Voices Across Boundaries Vol.1 No.3: Article
My Neighbour the Stranger
The promise and problems of top-down interfaith dialogue
by Mary Fowles
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"What’s your name?" I turned to ask Sasha, whose hands I noticed looked particularly weathered.
I was headed from my home city of Montreal to London and then on to Seville, Spain, where some of the world’s top religious leaders and scholars were converging to address concerns of increasing xenophobia in the modern world. "Dialogue with the strangers in our company must begin here and now," I affirmed to myself.
As it turned out, meeting Sasha was a timely challenge. British Airways had seated me in the centre of a team of nine blond, tattooed and thick-skinned Russians heading home to St. Petersburg. Having spent his last six months in the engine room of a cargo transport barge, Sasha hadn’t set eyes on land or women since the ship pushed off from Dakar. Once the plane reached cruising altitude, he pulled a 750-ml bottle of Smirnoff from his jacket and methodically poured shot after shot of the clear, potent liquid, throwing each gulp back with a sigh and a smile.
As you might imagine, I became considerably less interested in learning about the Russian heritage of my increasingly friendly neighbour. His face, now only three inches from mine, was flushed; his eyes were red and swollen; and his English sentences came out in a butchered, heavily accented slur.
Hoping to return to the invisible status I had had before making the mistake of introducing myself, I turned my shoulders towards the aisle and pretended to be absorbed in a textbook I was reading in preparation for the conference. Far from getting the message, Sasha noticed the word Islam on the page and screamed drunkenly to his compatriots: "Terrorist!" I did not know that Russian could sound so similar to English until I saw all those other travellers, who by that time were dozing off peacefully, turn around to look at me in wide-eyed panic.
When I tried to explain I was reading philosophy, Sasha’s Russian translation was that I was some sort of Chechen philosopher. This didn’t go over very well with the others.
By the fifth airborne hour my neighbour had sucked back six beers and five shots of cognac; he sacrilegiously spilled vodka all over my textbook. I learned the story of how his wife left him, was told about the vacant space he longed to fill on his marriage finger, and was subsequently proposed to before I asked to change seats.
By the time the plane touched down at Heathrow my own unexpected xenophobia impelled me to tap my heels together and recite under my breath, "There’s no place like home."
Every religion says it in one way or another: we must love our neighbour, embrace and care for the stranger. And this basic precept has been the foundation of interfaith groups that have sprung up around the planet as globalization becomes more and more a reality of our world. Today, in unprecedented ways, our neighbour is the stranger, and learning how to speak to her [M] to cross the religious, cultural and national divides [M] has become increasingly necessary.
The four-day meeting in Seville was designed to address this growing need for communication between people of different faiths at an international level. The conference also marked the establishment of the Elijah Academy, founded by Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, an Israeli scholar of rabbinic thought. The academy, which has been taking shape over the last two years under the auspices of UNESCO, has its sights set far into the future, aiming to provide an ongoing forum in which religious leaders can learn about other faiths. This is to happen through the input of rigorous scholarship and encounters with leaders from around the world. The academy is very much a "top-down" peace initiative, and intends that top religious authorities will return to their own communities and through their teachings pass down the message of tolerance and understanding for people of different traditions.
The meeting was attended by such prominent figures as the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Amar; Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Church in the United States; and Islamic teacher Dr. Wahiduddin Khan, who has written more than 200 books on Islamic thought in India and abroad. Other leaders hailed from as far as Cameroon, Taiwan and Thailand.
Dr. Richard Hayes, a Buddhist studies scholar who had significant input at the conference, agreed that all religions have prominent teachings that encourage acceptance of different faiths. He explained that scholars can help religious leaders through their interpretation of texts, and illuminate the teachings of tolerance inherent to their traditions. Yet he also said that the highest ideals of our faiths are very hard to assume. There is an obvious chasm between what our religious tradition expects of us and what our human condition allows. Hayes, who taught at McGill University in Montreal for fifteen years and now teaches Asian philosophy at the University of New Mexico, has also been a Buddhist practitioner for more than twenty years.
"If you look at any religion at its highest level of development," he told me in an interview, "it does have the answers that the human race needs. But what has never been the case in the world is that people actually live up to those noblest ideals. Even teachers themselves don’t live up to their own noblest ideals because that’s part of what it is to be human. It’s extremely difficult to be on one’s best behaviour all the time.
"You can be very tranquil when you are sitting in a garden, but when you go out into the world, other people can push your buttons and you may end up reacting in ways that surprise even yourself. So basic human psychology is such that the prospects of peace are not very promising."
In other words, much like my own experience on the plane to London, it is very easy in our idealistic imagination to accept and interact well with others. But when direct and unavoidable contact with the other presents itself, it is often hard, if not impossible, to act in a way that accords with the wisdom of our faiths.
The question remains: how do we dialogue with and open ourselves to an understanding of those with whom we share our most vital resources, those who are so close to us they have the potential to harm us, or those who in our own histories have harmed us greatly? One suggestion is to look to historical examples and base our own societies on what others have done well in the past.
Today, Seville’s cobblestone streets are lined with orange trees, which when I was there were abundant with ripe fruit and gave the city an idyllic quality. Its medieval architecture, which exhibits the interaction of the different religious groups through art and design, remains a testament to that historical cohabitation.
I found the richness of this intermingling of cultures to be most evident in Córdoba, also in Al-Andalus, just an hour from Seville. The third day of the conference was entirely devoted to visiting Córdoba. This public gathering of more than seventy people of different faiths in colourful dress was quite a sight. People stopped on the streets to stare at the long orange robes of Buddhist monks, the black suits of the Orthodox rabbis or the traditional headdresses of the Sufi sheiks.
In 711 Muslims arrived in Córdoba from North Africa, and in 716 the city became the capital of the new Arab Emirate. The city then saw a prosperous and peaceful period, giving rise to tolerance among the three cultures that shared the town: Christians, Muslims and Jews. In this period Córdoba was one of the most important cities of the West, and produced such influential and important thinkers as Maimonides, Ibn Arabi and Ibn Rushd.
The Mezquita, built in Córdoba as a symbol of the newly claimed city, today remains one of the biggest mosques in the world and is considered the most important Muslim monument in the West. It is ironic that this building of such spiritual importance and awe-inspiring beauty, with its famous rows of two-tiered arches striped with red brick and white stone, is no longer used as a place of worship. In fact, when our group asked for a few moments of silence from the other tourists so that we could pray together in the magnificent site, we were stubbornly refused the privilege.
Not far from the Mezquita is the Barrio de la Judería, the Jewish quarter of Córdoba. The entire group, in all its brilliance and diversity, passed through the maze of narrow streets lined with whitewashed walls and vibrant flower boxes until we reached one of Spain’s few surviving medieval synagogues. Rabbi Goshen-Gottstein explained the meaning of the fourteenth-century Hebrew inscriptions decorated with the typical cursive line of the Arabs on the upper part of the stucco walls inside the building. The inscriptions made reference to prostration, which was odd, he explained, because prostration is rarely practised in the Jewish tradition, at most three times a year in specific prayers. Thus, the verses on the wall suggested awareness of [M] and a sense of belonging to [M] broader cultural patterns of worship, uniting Jews and non-Jews.
Shear Yashuv Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, then removed himself from the group to pray silently in a corner behind the menorah, in the direction of Jerusalem. Dharma Master Hsin-Tao, a Buddhist leader from Taiwan, moved into the corner opposite Rabbi Cohen and also prayed silently. It was an unexpected moment of religious coexistence. With each man firmly remaining within his own tradition, the two converged peacefully beneath the same ancient roof in their religious practice.
Could interfaith dialogue have served as an adequate solution to quell the violence and destruction of the Spanish Inquisition? Looking at history in these terms perhaps seems ridiculous. Ridiculous because any time strife occurs between people of different faiths [M] in Israel/Palestine or Kashmir, for example [M] there is often another variable at play. And this variable, whether it is political power, domination over land and resources or the assertion of ethnic identity, may be the essence of the problem over which religion acts as a convenient veil.
One of the strong messages at the meeting was that getting religious groups to talk to one another may not be an adequate solution to global discord. Hayes used the teachings of his own faith to make that point. "I’ve tried to argue," he said in an interview, "that the Buddhist idea of peace is rooted more in recognition that there won’t be peace anywhere unless there’s an even distribution of resources. There has to be a world in which the rich aren’t allowed to get rich at the expense of the poor. Because as long as there are people who don’t have the means of living, there will always be unrest and crime and conflict."
At the same time, another message was made clear: religion must play a role in peace initiatives. Rabbi David Rosen was particularly adamant in making this point. He is the president of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, which as the largest interfaith body in the world incorporates more than fifteen traditions. He also served as rabbi of South Africa’s largest congregation and is the former chief rabbi of Ireland. In speaking about the failed peace processes in the Middle East, Rosen said that religion must play a role in any agreements between Israelis and Palestinians.
"Without peace among religions, there is no peace among different nations of the world," Rosen told me in an interview. "In my opinion, one of the reasons that the peace process in the Middle East broke down was the failure to take religions seriously. I understand that politicians have taken the attitude, ‘Let’s keep religions away,’ because religion has been part of the problem. If the leaders in the region really want peace then they must make religious dialogue a handmaiden to political development."
Yet of the nearly thirty religious leaders who crossed the globe to converge in Seville, no Muslim Arabs directly from the Middle East attended. "Many were either too busy or ill to attend," said Goshen-Gottstein, "But we’re still open to it for the future." However, the absence was significant for Dr. Vincent Cornell, professor of history, director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas in the United States and a Muslim representative at the conference. "We cannot avoid the political implications of those who attended and those who did not," he said. "This project was the product and inspiration of an Israeli. Under current political circumstances any interaction with an Israeli is toxic for people from the Arab world. People with political agendas don’t want to do something that might cause embarrassment to their constituencies. Muslims who do things with Israelis are making a political statement just as those who refuse to attend are also making a political statement."
The lack of women at the conference was another glaring absence. In general, interfaith initiatives of international scope lack strong input from women. One reason is that orthodoxy does not make much room for recognized female leadership. Including women would mean accepting those in less traditional positions of authority. This is one of the obvious problems of the top-down approach. If you only include people who are in top positions of authority, then women, who for reasons beyond the scope of this article are often excluded from those positions, cannot contribute in any meaningful way. In short, the top-down approach is a convenient way to justify the exclusion of women. This is unfortunate, to say the least. In many current and past societies, women are the other; their existence is measured in relation to men, who maintain important positions of power and make important decisions that affect their lives. Moreover, religion often supports, encourages and enforces women’s place as the other in society.
On November 26, 2003, the International Day against Violence against Women, Amnesty International described violence against women as today’s "most pervasive human rights challenge," and noted in a statement that rape and female circumcision are still widespread across the globe. On the same day, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for "a bold transformation in men’s attitudes and behaviour" so that women become their equal partners, and gender-based violence, which has become more complex in the twenty-first century, can be eliminated. Much violence against women committed around the globe is done in the name of religious scripture, law and ritual. A conference such as the one in Seville does a grave disservice if it does not address these topics, and it barely touched on them. In large part, this gap was due to the lack of meaningful female input.
Vanessa Sasson was one of only three women who sat at the roundtable of more than forty delegates at the Seville conference. Sasson recently obtained her PhD in religious studies from McGill University, where she now teaches and organizes intensive interfaith summer programs. As a woman, she was clear that the conference posed a unique challenge. "The absence of women has been a general concern expressed by most participants at the conference," she said. "Women need to be included in the dialogue because we’re here, and that’s the bottom line. By excluding women you exclude half the dialogue. Women are also very important in religion, in the transmission of religious values to children and continuing the lineage of religious traditions."
Hayes was also disappointed by the absence. "To me it’s a serious issue; it’s a very serious structural issue in the way this academy has been designed. And especially because the theme of this conference is hospitality. If you think about who most often provides hospitality throughout the world’s history, it’s women. Everybody who has ever been in a position of being dominated or subjugated in any way has to be included. If you’re not talking about their flourishing, you’re not talking about human flourishing."
This insight led me to ponder further whether interfaith dialogue could ever be an adequate solution to conflict. Those people who did not attend the conference were perhaps those whose presence would have been most vital in the move towards peace.
At the heart of interfaith discussion, the question of inclusion and how to maximize it must be asked with more urgency than ever before. In our global community where we inevitably sit next to strangers on airplanes, study with them in the same schools, lie next to them in the same hospitals and are ultimately laid to rest with them in the same earth, the problem of religious coexistence is well worth the struggle towards resolution. The diversity of voices that join in the dialogue can be its only true measure of success.
Mary Fowles has an undergraduate degree in religious studies and a graduate diploma from Concordia University in Montreal. She is currently in Morocco on a six-month fellowship from Canada’s International Development Research Centre.