My father has never been a particularly religious man. His embrace of the Muslim faith has come later in his life and is due largely to my stepmother, whose devotion is more pronounced than my father's but still not particularly devout. They are Muslims much in the way many Christians consider themselves Christians, but only go to church on Easter or Christmas. You will not find my father or stepmother praying five times a day or going to the mosque every week. You would receive a fairly stern reply, however, if you were to insinuate to my stepmother that her faith was insincere. She is fiercely loyal to her faith and often reminds me that although I may call myself a Christian, she considers me to be a Muslim, since it is Arab tradition that sons take on the faith of their fathers. I laughingly tell her that the Koran says that Christians and Muslims worship the same God and that as long as my faith is sincere, God will greet me in paradise. We smile at one another, knowing that this will not be the last time we visit this topic.
My father is a refugee from Palestine or what is more commonly known today as Israel, having grown up in Haifa, which is the main port city. My father does not speak very much of his childhood, but one of my favorite stories that he tells was when he was about five or six years old. My father was at home alone with his two older brothers one night while my grandparents were out at a meeting when the air raid sirens suddenly went off throughout the city. This was not entirely uncommon, as occasionally the German Luftwaffe would bomb the city, since Palestine was held, at that time, by the British. You may be surprised to know that my father and his uncles, in their youth, rooted for the Germans, not because they were sympathetic to Nazis or Fascists but because many Arabs resented their occupiers, the British. My father and uncles decided, that night, to watch the raid from the balcony of the apartment building they lived in instead of going into the building's basement, as my grandmother had sternly instructed them to do in case an event such as this occurred. Needless to say, she was hysterical when she went to the basement shelter and did not find her boys. My uncles, being older and more responsible, bore the brunt of my grandmother's wrath when she eventually found my father and his brothers safe and sound, having enjoyed the excitement of the raid.
Haifa is a beautiful city and my father enjoyed living there. He had many friends, some of whom were Jewish boys who lived nearby. As children often do, they overlooked their differences, if they even knew what they were, and saw each other as friends. After all, they attended the same British schools, learning English before they did Arabic or Hebrew, and shared many of the same experiences. As the 1948 war approached, and resentment grew between Jews and Arabs, my father could not understand why he was no longer allowed to visit the sections of the city where his friends lived. When my father and his family were forced to flee the city after the war, they were luckier than many of the other refugees. My grandparents had relatives in Lebanon with whom they could stay and did not have to go to one of the many refugee camps which were created for the displaced Arabs, most of which still exist today and have grown ever larger over the decades.
I give you all of this as a backdrop to paint a larger and more complex picture. Most Americans see the conflict in the Middle East as a religious one and, indeed, the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis has definitely taken on religious overtones. We hear, almost on a daily basis, of suicide attacks by Palestinians who have embraced the radical Islamic teachings of Muslim clerics who have convinced these young people (and yes, most of the bombers are quite young) that paradise awaits those who destroy the enemies of Allah. Armed with this twisted rhetoric from Quranic teachings which are often taken out of context, or merely twisted to suit the political and socials agendas of others, these young people gladly give their lives for a land that they have never been able to call home and to a God who is vengeful and armed with hate for those who oppose him.
Americans see this violence and hatred and are, understandably, appalled. Watching young people sacrifice themselves only to kill innocent civilians, many of whom are women and children, sickens us. It is helpful to remember, however, that those who occupy the land many Arabs, including my father, once called home, came to Palestine armed with their own rigid religious beliefs. Many Jews come to Israel believing that this is the land that God has set aside for his chosen people, as it is written in the Torah. Many orthodox Jews in Israel believe that it is their religious duty to expel all Arabs from Israel, the land which God has given to them. Armed with this mindset, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician, and devout Jew, walked into a mosque in Hebron on February 24, 1994, during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, and murdered twenty-seven of the congregants there, believing he was doing the will of God. An avowed religious Jew assassinated former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin because of his efforts at making peace with the Palestinians. Hatred, violence and terrorism are not the exclusive purview of the Islamic fundamentalist.
Indeed the religious intolerance I have illustrated here can be seen in just as much ferocity in Northern Ireland. Again, the conflict there is not inherently religious—it is a conflict over land and those who occupy it, but the conflict has taken on violent religious overtones. Catholics and Protestants infuse the conflict with their own religious traditions and beliefs, using it to justify hatred, violence and murder. Religious devotion has become just another weapon in this violent conflict.
Religious intolerance is not new. Indeed it has left a long and bloody trail over the history of humanity. Almost since human beings have held the notion of a god or gods, humanity's devotion to their own particular faith has been a means to differentiate and polarize one group from another. Just as we have used sex and race and sexual preference to differentiate ourselves from one another and justify prejudice and hatred, so too have we used our religious beliefs.
Why is this? Why do so many people cling to their religious beliefs with such tenacity and then use those beliefs to justify hatred and/or violence? There are many reasons. First, religion is an integral part of how we view ourselves. Often our faith is tied to our nationality, our race or our culture. Religion provides, for many of us, a direct link to God. Conservative Christians often speak of a 'personal relationship' with God and/or Jesus Christ. Religion provides us with rituals which mark the passage of life; birth, marriage, death--- all these life experiences are marked by ceremonies infused with our faith that provide meaning for our lives. Our religions often explain the workings of the universe, such as how the heavens and earth were created and what our relationship should be toward them. Religion provides us with a set of values by which to live our lives and a means by which we can seek forgiveness and redemption when we have run afoul of those values. Finally, and for many most importantly, religion provides for us a means by which to achieve salvation. It gives us hope for a life beyond this one.
It is no wonder, then, that religions provoke such fierce passions for so many of us. If someone believes differently than us, or worse, tries to convince us of the 'truth' of their particular faith, we become defensive and even hostile. Does this mean that it is wrong to be passionate in our faith? No, I do not believe this to be the case. Religious devotion and passion is often the means by which we can live with courage and can perform acts of great mercy and compassion. Mother Theresa's religious passion led her to India, providing a ministry to thousands, most of whom did not call themselves Christians. The faith of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the passion of his love for God gave him the courage to seek justice for African-Americans, even amidst the fire hoses and dogs of those who sought to keep him and his people oppressed.
Nevertheless, the violence I have outlined in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland, as well as countless other religious conflicts around the globe, speak to the destructiveness that can result from our religious fervor. Religious devotion leads many faithful people to a destructive conclusion—what I call the "two option theory." The web site www.religioustolerance.org summarizes this way of thinking using five points:
This way of thinking can lead to some very destructive conclusions. It can easily lead one to believe that one's own faith is good and all others are evil. It can lead one to believe that one's own god is the one true god and that the god of other religions is evil or is Satan. Finally, it can lead to the conclusion that the adherents of other religions are evil and destined for hell and this belief can be used to justify violence, murder and even genocide.
Perhaps most problematic of all is the belief in the "inerrant and inspired word of God" that many claim for their particular holy book. Fundamentalist Christians, Jews, and Muslims use their scriptures to justify their actions and their violence, claiming that their particular book is the word of God and is, therefore, infallible. One could spend many hundreds of sermons arguing the case for or against the infallibility of scripture; however two facts must be faced when reading any book of scripture. First, all books of scripture were written by human beings and, whether or not they were divinely inspired, were written in a particular historical and social context. I will, here, give two examples.
If one looks closely at the Christian gospels of Matthew and Luke, one will notice that along with the similarity of the two books there are distinct differences. Many scholars believe that the writer of Matthew had a particularly Jewish viewpoint when writing on the life of Jesus, noting how so much of what Jesus did fulfilled earlier Jewish prophecies. Jesus is quoted as saying in Matthew to the woman asking for the healing of her child that he cannot allow the spiritual food he brings to be consumed by the dogs, meaning that the message he brings is for the Jews and not for others. Luke, on the other hand, emphasizes that Jesus' message was for all people, Jews and Gentiles alike. Obviously the writer of these two books had different perspectives, otherwise how do we reconcile the contradictions?
My second example involves the teachings of the Quran, as given to the prophet Mohammed, regarding the status of women. Islam was born amongst the nomadic peoples of Arabia, where the ownership and enslavement of women were commonplace. The teachings of Mohammed, as stated in the Quran, liberated women from this kind of subjugation and gave them a status and place that they had never know before in that age and culture. It is true that the status and role of women, as seen in much of the Muslim world today, is seen as backward and unjust, so it is ironic that Islam was actually the means of liberation for women at one point in history.
Finally, it must also be remembered that each book of scripture contains contradictions, which if taken out of context or held as infallible can lead to disastrous and inhumane consequences. Whether it is the strict dietary rules contained in the early Old Testament books, the advocating of slavery, or the extermination of enemies, including women and children, there are many contradictions contained in the Christian texts which even fundamentalist Christians find hard, if not impossible, to reconcile.
Does this mean that the Bible, or the Quran, or any book of sacred scripture cannot be of value? Again, I do not believe this to be so. All books of scripture, from almost every culture and faith, speak of charity, love and mercy. All books of scripture provide for the means by which we can peacefully relate to one another and come to know God or the spirit of the Universe, in a way that is sacred or meaningful. All books of scripture, no matter what faith tradition they come from, can hold meaning and truth for us and are, therefore, worthy of study.
What can we conclude from all of this? The principles which we in the Unitarian Universalist tradition hold dear give us a clue. We recognize the inherent worth of every person; we are called to accept one another and are encouraged to aid one another in our spiritual growth. We realize that we are all dependent on one another in this world we share. Therefore, it is incumbent upon all of us, no matter what our faith tradition, to examine our faith with a reasoned eye, and with the realization that other faith traditions can aid us in our quest for truth, or for God, or for enlightenment, or for inner peace, or for whatever reason we choose to tread the spiritual path.
Religious tolerance is not simply a means by which we can live peacefully with one another. It is a key ingredient, I believe to any walk of faith. With the realization that we are all seeking meaning and truth in our lives, we should welcome the opportunity to seek out what others hold as meaningful and sacred. Does this mean that our faith is relativistic or, as so many fundamentalists calls it, 'wishy-washy'? I would strenuously disagree with this conclusion. A spirituality of tolerance calls each one of us to examine our own faith critically, to use our reason and experience to come to know the truth of our convictions and those of others. It allows us to engage in a spiritual and religious dialogue with those of other traditions and faiths; a dialogue that emphasizes respect and inquisitiveness for the differences of our traditions. It means we do not hold blindly to that which is taught to us by our faith, but that we examine what we are taught by holding it up to the light of reason and discourse. Only by these means can we journey along our spiritual paths with integrity and with love and respect for those that seek the truth along with us.
Since the tragedy of 9/11 many have fallen into the trap of using their religious beliefs, or their hatred of other religions, to justify actions of torture, of murder or of vengeance. We are in danger of repeating, again, what has been done so many times in human history. We are using religion as just another means by which we separate ourselves from one another. Our fundamentalist beliefs prevent us from seeking dialogue and reconciliation and only serve to sow the seeds of more violence and hatred for generations to come. If we are to truly achieve salvation, or paradise, or oneness with God, or nirvana, we must find a way to have passion for our own traditions while respecting, and even finding value in the traditions of others. If we do not, we will, inevitably, destroy one another.
My father has never seen the conflict in the Middle East as a religious one. He misses the land in which he was born and the city he once called home. He traveled to America to seek a new life and married the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Although raised a Muslim, he respects and finds value in the Christian faith. He is saddened that the fight in his homeland has become charged with religious hatred and is used to justify murder and terror. He continues to seek out friends from all faiths and to find ways in which Arabs and Jews can come to understand one another and reconcile their differences. My father's spirituality, which despite our own differences is one we share, is I believe the key to ending the conflict. Only through tolerance and understanding can we not only live in peace with one another but also come to know the truth we all seek.
Copyright © 2005 Bob Kublawi. All Rights Reserved.