54 – Interfaith Dialogue

Editorial

No peace among the nations without peace among the religions No peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions Hans Kling December 1992: Hindu nationalists destroy the Babri Masjid Mosque at Ayodhya, in BJP-governed Uttar Pradesh.

Supposedly built by the Moghul emperor Babur in the 16th century, it was said to be on the site of the birthplace of god / king Sri Rama (hero of the Ramayana). Estimated 3000 killed in subsequent violence.

January 1999: A Hindu temple in Gujurat is burned down. Over 850 people are killed in Ahmedabad, Gujurat's commercial capital. A train destroyed at Godhra railway station in retaliation, leading to further violence. Results in an estimated 5000 deaths.

March 2002: A Protestant International Church in diplomatic enclave of Islamabad is attacked with grenades by suspected Islamist militants. 5 dead, 40 injured.

May/June 2002: as I write, hundreds of thousands of troops are on the brink of war on the borders of the disputed Kashmir territory between Pakistan and India, bordering China and Afghanistan. Frustrated with Pakistan's President, India's Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee called for a "decisive battle" between nuclear powers. It is an area where Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Sikh live.

Hans Kung has stressed the great importance of understanding between religions. There is the world to gain from it, he tells us. But how do we engage in this dialogue, with whom do we engage, and to what end? In our postEnlightenment West, religion and politics have largely been separated into private and public spheres. Those who persist in aligning them, especially those who take religious sites as the targets of their resentments, are judged to be religious 'extremists' or 'fanatics' with unrepresentative views. Their actions and others' liberal attitudes effectively remove them from interfaith dialogue. In this context, we can imagine that interfaith dialogue can be a matter of exploring the doctrines and practices of the 'world faiths', with the aim of recognising similarities and differences for mutual understanding and even learning complementary methods of prayer and meditation.

But events in Central and South Asia and in the Middle East show that the necessary dialogue between faiths cannot be isolated from a consideration of other significant forces in our world that results in violent religious protest: politics and economics, science and technology, past imperialism and present Americanization. These global movements of economic capital, information and Western culture affect everyone. They challenge cultural and national independence and identity. Yet, religious identity is an integral part of national and ethnic identity and sectarian rivalry, as is seen in other conflicts over Tibet, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland.

Religion has always adapted and developed in response to social change. This is usually gradual, but may retreat from politics into the mythical realm of mysticism—of Sufism, some Christian Mystics and Jewish Kabbalists— or engage violently in politics-, as in the crusades and other 'holy wars'. Indeed, Karen Armstrong's history of 'fundamentalism', The Battle For God (2000), shows how fundamentalism is a part of a rationally organised 'modern' outlook for, while attempting to resist the trends of modernity, fundamentalism has abandoned a pre-modern appreciation of mythos and reduced scriptures to the rationalizing truth of logos. Even the use of centralised administration to extend the influence of fundamentalist religious movements displays a social structure that is indebted to modernity. Religion is a product of culture, even when it is • its critic. Violent religious expression is one form of adaptation. Where religion is part of the problem it will need to be part of any possible solution. Violent or reactionary representations of religion cannot be excluded from interfaith dialogue. The causes of such reactions need to be understood.

Some have suggested that the only way the Christian tradition can adapt to contemporary cultural change is for it to be appropriated in secular ways as a 'Kingdom Theology', a liberating social paradigm founded on an ethic of justice and equality. But this, at least metaphorically, still relies on the semantics of dominion. Even when its reign is a subverted one of a crown of thorns, it still employs a centralised monarchical model of authority to establish a single unified ideal order of justice, so betraying inherited cultural and ideological assumptions of domination. Such a crusade of justice excludes debate; the hearing of others' criticisms. The feminists' idea of a 'kin-dom theology' is preferable: a dialogical theology through which we recognise others as kith and kin in global familial relationships. This emphasises the creating of a community of mutuality and love, containing wide cultural and religious differences, as the context for common concerns, the discovery of shared values, and solidarity in criticisms of the worst excesses of global politics and economics.

Karen Armstrong's work shows that unless religions can adapt to contemporary socio-economic contexts, then there will continue to be religious communities believing that there is more to gain by going to war or by a martyr-like self-sacrifice, than by dialogue between faiths and a common engagement with our political and economic contexts. Perhaps the contribution to this dialogue of those who see religion as a human and cultural creation will that we can help others see how religions adapt in response to specific historical changes and pressures. In this way, we can understand religion as moral criticism of cultural, political and economic excesses.