Dialogue Australasia will be holding their next conference 15-17 April 2009 at the Old Parliament Buildings in Canberra. The theme is “Teaching the Abrahamic Religions: Christianity in Dialogue with Judaism & Islam”.
Dialogue Australiasia is an organisation comprising mainly Christian schools in Australia and New Zealand. Their purpose is to “help young people become more fully human by nuturing and promoting the development of a broad-based academic approach to the teaching of Values, Philosophy & Religious Studies”, and their vision is to “be a vibrant organisation that brings together educators who have a shared sense of the importance of our purpose, and a willingess to work together to achieve its objectives.”
According to the conference blurb, “Relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims are among the most divisive, challenging and important issues in the world today. Despite their often violent differences, each share a common heritage as the Children of Abraham and the worship of one God. In a time when understanding these three religions has taken on a new and critical urgency, this important conference will equip educators with practical strategies and resources to enable students to explore the similarities, differences and relationships between the Abrahamic faith traditions.”
The World Council of Churches has announced an international ecumenical debate on “The Promised Land”, from 10-14 September in Bern, Switzerland. Sixty-five Christian theologians “will discuss the concept of the ‘Promised Land’ and related theological issues with a view to help more churches become advocates for a just peace.”
“One of the main goals we hope to achieve is to deepen church understanding of biblical promises concerning the land and its peoples. This will require a holistic approach to the biblical message, promoting common understanding of how theological issues may be related to the conflict,” says Michel Nseir, programme executive for the WCC special focus on Middle East. “Different approaches to biblical and theological issues should not prevent common action for a just peace.”
That’s all very interesting from my perspective, however without Muslim and Jewish involvement the prospect of real progress being made is slim. As my favourite local refugee organisation says, “nothing about us without us!”
The WCC’s “Public Witness: Addressing power, affirming peace” project has laudable goals and some great programmes such as the Decade to Overcome Violence. However, the rubber meets the road at the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, and it seems like a very one-sided road to this Jewish reader. By effectively taking sides and not acknowledging different perspectives, the Council has turned itself into a political tool rather than an instrument of peacemaking dialogue. To my mind, that’s moving backwards, not forwards, as such exclusion can only lead to more violence on both sides.
For a slightly different but aligned (and more scholarly) perspective, see Frank Crüsemann’s article recently published in Jewish-Christian Relations, 60 Years: The Church and the State of Israel.
The Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam need to listen to and work together with indigenous voices to recognise injustice and to explore common traditions of reconciliation and moving forward in a new direction. The Abraham Conference provides a practical way forward for people of all faiths and backgrounds to become aware of our responsibilities and thus work towards reconciliation.
Pat Dodson, Mark Leibler AC, and Zuleyha Keskin will speak.
The conference will be held at the Central Hall of the Australian Catholic University 22-24 Brunswick St, Fitzroy, Melbourne on Sunday 19 October 2008, 7-9pm.
The Los Angeles Times has published an interesting article on how the tomb of the Jewish prophet Ezra has been turned into a Shiite shrine. Like many other Jewish prophets, Ezra (Uzair) is a holy figure in Islam. Most of Iraq’s Jews left in 1948 to go to Israel, but the shrine continues to be maintained by the same Muslim family that has looked after it for over a century.
The article contains some great photos too. Read it.
I’ve been in Auckland the last couple of days at the New Zealand Diversity Forum, of which the Religious Diversity Forum was part. It was really great to see such great commitment from the NZ Government, top down from the Prime Minister Helen Clark, who gave a moving speech to the plenary celebrating the strength of diversity in New Zealand’s changing demographic landscape. An Australian delegation, led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma also attended the forum.
About 200 people attended the first half-day Diversity Forum in 2005, which was held after two Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in Wellington. It has since grown to attract more than 1,000 people in an event that spans several days.
At the Religious Diversity Forum, Prof Paul Morris gave a good talk on religious communities’ right to safety and security, and went into some depth into research he’d carried out into religious perspectives on the issue. In the last few years, “minor events” of harassment (ie, where nobody was seriously injured) tend not to have been followed up so as to starve the perpetrators of the “oxygen of publicity” that they often seek in committing such acts. Paul suggests that it’s time to change this policy, and adopt zero-tolerance for attacks on religious communities.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Rob Pope responded with a prepared speech, but I felt that he didn’t have a grasp of the issues. More specifically, Rob seemed to conflate the concepts of race, nationality, ethnicity, and religion into a single entity – which is understandable, but also unhelpful getting to the crux of religious discrimination. I suspect that one of the key reasons for this is that the Human Rights Act covers race, gender, ethnicity and so on, but not religion. Pope also made reference to the Police’s Community Liaison Officers whose roles are modeled on Iwi Liaison Officers, but I’m unaware of any officers specifically dedicated to religious communities (in contrast to ethnic communities). Furthermore, in the recent Police action against Tuhoe, Māori liaison officers were left out of the loop; that’s not a particularly good model! Bottom line: the Police still have a long way to go before they’re asking the right questions, let alone providing the right answers. That said, they appear to be genuinely concerned, and they should be given some points for effort.
Anjum Rahman gave an account of discrimination against Muslim women – but says that things seem to be improving. Verpal Singh also gave an overview of the Sikh community in New Zealand, and highlighted the problem of people misunderstanding the kirpan. A further session addressed New Zealand’s considerable contribution to the UN’s Alliance of Civilisations programme.
The Religious Diversity Forum is where religious communities and the interfaith movement have the chance to interact with Government. That’s great, but the question of representation is a sticky one. Real progress happens at the grassroots, and there is a yawning gap between grassroots religious adherents and the religious elite and diehard interfaith junkies like myself who attend these fora. The Diversity Forum is relatively well funded, resourced, and backed by government agencies, but activities on the ground are performed by volunteers, generally self-funded on a shoestring budget. Real progress will require broader engagement. This need not be expensive or extensive, but it will need to have more consideration applied than is being done at present.
…. well, not quite, but as I write, Melbourne’s dynamic interfaith duo – John Safran and Father Bob are tackling all things Muslim in their own inimitable style on Australia’s national “yoof!” radio network Triple J. You can get a podcast of the interviews by going to www.abc.net.au/triplej/safran/, but if you happen to be reading this right now, tune in and catch all the music as well!
The Almanac, a Silicon Valley newspaper, recently ran a story on the Peace Camp Initiative. Three kids from Israel, Adam Horovitz, Zahi Tuama and Ahmed Hamudi (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) were taken to an American summer camp, and used Aikido as a method of conflict resolution.
At the end of the camp, the three boys listed each other as their closest friends at the camp.
Robert Kent, who came up with the idea, hopes eventually to take 12 peace campers per year through the programme.
For the record, your friendly bloggers here on 3faiths.org look absolutely nothing like any of these stereotypes. But the beautiful thing is, just like the caricature above, we’re all the same underneath!
A seminar sponsored by the World Council of Churches was held in Geneva recently, where 22 Jewish, Christian and Muslim young people where they “shared their thoughts, meals, and prejudices with each other”.
The story from the Standard Newswire reports a Muslim woman from Jordan saying, “I have realized I have much more in common with a Christian from Palestine than [with] a Muslim from the West … The differences are mainly cultural, not religious.”
Three of the participants were interviewed, and you can listen to their stories below:
Razan Abd El Haque, a Muslim woman from Jordan:
Olivier Salagi, a Jewish man from France:
Veranika Shetskaya, a Christian woman from Belarus:
The Interfaith Encounter Association is an organisation operating in Israel and Palestine who hold encounter groups between the Abrahamic faiths. Their website says that they are “…dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East through interfaith dialogue and cross-cultural study. We believe that, rather than being a cause of the problem, religion can and should be a source of the solution for conflicts that exist in the region and beyond.”
Its principals are:
Equal representation of all faiths in the IEA;
Gender equality in the decision making processes and activities of the IEA;
Outreach to individuals and communities from all faiths, age groups, walks of life, and levels of society;
Outreach to individuals and communities across the religious-secular and political spectra;
Continual recruitment through committed activists on the local and regional levels;
Implementation of interactive programs that effectively change outlooks and attitudes, such as extended weekend seminars and ongoing study groups;
Continual development of new models for effective encounter; and
Ongoing evaluation of all strategies and programs.
You can subscribe to their reports which are issued occasionally – they make interesting reading, and are proof that goodwill and spiritual intent can conquer prejudice, and together we can make a better world.
