Topic: Interfaith Dialogue 1: Changing Relation Between Religion and Politics

Interfaith Dialogue 1: Changing Relation Between Religion and Politics

Vartan Gregorian
Let me introduce this panel—Interfaith Dialogue—by a few remarks. All religions believe in brotherhood and believe that life is sacred, so murder and killing of innocents is forbidden, while justice, good deeds, and charity, as well as morality, are central religious tenets. Yet, we see members of different religious groups condoning genocide, holocausts and other individual and mass atrocities. Throughout history, we have seen many instances when religion has been hijacked to become an ally of oppression. Manipulation of religion by secular authorities is not a new phenomenon.

We have seen that during the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation, when princes supported the Protestant movement and Catholic monarchs defended the Catholic Church. In modern times, we have seen the mobilization of religion as an ally of nationalism, anti-colonialism and various liberation movements of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and others. For example, during recent times, we have seen the tragedy of the partition of India and the slaughter that resulted in the name of religion.

We have seen, in the Soviet Union—an atheist country at the time—sudden reactivation of religion in the 1940s in order to fight against Nazi Germany. And, currently, all over the world, we see religious entities using secular power to advance religious causes. Even religious tolerance is based today on tolerance alone rather than on understanding and acceptance. I have attended many interfaith dialogues, and unfortunately, most of them I can sum up in the following way: brother or sister, we both serve the Lord, you in your way, and I in His. Yesterday, we signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights pertaining to individuals, declaring that individuals have the right of free speech, free practice of religion, et cetera. But nowadays, many do not consider the practice of religion to be an individual act and believe that when you switch from one faith to another, apostasy should actually be punishable.

I would also like to mention that in some nations, under some governmental systems, religious choices may be allowable in the abstract but not necessarily in practice. Let me illustrate my point: one of the most interesting constitutions ever written was the Soviet Constitution of 1936. The first clause of the constitution stated that the Soviet Union was an alliance formed by the free and voluntary union of all its peoples who willingly gave their loyalty to the Soviet Union. The first right each republic, territory and region had was to secede from the Soviet Union. And the first law was to adhere to Soviet principles. So therefore, if you decided to secede from Soviet Union, you forfeited the right to secede from Soviet Union. In terms of religion, the same conundrum is also true now in many places: rights exist only in theory, not in practice. Some religions today use certain tenets to sideline women. Others think highly of women, but they are discriminated against nonetheless. One of the great modern interpreters of the Koran, Mohamed Talbi, a North African reform scholar, came up with an original idea that, according to both Judaism and Christianity, God created Adam first, and then, maybe as an afterthought so as not to allow Adam to be alone, he created Eve. But Talbi says that God created a couple—Adam and Eve—at the same time. Hence, he created men and women as a couple. So, half of the couple cannot be inferior to the other half.

Other things that are happening in the name of religion are, in fact, aberrations of religion. For instance, there are people who think the world is going to end shortly. So therefore, why bother to worry about the ecology? Why bother about anything when the apocalypse is near? As a matter of fact, according to some, the year 2000 was supposed to bring the apocalypse; the year 1000 was supposed to bring it, and currently, there are many who believe that 2012 will be the end of the world. To those people I say: write your wills and send them to Václav Havel’s Library or to The New York Public Library right now. Do not waste time! Will all your assets to these great organizations so that if the world does not end we can inherit your wealth. So far nobody has taken me up on that idea!

And then we must also make note of yet another issue: The Sunday Times reports that some Muslim medical students in England are refusing to treat members of the other gender. They are refusing to treat victims of alcoholism. They are refusing to treat victims of sexual diseases. Well, evidently these Muslim students have not read Ibn Sina, al-Razi, Ibn Rushd, and others, whose major texts were in use in Padua and other places as medical texts as late as the twelfth, thirteenth, even fourteenth century. If these modern-day medical students had read their Islamic predecessors’ work, then they would know that the first duty of a doctor is to heal. They must not even have read al-Afghani, considered by many to be the father of Pan-Islamism, who says there is no such thing as Muslim science, Christian science, or Jewish science, there is only one science.
Lastly, I am glad that there has also been a great deal of rapprochement among the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and also between the Vatican and Muslims, especially the Vatican and the Shia movement. So all in all, today’s discussion is supposed to, or will, I hope, deal with these issues: is religion a source of conflict, an instrument of war or an instrument of peace? How can the peaceful potential of religion be mobilized? Is there a way to prevent violence that is carried out in the name of religion? How can religious communities help with the prevention of conflict? In a sense, how can we once again help religion to become the august, personal practice and belief that it was, as outlined by Pascal, where men and women deal with the great questions of the universe such as: Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? How can religion help us think about and deal with loneliness, with solitude; how can religion help us understand the universe and its meaning? Einstein said that philosophers and scientists always ask why. And philosophers also ask to what end? Religion is asking to what end? And today we are going to ask that, too.

Now, let me say a few words about our first speaker, Azhar Hussain, Vice President for Preventive Diplomacy and Director of the Pakistan Madrasa project at the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. He is one of the greatest spokesmen for international understanding and building bridges, not only between faiths but among countries and among secular and religious establishments. He is the winner of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding 2006 Peacemaker in Action Award. And he is going to be our main speaker this morning.

Azhar Hussain
Good morning. It is a pleasure for me to be with you on this occasion and especially in this wonderful setting. I have been asked to speak to you today about The Changing Relation between Religion and Politics.

We must find a way to engage religion in our sociopolitical systems because it is a democratic thing to do. According to the Geo site, 86% of the world’s population describes itself as religious. By religious engagement I mean making religion part of the solution to some of the intractable, identity-based conflicts that currently plague the geopolitical landscape.

As Samuel Huntington states in his Clash of Civilizations, religion is the defining element of culture, and that is not good news for the West, which has neither the capability nor the competence to deal with religious differences or to interact effectively with demagogues who manipulate religion for their own purposes.

The facts on the ground tell us that violent conflicts are not always caused by religious differences; rather, most social conflicts and confrontations are caused by political, ethnic, economic, and security dimensions. In many instances religion is co-opted by power politics and used as a badge of identity or a mobilizing force for nationalist or ethnic passions. Some examples of this are the Balkan conflict; the Afghan-Soviet conflict, where pushing the Russians out of Afghanistan was framed as an action to safeguard “Muslim” identity and culture when in reality it was largely a nationalistic and ethnically-motivated action and a major strategic gain for the United States to defeat its Cold War enemy; and the current Al-Qaida/Taliban nexus that mainly uses religious and ethnic identities to fight the “infidels”.

So I completely agree with the assertions made in the Second Prague Declaration which said that “religion has often been used, partially at least, in justification for violence … and that search for common values will be impossible if tolerance is not promoted in individual faiths”.

And that is precisely why I have been involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan to promote acceptance and appreciation of the “other” perspective. I will discuss this work in more detail in a few minutes.

Both sides bear the responsibility to empathize with the dynamics of “identity”.

In the West we declare, “We must preserve our way of life and the individual freedom to make choices”, and some in the Muslim world say that “We must preserve our traditions from being diluted by Western culture”. In essence we are saying the same thing. The underlying cause of major conflicts is still the safeguarding of one's identity, and this fear is more of an ethnocentric/ethnoreligious nature where one feels his or her culture and religion are superior and should not be forced to change by outsiders.

I can speak to you about my experience in working in this field of religious peacemaking for many years now. I have observed that the role of a positive, strong Muslim identity that is informed, critical, and devoted is paramount in the fight against terror. This is because Islam is rational as well as spiritual. I have met many young Muslims who feel they do not have public representatives speaking with or for them, expressing their hopes and dreams, their concerns and their fears. It is because of this lack of representation that figures like Osama Bin Laden become the focus of attention and in many cases, a hero for some Muslim youth. The fundamental problem is that when Muslims do not see themselves represented, when the caricatures of the “Arab terrorist” created by the West are the only images that receive international attention, it tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There, we must also take care to respect each others’ “identity boundaries”, while encouraging self- and cultural examination of who we ourselves are. We in the West cannot succeed in convincing the Islamic world that “they are radical”, simply because we, too, in the West, despite many decades of development and prosperity, may also fall into similar Texas-style tribalism as the youth from the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan do in volunteering to fight the perceived enemy.

A major weakness of religious leaders and organizations in building a world safe from conflict is the fact that they often remain secondary actors in perpetuating conflicts when they perceive a threat to their identity. Another major weakness is the lack of effective cooperation between religious organizations. Most of the peacemaking or peace-building efforts are uncoordinated, and in many cases, such organizations may try to “one-up” each other. Finally, there is a need for more professional expertise in conflict analysis and management.

But we at the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy (ICRD) believe that religious organizations and leaders are and can be a rich source of peace services. They can function as a powerful warrant for social tolerance, for democratic pluralism, and for constructive conflict-management. They are and can be peace-builders and peacemakers. There are substantial under-utilized assets within religious communities which, if properly trained, and respectfully engaged, could be applied to peacemaking. In today’s environment of increasing disorder, the world can no longer afford to overlook the significant contribution that religious and spiritual factors can bring to resolving conflict. Not only do the theologies of the major world religions share in common some version of the Golden Rule, but they also incorporate specific moral warrants for peacemaking. The need to apply religious principles and instruments based on these warrants to the practical work of conflict resolution is becoming increasingly urgent.

As we demonstrate in the book Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, the strongest weapon commonly shared among religious communities as a force for conflict prevention is trust. Contrary to traditional diplomacy characterized by interest-based negotiations, religious communities do not hold particular strategic interests or hidden political agendas. This renders religious communities a different dimension of trustworthiness as mediators who can approach and have discussions with parties that are so divided from each other that direct contact is almost impossible. There are many examples of religious communities that worked as mediators, especially in a number of civil war cases in Africa, including Quakers, the Community of St. Egidio, and Catholics.

The International Center for Religion & Diplomacy was established in 1999 to practice faith-based diplomacy—that is, diplomacy which involves the incorporation of religious concerns into the practice of international politics and conflict resolution. Operationally, it means making religion part of the solution to some of the intractable, identity-based conflicts that currently plague the geopolitical landscape. We do this by:

 Serving as a bridge between the political and religious communities in support of peacemaking,
 Deploying inter-religious action teams to trouble spots where conflict threatens or has already broken out (for example, prior to the violent confrontation between the Red Mosque and the Pakistani government),
 Training religious clergy and laity in the tasks of peacemaking, and
 Providing feedback to theologians and clergy on interpretations of their teachings that are contributing to strife and misunderstanding.

Thank you.

Vartan Gregorian
The second speaker, Tomáš Halík, who is an author, sociologist, psychologist and theologian, is a professor at Charles University in Prague and the president of the Czech Christian Academy.

Tomáš Halík
Mister Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, in my opinion it makes no sense to speak about religion in a singular and abstract way. Such a concept of religion is an invention of the Enlightenment; it is an ideological fiction. Religion is a very dynamic phenomenon. Individual religions change depending on the cultural context. Religion can not be strictly separated from politics and whoever says so applies a very reduced kind of idea of politics and religion. Both politics and religion are anthropological constants, they are important dimensions of life. Rejection of religion itself is a kind of religious attitude, and an apolitical stand is in fact political. Of course religion has its deep dimensions, spirituality, personal faith, and set of beliefs, but religion also has its institutional aspect and ethics that influence not only private life but also the behavior of individuals and large groups of society.

In the West the model of separating the state and the church was and still is considered to be a dogma of democracy, but this is a fruit of Western development that has had a number of stages of development be it Biblical prophets, the conflict within the Papacy and religion up to the enlightenment that tried to defend civil society against their powerful church, and also the freedom of religion before absolute states. Some of these things still exist today. But I think it would be a mistake to use this model of separation of the state and the church as a paradigm leading to the understanding of political and religious worlds. I would like to give you two reasons behind this.

First of all, the church is a specifically Christian phenomenon. In other religions there is no equivalent of such an institution representing the community of believers and at the same time being separated from the state and the nation. Therefore, this model can not be, in a mechanical way, applied elsewhere.

Second, in Western society churches have lost the monopoly over religious life and the state has lost its monopoly over political life. Now the most dynamic elements of religious life are the different new movements, be it under the umbrella of traditional churches or movements that exist beyond the borders of these churches, be it new social movements, new political movements, NGOs, civic initiatives, that act outside or beyond the borders of states and other structures. Religious institutions could be the site of the main movements of power, but we should also consider the so-called pre-political area. Politics will always depend on cultural context, on the cultural climate in a given society. General values could be considered the biosphere of policies and it is here that religion has its role, its very significant role, together, of course, with other institutions of moral and cultural character, be it universities, free press and so forth. This brings me to another area, and I will be very brief. The most important nervous system, a system that has a very dominant role, is the media. I have written a number of texts about the role of media in which I say that the media has decided to interpret the world like religion did in the past. They offer symbols, great symbols. They offer stories. The media influences the way of life of many people. All these are in fact religious roles in the traditional sense. They are often arbiters of the truth. People often consider what they see on television as something that is definitely true. And what was the first piece of news is very often considered to be the most important piece of news. For example, last night there was absolutely nothing about Forum 2000 on our evening TV news. If there had been a conflict here, then of course it would have been the headline on the news. And religion is often also described as a piece of news. For example, Benedict XVI said something, then one sentence was taken out of context and it lead to many conflicts. And then of course there was some response from the Muslim side and again it was the conflict that was the most important piece of news for the media. Very often the response of the Pope has not been covered by any media whatsoever. Osama bin Laden has been in the center of the media interest. He would like to provide some idol, some pictures that create the atmosphere of fear and anxiety. What our Czech society knows about religion today is usually all the scandals. Good news is no news. And religion is often presented as something what the media decides to do about it. If politics wanted to expel religion from our public life, then policy would become religion, which would become sacred. And it is extremely important that we have some kind of dynamic relation, that of a dialogue between the two. Thank you.

Vartan Gregorian
The third speaker is Mohamed Bashar Arafat, the founder and President of Civilization Exchange and Cooperation Foundation, which is currently providing religious and cultural training and consultation services in the United States. Mr. Arafat served as Imam in Damascus and later in various institutions in the United States. He has taught courses in Islamic studies in various United States universities including Johns Hopkins, and currently he is teaching at the College of Notre Dame in Maryland.

Mohamed Bashar Arafat
Peace be upon all of you. It is a pleasure for me to be here and thank you very much for this wonderful event, the Forum 2000, which I hope will continue without stop. But I pray that it will be a forum that will also include those who would like to hear this message from various segments of society, because it is a very, very important message to be heard. These days, I travel between the United States and the Muslim world and I see a lot of things that I would like to share with you in these ten minutes, if I can. I hear about the word of God. In the introduction we heard about the word of God. When I entered this room yesterday morning and I looked at the beautiful decorations on the ceiling, I saw the word of God. To me, the word of God is art. To me, the word of God is what the Almighty has blessed each one of us with, something unique to bring to humanity. When I travel to Turkey, when I go to Cordoba, Spain, when I go to Egypt, I see the word of God. The word of God is not only in the mosque or in the church or in the synagogue. It has to go out also and be carried to those who consider themselves to be politicians. And here I would like to say something that I have prepared about the word of God and politics. The Prophet Muhammad said:

“Islam and Sultan (Sultan in terms of political power or authority) are twin brothers. Neither will succeed without the other. Islam is a foundation and the Sultan is a guard. Any building without a foundation will collapse and everything that has no guard will get lost.”

When I say Islam, I mean the word of God, which was the continuation of the message brought by Abraham, Moses, and Jesus from the Almighty. Today you have to separate between what the Muslims are doing or saying and what God is saying in the Koran. To me, I will not be a true Muslim if I do not follow the teachings of all the prophets who came before Prophet Muhammad.

The word of God, which also has to be emphasized today, is taking care of women. Prophet Muhammad was a champion in dealing with women and respecting them. There is a long chapter in the Koran called “Women”. Even the last words uttered from the mouth of the Prophet before his death were three reminders: “Take care of women, take care of women, and again, take care of women.” This is something you do not hear about in the media today, but you definitely hear about Zawahiri, Abu Hamza Al-Masri, Bin Laden and others since that’s what makes news.

I would like to share with you that in the United States two months ago I was asked to participate in a panel of one session with Iraqi youth, who came from all over Iraq to the United States to form a group of Muslims, Christians, Turkmen, Shiite, and Sunni—I mean all colors of Iraq—for a 2-week program. The media was asked to come and be present at this wonderful event where they were interacting with one another peacefully and with respect. So the response was: “Are they fighting with one another?” The answer was: “Of course not.” They said: “When they fight, call us.” This is a problem today.

Just to echo what we have heard before. The word of God today is really something so precious and important. When I read in the US at the bottom of certain cigarette packs: “Warning for minors”, I think that the word of God also should be accompanied by a warning which says: “Not for incompetent clergy who are not ready to carry the word of God,” because this is a serious matter. We are talking about the word of mercy, the word of love and the word of reaching out to everyone. The word of God encouraged civilizations to borrow from one another, not civilizations to clash with one another.

From that perspective, when I travel and come across incompetent religious leaders and see their situation, of course the results are not going to be encouraging.

When I teach in the United States in Christian seminaries, I first ask my students: “What do you know about Islam and the culture?” I hear the response “I know nothing.” And at the same time when I am in the Arab world and Muslim world, I ask the same question: “What do you know about America and its culture? What do you know about Europe and its culture?” They only know what they see on TV, they only see Iraq and Afghanistan, and they say that they know nothing. This is a problem to me. But who is taking care of this problem and encouraging the new clergy to understand the 21st century and how to deal with one another?

And then you will see clergy, whether they are Muslims, Christians or Jews, who are reaching out and saying the right thing, which is not accepted by their entire community. They experience some rejection and sometimes they are exposed to threats. Who is there to protect them? They are not as protected as the extremists. This is another thing. The East and the West have to think about that in order to see real reform.

To me, when I look at more than 30 million Muslims in Europe and more than 8 million Muslims in the United States, it is apparent that most of them are immigrants. This has never happened in the history of Islam. Never. This is the first time in the 21st century that the number of immigrants has increased so much. This is a question for Europe and for America.

Where I come from, integration allows the community to feel that they are part of the society.
Here I would like to say that those Muslims in the West, who were given the chance to live in both worlds, are starting to have more weight. I see a movement of “reform” starting in the West and talking to the reformers in the Arab and Muslim World.

We are in dire need today to provide a sufficient number of institutions and proper training for those who are supposed to carry the word of God to politicians and to the rest of society. The mercy and love contained within the Word of God has been and will continue to be the source of health and the source of life.

I would like to end by saying this. The word of God is like rain that comes from the sky or from the pure springs of water. You cannot tell someone about the benefits of water, the importance of water, the way it quenches the thirst, and then show him a stream of water after it went through a city and was mixed with sewage and dirt and became black. When you tell him: “This is the water,” without showing him the original spring from where the water originated, he will become an agnostic or atheist. He will run away from the word of God. But when you show him the word of God—the water from the original spring, which quenches your thirst and provides limitless benefits—he is going to love the word of God. Thank you very much.


Vartan Gregorian
The next speaker is Professor Aaron Wolf, from the department of geo-science at Oregon State University.

Aaron Wolf
Maybe you wonder what a professor of geo-sciences is doing here. I am a water guy.

First of all, the work that I am involved with is negotiations over water resources. And I come out of a rational school like most people coming out of the West where we are taught that people come to agreement when it is in their interest to agree. We walk into negotiations assuming that negotiations are rational processes and then you get in the room, you start to watch the process, you watch the conflict and you see that rationality has very little to do with it. And you ask the rationalists: how do people agree? Why do they agree? They agree when it is in their interest to agree. How do you know it is in their interest to agree? Well, they agreed. This is a tautology, this is circular logic and anybody who has been involved in real conflict and anybody who has been involved in negotiations knows profoundly that this is not a rational process. It is about spirit, it is about energy, it is about a contact with the divine and when people shift in negotiations or shift in their thinking of conflict, this is when the worlds above and the worlds below touch. There is a technical, political term for this. This is called the “Aha moment”, when people suddenly think differently.

The question I have been asking over the last several years is if we understand that this is shaping energy in the room, whether it is a conflict or negotiations, what can we learn from the people who have been shaping divine energy for thousands of years, in order to help us do better conflict resolution, in order to help us do mediation better. So we look a bit historically. Understand that the root of this problem is the Enlightenment. In the Enlightenment we decided that we were going to take everything that was not provable, rational and put it aside. All of our traditions understand that we are made up of four beings simultaneously: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. And in post-Enlightenment we took the spiritual and we put it aside. We said you can do that on Saturday, you can do that on Sunday, we are going to focus on the others. And what comes out if we look around are things that we became so used to, which really make no sense at all.

We talk proudly about our growth rate in our economies. What does this mean? It means that we are getting more stuff. How much happier is it making us? How much more satisfied? How much more fulfilled is this stuff making us? It is actually the king of Bhutan, believe it or not, who started to see that the development world is coming to his door, and he was the first to ask, “What is the relationship between stuff and happiness?”. And he has a measure called “Gross Domestic Happiness”. When he asked the question we laughed, but it is a serious question. What fulfills us? And he found, not surprisingly, at abject poverty, yes, there is a relationship between wealth and happiness, – but once your basic needs are fulfilled, from then on there is no relationship between wealth and happiness or satisfaction. And when you get to higher levels, there is an inverse relationship between wealth and satisfaction. And we are so comfortable saying our growth rate proudly is 3%, 4%; we are getting more stuff. In our Western European justice system we are very comfortable focusing on justice without the possibility of rehabilitation, on punishment without mercy. And in contrast we look at a wonderful Arabic concept. Resolution of a dispute without loss of honor. What a powerful concept and one that we have totally stripped away. I work a bit in the prison system and I watch us lock the door. That’s it. We are focused on the punishment. Forget about the honor, forget about the community, that has been lost when we focus on punishment. In our court system we are happy where one person wins, one person loses without thinking about what the options are. Thinking about what is rent asunder when one person wins everything and the other loses everything. These are the things that we do so casually because we put the spiritual part of our being aside. Lock it up for the weekend. And so we ask: can we do things better? We have to do things better. Let us look at some of the things we can learn simply in mediation. How to do mediation better? By tapping into this other side. When we ask people who do mediation what their own practices are, often we find that they do invoke the divine. I have a good friend, believe it or not, in the Army Corps of Engineers. Military engineering, as rational as you get, he walks into a room, he invokes the Trinity before the negotiation starts.

When people are seated, often times we sit them across from each other in negotiations, which is the single worst way to negotiate. This is the most anger-inducing setting there is. And if we put instead our negotiators sideways, as we pray always together sideways, changing our energy from this to this, we effect a transformation in the room. When we learn to tap our spiritual traditions, all of our spiritual traditions, and learn to listen, to profoundly listen, absolutely to be there for the speaker, what we find is profound transformation. The anger that comes from the speaker is allowed to wash over us and through us and as we are there the speaker gets deeper and deeper. The anger is always protecting pain, it is always protecting vulnerability. And in negotiations you can not deal with the anger. But if you are profoundly present for the speaker and you allow the anger to wash over you, at some point the vulnerability comes forward and then you are in a place where you can negotiate. These are the kinds of things that we can learn when we tap in and we bring the spiritual side.

I just want to end from Talmudic Midrash that I personally love. There is a legend from the Talmud that says, “When a person walks in the street, he is led by a company of angels, and the angels call out: come, celebrate, here comes the image of the divine”.

Vartan Gregorian
The next speaker is my dear friend Kishore Mahbubani, the Dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. He is a former UN ambassador from Singapore and Chairman of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Kishore Mahbubani
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday you began your presentation by saying that you were the oddball on the panel on “Freedom and Responsibility in Business”. Today I am the oddball on the panel on “Freedom and Responsibility in Religion” because I am still not sure why I am here. Let me just describe my religious background, so that you understand what my biases are, if any. I was brought up as a very devout Hindu boy. I used to pray every morning as a Hindu. But when I grew up, went to university, studied Western philosophy, read Karl Marx and Bertrand Russell and so on, I became an atheist. And then I fell in love and married a Roman-Catholic girl. When this happened, I was forced to convert and I became an agnostic. So you can see I have zero religious biases.

So how can I contribute to this discussion? I think I can contribute by making two points in the five minutes that the chairman has given us. The first point, the big point, is that religion does not cause conflicts. Politics causes conflicts. I say this is as someone who has been in the field of international relations for 35 years now. I have come to the conclusion: please do not blame religion for the conflicts that you see. It is always about politics and politicians using religion as a weapon in all these conflicts. So let’s not blame religion; let us focus on the political dimension.

And this leads me to my second point. If you look at the multiple religious conflicts that exist in the world, and I will mention a few of them, there is one that stands out as the most important religious divide. But since I also want to give you good news, I also want to tell you that there is a “silver bullet” available to cross that big religious divide. But before coming to that let me emphasize that I am aware of the multiplicity of conflicts. When the Taliban blew up the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, I was shocked. Why? In Sri Lanka it is between Buddhists and Hindus. In Southern Thailand it is between Muslims and Buddhists. Of course, the Chairman also mentioned the painful partition of South Asia between Hindus and Muslims. Here let me inject another piece of good news. Last month, for the first time in my life, I visited Pakistan. This was a very important moment for me because it was the first time that I, as a child of Hindu parents, went back to Muslim Pakistan. Those of you who know the history of the partition, where millions of people were killed in the partition, will know how strong the Hindu-Muslim tensions could be. When I arrived in Hyderabad, Sindh, I went to see the home where my mother grew up. It was an amazing experience. The Muslim family that is now occupying my mother’s former home received me very warmly, opened up their home and said “welcome back, this is your home, too”. If this harmony can happen between Hindus and Muslims in India and Pakistan, I see that there is hope for the world.

Now let me come to the main religious divide in the world, which is the one, frankly, between Islam and Christianity. I can say this with a great deal of personal conviction because I was recently present at a dinner with a group of European ambassadors. Ambassadors are normally supposed to be fairly sober and rational people. But I was shocked at this dinner. In this private conversation, in a room full of European ambassadors, the things they said about Islam were amazing. It revealed their deep gut fear of the Islamic world. This is why we have to address it and deal with Muslim-Christian tension. So what is the “silver bullet”? Let me suggest to you that the “silver bullet” is that if you can solve the Middle East problem you will erase this divide in a fundamental way.

Let me make three quick points here. The first point is that the Middle East problem no longer belongs to the six million Israelis and the six million Palestinians. I say this because I live in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is thousands of miles away from Israel and Palestine but every time a political lightning bolt hits Israel and Palestine, the electricity reaches Southeast Asia. There are, incidentally, more Muslims in Southeast Asia than in the entire Arab world. They are now directly connected to the rage that comes out in Israel and Palestine. That is the bad news. What is the good news? The good news is that we have finally, for the first time, a viable Middle East peace settlement. We have the Clinton Taba Accords of January 2001. And, believe me, everybody, including my Palestinian friends tell me, “Kishore, we can accept the Clinton Taba Accords”. Now, I am aware that Arafat turned them down. I am aware of all that history. But the fact is that we do have a peace settlement that can work for both Israel and Palestine and we should push for it.

Third point: why are we not pushing for it? Here I am going to say something maybe slightly controversial. In this forum we are all asked to speak truth to power. That is our mission here. Here, as a neutral observer, I must say that on the Middle East issue, I am shocked by the intellectual and political cowardice of many Western intellectuals when it comes to speaking truthfully on the Middle East issue. They are reluctant to state some bold truths very frankly. Just let me tell one story to illustrate this. In 2004, in the Bush-Kerry campaign, a Stanford University professor was in a room talking to the Kerry campaign people. He said to them, “Can we declare that the Democrats are even-handed on the Middle East?” The answer came back immediately: “We in the Kerry campaign have studied this. The “e” word is banned. We cannot be even-handed.” If you cannot be even-handed on such a critical conflict, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the Western world. Therefore, I suggest to you that if you are looking for one “silver bullet” that will immediately lower the political temperature all around the world, that will bridge the divide between the Muslim and the Christian worlds, please try this “silver bullet”. It is available. It would be good for the Israelis, it would be good for the Palestinians, and it would be good for the whole world.

Vartan Gregorian
The next speaker is Farish Ahmed Noor, historian, political scientist and researcher. Currently, he is at the Centre of Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin.

Farish Noor
I am particularly thankful to the previous speakers because they raised points that I would have liked to raise as well and particularly to Dean Mahbubani. If I may, I would like to differ slightly to what Mohamed Bashar Arafat has just said. Like you, I do see divinity or the word of God in art, however I would not reduce piety, or measure piety. I see God not only in the palaces and in the temples and the churches but also I see God and I see faith in action. When we see democratic activists standing their ground in front of bayonets and tanks, when we see editors and journalists writing without fear and also when we see religious intellectuals sincerely questioning their faith and being given the space and the room and the opportunity and freedom to actually sincerely question their faith as well. Like the previous speaker, I am from Southeast Asia and of course all of us here are familiar with what is going on in Burma at the moment. And for me the sight of these monks taking to the street speaking truth to power, as Dean Mahbubani has just pointed out, for me that is faith in action. And my concerns, not only as an academic who studies religion and religion’s connections with politics, but also as a religious activist, are precisely: how do we, in the context of today, develop and articulate a new vocabulary, a new discourse of religion that takes religion outside the cloistered confines of, you know, a dead orthodoxy and translate it into something that is meaningful. I say this as a Southeast Asian who comes from a part of the world where practically all major religious traditions are represented with huge Muslim, Christian and Buddhist populations but it is also a region that has undergone and witnessed very significant changes over the past thirty years.

The massive influx of capital, which, as our chair has pointed out, has commercialized religion, turned God into a commodity for all the religious communities and has put enormous pressures on the social fabric of everyday life there. But it is also a region that has experienced decades of authoritarian rule and is still making the painful transition towards democracy. So what role can religion play in the midst of all this? I raise these questions because as someone who studies the phenomenon of popular religious politics, my concern, which has already been raised several times in this panel, is how we actually develop the bridging capital that is so necessary to bring these communities together, to focus on concrete issues that are of universal concern for everyone. Instead what we are witnessing in Southeast Asia at the moment, I think, is a rather cynical manipulation of religion for sectarian, communitarian and therefore divisive and violent ends. And my worry, as someone who works with progressive reformists, Buddhists, Catholics and Muslims in the region, is why is it that there is this dilemma faced by progressive theologians today, the reluctance to enter that public domain and to engage in politics?

I think the answer to this has actually been given to us earlier by Professor Wolf, when he talked about how in the post-Enlightenment period there has been this tendency to somehow compartmentalize our lives and relegate religion to specific hours or days of the week. This has become part and parcel of the whole developmental paradigm that we see in Asia, in Southeast Asia in particular. And therefore the dilemma faced by the progressive theologian, the progressive Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu intellectual today is how do we develop this language, this new theology that actually allows us to put these ideals into practice and to develop this bridging capital. The funny thing I find about religion is that it has both. It has an amazing capacity to actually bond society together. And this is something we can not deny. The bonding capacity of religion is such that it immediately unifies Muslims with Muslims, Christians with Christians, Hindus with Hindus. And that is why we see in Southeast Asia today the emergence of so many religion-based communitarian groups, be it NGOs, self-help groups, charity organizations, etc. But while this is going on, society as a whole is suffering. Because in the context of, say, Malaysia, where I am from, over the past two years, we have witnessed the emergence of more than two dozen religious-based NGOs, all of which share one common characteristic—they are all sectarian. And attempts at dialogue, and I share the Chairman’s cynicism here, have always been at best cosmetic, to the point where we sit at a table together, we shake each other’s hands, we smile for the camera, but the subtext, the subtitle which nobody reads is, we do not really believe what they believe, but let’s smile anyway because it looks good for the press.

Now the only instances where bridging actually seems to have taken place is in this neutral public domain out there where political economy is the issue. And that is why instances such as Burma happen to be the key instances that actually get us out of our shells and allow this sort of societal networking to continue. I therefore applaud the work that has been done by some of the speakers here in the attempts at bridge-building, but I will end with one final note. And here I would refer to the idea of the theologian from South Africa, Professor Farid Izhak, whom I deeply admire. He talked about the need for us today to revive what he called the “prophetic mission”, but prophets are not kings or presidents; they are marginal figures. And the prophetic mission is such that it has to speak for those who are at the margin. And as religion makes the transition from the margin to the center, as it grapples with power and politics, I suppose the moral responsibility of those who are engaged in religious reform is to somehow retain this marginal status, to constantly remind themselves of the need to speak for those who do not have a voice. We are seeing this in Burma today and I hope that more attention will be given to what is happening in Burma. Not simply because this is important for Burma as a country, but more importantly it is important for Buddhism as a religion and it is important for religion in general, because this is a model, I believe, for progressive religious activists to follow.

Vartan Gregorian
Last, but not least is Dr. James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute. He is very unfortunate, because his name starts with Z, and therefore he is always at the end of the alphabet and the last speaker, but I would like to welcome him to give his presentation. He is one of the outstanding leaders in America for Arab-Americans. People are always surprised how Christian Arabs can defend Arab interests in general, because they all believe that if you are Arab, you must of course be Muslim. Not necessarily, as represented by Dr. Zogby. When it comes to the tradition of Arabs, he is one of the greatest spokesmen. When it comes to human rights, he is also one of the greatest spokesmen.

James Zogby
Thank you, Vartan. You know, I love the Forum and I hate the Forum. I love it because it is one place where I can just listen and learn, and hate it because it is always over and then the listening stops. It is also disturbing when you have to speak, because then you can not listen anymore. There is more to learn in listening than in speaking.

I am a believing Christian. And I am a believing Christian with a PhD in Islamic studies. How about that? And it is a helpful way to begin, but let me begin by saying the unexpected: I am not here to talk about either of the two religions. I am not here to talk about theology. I am here as an analyst. Because to me the issue is not, in this discussion in particular, what religions say about themselves, but how they work, what they do, how they are operating in the world in which we live. I always like to say that the meaning of religion is how it is used, as in the meaning of the word and how it is used in the sentence. The meaning of religion is used as well. As an example, I sometimes point to a sort of crude example from my teaching years when I would say, “Greeks were smart, they had three words for love”. They knew that they could not use one that describes it all because it meant too many different things. And if you take the sixteen year old boy in the back seat of a car with a sixteen year old girl swearing that he loves her we know that he is really talking about something quite different but he uses that word. If someone is killing me in the name of God, I really ought to know what he is talking about: is he angry with me, hates me, and wants to kill me? Do not put it off on God, just as we really should not discredit the meaning of the word love in its other meanings by the abuse that the word endures from the sixteen year old boy. Having said that I want just to put it aside for a moment and raise another issue because, at the end, I want to pull a couple of themes together. First, in other words, is the meaning of religion and how it is used. Let’s just put that there for a moment and let’s talk about what is unique about the era in which we live. Because we can not say that this use or abuse of religion in politics is new, as some might suggest, as if they have just discovered it. For God’s sake, we have been fighting in wars for the entire history of civilization and doing it in the name of religion.

Religion is the language we use, it is the holy water we sprinkle, to use a Christian metaphor, on our deepest fears, our deepest feelings, and our strongest beliefs. We have been killing in the name of God. We have probably killed more people in the name of God than souls we have saved in the name of God in the history of our humanity. What is unique about this era is not that, but it is the transformations that are taking place, and taking place so rapidly. For example, in this part of the world there is the collapse of Communism and the enormous transformations and questions that it has created. In the world in general there is this rapid transformation and technology that has created so many spillovers. One is this globalization of communication. We know the other more intimately than we have ever known before. We have the ability to travel more easily than ever before. We have a migration of labor and the need for movement of labor that is more dramatic than ever before. The result is that we live with this enormous change and with it the uncertainty and the insecurity that it has created. This has had an impact in religion.

One, it has created opportunities for sessions like this that never could occur before. We ought to realize that to begin with. The fact that we are having dialogues among people of different traditions is something that has never occurred before in history. The only time that theologians or people with different traditions met was usually on the battle field or in a unique instance of Francis meeting Saladin, situations of that sort. But the fact that it occurs over and again, and that these meetings are now so frequent, that it has become an institutionalized religious dialogue. This consciousness of the other and the need to understand the other is new. Unfortunately it is fighting against something else that is a byproduct of this era, and that is the fact that we think we know the other. And communications and media have played a role and they have created stereotypes and propagated stereotypes and been used as an instrument to justify the fear of the other and play the destructive role. We are fighting against that current in dialogues and conversations of this sort. But now, having said that and having said the other, about the use of religion, let me just answer the two questions. Is religion a way of peace or an instrument of war? It’s both. And is there a way to mobilize the peaceful potential of religion? There is. And that is by focusing on the peaceful potential, not of religion so much but of ourselves and our humanity. It means stripping away and not abusing the religious discourse but looking at, as Allen would have said, the needs of the people involved. I sometimes think that if the dialogues among people in religion did not focus on what you believe but on what you fear and what you need most, what you desire most, what if Palestinians and Israelis were to sit across a table and not talk about what they want but what they need and what they fear, they would understand their commonality in a way that has not been possible up till now. They would realize that the other has the same fears and the same hopes and aspirations, and it would make possible a reconciliation that the wants stand in the way of.

When we allow the language of religion to stand in the way of communication and stand in the way of understanding we disrupt the discourse. Because what it does in a sense, it plays off the certainty that we think we have, disguises the fear that we have and presents it as certainty; whereas what we ought to be doing, if we wanted to discover the personal potential that we have to resolve these problems, is focus on resolving the problems without the intermediary of this divisive and certain discourse that, like I said, stands as an obstacle in every instance. And I will end there, thank you.

Vartan Gregorian
Thank you all very much for your presentations. I just would like to add these points. One is addressed to politicians: please do not mobilize forces that you cannot demobilize. Often, religion is mobilized and then no one seems able to demobilize it. As we saw in Iran in 1979, once the revolution got started, the mullahs were not content to go back to the mosques. Second, please—and this is for all the Westerners—do not say “Islamic world”. There is no such thing as an Islamic world, there is no such thing as a Christian world, there is no such thing as a Jewish world or a Buddhist world. There are more than fifty states that happen to have Muslim societies. Second, we must beware of the perils of categorization, because from that comes the aestheticization of politics, and out of that comes dehumanization, and thus we find ourselves dealing with categories rather than people. Hence, it becomes easy to replace the “Red Menace” with the “Green Menace” and mobilize all sorts of forces without understanding what we are really unleashing. Third, please, please: we must understand that there is no clash of civilizations. There may indeed be a clash of values or of ignorance but not a clash of civilizations. When I grew up in Tabriz, Iran, there was one civilization. Not Western, not Muslim, not Christian or anything else. Muslims brought their ideas and accomplishments and added them to the banquet of world civilization. That included people like Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, it included great architecture, enormous contributions to the development of mathematics, and so forth. Certainly, Christians, Buddhists, Jews and followers of many other religions also contributed their part to the development of humanity, of our global civilization. So, if you are going to use “civilization” in the Islamic context, then use the term “Islamic civilizations”, plural, not singular. For example, it is important to bear in mind that there are more Muslims living in the Indian subcontinent than there are ethnic Arabs in the world. And that comes as a surprise to many. So we have to build bridges between cultures, bridges between peoples and let’s not drag the name of God into our conflicts or use God as a commodity. If you truly believe in spiritual values, let’s respect the sacredness of God and render Caesar’s obligations unto Caesar.

Let me raise one other issue: how many of you have read the Koran? How many of you have read the Talmud? How many of you have read the Bible? Perhaps in our schools—and I mean all over the world—we should teach these as classical texts that bind together so many people. That way, people would know exactly what these texts actually say rather than accepting what other people tell us that they say. And the last point I would like to make—harkening back to what I noted earlier—is that that during the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, there was a great deal of manipulation of religious entities on the part of secular powers. Now, the reverse is true, with one difference: somehow, theologians have succeeded in making everything political. They issue a fatwa, they issue a legal opinion from the Vatican or some other religious source and once politicians get hold of it, you are in the middle of a political struggle rather than a theological one. If I had my money, I would put it all on theologians and create as many theological disputes as possible because that would result in moderation. Why? Because if multitudes of religious leaders, speaking on behalf of all the world’s many religions, start issuing all kinds of religious decrees, then it’s going to be very hard to figure out who really dares to speak in the name of God!
May God be with you, all the Gods be with you, go in peace.