Bishop Pierre Whalon, writing for the Huffington Post, makes the case for increasing dialogue between Muslims, Christians and Jews and that an important tool to fight the tendency towards fundamentalism and radicalism is a faithful, critical reading of our holy texts.
Winston Churchill famously said, “It is better to jaw-jaw than war-war.” Clearly, it is only when dialogue has ceased that the fighting can begin. But it is equally true that two sides — nations, religions, tribes — are either on the path to peace, or the path to war. There is no third way — none….
…Since the beginnings of Islam, Christianity has been in a difficult relationship with it. When we are celebrating what we have in common, we are on the road to peace. When we perceive our differences as rivalry, we are starting down the road to war. In the 21st century, war is waged less and less between nation-states, but through terrorist groups who serve as proxies. There is certainly enough reason to wonder whether we have once again allowed “violence, hatred, and enmity” to surface in our relations as religions.
Of course, this is an abstraction. Religions do not relate, people do. But as we see fanatics hounding Christians out of the Middle East — ancestral lands they have lived in centuries before Muhammad’s birth — the question becomes, whom are we dealing with? The killings of two government officials in Pakistan, seemingly with impunity if not outright approval, because they opposed the draconian blasphemy laws in force in that country ups the ante. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Monday last to the Pakistani government, “Do not imagine this can be ‘managed’ or tolerated.”
Those of us who have been “jaw-jaw”-ing have even more items to talk about. In America, there is a growing movement to reject Islam out of hand. Peter King, the congressman chairing the Homeland Security Committee for the House of Representatives, is holding hearings on the place of Islam in America. In Europe, David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France have denounced multiculturalism as a failure. There are disturbing trends being instrumentalized all around, Muslims praying in the streets of Paris, North Africans being discriminated against in Spain.
Are these not the “reciprocal actions” Clausewitz and Girard warn against? The threat of violence against moderates on both sides silences the voices of reason, those who understand best the value of dialogue.
Read the rest here.