As a young adult engaging with sensitive topics after 9/11, Faheema often needed a personal guide to help her manoeuvre difficult conversations. “I needed something simple and portable, a structure to help me stay steady,” she says. That desire became the R2D2 method, inspired by her favourite Star Wars character. 

It encourages recognising assumptions, reflecting on them, dialoguing with intention and developing further clarity. It is difficult to point to a single example, she adds. The method is not a linear process with predictable outcomes, but something that unfolds through difficult conversations over time.

That philosophy came into focus during an overseas dialogue engagement, affirming her approach. As tensions between communities escalated, group dialogue was paused. She and others moved between communities and leaders as messengers, keeping channels of communication open.

Nearly three years passed before leaders were willing to meet again.

“What mattered most,” she says, were “the nodes”, the connectors and “in-between people” who kept communication alive when formal processes could not continue.

It is a role she recognises instinctively. Faheema often describes herself as “a Tamil Muslim woman, a minority among minorities”. Her upbringing in a Catholic school taught her to notice parallels across traditions without erasing distinctions.

“Two different religious traditions and two different histories, yet strikingly similar journeys,” she says, recalling figures from Islam and Christianity who influenced her thinking.

All of this stays with her in her work today. The work of changing long-held mindsets, however, is emotionally exhausting, slow, and often invisible. “I wake up every other day wanting to give up,” she admits. Much of the labour happens away from public view, in quiet conversations where people feel safe enough to be honest. 

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Thinking back to that taxi ride, Faheema says she would tell her younger self that harmony is not about avoiding discomfort but “the courage to stay open after it”.

And to youths intimidated by the enormity of interfaith work, her advice is deliberately simple: Start small. Start with one person. Start with curiosity, not pressure. “Just learn about someone different. Ask questions gently. Share about yourself honestly.”

In her view, change rarely begins with spectacle or sweeping gestures. It can start with one conversation, held with care, that becomes the beginning of something larger: a relationship, a shift in perspective, maybe even a brave space. Because bridge-building is a practice, she says. “A way of showing up, again and again.”