What are the chances for a more positive role for religious women in international affairs, both on the governmental and mass levels?
Answer
Excellent question. The chances continue to grow and not a moment too soon.
Let me be clear: from my point of view qualifications for public roles of service should be based on competence. And, I firmly believe that both men and women should be give equal chances to develop their potential competencies.
Moreover, I personally rejoice in both the similarities and the differences between men and women. These "differences" are for me "complementary," so much so that if we deny the experiences of one whole group we are trying to breath with only one lung.
While we have some understanding of the biological differences between men and women, we are all just learning what roles cultures have played in "sculpting" the differences between genders. We can imagine that what we understand to be masculine and feminine will continue to change over time.
We must all recognize that most of our habits regarding gender have come from the period of the agricultural revolution. Most of humanity is no longer living in that period of time, so now is a period of creativity when it comes to gender roles.
I personally believe that men and women shall always experience reality from broadly speaking different viewpoints, but I also believe that we are all diminshed if these differing viewpoints do not equally inform our public life.
Regarding the roles of women in religion, we must acknowledge that women have and continue to play major roles in the work of religious communities and the transmission of religious tradition. It is up to each religious tradition to undertake its own evaluation regarding what new roles are available to whom.
In the meantime, the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) is developing a network of religious women's associations. These associations provide opportunities to cooperate across religious lines and a representative basis for women to take appropriate roles of leadership in multireligious work. If you want to know about this association email akaram@wcrp.org
In any case, let us respect the God-given dignity of both women and men, and let us work together.
Thank you.
Name
Carla
-
Profession
Question
With your organization’s strong conviction of the power of religion to redirect and possibly transform world politics, are you not tempted – in light of the recent September events – to believe that Huntington was right?
Answer
No, I am not tempted to believe that Huntington is right in the sense of a "clash" of religions and cultures.
However, some current events can be perceived by some as supporting his thesis.
This places the burden on all sincere men and women of religion who know in their heads and hearts that religion invites us to embrace the entire human family with the mercy and love we know to be offered by God.
Concretely, we must act together on all levels, local, national, regional and world-wide. Our actions can take many forms. But, large or small they can demonstrate that we have "deeply held and widely shared" values and these shared "cares" provide to us a framework for collaboration.
Name
Jimmy
-
Profession
Question
I’m interested in your “Religion, Memory, and the Establishment of a New Political Order” paper. Where can I get a copy of it?
Answer
Jimmy,
I'll gladly send you my small paper on this topic. You can email me at wcrp.org Basically, I argue that withour religious memory, all attempts for "secular" political order suffer from the loss of memory of what it really means to be a human being. On the other hand, there are many different religions, and so no one among them can impose it's vision on the political order of states with a pluralistic population. I try to work out a way in which diverse religions can contribute to the building up of "public language" that is informed by the deep moral "memory" of the human family as it is contained in our religious traditions. These heritages must, however, be re-expressed in public ways, even as they retain their own "primary" languages for their own believers. What do you think? Can religious communities become bi-lingual? Speaking their particular religion among their own believers and transposing their moral concerns into an ever fuller form of public language? I try to point a way for us to work in that direction.
My approach tries to steer between a narrow and ever thinner form of secularity and a single religion trying to impose political order on plural populations.
All good wishes.
Name
Nesma
-
Profession
Question
There are different practices of Christianity and Islam throughout the world. This may be due to the differences in the mindset of the followers of those religions because of their cultural differences and geographic locations. What are WCRP’s efforts in bridging the gap between those people (i.e. how do you come to one meaning on Christianity and Islam and hence act in the desired direction?)
Answer
Dear Nesma,
Your are right, spreak as if by a breeze groups of our traditions have scattered around the world with different kinds of emphasis and focus.
WCRP's job is not to try to work to bring the different groups within each tradition into "organizational" unity. That is the job of each particular religion.
What does WCRP try to do? We try to help each group "discern" or discover the meanings and values that are deeply shared. These are the basis for cooperation. Then we try to actually work together. We have wonderful concrete projects undertaken by believers of different faiths working together. Believe me, we can do more together than we can do alone.
Let me give an example of your question from Christianity. There are some Christians who are not open to dialogue or cooperation. I personally feel they are theologically mistaken, but so long as they don't break the law, they can believe in that way. Unfortunately, however, they will not make good partners in dialogue or cooperation for the common good. So, we allow them to be believe as they do, trusting that God is still leading them forward in their growth.
However, the eye of commitment can see commitment. Commitment to the good is very attractive. When sincere religious people cooperate for the common good, for example for the well being of children or ending conflicts, many others find themselves attracted to these good works. This is one of the ways WCRP spreads.
WCRP does not spread or grow by propaganda. It spreads because our deepest readings of our faith traditions ask us to respect each other and because people who cooperate with each other find the experience both joyous and liberating. Cooperation liberates us into the heart of our own religion tradition from which we can see goodness in the other. Goodness sees goodness, love sees love, mercy recognizes mercy. What is more powerful?
Thank you.
Name
Othman
- Afghanistan
Profession
Question
There is no PEACE in this world. The peace will never ever be in this world unless the CROSS is broken down.
Actually The Christians hates us, so how can they go throw a peace with us, muslims?
Answer
Dear Brother, we are creatures before the One God,
So, I greet you as my brother. I can only respect your right to have your views. Also, I can imagine that you must have had many painful experience that lie behind your view point.
My experience is different. You do not have to accept my views, but I would like to share them with you.
I have had the joy of working "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Muslims in many difficult situations. I am a Christian and my faith has taught me to love God. In fact, it asks that I love God with all my heart, all my mind and all my body and that I am to love others as myself.
Of course, I fail so often, but I also have the experience that God's Love and Mercy are stronger than my failures.
I said I have worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Muslim brothers and sisters. Let me give you an example. In Sierra Leone, a lovely country in West Africa, the people had to suffer from 10 years of brutal civil war. The political and military possibilities of ending this war were exhausted. What did we do? We organized a council of Muslims and Christians to work together. Together we were able to get the rebels and the government into negotiations, together we were able to gain the release of captured children, together we were able to establish an ethical framework for common living.
Quite honestly, we could not have done this if only the Muslims or only the Christians acted alone. We had some failures, but our successes were due to coopertion.
Let me also mention a personal aspect of this experience. From the center of my Christian faith, I could recognize the truth of the faith of my Muslim brothers and sister. I also felt that could recognize me.
So, dear brother. I respect your right to hold your view, but I also must share that I have experienced unspeakable joy in cooperating with Muslims who I know to be truly my brothers and sisters.
I wish you the Peace of God.
Name
Qun
- China
Profession
Question
There has been many wars involving the Americans and the Moslems, like the Gulf war, the strikes and economic sanctions on Libya, the rockets that hit Sudan after the embassy bombings and a lot of other examples … why is this war in particular considered to be a war between civilizations ?
Answer
Dear Qun,
Thank you for your question. I, too, ask myself the same question.
First of all, I need to state that I think military responses more often than not cause more harm than help. Yes, we all have a right for self-defense. However, too often this right is abused and we can recognize "aggressive action" instead of legitimate self-defense.
The examples your raise need to be carefully examined, and I too feel quite critical of some of them in particular. I am not a political expert, and I did not have any personal experience in the examples you cite, however, I strongly regret them.
I do have experience in Bosnia, Kosovo, and more recently in Macedonia. In Bosnia, I worked with great closeness with the Muslim community, in their grief, and I was with them when they heroically began to work together with the other religious communities in that region. They are heros to me.
That was also part of my personal experience in Kosovo. I took my son to Kosovo with me and he was so warmly recieved in madrassa.
What I have found to be true is that religions themselves are not typically the source of conflict. Rather, political forces including narrow ethnic political ambitions often end up manipulating religion for their own purposes.
Actually, I believe there are very few real "religious" conflicts. Instead, other forces sometime are successful in temporarily "hijacking" religion in support of a conflict. To the degree that this is true, we must all work harder to help sincere religious people to work together to reject violence and for peace with justice.
In this regard, nothing is more powerful than for us to defend each other. I have seen Muslim defend Christians and Christians defend Muslims. Can you imagine the kind of solidarity and trust this builds?
Thank you.
Name
Francesca
- Italy
Profession
Question
What the Italian prime minister said about how the Western civilization is superior to the Arab-Islamic one reflects meanings and feelings that were hidden inside these people’s souls and was revealed after the latest accident. Do you think that these people hated Moslems for a very ling time but these feelings were hidden under the mask of diplomacy and policy and that the latest events unveiled all this ?
Answer
Francesca,
Ignorance is the source of prejudice. What the Prime Minister expressed was prejudice, and we can only assume how deeply ignorant he must be on a personally level to demonstrate such stupid prejudice. Too bad for him! And good that the public media attacked and scolded him. Perhaps he felt ashamed, if so, good, it is a step in his needed education.
Everywhere there is cultural isolation, there is the danger of ignorance and therefore prejudice.
When I was a small boy in America, I am ashamed to say that there was racial discrimination against African people. My parent were good and loving people, but -- like a blind spot in the eye -- prejudice was part of my society and was unconsciously passed on in "good" families. It take humility to recognize examples like this in our own lives. At there best, they can help us to understand (not accept) how other people through ignorance have prejudices. When I was 18 years old, I joined the civil rights movement to work to overcome the shame of this kind of prejudice, but if I have been born 20 years earlier it frightens me to realize that my eye, too, might have been blind.
What is the answer? First, we must reject prejudice, wherever and whenever we find it. It is wrong. Second, we must work together to eliminate the causes of prejudice and the main cause is ignorance.
In this regard, dialogue is of critical importance. It is easy to reject the person you do not know; it is much harder to reject the person you have met in an honest search for the truth and the good.
Let us be our selves, open to one another with full self confidence.
Name
Hana
- Egypt
Profession
Question
There has been many wars involving the Americans and the Moslems, like the Gulf war, the strikes and economic sanctions on Libya, the rockets that hit Sudan after the embassy bombings and a lot of other examples … why is this war in particular considered to be a war between civilizations?
Answer
Hana, warm thanks, but I have just tried to answer the same question. Kindly refer to my earlier answer. All best,
Name
dnetra
-
Profession
Question
What is the difference between Allah and God
Answer
The spelling.
Yours with good wishes.
Name
Ahmad
- Egypt
Profession
Question
I’m interested in your article “Religion, Memory, and the Establishment of a New Political Order”. Where can I get a copy of it?
Answer
Dear Ahmad,
Kindly email wcrp.org and request that I send it to you. Now I am in Cairo, tomorrow Palestine, but back to New York in about a week. I'll send it to you. Why don't you help me to improve the small thoughts in that paper.
Yours.
Name
Ibrahim
- Malaysia
Profession
Question
It’s very obvious that most Islamic countries have got Christians in addition to other religions inside the country. If this was a clash of civilizations or a crusade what will be the position of these minorities IN THEIR POINT OF VIEW?
Answer
Ibrahim,
Your observation about religious pluralism is quite correct. In fact, I think such experssions as the "West" and "East" are quite misleading. Did you know that Islam is the second largest religion in America? and that it is very rapidly growing in Europe. Frankly, all of our civilizations are "on the move." People from all civilizations now live in all homes of all civilzations. And, I don't think this trend will slow down, rather it will pick up speed. Do you know that in my home, New York, 180 different linguistic groups live together. How can we call this the "West?" And in differing degrees this is more and more true everywhere.
These demographic trends calls us all to reflect on the requirements for common living built upon a respect for religious diversity.
Are we just going to live in societies based on a kind of "least common denominator," or can we learn to respect and appreciate our differenes. I hope and work for the latter.
You have probably ready about some Muslims being unfairly harrassed in the United States after the events of 11 September. That is true and terribly regretable. But what you don't read about are the enormous numbers of multireligious services, the many calls for tolerance, the fact that most people do in fact respect and enjoy each other, the innumberable small acts of kindness between people of different backgrounds.
Again, what are our choices -- as your question suggests? Shall we not live together, the many tribes that God created so that they might know one another? I vote yes.
Name
Hala Abohmeed
- India
Profession
Question
An American friend of mine in the U.S. told me that the harassments and the “prosecution” to which Moslems are exposed in America are all allegations and that these accidents are very few and reflects no general trend in the American community … however, Moslems say that this is happening in a wide range and is transforming gradually to a general trend in America and Europe. Which of which is true and whom to believe and why would one of them lie about this thing ?
Answer
THIS HAS TO BE MY LAST ANSWER. I HAVE DEEPLY ENJOYED THE CHANCE TO E-CHAT WITH YOU. AND, I CONGRATULATE YOU ON THIS FINE SITE. THANK YOU FOR WELCOMING ME. ASALAM ALEIKUM!
A good question. Perhaps neither person is "lying." Let me explain. If you are feeling fear, you may notice everything that is fearful and you may be tempted to worry about the "worst possible case." I can easily understand some Muslims feeling this way. Any incidences of harrassment are too many!
However, in a large country (270 million) there really have been relatively few nasty examples of hatred or harassment. If a person is not personally frightened by these realities (for example if they are not a Muslim), they may say that they truly believe that the examples are not so many.
So, both may be trying to tell you the truth. In my view, there is some real islamophobia based on ignorance, but there is also an ever growing living experience of Muslims as neighbors, members of our schools, best friends, work mates, etc. Muslims are helping to make America into the country that it is becoming.
What should we do? It is the duty of Christians and other men and women of good will to stand up and defend any group that is being unfairly attacked. This is simply our duty, and others have done this for me when I was in their lands.
The most important religious virture in my book is the ability to be self-critical. If my religious community fails, I should and must be critical of it's failure. This does not deminish our religous tradition, rather it honors it by giving a true witness that we really do believe in God's mercy, forgivness, and love.
