Interfaith Dialogues and Forgiveness:
One Common Ground
Talk
by Hon. David Kilgour
Secretary
of State (Asia-Pacific)
and
Member
of Parliament for Edmonton
Southeast
Hotel
Borobudur, Jl. Lapangan
Banteng Selatan, Jakarta,
June
24, 2002
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Against Delivery
Permit me to say at the outset how much I appreciate the
opportunity to address you
today. My colleague,
Gurmant Grewal, a Canadian M.P. of Sikh faith, was
unable to be here but extends
his greetings.
The Indonesian Council on World Affairs has played a positive
role in building bridges
between faith communities
after September 11th.
Last December, members
of your organization and
the Islamic Millennium Forum
organized an international
summit in Jakarta to counter
misconceptions about Islam.
The results speak
for themselves: 150 Muslim
leaders and representatives
from fully 50 countries
participated. Included
in the Joint Declaration
was a call for justice for
the world’s diverse communities
and a call for Islamic nations
and other countries to end
global conflict.
CANADIAN-INDONESIAN
INTER-FAITH EFFORTS
Canada and Indonesia have worked together on interfaith
matters since the 1950s.
Links to your Muslim
community started through
the Institute of Islamic
Studies (MIIS) at McGill
University in Montreal.
This led to a partnership
involving your Ministry
of Religious Affairs, the
State Institute for Islamic
Studies in Yogyakarta and
Jakarta, and McGill University.
Canadians support Indonesia’s efforts to harness the power
of education as a weapon
in the fight against ignorance.
In 2001, your Minister
of Religious Affairs signed
a Memorandum of Understanding
confirming Canada’s continuing
support for education in
Indonesia. The Indonesian
Islamic Social Equity Project
with IAIN is the third consecutive
Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA) financed project
in the field of Islamic
studies in Indonesia.
From an initial program
of scholarship in 1987,
the project has evolved
and now seeks to strengthen
IAIN’s capacity to support
teacher training and community
development. Mr. Grewal
and I were fortunate enough
to visit their facilitates
on the weekend. In
the words of their rector,
IAIN in Yogyakarta is “the
prototype for inter-religious
dialogue and harmony.”
We were also told that one
of their objectives is to
create a centre for religious
diversity. Canada
is committed to further
supporting other such initiatives
in the coming years.
Canada also supports Indonesian religious organizations
that are active in initiating
inter-faith dialogues.
I understand that
Muhammadiyah recently organized
a meeting called “Islam
and the West working together
for a peaceful world.”
Influential leaders in both
communities launched a nation-wide
movement to promote inter-faith
solidarity. As recently
as last week, the Nahdlatul
Ulama hosted a meeting with
leaders of Muslim organizations,
Churches and the international
community.
A
PERSONAL NOTE
On a more personal note, I am a member of the Muslim-Christian
Dialogue in Canada.
Our group brings
together the two religious
communities. Three
months ago, Reverend James
Stevenson, Rabbi Arnold
Fine and Imam Shaikh Gamal
Solaiman started a tri-logue
with the three monotheistic
religions called the Abrahamic
Faiths Peace Community.
Interest in the group has
increased; so has the extent
of the challenges.
OVERCOMING
DIFFERENCES THROUGH FORGIVENESS
These challenges, however, are far from insurmountable.
Consider here a book,
The Forgiveness Factor-Stories
of Hope In A World of Conflict
(Grosvenor Books, 1997)
by Michael Henderson.
Throughout the book, Henderson
tells the stories of citizen-diplomats
of all backgrounds who have
found the strength to being
faith communities together
through forgiveness, breaking
cycles of violence in the
process. Given the
situation that now exists,
not only in Indonesia but
all over the world, I’d
like to share a few of these
stories with you.
JOSEPH
LAGU—SUDAN
In 1971, Joseph Lagu was the military and political leader
of the guerrilla movement
in the south of Sudan during
the first civil war between
the predominately Muslim
north and largely Christian
south. A plane
from the north crashed one
day in a region controlled
by Lagu’s soldiers, and
there were twenty-nine survivors.
His colleagues wanted them
killed but, in reflecting
overnight, Lagu recalled
that Jesus, when asked how
many times one should forgive,
had replied, “seventy times
seven.” The northerners
were released unharmed;
their message about this
at home helped to persuade
the government of the day
to negotiate the Addis Ababa
agreement, which ended seventeen
years of armed conflict.
In 1994, Lagu and another Sudanese general, Mohamed Zein
elAbdeen, a Muslim and a
northerner, shared a podium
together at a spiritual
retreat centre in Caux,
Switzerland. The
northerner told the audience:
“We generals are living
in one room, very friendly.
He (Lagu) starts in the
morning reading his Bible;
I read the Koran . . . [W]e
can share together because
we believe in the same God.
A just and lasting peace
can only be achieved through
a process of reconciliation,
compromise and confidence-building.”
ABEBA
TESFAGIORGIS—ERITREA
In 1975, Ms. Abeba Tesfagiorgis was arrested by the Ethiopian
government for her activities
in the Eritrean independence
movement and spent the next
six months in a tiny cell.
As a believer, she
managed later to forgive
the individual who had betrayed
her but could return to
Eritrea only after it won
independence in 1991.
Speaking two years afterwards at a symposium on regional
cooperation in the Horn
of Africa, she challenged
the politicians and government
officials present to use
their education to serve
others rather than themselves.
“Reconciliation and
healing take time but you
win as an individual, as
a family, and as a nation,”
she said at a later occasion.
GORDON
WILSON AND PADDY JOE (PJ)
MCCLEAN—NORTHERN IRELAND
In 1987 in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, Gordon Wilson
heard his 20-year-old daughter,
Marie, say, “Daddy, I love
you very much,” just before
she died in the rubble of
a bomb blast. The
next day, in words which
reverberated across the
world, he said to the media:
“Marie’s last words were
of love. It would
be no way for me to remember
her by having words of hatred
in my mouth.”
PJ McClean was arrested in 1971 for his struggle against
British rule in Northern
Ireland. While
in prison, he began to re-examine
the hatred in his life and
finally concluded that,
“Catholics and Protestants
and people of no religion
all need a level playing
field so that all can feel
themselves to be equal parts
of the community and each
enjoy a fair chance to move
ahead.” As he puts
it, “Society as a whole
has paid dearly because
unfairness created alienation,
and alienation became a
breeding ground for terror
. . . A cease-fire in the
head is every bit as necessary
as the cease-fire on the
streets.” PJ currently
represents his political
party, the Democratic Left,
at the Forum of Peace and
Reconciliation that has
been meeting weekly in Dublin
since 1994.
SUSHOBHA
BARVE—INDIA
During 1992/93, an ancient Muslim shrine, Babri Mosque,
was destroyed near Bombay,
unleashing riots leading
to hundreds of civilian
deaths. Ms. Barve, a Hindu, was appalled
at what had happened and
worked to set up peace meetings
between the two faith communities
and citizen-police committees.
Later, she even managed
to get the young men of
the Muslim and Hindu faiths
to play table tennis, volleyball
and cricket with each other
instead of throwing stones
or worse.
In earlier years, Ms. Barve had begun to build friendships
with Muslims across India.
In 1984, following
the assassination of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi by
two Sikh bodyguards, there
was terrible violence against
many innocent persons of
the Sikh faith. Ms.
Barve worked hard after
that to rebuild trust and
break the chain of mutual
hate and revenge.
YASUF
OMAR AL-AZHARI—SOMALIA
As a son-in-law of Somalia’s president, Yasuf Omar Al-Azhari
led a golden life until
a military junta took over
the country in 1985 and
he was forced into six years
of solitary confinement.
In the early months,
he was tortured daily, but
one night he prayed.
His prayers freed him from
hate, despair, and depression.
The next morning, the guards
found a new person – calm,
brotherly and submissive.
The torture stopped.
In
1991, Al-Azhari was freed
when the Supreme Revolutionary
Council was deposed and
its head, General Siad Barre,
took asylum in Nigeria.
The prisoner found his family
living in a hut in Mogadishu.
His wife had been told that
he had perished attempting
to escape. Nonetheless,
after two years, he felt
obliged to forgive Mr. Barre,
aged 887, and travelled
to Nigeria to do so.
He describes what occurred
at the meeting: “I went
all the way there just to
tell him, while he was still
alive, that I forgave him.
I could see tears flowing
down his cheeks. I
thanked God for letting
me fill the heart of such
a man with remorse.
He said to me, ‘Thank you.
You have cured me.
I can sleep tonight knowing
that people like you exist
in Somalia.’”
Today, Al-Azhari is working for peace and reconciliation
in Somalia, which is without
a government, a judicial
system, police or schools
and where at least 40 percent
of the children die before
reaching ten years of age.
“Love has been planted
in my heart and I vowed
there to serve my fellow
countrymen and women to
reconcile and settle differences
with harmony, love and forgiveness.”
INTER-FAITH
DIALOGUE
Another book, Exclusion and Embrace, by Miroslav
Volf of Croatia has much
of Importance to say to
all of us everywhere on
the subject of inter-faith
reconciliation, hatred of
“otherness,” ancient wrongs,
and the self-defects of
all of us, including the
most victimized.
Let me quote several paragraphs in Volf’s powerful book:
“A Serbian journalist .
. . comments: ‘How many
mothers in Bosnia have sworn
to teach their children
hate and revenge!
How many little Muslims,
Serbs and Croats will grow
up listening to such stories
and learning such lessons!’
How many children around
the globe, we could continue
to ask, are growing up with
‘jihad,’ ‘war,’ ‘crusade,’
‘revenge,’ ‘hatred,’ not
only inscribed in their
names but woven into the
very fabric of their lives.
For reconciliation to take
place, the inscriptions
of hatred must be carefully
erased and the threads of
violence gently removed.
Elsewhere, he writes: “There can be no peace among nations
without peace among religions.
Since religious peace
can be established only
through religious dialogue...
reconciliation between the
peoples depends on the success
if the inter-religious dialogue.”
CONCLUSION
Real
dialogue and understanding
can only begin with genuine
love and forgiveness. This
is the challenge we muse
address together: in Indonesia
in Canada, and anywhere
that misinformed religious
beliefs can be misconstrued
to foster hatred and violence.
Believers
and non-believers alike
must rise above ignorance,
find a common ground, and
work together. It is not
enough to live and let live;
each of us must actively
and constantly be part of
the community, helping reduce
our differences and interacting
with the different faiths.
I understand that in North Sulawesi, Christians protect
Muslims as they go to pray
in the Mosques and Muslims
protect Christians as they
go to pray in the Church.
Islam
and Christianity, like all
monotheistic religions,
teach that all faiths have
in essence one common message:
the existence of a Supreme
Being, the one and only
God whose sovereignty is
acknowledged through worship
and respect for God's teaching
and commandments.
Let
me close with a passage
from a book called "Essential
Sufism,'' by James Fadiman
and Robert: Frager. ''The
great religions and mystical
traditions of the world
share the same essential
truth. The various prophets
and spiritual teachers
are like the light
bulbs that illuminate a
room. The bulbs are different,
but the current comes from
one source,
which is God. It is the
same light; each of the
individual bulbs receive
electricity from a single
source. The quality of the
light is always basically
the same, and so is the
original source."
If
we can come to recognize
this shared origin of our
two faiths, there will be
a real ground for a true
dialogue.
Thank
you.
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