The emergence of a new generation of young Muslims in very large numbers heralds a time of effervescent energy in the Arab and Muslim worlds. This youthful effervescence comes at a time of population aging in the major Western nations. The resulting demographic imbalance precludes a commensurate world understanding of the sources of young Muslim motivation, resentments, and inspiration.
This unevenness occurs at the height of American dominance of the world political system. The American super-power is coupled with a weakened United Nations structure. The result of which has been the eruption of a series of conflicts that have threatened world order and peace. These conflicts occur within the Muslim world as well as between the Muslim nations and others. They are marked by rash terrorism and the willingness of the United States, whether acting unilaterally or with international political support, to strike back in anger with the full use of its military superiority.
Underlying this clash is the lack of understanding and mutual respect between many in the West and Islam. This lack of understanding is intensified by deep fear of the concept of Jihad and by the notion that it portends religious war between Islam and Christianity, and between Islam and Judaism.
Further complicating the situation is a comparable lack of understanding in the Muslim world of religion in the United States. Muslims misunderstand American religious tradition with particular regard to the notion of constitutional separation of Church and State. This legal principle of the non-establishment of a particular religion in American culture is consistent with a strong commitment to organized religion and personal faith. However, the separation of church and state is often seen outside the United States as a statement of American secularism.
Religious faith influences American thinking and action in the world. However, Americans often limit forthright discussion with the international community of this influence of religion. American religious understanding has the potential to inform the way we understand countries who make religion a more formal part of their constitutional systems and legal systems. It also follows that, through our expanding understanding of the relationship between church and state in other nations, Americans could explain how freedom and faith coexist in the United States. Other countries often see faith and individual freedom as incompatible. The perceived incompatibility of faith and freedom of ideas cripples their development. It also undermines the power of American leadership as a global model in societies that are concerned with the protection of faith.
Description of Project:
There now exists a rare moment when the governments of the US, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel are now officially supporting the climate for a dialogue between the world’s religions. We plan to take full advantage of this opportunity to create a cadre of enlightened, young religious leaders who are willing to learn and preach a message of understanding and mutual respect among the three Abrahamic religions. We will accomplish this in three phases.
Phase One:
This phase was competed by the convening of our inaugural Summit for Interfaith Respect from November 28th to December 26th 2004. Leading Sunni Muslim educators and scholars visited the US for the first time to initiate a process of dialogue, education, conflict resolution, and religious respect. Through a seed grant provided by the US State Department last year, the Institute convened the first Summit for Interfaith Respect.
Our guests included delegations from Yeshiva University, Jewish Theological Seminary, the University of Notre Dame, Wheaton College, Al-Azhar University, Alexandria University, the SHURA Council of Egypt, Embassy of Egypt, Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center, Islamic Academy of Sciences, Jordanian Islamic Supreme Court, International Islamic Forum for Dialogue of Saudi Arabia, King Abdul Aziz University, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Harvard Divinity School, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Hartford Seminary, and the Islamic Society of Boston.
Phase Two:
Over the last several years of increasing American involvement in the Middle East region, the relationship between Americans and Shiite Arabs has become more important and often very problematic. The US experienced its first mortal blow of Islamic terrorism in Lebanon from Hizbollah, a Shiite radical group. The takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran was the work of the Shiite radical supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini as part of their Revolution at the end of the 1970’s. Furthermore, since the US invasion of Iraq, American plans have been faced with the challenge of navigating the relationship between Shia and Sunni Iraqis.
The growing importance of the Shiite factor in Middle Eastern politics underscores the lack of any effective communication between American religious leadership and Shiite Muslim leadership. The communication gap is particularly wide between American university and seminary communities, and key Shiite seminaries at Najaf, Karbala, Qom, and Beirut. The second phase of our project will be a major attempt to fill that vacuum with high-level dialogue. We will accomplish this through a mutual education seminar between leading figures of American and Shiite seminaries and universities.
We intend to look carefully for participants in the circles of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, in the new non-Hizbollah leadership in Lebanon, and in the Iranian religious leadership of Qom. We have secured participation from Union Theological Seminary and Auburn Theological Seminary, which encompass Presbyterian and Episcopalian Protestantism. We are working closely with the Fuller Theological Seminary, the Evangelical Lutheran institution headed by President Richard Mouw. We have participants from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Yeshiva University, and Hebrew Union College. We have also worked closely with Wheaton College. We are exploring a new partnership with the Center for Faith and Culture at Yale University.
Some potential guests and speakers for this year’s summit include: Prof. Dr. Hamid Bin Ahmad AL-Rifaie, Saudi Arabia; Akbar Ahmed, Head of Islamic Studies at American University; Fr. David Jaeger, Vatican Emissary to the Holy Land; Richard Mouw, Fuller Theological Seminary; Ahmed Al-Tayyib, Al-Azhar University Rector.
This year, our Summit will meet either in Europe or in the Middle East, as the Iranians may not be granted visas into the United States. We are working with the Rockefeller Foundation to use the Bellagio in Italy for our venue. Other possible venues include Spain and Greece in Europe, and Morocco and Jordan in the Middle East.
Shiite religious leaders have requested that they be able to meet together prior to the comprehensive meeting of American religious leaders with Shiite religious leaders. They will meet early in 2006. Thus, we have decided to hold a pre-meeting for American religious leaders as well. We will plan it for early in 2006 as well, and request that it be held at the University of Notre Dame. (This pre-meeting is explained in further depth below.)
Phase Three:
The ultimate goal of our work is the development of the
Interfaith Seminary Encounter, a new training institution for novice and intermediate religious professionals from the three Abrahamic faiths. The Encounter will be designed for the education of men and women who have been trained intensively within a particular religious tradition in one of its leading seminaries. Students will have the opportunity to meet their counterparts in the other faiths and to teach them the basics of their own religious traditions and sacred texts prior to entering their professional religious vocation. They will in turn learn from each other the elements of their basic tradition and basic texts.
Once students enter their professional religious vocations, they will see the Other as a real person of faith who is worthy of God’s love and of human respect. Furthermore, their professional preaching and teaching will refer to the Other with positive curiosity and faithful respect, rather than continue the tradition of inter-group contempt and stereotype.
The first session of these Interfaith Encounters should take place no later than the summer of 2007. We will discuss the location and the nature of the participation – both teachers and students – jointly with our Sunni, Shiite, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish colleagues to make sure that we all can agree on a schedule of venues and a structure for the Encounters. We have already received a tentative invitation to host our Interfaith Seminary Encounter from Yale University; however we are also seeking one from the University of Notre Dame.
We intend for our Encounters to eventually produce an agenda for interfaith peace efforts to lower tensions between the US and the Arab-Muslim world. We also hope to advance the peaceful lowering of tensions among the religious leaders and their followers more generally. It has become necessary for religious leadership in our generation to take up its share of the responsibility for preparing Civil Society among Muslims, Christians, and Jews to educate for tolerance and mutual respect. This will serve to inspire a more active search for world peace, as well as a determined effort to wipe out the destructive tendencies to turn to violence every time there is a disagreement in this multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-national global society.
Objectives:
Immediately: To discuss and decide how to engage and inform religious leaders in training, and about how to teach appreciation and understanding of other social and cultural systems. To establish a cadre of 15-20 Middle Eastern and American faculty, religious teachers, seminarians, social leaders, conflict-resolution and cross-cultural specialists to work together for the creation of an interfaith dialogue.
Medium-term: To use the specific outcomes developed by the cadre for the students. The cadre will begin to apply their knowledge by developing educational projects and opportunities to benefit a wider range of young people.
Long-term: To create an alliance of young moderates in the religious sphere who maintain professional sophistication in their ability to think critically and compassionately about one another. We want them to join with other sectors of society in moving forward toward peace and development.
Methods:
Primary Method: Interfaith dialogue.
Secondary Method: Mine each religious tradition and sacred text for: (1) messages of peace and respect for one another, and (2) the universality of God’s dominion over all people.
Third Method: Re-educate religious leaders and teachers about how to study their own texts. Train how to teach their religious texts to people of other faiths.
Audiences:
First Audience: Religious and educational leaders and teachers.
Second Audience: Young men and women who are preparing to enter religious vocations.
Wider Audience: The broad-spectrum publics of the three faiths. We want to create an echo effect to show that such movements toward interfaith respect are happening. It will make a big impact on the wider public to know of contexts in which the three faiths are being given equal respect and dignity; to know that the faiths are being taught to each other as expressions of divine inspiration and of the human search for the holy; to know that their own religious leaders are coming together to teach leaders of other faiths and to learn respect for them. We will reach out to this wider audience through print and broadcast press, as well as through online networking.
Evaluating Success:
Primary measure: institutional commitment in each country to participate in the joint educational programs for people training for religious vocations; the willingness to both attend and host meetings with people of other religions.
Secondary measure: whether religious leaders and institutions will be willing to introduce the idea of mutual respect among three monotheistic faiths into their regular teaching in their religious institutions and preaching in places of worship.
Third measure: whether religious leaders and institutions will be willing to include respect for other religions and its role in future cooperation in the religious education of their children.
Fourth measure: willingness of participants to favorably discuss interfaith interaction/ mutual respect in the public media of their own countries in their own native languages; to write about these experiences favorably in their print media.
Past Accomplishments:
The Summit culminated with the issuance of a joint statement, endorsed by the participants. The copy was finalized December 7, 2004. Below are two key excerpts from the five-page document:
“We believe that the diversity in religious beliefs and nationalities should not hinder cooperation amongst all mankind, especially that we are now living in an era in which the world is witnessing unprecedented technological advances in the field of communication, thus turning the globe into a single entity.
This spiritual interfaith and common interest has, no doubt, created global interdependence resulting in the fact that no nation can live isolated by itself from the other.
Wise men and wise women have also agreed on the notion that since the dawn of humanity, there are certain virtues that men and women should abide by, such as justice, peace, cooperation, security as well as positive and honest dialogue amongst all people of the world.
They also believed that man and woman, on the other hand, should refrain from committing vice and adhere to the moral value of justice. Choosing the path would undoubtedly result in positive cooperation among different societies and thus achieve prosperity for all.”
“Islam has laid the basis of dialogue and common ground between the various nations and people of the world more than fourteen centuries ago. The Qu’ran affirms that ‘Muslims should believe in God Allah and to what has been revealed to Abraham and Ismail and Isaac and Jacob and what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the other prophets.’
It is of great importance to underline that when this dialogue takes place with an open heart this would pave the ground for a better world, elevate the moral values of different nations which will, in turn, emphasize the tolerance and the true notion of brotherhood between people whatever their belief or doctrine might be.”
Summit Participants also made statement of importance regarding the next two steps in our project to create a new type of religious leader and religious teacher:
“As a result of all that has been discussed, the conferees of the respective three religions agree on the necessity to sustain the dialogue by holding similar conferences in the future to reach the goal of a peaceful and harmonious world, especially focused on the training of the next generation of religious teachers and leaders.”
