Islam and Religious Dialogue: A Thematic Study - Part Two
By
Grace Mubashir, New Age Islam
May 2022
Intra
and Inter Faith Dialogues and Engagements Cashing On Convergent Commonalities
Could Somewhat Ease the Process of National Integrity and Peace Building
Main
Points:
1. Most
effective tool for religious peace building is interreligious dialogues.
2. Hatred of a
faithful to other religious people stems from the virtual ignorance of the
other.
3. Interreligious
dialogues tap the spiritual resources of the religious traditions creating
avenues for connecting participants at deeper spiritual level.
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Intra and
Interfaith Dialogues
Intra and
inter faith dialogues and engagements cashing on convergent commonalities could
somewhat ease the process of national integrity and peace building. Interfaith
dialogues are defined as whole host of activities and strategies of
intervention designed to bring about a state of peaceful relations by
conflicting parties, peace building is a complex and dynamic process of
changing relationships, perceptions and underlying elements that perpetuate
violence. It also implies to strategies that can prevent conflict, terminate
it, transform or resolve. Changing behaviours and perceptions of religious
conduct is a critical part of peace building.
David
Little and Scot Appleby explained peace building through religious advocacy in
terms of myriad of activities performed by religious actors for the purpose of
mitigating and transforming of trust deficit and violence falsely sponsored by
religious beliefs and supplanting xenophobic and chauvinistic religious conduct
with harmonious pluralistic way of life enabling to bridge the yawning communal
gap. Religious peace building entails faith based actors and religious
resources such as myths, values and texts to abate violence and promote
harmonious life.
Most
effective tool for religious peace building is interreligious dialogues and
constant engagement maintaining the differences. Rampant increase in the
ethno-religious conflicts could be instantly checked through inter religious
dialogues and gathering which will provide the people the opportunity to know
each other and crush the fear caused by ignorance. Hatred of a faithful to
other religious people stems from the virtual ignorance of the other. Clash of
civilization, maliciously propounded by Samuel Huntington to predict the nature
of violence in the post-soviet era, brings the religions, especially Islam,
into the dock and wanted the Western hegemony to be imposed upon the world
people altogether to ensure the peace dreamt by neo colonial forces. Objecting
the arguments of Huntington, Edward Said cited the clash of ignorance as the
prime reason for the violence and wanted the civilizational dialogues to clear
the mud of fear and ignorance while appreciating the vital role of religions in
speeding up the developmental process. To dismantle the apartheid of fear and
distrust and to start understanding each other is the first step for active
interreligious engagement for the world peace and national development.
Interestingly,
interreligious dialogues tap the spiritual resources of the religious
traditions creating avenues for connecting participants at deeper spiritual
level. Using spirituality and moderate religious interpretations as salient
sources of commitment to social changes is what distinguishes the
interreligious dialogues from other forms of engagements. Religions as a tool
with mass appeal among people which supersedes the emotional bonds of
nationality and ethnicity makes the revolutionary transformation conducive
because religions tracks the deepest rapport between the self and the other.
This
opinion is backed by Stalov who observes: “When religions engage in deep
positive interaction with others people overcome the prejudices and fears and
replaces them with mutual understanding, respect and bonhomie. It is high time
for religious leaders and statesmen to carve a common platform of cooperation
and harmony before religions lead to fatal collision.”
Religious
harmony is closely associated with nurturing the pluralistic concepts of world
religions; in contrast to the hegomonical views of cultural uniformity and
religious homogenization. Innovative mechanisms to be formulated by religious leaders
will render the religions to be flexible towards the new challenges of violence
and enable cultural and social pluralism even though all religious teachings
unambiguously reiterate the concept of exclusive truth and success in
eschatological life. By fostering the pluralistic reinterpretation of
religions, social cohesion, national integration and cultural assimilation are
possible. Unification of people owing different affiliations is possible
through asserting the universal human values along with maintaining theological
and jurisprudential of religious beliefs and practices.
Religious
harmony and national development through integration and assimilation process
The
invincibility of the jingoistic political thought that places the nation as the
effective binding factor of the citizens, like in Kamalian Turkey and Hitler’s
Germany, has failed miserably and instead the concept of multiple identities
have been identified as forces behind the mass mobilization. Among all,
religious identity occupies central importance. Reports show that
conflict-ridden countries lag far behind the stable countries in terms of
economic growth and national development because conflicts consume precious
sources of nation and hinder the optimal use of human skills. Political
stability, national safety and civilian security are the prime concerns of
business world when they intend massive investments. Due to this reason hardly
turbulent countries get the foreign investment and logistical support to
develop.
Colonial
era witnessed people opposing the concept of ‘nation’ which led to the
religious universal movements like Pan Islamic movement of south Asia and Irish
liberation movement. Important reason behind this attitude was it delineated
the boundaries based on the cunning craftsmanship of imperial forces to
perpetuate the oppressive rule. Besides, all religions perceive an imagined
global community of believers sans borders and nations. Nevertheless, in the
contemporary era this riddle of religious nationalism has been solved as
religious leaders and statesmen adopted more realistic approach to limit
religions to regional entities. Muslim scholars adopted a more realistic
approach rather than idealism. The debates over the nature of religious
politics regarding the administration often instigate the radical elements to
wage war against the governments only to culminate in the regional
disintegration and violence. Recent terror wave unleashed by ISIS to establish
an Islamic caliphate is the fitting example.
Harmonious
atmosphere and mutual coexistence foster national development. As all nations
are home to various religions it is important to strike balance among these
faiths. Unlike other identities, religious identity is highly vulnerable to
exploitation and may even pose threats of separatism and militancy. Commenting
on the nature of religious, communal violence in India, K.N Panicker explains
the fatal impacts of religious violence in the economic growth of the nation
and the severity of jolt to religious fabric that will smoulder for decades.
Nowadays
conflict resolution ignoring the religious role in social harmonization and
reconciliation absolutely deemed unviable. Invoking religious humanism that
emphatically brings the religions closer to shared common values of human kind
could be used efficiently to address the violence. Scuttling process of
integration and assimilation could be easily expedited if the drives in this
regard are supported by reinterpretation of religious texts. Analysing the
exemplary cultural assimilation of Kerala Muslims Filippo Osella and Caroline
Osella reaches the conclusion that contextual and local interpretation of
religious texts as to include within the religious framework strong sense of
integration was the factor behind the popularization of secular values in
Kerala Muslim experiences.
Religious
insurgency and terrorism are the inevitable outcome of lack of integration and
growing sense of alienation and social insecurity. Resurging terrorist attacks
in Europe by radicalized Muslims are natural fallout of the indifference both
by governments and religious leaders to drive home the crucial demand of
integrating the migrated Muslims from the so called Darul Islam (abode
of Islam) to the Darul Harb (abode of disbelief). Flexibility of
religions to assume various positions from moderation to extremism has
attracted less attention by scholars. In case of Islam, it has both extremist
position of political hegemony only after the wilful acceptance of people and
moderate position while living in a pluralistic society. Problem lies in
projecting the only face of extremism totally incompatible with the modernity
and overlooking the pluralistic way of religion.
Religions
nurture national integration and inclusivism in social life, key elements for
the national development, given that they share many commonalities pertinent to
universal human values. Quran commands people to work for development and
prosperity setting aside the minor theological differences because diversity is
the essential part of god’s creation. “O People of the Book let us come to a
common statement/word (Kalimatin Sawa’in) between us and you. The
concept of Hinduism the universe being the single family (Vasudhaiva
Kudumbakam) supposed to give and take each other also signifies this point.
Common values like peace, love harmony, coexistence and so offer wider
platforms for religions to converge at liberal cooperation. The onus lies upon
governments and scholars along with civil societies to break the handcuffs of
religion and liberate from the narrow perceptions.
Appreciating
the positive role between religious harmony and national development, Maulana
Wahiduddin Khan, chairman Centre for Peace and Spirituality, says that it gives
immense opportunity for all people to take part in the economic growth pace of
every nations: “Scholars generally define peace as the absence of war. This is
a negative definition. The positive definition would be that it is a state in
which there are a great many opportunities. The most important role of religious
peace is that it opens up the door of opportunities, giving each individual the
chance to avail of these opportunities and reach his or her goal.
Through
violence you can cut down a tree, but violence cannot help you to grow a tree.
This is true in the case of human life. In the human world, war only leads to
destruction. Peace, however, has a positive role. No constructive work can be
done if there is violence, whereas peace facilitates constructive work on its
own. Peace paves the way for nation building along the healthy lines.”
References
Abdul
Aziz Bin Abdullah, Bin Baz, “The Beautiful and Lofty Attributes,” Al-Ibaanah 2
(August 1995). Little, David (ed.). Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion
and Conflict Resolution. New York: Cambridge University Press , 2007 .
Mohammed
Nasir al-Din al-Albani, The Knowledge of Current Affairs, trans. by Abu Talhah
Dawud Ibn Ronald Burbank (Birmingham, UK: Jam’iat Ihyaa’ Minhaaj Al Sunnah,
1994).
Olivier
Roy, Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (London: Hurst Publishers,
2004). Shaikh Ahmad Fareed, On the Issue of Takfeer (Ipswich, UK: Jam’iat
Ihyaa’ Minhaaj Al-Sunnah, 1997).
Stéphane
Lacroix, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary
Saudi Arabia, trans. George Holoch (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2011),
Swidler
, Leonard (ed.). Muslims in Dialogue: The Evolution of a Dialogue over a
Generation. Lewiston, NY : Edwin Mellen Press , 1992 .
Little,
David and Scott Appleby . “A Moment of Opportunity? The Promise of Religious
Peace building in an Era of Religious and Ethnic Conflict,” in Religion and
Peace building, eds. H. Coward and G.S. Smith . Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 2004.
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Part One
of the Article: Islam And Religious Dialogue: A Thematic Study - Part
One
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Grace
Mubashir is a journalism student at IIMC, Delhi
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/religious-dialogue-thematic-part-two/d/127078
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