On the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, Christians and Muslims come together to celebrate abundance.

Thursday, November 1st, 2012. A normally quiet afternoon at Tangaza College is suddenly vibrant. Life buzzes by the massive benjamina trees just in front of Pamoja Cafeteria. Tables are laden with pots of steaming rice and meat stew. There are several crates of soft drinks. Some excited students sway to the beat of the music reverberating nearby.

This celebration was All Saints Day. Celebrated every November 1st, in the Catholic tradition, it is a time to remember not only the well known saints, but all holy men and women, even those beyond the boundaries of the institutional church (Payne, OCD). To mark this solemn occasion, free lunches were generously offered to members of Tangaza College by Muslim neighbors as part of their own important celebration, Eid-ul-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice). Indeed this was an extraordinary, atypical way of commemorating the feast of all saints, a celebration in style.

Some watched the festivities – Muslims, as represented by members of the Respect Foundation and Christians of Tangaza College, celebrating with Christians – and labelled it “unusual,” “historic,” “rare,” or even “remarkable.”

The festivity started with Fr. Steven Payne, OCD, Principal of Tangaza College, welcoming our Muslim brothers and sisters. He continued by reminding the gathering of the positive attitude of the Catholic Church towards different faiths and traditions, particularly Muslims, as expressed in the documents of the Vatican Council II. Lumen Gentium, one of its documents, states that “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us, adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge humankind.” One declaration says that it is the duty of Catholics to foster unity and charity among all peoples. He also stated clearly that the Church has high regard and esteem for Muslims who share some beliefs with Christians, value leading moral lives, and worship God, especially through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.

Fr. Payne then welcomed Mr. Fatih Akdogan, Chairperson of the Respect Foundation, Kenya Chapter. Mr. Fatih briefly explained the meaning and significance of Eid-ul-Adha to the Islamic community. The feast is one of the two greatest feasts in the Islamic calendar marked at the end of the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca every year. It is a celebration that commemorates Ibrahim’s (Abraham’s) submission and consequent tribulations when God asked him to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. As the story goes, confirming Abraham’s total submission, God provided a ram to be sacrificed in place of the son. During Eid-ul-Adha, Muslims slaughter animals as a sign of their willingness to make sacrifices in order to remain right with God. The meat is divided into three parts. One portion is retained by the family or community, the second portion is donated to the needy, while the third portion is given to friends and neighbors, regardless of race and religion. Quoting Yunus Emre, a Sufi poet, Fatih added that this love extends to all of creation because God is the creator of everything.

The Chairperson of this organization that promotes interfaith and intercultural understanding went on to say that both Muslims and Christians describe Abraham as a “father in faith.” This gives Christians and Muslims one common heritage in faith. In spite of Christian-Muslim religious strife in many countries, the Qur’an recognises Christians as those nearest to them; both are children of Abraham and believe in the same God or Allah.

There were no elaborate speeches, as would normally have been expected of an institution of higher learning. Soon, I recited a universal prayer of blessing for the food. Then everyone present was invited to share the meal before us.

This was a one of a kind treat. There was enough food to feed more than 500 people. Laughter and excitement ruled the air. Amid the sounds of joy and eating, there were silent questions, some of which may never be answered. But above all else, there was the curiosity to know what these celebrations were for.

Fr. Steven Mr. Fatih and I are optimistic that the new-found relationship between Tangaza College and the Respect Foundation will be nurtured by all concerned parties. Grateful that their Muslim brothers and sisters took the initiative to extend their generosity and love, the Tangaza fraternity also hopes and prays that the spirit and embers of such inter-faith liaisons will be reignited every day.

Sr. Lilian Curaming is a Franciscan Missionary of Mary, Directress of St. Anthony of Padua Institute of Africa (SAPIA) and Coordinator of Franciscan Studies of Tangaza College

In 1989, in his classic book The World’s Religions, the late Scots writer and teacher Ninian Smart gave us a landmark framework to help us compare and contrast the world’s great religious beliefs. Smart identified what he called the ‘seven dimensions’ of religion:

1. The practical and ritual dimension
2. The experiential and emotional dimension
3. The narrative or mythic dimension
4. The ethical and legal dimension
5. The social and institutional dimension
6. The material dimension

This framework has helped two generations of scholars and believers to identify what their beliefs have in common with other belief traditions and what the significant differences are.

In countries like Australia, where religious groups and institutions enjoy tax exemptions in relation to property and works of charity, courts have been asked to rule on what is or is not a ‘religion’. So, in Australia, the High Court determined in 1983 that to be considered as a ‘religion’ rather than a ‘philosophy’ a group must pass a twofold test:

– belief in a supernatural Being, Thing or Principle; and

– acceptance and observance of canons of conduct in order to give effect to that belief.(154 CLR 120 at 132, 137)

(A strict application of the first principle would rule out Buddhism as a religion, yet results from successive Australian censuses show Buddhism to be the fastest-growing religion in Australia. It is hard to be consistent! )

Some scholars looking for another, and perhaps simpler, way of comparing and contrasting religious movements, institutions and traditions may find help in the pioneer work of the English sociologist Grace Davie.

In 1994, Davie launched the study of religion into a new dimension with her challenging book, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging. The study was based on interviews with several thousand people outside shopping centres in various parts of Britain. She posed her conclusions in a series of questions. The first is:

Believing without Belonging

Why is it, for example, that the majority of British people – in common with many other Europeans – persist in believing (if only in an ordinary God), but see no need to participate with even minimal regularity in their religious institutions? Indeed most people in this country – whatever their denominational allegiance – express their religious sentiments by staying away from, rather than going to, their places of worship. On the other hand, relatively few British people have opted out of religion altogether: out-and-out atheists are rare. ( Davie, p2)

Five years after Davie’s significant book was published, another English sociologist, Robin Gill, added a third B, Behaving, although he did tend to equate ‘behaving’ with churchgoing, arguing that it is churchgoing which fosters and sustains a distinctive culture of beliefs and values (p. 64).

In the same year, Grace Davie published another of her many books; this one based on a study of religion in Europe. This led her to conclude that Europe is what she calls ‘the exceptional case’ – many Europeans, particularly in the Scandinavian countries of northern Europe, belong to the majority national church without any belief in their teachings, or even in the existence of a god. She is now preparing revised editions of both her books.

The three Bs have become almost a cliché – so, just two of many examples, the Anglican bishop Tom Frame uses the three Bs to frame part of his critique of the Anglican church in Australia and Richard Rice uses them to combat ‘the ideology of individualism’ and construct a theology of the church for Seventh Day Adventists in the United States.

Grace Davie herself has recently moved on from examining the state of Christianity in Britain and Europe to consider issues arising from Muslim migration to the West, and what she calls the shift from religious obligation to religious consumption.

Now some scholars are talking about a fourth Becoming. Most religious traditions teach that believing religious truth, and belonging to a religious community, should not only modify your behaviour, for the better, of course, but should change your nature, so that you become a new and better person. King’s College London has become a centre of transformation theology, Transformation is a well-established international journal of holistic mission studies and the United Methodist Church of the United States includes ‘becoming’ in the title of a new manual to help congregations incorporate new members.

In the great eastern religions, ‘becoming’ is a key part of their anthropology, with rebirth or reincarnation being the reward or the punishment in the next life for the quality of behaving in this life.

So we now have the ‘four Bs’ of religion, Believing, Belonging, Behaving and Becoming. At a time when the patterns of religious adherence in Australia are changing, due both to immigration and conversion, it is more important than ever for us to understand what other Australians believe. The Four Bs give us a new formal structure for discussing religious belief and practice intelligently, just as there are formal structures which help us make sense of physics or chemistry or biology or economics or sociology, or any of the natural or social sciences.

It may even result in a new and simpler way of comparing and contrasting established religions, on the basis of what the adherents of a particular religion believe and do, alongside Ninian Smart’s ‘seven dimensions’ of religion. So we can consider such issues as:

1. Which of the four Bs is most important to a particular religion?
2. What are the key beliefs of the major world religions represented in Australia?
3. How are the four Bs linked, in the Scriptures and the teachings of each faith?
4. Do all people of faith believe in the same God? If not, is there more than one God?
5. Is belonging about belonging to God or to the community of faith, or both?
6. How do these faith traditions expect their believers to behave – what is commanded, what is allowed and what is forbidden? and
7. How do believers become changed people, spiritually and even bodily? What is at the heart of the anthropology of each faith? What do they teach about the body and the soul, about resurrection and reincarnation?

In a sense it is all about the one big B, believing; what does a particular faith community believe about believing, about belonging, about behaving and about becoming? Over the past few months, I have recorded interviews with leaders and scholars of the five major religions represented in Australia and studied the books and pamphlets which they recommended. All of them claimed that their basic beliefs were based on their Scriptures, but the statements of faith which emerged suggested that some of them had put their Scriptures through a blender, as it were, to come up with statements which summarise the beliefs and practices and understandings which are common to most of the denominations or sects within each faith community.

JUDAISM

So the first article of the Jewish faith is the shema, the message given by Moses, or in the name of Moses:

The shema

Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. – Deuteronomy 6.4

Yet the Jewish Scriptures record the growth of an understanding of God from the anthropomorphism of the book of Genesis through transcendentalism and panentheism, henotheism and particularism to true monotheism, belief in the one God who is the one true God of all peoples, even of those who do not accept him.

The second article of faith relates to humankind, which is said to have been created in the image of God, and is bound to God in a covenant relationship. The Hebrew Scriptures speak of a number of signs of the covenant, including the gift of the Sabbath at the time of creation, the rainbow after the great flood, and, most important, the circumcision of all males on the eighth day after birth, as part of the Abrahamic covenant.

This covenant is stated in chapter 12 of the book of Genesis, restated in Chapter 15 and sealed in Chapter 17, when Abraham agrees that the sign of the covenant will appear on the bodies of all his male descendants through circumcision.

The covenant with Abraham

Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing …and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

– Genesis 12.1-3

God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. – – Genesis 17.9-11

Many Jews call the ceremony of circumcision berit, which means ‘covenant’. The covenant was reaffirmed in the so-called Mosaic covenant at Mt Sinai, which the whole people of Israel are said to have confirmed, answering Moses as one, Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do. (Exodus 19.8)

The third article of faith is that the Torah is divinely-inspired. ‘Torah’ can mean the totality of the law of Moses, or all the law on a particular subject, or the first five books of the Scriptures, the Pentateuch, as distinct from the Prophets and the Writings.

Two other significant beliefs, which are seen differently by different Jewish communities, relate to the Messiah and to the land of Israel.

Belief in the Messiah developed after the Second Temple period, giving new meaning to the Messianic oracles in the writings of the prophets. The rabbis taught that the Messiah would be a descendent of David, and thus his coming would bring about the climax of human history and the direct rule of God on earth.

The land of Israel, Eretz Israel, was part of the Abrahamic covenant, but not all Jewish believers accept the modern state of Israel, because it was a secular foundation, not established by YHWH. Some Orthodox Jews say that the true Israel will be established only with the coming of the Messiah.

ISLAM

Most Australian Muslims will tell you that belief comes first, without the core beliefs there is no Islam. But the word Islam means submission, so some Muslims believe that behaving comes first, to be a Muslim one must submit absolutely and completely to the will of God. Many men and women were Muslims before the time of the Prophet. Two verses in the Qur’an are almost identical in proclaiming this:

Submission to God
Surely, those who believe,
whether they are Jews or Christians, or those of some other faith;
anyone who believes in GOD, and
believes in the Last Day, and leads a righteous life,
will receive their recompense from their Lord;
they have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve. – Qur’an 2:62, 5:69

The core Islamic belief is belief in the one, unique, incomparable God, the God who has no son or partner; none has the right to be worshipped but Him alone. Al’lah is the true God, and every other deity is false. He has the most magnificent names and sublime perfect attributes. No one shares His divinity, nor His attributes. The shahada, the confession of faith, the so-called first pillar of Islam La ilaha illa’Llah, ‘there is no god but God’ begins with a negative, to deny the false notions of God in the polytheism of Muhammad’s time and in the beliefs of the Jews and Christians whom Muhammad had encountered.

All other key beliefs in Islam relate to this core belief

– the angels are heavenly beings who worship God alone, obey Him, and act only by His command

– the Revealed Books have been revealed by God to his messengers as proof of His existence and as a guide to their belief and behaviour . The latest and greatest of these books is the Quran, which God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad , and guaranteed to protect it from any corruption or distortion.

– the Prophets and Messengers of God, from Adam to Muhammad, and including Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus were all sent to reveal the same message, but God’s final message to humankind, the supreme reconfirmation of the eternal message, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. God has made prophecy the central reality of history, the Qur’an says that God has sent a messenger to every people in every age (Q. 10.48) – one of the ahadith says a total of 124 000 prophets in all.

– the Day of Judgment, the Day of Reckoning, the Day of Resurrection, is the day when God will resurrect, reward and punish every one for their beliefs and deeds. Some scholars have counted more than 115 references in the Qur’an to the Day of Judgment, more than on any other topic in the Qur’an, except Al’lah, and that number does not include verses with graphic details of the after-life, of heaven and hell. Surah No 81, which is said to date from the early years of Islam, before Muhammad left Mecca for Medina,

The Day of Judgment
When the sun is folded up,
when the stars fall, losing their lustre;
when the mountains vanish (like a mirage);
When the she-camels, ten months with young, are left unattended;
when the wild beasts are herded together;
When the oceans boil over with a swell;
When the souls are sorted out (joined like with like);
When the female (infant) buried alive is questioned for what crime she was killed;
When the Scrolls are laid open;
when the world on high is unveiled;
when the Blazing Fire(of hell) is kindled to fierce heat,
and when the Garden (of Bliss) is brought near –
Then shall each soul know its Destiny. – Qur’an 81. 1.14

CHRISTIANITY

In the early centuries of Christianity, when its beliefs were being defined, the central issue in the debates was the nature of the person and work of Jesus which later grew into distinct areas of theology, Christology and soteriology: What is the relation between Jesus and God?

Christians maintain that God was clearly acting and speaking in and through Jesus; the writer of the Gospel according to John could quote Jesus as saying, the Father and I are One (John 10.30) yet Jesus is recorded, in the same gospel and elsewhere, as praying to God and speaking of God as a separate person. As well, God is shown as being present at key points in the life of Jesus, at his birth, and his baptism, and key moments during his mission, in ways traditionally associated with the spirit, or the breath, of God.

The outcome was a Christian redefinition of the inner nature of the Godhead, as a mystical union of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – distinct, yet co-equal and co-eternal. Today, some Christians see these terms as anthropological and prefer to speak of the persons of the Trinity in terms of their roles or activities, as Creator, Redeemer and Spirit.

So the historic creeds have more to say about Jesus than of the other persons of the Trinity. The so-called Nicene Creed speaks of Jesus as the one who lived and died and rose again ‘for our salvation’, but does not say how and from what, So a spectrum of different accounts or theories has emerged – from the legalistic substitutionary theory, that Christ took the place of each and every person on the cross, to the moral or exemplary theory, that the death of Christ revealed the extent of the love of God which Christians are called to emulate. Generally, the theories coalesce around the idea that Jesus’ death dealt with the reality of sin in a way which humanity could not have done for itself.

For many Christians the death of Christ was the seal of a new covenant between believers and God, replacing the old covenant with the Jewish people. The unknown writer of the Letter to the Hebrews elaborates the doctrine at length in typological fashion, stressing that the new covenant secures the perfect forgiveness of sins for all believers.

The new covenant

For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God! – Hebrews 9.13-14

The creeds also include belief in the church, the return of Christ in glory, and the promise of the resurrection of the dead, or of the body. The Nicene Creed also speaks of the sacrament of baptism, but not of the eucharist, or of any other sacrament of the church. The debates on these came later.

From the first generation, many Christians have believed that the Holy Spirit would empower them with special gifts, as described in a letter of Paul to the church in Corinth:

The gifts of the Spirit

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. – 1 Corinthians 12.7-10

These gifts were seen as theirs as disciples of Christ and sharers in his gifts. But few mainstream Christians would claim these gifts today. Many Christian traditions maintain a healing ministry but no longer claim, as Augustine did, that all diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons and that these can be driven out with prayer and fasting.

HINDUISM

The traditions of Indian religion which most people collectively call ‘Hinduism’ have evolved over many centuries, without a single founder or a single collection of scripture. They include many and varied beliefs, so that believing is not as significant as belonging or behaving or becoming.

Many Hinduisms have largely merged into one. Ninian Smart says, like the trunk of a single tree which rises from a tangle of the most divergent roots. Most of these traditions have become monotheistic, but in a variety of ways – for some believers the 330 million or so deities in the pantheon are manifestations or expressions of the one divinity, as in some passages of the Rig Veda. For others, one god, Shiva or Vishnu, is the supreme god, and other gods are lesser gods or demigods.

Other groups recognise a trinity: Brahma, the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. Together they represent the forces which are evident in the natural world and in human beings at all times. To indicate that these three processes are one and the same the three gods may be combined in the one form of Lord Dattatreya, who has the faces of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

In the pre-classical period, dominant beliefs were expressed in or developed from the four Vedas. The Rig Veda, the oldest of the Vedas, was composed about 1500 BCE and redacted about 600 B.C. The Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda came later. All contain hymns, incantations, and rituals by which man can relate to the gods. The chief gods of the Veda are Indra, the great warrior; Varuna, the lord of the heaven, and Agni, the god of fire.

Sometime around 500 BCE, new traditions developed, including belief in samsara, the cycle of rebirth, and karma, the impact of past actions on the present and the future. The earlier traditions were focused on the priestly class, the Brahmans; now they came to include all classes, so Brahman came to mean the holy power which informs and animates the whole of reality. Sometimes Brahman is identified with Atman, the inner essence of the human being

The new traditions are expressed in the 200 or so Upanishads, the texts which are said to complete the message of the Vedas. In the Upanishads, ritual action and self-control converge in the search for personal liberation from samsara through unity with the Holy One or at least close communion with the holy.

The Upanishads express the unity of all things in many ways, as in these verses from the Isha Upanishad:

The Divine unity
When a man sees all beings
within his very self,
and his self within all beings.
it will not seek to hide from him.
– Isha Upanishad 4.6

In classical Hinduism, which emerged in the second and third centuries BCE, the community of the local temple became more significant, with its fervent sharing in the life of the chosen manifestation of the divine, known as bhakti . Bhakti is the essence of the epic poem the Bhagavad-gita , which was composed around 300BCE to 200 BCE and became the major work of Hindu Scripture, largely supplanting the Vedas and the Upanishads.

In the Bhagavad-Gita the Lord KRSNA presents the mature Hindu understanding of the one God:

The nature of God
My nature is divided eight-fold …
my higher nature know:
It is the Life (soul), great-armed one,
by which this world is maintained. …
Of the whole world I am
the origin and the dissolution too.
– Bhagavad-gita, chapter

The diversity of Hindu beliefs is also seen in the growth of devotion to the Goddess, under various names, such as Durga, Kali and Parvati, each of whom represent different aspects of the goddess – Durga is the unapproachable; Kali the ferocious devourer of time; Parvati the beautiful, the benign, the wife of Siva, whose devoted service to her husband is the model of how man should serve his god.

BUDDHISM

Belief is not as important in Buddhism as in other faiths; Buddhist teachers say that Buddhism is not a religion but a a way of life; Buddhism is pragmatic … as it moves from its heartland it assimilates beliefs and practices from local cultures. So right believing is not as important as right becoming, securing a good rebirth, or escaping from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth by reaching Nirvana, or even as belonging, living as a member of the Buddhist community.

However, to be a Buddhist means believing that Buddha actually lived, and that his teachings are true wisdom; and that all things are impermanent and interdependent. The Buddha’s teachings are known collectively as dharma. They speak of

1. AThe Four Noble Truths
2. The Triple Jewels
3. The Four Reliances and
4. The Four States of Mind for Studying the Dharma

Buddhist teaching aims to enlighten us about ourselves, to respect ourselves and to affirm ourselves. It is humanistic, not theistic – Buddhist teaching speaks of devas or gods, as well as maras or evil spirits, which are evil influences which stand in the way of Buddhist practice and ultimate liberation. The devas inhabit the heavens above the human realm, but are still unenlightened, bound to samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death. Mainstream Buddhism has no concept of the creation of the world, or of a divine Creator. Like all things, the world is subject to the cycle of birth and death.

Religious teachings on belonging, behaving and becoming all stem from the basic beliefs and the Scriptures of each faith.

BELONGING

Judaism sees belonging in at least three ways – firstly, the people belong to God in a covenant relationship; but they also belong to each other on the grounds of race, the sense of a common ancestry, of belonging to a people with a common history, including centuries of communal suffering, and, thirdly, they belong in a local community in one of the varied streams of Judaism -Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Progressive, Reconstructionist, Hasidim or Liberal.

Islam, submission, is a community obligation as well as an individual one. Believers form the one community, although they may be from many nations and tribes. Just as God sent prophets and messengers as witnesses to the Jews and the Christians and then to the Muslims, so the Muslim nation must witness to other nations.

The Greek kuriakios, from which Christians derive the word ‘church’, means ‘belonging to the Lord’, so ‘belonging’ means belonging in the church – the local congregation, and/or a particular denomination or tradition, and/or the ‘one holy, catholic and apostolic church’, as the Nicene Creed puts it. For the early Christians, the church was a spiritual society, the ‘new Israel’, which replaced the Jews as the people of God; all Christians were one in Christ, regardless of race, background or gender; the church was the repository of Christian truth; and nourished its members to enable them to grow in faith and holiness.

In the Hindu traditions ‘belonging’ relates primarily to one’s place in Indian society – the words Hindu, India and the Indus are cognate words – essentially, Hindus are the people of the Indus valley. They belong to the community because they are born into it. Belonging is expressed through the family’s association with a particular temple, or with a particular religious teacher; by their dress, their participation in religious ceremonies and festivals, and by their moral codes and behavioural expectations.

One of the three jewels of Buddhism is the sangha, the Buddhist community. In Chinese Buddhism the sangha is a community of monks and/or nuns, who are the exemplars of the faith. In other traditions the sangha may include lay men and/or women. Whether the sangha is monastic or lay, or a combination of both, belonging means accepting the principles of harmony in truth and harmony of action. The six principles of the sangha: doctrinal harmony, moral harmony, economic harmony, spiritual harmony, verbal harmony and physical harmony.

BEHAVING

A large part of the Jewish Torah is taken up with instructions on how the people should behave towards one another, particularly towards the poorer members of the community, as in the holiness code in Leviticus chapter 19. Behaving is linked with belonging – You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. (Lev. 19.1). The Torah records the commandments of the Covenant, including the 10 commandments, which are recorded twice, in slightly different forms, and the 613 mitzvot, the lesser commandments and ritual duties and good deeds which are scattered through the text.

For Muslims, ‘behaving’ means following the rules prescribed for the community. Belonging controls behaving. In turn, believing controls belonging. Right behaviour is modelled on the life of Muhammad and his Companions, in the sunnah, the early Muslim community, as recorded in the ahadith, the authentic traditions of Islam. The Qur’an regularly links believing and behaving, as in this passage about the outcome of the Day of Judgment: Surely for those who believe and do righteous deeds, their welcome is Gardens of the highest level of Paradise. Therein will they abide, without desiring any change therefrom. (Qur’an 18: 107-108)

Christians are expected to behave in accordance with their belief that Christ is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ (John 14.6). Christians need to study and model their own lives on what Georgia Harkness calls the way of life exemplified and taught by Jesus, applied to the manifold problems and decisions of human existence. (Christian Ethics, 1957 – from web). But Christians are also required to behave in accordance with their belonging, to behave in accordance with the teachings of their church. The issue of conscience versus command has been controversial throughout Christian history.

Many Hindus call their faith sanatana dharma, everlasting dharma. They see Hinduism as a personal map of appropriate behaviour -behaviour which will eliminate mental impurities like greed and egoism and achieve good karma , behaviour which corresponds to the cosmic order in which natural law is grounded. The basic Vedic virtues include truthfulness, nonviolence, austerity, self-control, tranquillity, study and teaching, sincere worship, universal brotherhood and wisdom. These apply to all human beings, but particular behaviours may be required of the five castes and at each of the four stages of life.

The precepts or rules of Buddhism are largely negative, urging restraint from the desires which lead to suffering. So Buddhist teaching on behaving focuses on training to avoid and overcome these desires. A mind that is trained avoids actions that are likely to cause suffering or remorse. The Buddhist text, the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines lists ‘the six perfections of a Bodhisattva’ – the perfection of giving, the perfection of morality, the perfection of patience, the perfection of persistence, the perfection of concentration and the perfection of wisdom.

BECOMING

In traditional Judaism, ‘becoming’ is about becoming a better person in this life, not about the next life. The next life is best left in God’s hands. The reward of good behaving is a longer and better life, rather than the promise of an after-life But, by the Rabbinic period, the resurrection of the dead had become central tenet of Judaism, even if, for many traditional Jews, personal transformation in this life through repentance and commitment to the will of God remained the foundation of the Jewish faith.

In Islam, believing, belonging and behaving become a transformational experience. The self is made fit for paradise, the ultimate reward for those who believe. Three key passages in the Qur’an outline the successive stages. The nafs, the self, which is naturally prone to evil (Q. 12.53), becomes self-accusing (Q. 75.2); in this second stage the self becomes conscious of evil and resists it, asks Al’lah for pardon and reaches for salvation. In the third stage, the soul asks no more than to be at rest in Al’lah (Q. 89.27).

Christians believe that, in some way, their belief in Christ and in his mission as the bearer of salvation transform them into a new person, in mind and spirit, if not in body. The key Scripture is in the Gospel according to John, which quotes Jesus as telling a Jewish teacher that the people of God are not identified by their race, but by their commitment to God – ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being reborn of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3.5-6)

In the traditions of Indian religion, rebirth after death is a fundamental teaching, and the desire to achieve a good rebirth, based on good karma in this life, is the reason for following the prescribed rituals and patterns of behaviour. So behaving determines becoming. Rebirth may be in many forms, including those of animals, and in many heavens and hells. Rebirth as a human is rare, and marks release from samsara, the eternal cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

Two core teachings of Buddhism come together in its doctrine of rebirth – the reality of impermanence and the law of cause and effect. All human beings are caught up in samsara, transmigration, the continuous process of birth, death and rebirth. If they fail to practice the dharma in this life, on or after death they will be reborn in one of the six realms of existence – the realm of hell beings or the realm of hungry ghosts, or the realm of animals (the three unfortunate realms), or perhaps in the realm of human beings, the realm of the demigods or the realm of the gods.

CONCLUSION

The Four Bs does appear to provide a new framework for comparing and contrasting the main traditions of institutional religion, perhaps of all religious traditions. They appear to have major differences in two Bs, believing and becoming, but a good deal in common in belonging and behaving. The more I read and speak with teachers of the major faiths, the more the differences become significant. Yet the beliefs and behaviours of religious people generally are so different from dominant secular beliefs and values that people of faith might be seen as forming a sub-culture within globalising world culture. The Melbourne scholar Ken Gelder argues that

‘subcultures are social, with their own shared conventions, values and rituals, but they can also seem “immersed” or self-absorbed; a feature that distinguishes them from countercultures’.

– Ken Gelder Subcultures: cultural histories and social practice 2007 p2.

Simply by believing in the numinous in any form, and belonging to a religious group, and behaving in accordance with religious teaching and becoming a better person as a result may make what believers have in common much more significant than anything that separates them. Already there are signs that religious believers, whatever their faith allegiance, are willing to stand together, both against the excesses of a dominantly secular society and the excesses of religious fundamentalism.

Dr Douglas Golding is a post-doctoral research scholar of the sociology of religion living in Sydney, Australia. He has taken part in many inter-faith discussions and given papers at a number of international conferences – in Oxford, Tokyo, Stockholm, Manila, Auckland and Tehran as well as in Sydney. He is currently teaching adult education classes in religion and history at two universities and working on his book on the ‘Four Bs’.

There are many possible explanations for this, not least of which is the presentation of science and the use of reason in Islamic texts, but also sociological factors, such as different economic situations during the Middle Ages, and internal political structures. There is also the fact that the Qur’an simply doesn’t contradict scientific findings .

The Middle Ages (or the Dark Ages as they used to be known) of European civilisation extended between the 5th and 16th centuries, encapsulating the Islamic Golden Age spanning the 7th to 16th centuries. It was once thought that Islamic science during this time was little more than a translation of Greek conclusions, however there is now sufficient evidence to suggest that this was a scientific revolution in its own right, and it contributed greatly to the basis of modern scientific thought. Part of the reason science played such a key role in the Golden Age of Islam is surely because of the importance placed on it in Islamic texts. There are hundreds of references in the Qur’an related to human knowledge and contemplation, including the first command of God, instructing humanity to “read.” The hadith also contains hundreds of references the Prophet made to seek knowledge, including one instance of the him saying, “Seek for science, even in China” ; the significance of China being that it is the furthest known country to the Muslim Empire. There is a moral obligation for Muslims to seek knowledge; in fact, learning is often seen as a form of worship and a quest for spiritual perfection through knowledge. This surely acted as an incentive that enabled them to become the great scientific civilization they were during the Golden Age. The Renaissance, which followed the Middle Ages, could be described as the Western equivalent

There is nothing in the Bible to discredit specific scientific discoveries, though it also doesn’t encourage the scientific pursuit in the same manner as the Qur’an. The Bible does convey an ordered world in which science is not only possible but should tend towards the truth, but any such scientific commendation can also be levelled at the Qur’an.

What’s unique about the Qur’an, however, is that it is not as susceptible to the human fallibility excuse, in that it was written immediately after the Archangel Gabriel imparted the Revelation to Muhammad, it was arranged by Muhammad himself, and has remained unchanged since, at least when speaking of the original Arabic and not a translation. The areas of science explored in the Qur’an range greatly from astronomy to physics to biology, and all seem to be in well keeping with modern scientific findings.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Qur’an does not contain any hardline indisputable science, however. The meanings of many of the Arabic words are subtle and open to interpretation, and different interpretations of the same passages have been used to support different scientific enquiries at different times.

The rapid expansion of the Muslim empire beginning in the 7th century brought great wealth and security, and this naturally led to great advancements in science and technology, similar to the Greek and Roman empires before them. Once an empire establishes itself and can comfortably support its population in terms of food and security, it can turn sights on its lesser problems, and attempt to solve them using its ingenuity, thus making great strides in science and technology. The West had, as already noted, become stagnant in these fields following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Europe was unified once more under the Catholic Church, but there was much animosity between the destitute working class and the self-interested ruling class. It was a time of prosperity for few, and the Muslim empire attracted great minds and became the hub of scientific achievement. Viewed in this context, the Islamic Golden Age is not so much a religious achievement as it is a cultural achievement of a burgeoning civilisation.

The contrast with the Western Renaissance is clear. Galileo, a friend of the pope and of the church, is the most famous example. Upon expressing his approval of Copernican theories, he was incarcerated for heresy. The pope famously rebutted Galileo’s arguments by stating that Galileo could not assert a scientific theory that contradicted the scripture unless it could be shown that God, in his infinite power, could not have brought it about that all the evidence in support of the theory existed and the theory itself not be true. This is of course an impossibly high standard of truth for science to achieve, and furthermore put in jeopardy all scientific knowledge. Galileo was, however, purposefully antagonistic towards the church, and may have done more harm, especially for the relationship between religion and science, than he is usually given credit for. Rene Descartes was on the verge of publishing a similar paper in support of Copernicus, but suppressed it upon seeing the treatment that Galileo received. During this time, it was required that all work be approved by representatives of the church before it was published in order to avoid the publication of any heretical material. This was catastrophic for any scientific theory that may have contradicted the interpretation of the scripture as advocated by the Church. Islamic science avoided this problem. While the Church, as a figure of authority, advocated a particular interpretation of the scriptures and had in the past exercised this authority with punitive measures such as excommunication and incarceration, Islam had no centralised authority with the same level of control. The closest analogous administration is the caliphate, whose role has changed over time, but never gained the overarching power of the Christian church. This could well be due to the Muslim Empire being founded by many small tribes with Bedouin roots, and city states, who had no history of being subject to a greater authority. Also, due to their disparate nature, both culturally and geographically, such an overarching authority was a logistical impossibility. Furthermore, the legitimacy of any one caliph was always controversial; the most divisive split of course being between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, the former believing Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s father-in-law, was his rightful successor, while the latter preferring his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib. Such disagreement continued and constantly threatened the supreme power of the caliphate, despite Muhammad’s assertion that Muslims should fulfil oath of allegiance to only one caliph. This disagreement in turn led to a lack of a single ruling authority, and a lack of one single interpretation being enforced across the empire. Often, the interpretation of the Islamic texts varied from community to community. Further supporting a lack of enforcement was the Qur’an. “There is no compulsion in religion” can be interpreted both as a decree of tolerance to other religions, and also a decree of tolerance within Islam itself. This aspect of religious tolerance must surely have played some part in the ability of Muslims to abide alternate interpretations of their text, and also rationalise discrepancies between the text and the constantly evolving hypotheses of science. Without an authority to push an anti-scientific agenda, the Muslim Empire became a hub of scientific enquiry which, along with an unusual tolerance for religion, attracted scientific minds from across the entire region.

There is another hypothesis that should be noted, which is that the view of Christianity and science being in direct opposition to each other is unwarranted. After all, modern scientific prosperity grew out of the Christian West, and it can also be argued that without the fundamental view that nature is uniform and has an observable order and organisation, provided initially only by religion, science would never have even had a grounding on which to start. Perhaps religion and science are not as diametrically opposed as they seem, and their previous confrontations have been due to misunderstandings that are not fundamental to their positions. While it is undoubtedly true that Christianity and science have in the past had a tolerant, if not a symbiotic, relationship, it is nevertheless the case that for quite some time the two held hostile policies in regard to each other, and these policies have resulted in animosity that exists even to this day. This animosity is not a necessity, however, as demonstrated by Islam.

It seems it can then be concluded that the roots of the Islamic propensity for science are a product of both Islamic texts and sociological factors, such as a lack of a centralised authority pushing a particular interpretation of the text. The search for knowledge which the Qur’an advocates must surely have helped initiate this scientific resurgence, but it was also the ability of the Muslim population to interpret the findings of the scientific community (and it should be noted that Muslim and scientific groups were by no means mutually exclusive) in a way that didn’t conflict with their theological beliefs which allowed science to flourish. The Golden Age of the Muslim Empire should stand as an example to all cultures that science and religion can coexist, and not just tenuously, but harmoniously.

Stephen Pant is a freelance writer in Australia. He has a degree in philosophy and history from Monash University, Melbourne.

Notes

1. H.R. Turner. 1997. Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 5-9.

2. George Saliba. 2007. Arabic Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press.

3. A.H. Syed, Islam and Science, New Delhi, 2003, p. 111.

4. Ibid.

5. Maurice Bucaille. 1978. The Bible, the Qur’an and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge. Indianapolis, p. 92.

6. Syed. 2003. p. 116.

7. Syed. 2003. p. 115.

8. F. M. Donner. 1981. The Early Arab Conquests. Retrieved 16/5/2009 from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/donner.html

9. John Cottingham. 1991. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Cambridge: CUP, pp. xi–xiii.

10. Sachiko Murata, William Chittick. 1994. The Vision of Islam. New York, p. xxiv.

11. A. H. Siddiqui. Translation of Sahih Muslim. 2007, 20:4543.

12. Qur’an 2:256.

13. Syed. 2003. p. 112–113.

M&B: Dr. Mitchell, you have been teaching your course on the Bible and Modern Science for the last nine years. Could we start with the contents of this course and why you were interested in teaching it?

Dr. Mitchell: I’ve been teaching this advanced course in the religious studies minor since 2000, and it’s been a longtime interest for me. Since I started teaching at universities in 1974, I have included a study of the relationship between science and the Bible in almost all of my courses because I think that is probably the least understood controversy.

With the attempt to have a little epistemological humility-that is, I am not a scientist, I don’t claim to be a trained scientist-I am not trying to convert anybody, whether they are atheist or Christian to any particular point of view. My primary approach to this topic is to help both Christians and atheists to read the Bible because I think a lot of the confusion and a lot of the controversy about science and the Bible is the result of somebody not sitting down and explaining to people how to read the Bible. This debate is very heated in America. It splits families, it splits schools, and it splits churches.

So the course is unashamedly an attempt to help people incorporate what they are learning about science with their Christian faith, or with their faith, whatever it is. In a sense I lean in the opposite direction to some of the science teachers, in that many of them tend to lean toward mocking or making fun of the faith of people who believe, for instance, some of the more recent writers like Dawkins and Hitchens. I feel my job is to be a person on the campus who offsets that influence. So, first of all I focus on how to read the Bible. But the importance of learning how to read the Bible arises because the history of science in Europe and in the United States has been based on a conception of what science is and what faith is and how to relate the two which is really not based on knowledge; it’s just based on some poorly known incidents between Galileo and the Church.

M&B: Historical experiences?

Dr. Mitchell: Yes, historical experiences. One of the things I read when I was at Rice University was W.T. Stace’s Religion and the Modern Mind. The conclusion he came to is one that I think is very important for people to know-that among the basic things that were discovered in the Scientific Revolution, there was nothing which should have had the slightest tendency to either prove or disprove faith, or even the existence of God. So, the fact that in the West, there was an Age of Faith, followed by an Age of Reason, then an Age of Unbelief is not for any scientific reason. It’s because of a psychological transition that took place, or because people misunderstood what was really discovered in the Scientific Revolution.

The modern conception, or the modern myth, is that Christianity and other religions just went along through the Middle Ages being totally ignorant of science, which of course is a historical nonsense. If they had been totally ignorant of science, there never would have been a Scientific Revolution. People believe that science was actually suppressed so much by the Middle Ages that it took an explosion of unbelief in order for modern science to develop. So, I make sure that people understand that all of the revolutionaries of modern science were religious believers and the idea that somehow some atheist dropped out of the sky and won the battle with the Church is nonsense. There was no battle between science and the Christian faith in history. The only battle was a battle that occurred among Christians about how the Bible should be read in the light of modern discoveries. And that continued for a long time.

M&B: What was the nature of the conflict that occurred between Galileo and the Catholic Church?

Dr. Mitchell: The battle within the Catholic Church was not primarily over the Bible or over faith; it was a political battle based on the fact that the Catholic Church knew that it was then losing its hold over the entire Christian faith and was also losing its control primarily over political power.

That’s what scared them, and so when they talked about being afraid of what Galileo said, it wasn’t primarily because they necessarily disagreed with it. It was because of their fear of the confusion that it would cause among the faithful, the Christians who were not well-educated. But they obviously could not hold that back. It was going to burst. But a part of the Roman Catholic church, a very small part of the Roman Catholic church, namely the Pope and the Office of the Inquisition, treated Galileo very badly. There are some things that people need to know about Galileo, and one is that he was a very ornery person, very difficult to get along with. That’s one of the reasons they had a problem with him. The Pope was a friend of his and didn’t necessarily disagree with him; he just thought that he was being obnoxious. Galileo would never recognize the description of him as this giant anti-Christian, anti-faith person who stood up to the Church and the Church punished him for it. He considered himself to be a good Catholic, he considered himself to be in conformity with all basic Catholic doctrine. The only reason he wrote was to try to show Catholic people that they did not have to reject the new knowledge that was coming about. Not only that, the main battle was not over the Bible; it was over Aristotle. The Pope and the Inquisition did not try to punish Galileo because he was a Christian or a Catholic or because of the Bible. They tried to punish him because he was too hastily critiquing and trying to do away with Aristotle, and Aristotle had become the scientific philosophy of the medieval Church. Now, Aristotle is not a Christian, and I take a little time to point that out. So, they were fighting about Aristotle’s view of the universe, not the biblical view because the Bible doesn’t have a scientific description of what the universe is. That’s the reason why we Christians, just like Muslims, started working on science; they adopted Aristotle because Aristotle was the scientist, and Ptolemy too. One of the main points I’m trying to get across is that there never has, in the history of the world, been a battle between Christianity and science.

Also, I like to remind people that Copernicus was published by the Church, and that Galileo was published by the Church. There was nobody else to publish their works. Indeed, the foreword to Copernicus was written by the Pope-though a different Pope than Galileo’s. There is no doubt that there were ignorant people and hostile people, but they were all Catholics arguing. It wasn’t science versus faith. The same thing happened with Protestantism, as science in the west was transferred primarily through Protestants because the people in England and Holland and places like that who carried on the scientific tradition were the Puritans. The Puritans were the ones who carried science forward. In other words, to put it bluntly, science is a gift of religious people to the modern world. Religious people should know that so that they do not think that they have to be reactionary. In fact, we don’t ordinarily think that way. I would say a good portion of the people who teach science, and even philosophy, at the universities in the area where I live are faithful people.

Now, as for specific areas that Galileo dealt with, he told some folks, for instance, that he had a telescope that could see that there are more than seven planets. According to the story, Archbishop Bellarmine refused to look through it because the Bible says there are only seven planets. In fact, the Bible doesn’t discuss the subject. It was Aristotle who said there were only seven planets. Again, that was a fight between Galileo and Aristotle. But some of the Bible people would throw out things like a passage in the Book of Joshua which is taken from a poem from the Book of the Wars which we don’t have. The only thing we have from this book are quotations like the one in Joshua, and it’s poetry. In this poem in the Book of Joshua, it says that the sun stood still in the valley of Aijalon, and then Joshua was able to complete his battle against the enemies of God. Well, some of the Bible people said, “Well, that’s just absolute scientific proof that the sun moves around the earth.” But there were a lot of medieval theologians who knew that wasn’t the way you should interpret the Bible. So, Galileo did a lot of speaking on that subject when he wrote his letters to defend his case, particularly his letter to the Grand Duchess.

A lot of people today think that one of the things that bothered the Church at the time of Galileo was that they believed that the earth was flat. The Church did not believe the earth was flat at the time of Galileo or at the time of Columbus, but that’s still the street talk. In fact, Thomas Aquinas knew of only one theologian in all of the history of the Church who argued that the earth was flat. Thomas Aquinas said that he was an ignoramus because Aquinas believed, as did Aristotle and Ptolemy, that the world was round. The picture many people have of medieval science is as if it were done by ignorant people and that in order for modern science to win they had to overcome the ignorance of all of these medieval scientists including those in Seville. But of course that’s where Aquinas had gotten his science-from the Muslims in Andalusia. That’s where he’d gotten his Aristotle. So the High Middle Ages was not the Dark Ages. That’s a mistake lots of Americans make, including PhDs in universities, talking about the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages preceded the Middle Ages. And that was a dark age. But the High Middle Ages was not a dark age. It was an age of the most intense intellectual ferment in human history, and certainly in contrast to every place else in the world, except the Muslim world, where the same thing was going on. So, you see, those are ideas that I’m trying to let people know about. For instance, to explain that the idea that the sun stood still in the valley of Aswan is from a poem that’s taken from a non-Biblical book.

M&B: How about the genealogy of Prophets in the Bible?

Dr. Mitchell: There is genealogy in the early part of the Bible, which treats genealogy as if it were chronology, which is all you can do if all you have is genealogy. They treated genealogy as chronology. All traditional cultures have these genealogies, but they cannot really be used as chronology. First of all, their purpose is different from chronology. Their purpose is to keep the genealogy or lineage. So, for instance, there are some genealogists in the Christian Bible that say, “Jesus was the son of David that was the son of Abraham.” It’s a genealogy. Obviously, it is not very complete.

M&B: So, by “son,” it means “grandson”?

Dr. Mitchell: Yes, it means descendant-or an ancestor-but there are other considerations. If we consider the genealogies to be scientific chronologies, then we’re still thinking of the Bible as primarily a scientific book. But, whether it’s true or not, it became fairly accepted by Christian geologists and others in the nineteenth century that geology certainly seemed to say that the world was older than six thousand years. At that time they thought it was maybe 200,000 years old, and every few years since then it has been pushed back. But they did not consider that change a threat to their faith because they understood that the Bible was written for a different purpose. They understood that if we spend all of our time trying to make it concordant with scientific theories, first of all, the two will never be concordant because scientific theories change every generation. Second, it would mean that the people to whom these books were originally revealed could not possibly have understood them because they would be scientific books and science is not something they were interested in; it was not something that they could comprehend. So, that argument about the sun standing still did not last very long, and even most modern-day scientific creationists do not try to argue that that poem has to be taken as a literal scientific view. Otherwise, you’d have to do the same thing to the Psalms and so forth. In fact, there are several creation accounts in the Hebrew Bible that are different from the creation account in Genesis because they’re for different purposes. In fact, all creation accounts are doxological; they are praise that God is the Only One-He is the One God, that the moon and the stars and the planets are not gods, that the animals are not gods, that human beings are not gods and so forth. Even though they are not gods, they are still good. So, that’s what we should have been carrying on, instead of carrying on this debate about science-especially with these ridiculous stories that are added to it.

M&B: So, it’s not right to read the Bible as a book of science to draw strict conclusions.

Dr. Mitchell: The point I want to make is that both Christian fundamentalists and atheistic fundamentalists are too uptight about this question, and that is detrimental to religious faith. Some people come into my office crying because they just learned that the earth is maybe more than six thousand years old, and they say, “Professor Mitchell, I’m losing my faith,” and I say to them, “What do you mean you’re losing your faith?”

“Well, the Bible says the earth is six thousand years old, and my professor says it’s more than six thousand years old.”

“Well, you’ve got a Bible,” I tell them, “and I’ve got a Bible over there, so why don’t you show me where it says that the earth is six thousand years old?”

What is changing is that you may be changing a belief, and that’s not the same thing as losing your faith. You’re changing a belief, and if you’re a forty-year-old person of faith or a hundred-year-old person of faith, you shouldn’t probably have all of exactly the same beliefs that you had when you were eighteen, and that’s very important to people.

To the atheists, I want to say that they should learn a little bit about history and the philosophy of science and logic, and learn what faith is, so that they have a little bit more respect for people of faith, even if they are the extremists, because every time they write about something that is going on in a school district or whatever, they act like they’re in a panic. That is, they seem to think that if we allow people to believe that human beings are the creation of God, science is lost. Well, the problem for that argument is that all of the people who were scientists up until their great grandfathers or their grandfathers were people who believe that human beings are the creation of God, and science didn’t die.

Yuksel A. Aslandogan is the editor of Muslim Citizens of the Globalized World: The Contributions of the Gulen Movement.

There are close spiritual relations between the Cave of Hira in Mecca and the Aqsa Mosque, and between Mecca and Jerusalem. In Mecca- to be more specific, in the Cave of Hira-Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, devoted himself to worship, and the Revelation started there, while the Prophet’s journey from the Sacred Mosque (in Mecca) to the Aqsa Mosque ended in Jerusalem. The Aqsa Mosque was also the place from which the Prophet started his heavenly journey. In addition, the Aqsa Mosque was the first of the two qiblahs to which Muslims directed themselves in prayer, and it was the place where Prophet Muhammad led the other prophets in prayer. Mecca, on the other hand, is the place where the first of the Two Honorable Mosques lies, to which every Muslim pays a visit at least once in a lifetime if they can afford to do so. It is also the place where the Cave of Hira is located, where the Glorious Qur’an was revealed for the first time. This is why Muslims love and concern themselves with all these sacred places equally.

The Ottoman conquest

Jerusalem was under Mameluke rule before the Ottoman era, which lasted from 1517 until the downfall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1517, Sultan Selim I put an end to the reign of the Mamelukes in Egypt, and consequently the same in Jerusalem, which was also under the Mamelukes’ sovereignty.

Once Sultan Selim I had established authority over Syria, Egypt, including the Two Honorable Mosques (the Sacred Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina), and the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, he decreed that no new churches or places of worship were to be built in the cities, the towns, or the villages of these areas. However, the places of worship already built were to be maintained in order to ensure that they were used according to their original purposes. The old buildings could be demolished only if they were rebuilt in their original places and in the same style of construction. By making such a decree, Sultan Selim I followed the example of the Commander of the Faithful, Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, who, in 15 AH (637), acknowledged the due rights of all non-Muslim sects in writing. This conduct was likewise repeated by Sultan Selim I when he conquered Jerusalem; he proclaimed a written decree (firman) stating that all the rights of the Christians and Jews were to be observed. He thus ensured for all the sects of non-Muslims the right to practice their rituals freely. This decree, which was penned by the then judge of Jerusalem, was copied out by the Armenian Sarkiz Karakoç, from the original copy, which is found in the State Archives of the Armenian Patriarchy in Jerusalem. It is also found in the Book of Churches in the Prime Ministerial Ottoman Archives in Ankara. In the abovementioned decree, Sultan Selim I defined the rights of the non-Muslims and forbade any violations of such rights.

The following is a translation of the Arabic text of the decree, which in turn has been translated from the Turkish version of the document.

The Text of the Decree of Jerusalem

“Let this decree be duly abided by.

This honorable decree, decreed by His Majesty, bearing the monogram of the Sultan, with God’s help, states that:

With God’s help, we have arrived in Jerusalem on 25 Safar (the second month of the Arabic lunar calendar) 923 AH (1517). In the company of the other priest, the Armenian Patriarch, Sarkiz, who came asking us to grant his followers favors, in which regard they requested us to let them keep under their control the churches and other places of worship which from ancient times have been under their administration, as well as to renew the covenant granted to them by Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab and Salahuddin al-Ayyubi. Thereupon, it has been decided that the Armenian priests will continue to be authorized to hold under their control-as they have been doing-the Church of Qiyamah, the Cave of Bethlehem, where Jesus Christ was born, the keys of the gate to the north, the two candle-sticks and their candles at the gate of Qiyamah, the great churches, Mar Yaqub, the Churches of Dayr Az-Zaytun, Habs al-Masih and Nablus, including the churches of the Abyssinians, Copts, and Assyrians.

This honorable decree states that nobody from other religions shall interfere with them. I have issued this decree ordering this: let it be duly abided by. The control and disposition of the abovementioned great churches are to be for their owners. Similarly, this applies to the churches located in the suburbs and inside the borders of the Armenian Patriarchate in Mar Yaqub. The same also applies to the places of worship of other sects, such as the Abyssinians, Copts, and Assyrians, i.e., they also have the right to practice their rituals therein, and control such places of worship themselves. Further, no one has the right to interfere in appointing or dismissing those who are in charge of religious affairs and those who supervise the monks, priests, metropolitans, and bishops. Again, all their religious affairs, their churches, temples, monasteries, and other sacred places are under their authority, and no one has the right to interfere.

People of all sects have the right to enter the Church of Qiyamah, to go to the center and the tomb of Virgin Mary in the suburbs of Jerusalem. They also have the right to visit the Cave where Jesus Christ was born, the keys of the gate in the north, the two candlesticks at the Church of Qiyamah, the lamps inside the cemetery, and the candles. This may be done by keeping the ceremonies and acts of worship in the church Qiyamah performed according to the agreed beliefs.

Thus, people of any nation have the right to enter the Church of Qiyamah, walk around it, visit its door, see the gold and the precious stones in its windows, watch and visit the temple inside, and to visit all the wells and the shrine of Mar Yuhanna in the yard of the Church of Qiyamah. People also have the right to visit Habs al-Masih, which is located near Mar Yaqub in the suburbs, visit the rooms of Yaqub, which is also located in the suburbs, and visit the rooms and the guesthouses near the Cave of Bethlehem.

Furthermore, the previously mentioned Armenian patriarchate has the right to manage all the gardens and olive farms, and in general their churches, temples, monasteries, and shrines. They also have full control over all their possessions, their endowments, and whatever they own. No one should obstruct any Armenian person who comes to visit the Church or the Well called “Zamzam.” Similarly, no one is to cause any harm to their farms, their place of worship, or their shrines; no one has the right to forbid them from reaching such places.

From now on, this decree of the sultanate is to be abided to according to the way explained. No one from any different religion should interfere in their affairs. Let my honorable children, viziers, pious tutors, judges, beylerbeyis (governor general), governors of sanjaks (i.e. subdivisions of a province), voyvodes (native princes; governor or mayor), subashis (policy superintendents), and the like act by this. Finally, no one should oppose any of them, whatever the case may be, and nothing of what has previously been stated is to be altered or changed. If any one interferes, changes, or alters something, they will be considered to be among the criminals and sinners in God’s sight.

All should know that my orders, and my decree which bears my monogram-I, the conqueror of the world-will be certified, and let the content of this decree be duly abided by.

This is written in 923 after Hijrah.”

From this we can see that Sultan Selim I, having arrived in Jerusalem, received the Armenian patriarch, the clergymen, and subjects; he granted them safety, treated them generously, and, further, renewed Umar’s covenant and Salahuddin’s treaty.

It is worth mentioning that such treatment was not restricted to Jerusalem alone, but rather was introduced in many other places. For instance, Sultan Selim I also issued a similar decree for the monks of Saint Catherine Monastery in Sinai once he settled in Cairo in 1517. In this decree, Sultan Selim granted the monks of Saint Catherine the same rights he had previously granted to the Armenian patriarchate, the Abyssinians, and the Assyrian Copts in Jerusalem.

It is noteworthy that throughout history there has been no single incident in which a Muslim leader has besieged a church or a place of worship, attacked it, or forbade water or food to be taken inside such a place of worship. Never has a Muslim army or security force pursued anyone sought refuge in a place of worship.

The document presented here and many other documents remained in force throughout the ages. Even the decree of Selim I to the monks of Saint Catherine Monastery was preserved there until the Israeli occupation of Sinai; its whereabouts are now unknown to the author.

The Golden Age: Suleyman the Magnificent

Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-1560) showed remarkable excellence in the field of construction after he had ascended the throne; he also excelled in the field of lawmaking. After 55 years, all the Arab lands, up until Telmisan in Morocco, were within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.

Sultan Suleyman bestowed much of the spoils he gained in wars on the Two Honorable Mosques, as well as the Aqsa Mosque. He covered the external walls of the Dome of the Rock Mosque with flagstones made of ceramics of superior quality instead of using mosaic, which would have needed to be repaired from time to time. The result of this process was that the mosque attained a blue ceramic covering, instead of a mixture of red and green; this tiling has given the mosque its magnificent appearance, which has remained for many centuries. Also, instead of mosaic, Sultan Suleyman had the lower part of the walls covered with marble and surrounded the building from above with a girdle of dark blue ceramic with inscriptions in white. He further ordered that colored glass be fixed in the windows, which were firmly placed within cavities in bright white gypsum and plaster.

In addition, Sultan Suleyman ordered that all the walls of Jerusalem be repaired, to give them the appearance they maintained until recent times.

It is worth mentioning that the Church of Marqad Isa had no bells until 1545, so he commanded that bells be hung there. In 1555 there was a small building over the shrine in the circular part of the Church of Qiyamah, so he commanded that another structure, which was to be well designed and suitable to the shrine, be built instead of the older one.

At this time, the church was divided between various discordant Christian denominations. Such discordance prevented the necessary restoration and reconstruction from being carried out and thus no bell tower had been constructed. This was the case until 1719. By a government order, all the drawings, figures, and styles had been preserved as they originally were when the tower was being built and during the necessary restoration work. In fear of changing the original appearance, renovation work that should have been done to the Church of Qiyamah was abandoned. In 1808, a fire broke out in the Armenian Church, which led to the destruction of its entire western section, and it was agreed that the Armenians themselves would handle the necessary restoration and renovation work, by virtue of a decree issued by Sultan Mahmud II (1808–1839). According to existing texts, the gilding of the Dome of the Rock Mosque was renewed and the Sultan ordered that the Mosque be restored from the outside. It was the Christian denominational differences that prevented the Church of Marqad Isa and its ornaments from being renovated, and it would have been possible to make use of the remaining places so that the church may be turned back to the state it had during the Crusades.

The nineteenth century witnessed many events that disrupted the peace and tranquility of Palestine, in general, and Jerusalem, in particular. For instance, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), who was under siege in Egypt, attacked Palestine. As he set siege to Acre, he sent some French troops to attack Jerusalem. So the Turkish and French troops fought in front of Yisra’il; that is in front of Marj bin Amir, but the French troops were defeated. Then, in 1831, Palestine, in particular Jerusalem, was captured by the troops of Muhammad Ali Pasha, and this city came under Egyptian rule until the Egyptian issue was solved. Shortly after the enthronement of Sultan Abdulmecid I (1839-1861), the great powers at that time put pressure on the region. Eventually, France joined these nations and a treaty was convened in 1840 that forced Egypt to leave Palestine. After that, England and Austria exercised substantial pressure to restore Jerusalem to Ottoman rule. This continued until the end of World War I. However, during the last stage of the war, namely on December 8, 1917, Jerusalem was occupied by the British. Thus, this sacred city which had enjoyed an independent administration during the Turkish Ottoman era now was under British administration until 1948.

The story of Sultan `Abdulhamid II and what he did to protect Jerusalem is a long story that needs an entire article devoted to it.

Historical background

Dhimmi designates an indefinitely renewed contract through which non-Muslims have a specific status (but are not full citizens), have their property protected, and are ensured safe conduct in return for acknowledging Islam’s domination and paying the jizya (poll tax).(3) In early Islam, they were Christians, Jews, Magians, Samaritans, and Sabians.(4) The Prophet and the early caliphs showed religious tolerance and caution toward religious minorities.(5) The Ottoman sultans made slight changes, but basically followed the same attitude in a more structured fashion.

Dhimmis in the Ottoman State

Some assert that Ottoman society was divided into ruling (Muslim) and (non-Muslim) raaya classes. But it was more complicated than that, for Muslims and non-Muslims were referred to as raaya (followers, the ruled, or non-participants in government). As the Ottoman State was semi-theocratic, raaya should be understood in the biblical sense as the shepherd and the flock.(6)

Government personnel worked in three areas: religion and law, war and statecraft, and the bureaucracy. The first branch was restricted to Muslim-born subjects. The ulema devoted long years to theological, scholastic, and legal studies in order to become judges and professors. The latter two branches were reserved mainly for non-Muslims. Neither group was inferior to the Muslims.

The Ottoman system was so complex that we cannot determine whether there was religious or racial discrimination. After reforms during the nineteenth century, many intellectuals and ecclesiastics argued that applying a unified law would deprive them of their privileges.(7) The Ottoman system of government was holistic, considered all branches interwoven and interconnected, and was fairly well integrated, in socioeconomic matters but not in religious matters, at least in Turkish-majority areas.

The Millet System

Three days after Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror entered Constantinople (1453), he told everyone to go home and continue his or her occupation and religion. He supervised the election of a new Greek Patriarch, a monk named Genadius, who was elected by Synod and consecrated. He proclaimed the patriarch-elect in the most honorific terms, gave him the pastoral staff with his own hands, and said: Be patriarch, live with us in peace, and enjoy all the privileges of your predecessors.(8) Though other communities later were recognized in the same terms, the Greek Orthodox Church always had more privileges and stronger ties with the central government.

Gradually, dealing with minorities engendered the millet system. Controlling the minority communities through their local bishops and rabbis stopped, and the whole Orthodox Church was organized as Rum Milleti (Roman people). The patriarch collected and allocated the poll tax and served as his community’s temporal leader. He was assigned a ceremonial rank with three tugs (horsetails), allowed his own court and prison in Istanbul’s Fener district, and had unlimited civil jurisdiction over and responsibility for his community. The State assigned him other duties and enforced the laws that he laid down for his community.

Since Islamic law is corporate (not territorial) and Ottoman society was corporate in nature, the Ottoman State dealt with dhimmis as members of a community and not as individuals.(9) A community member was directly responsible for and accountable to the community. Thus the government protected the communities from internal and external aggression, while the community’s leaders managed its affairs. The Porte had to ratify the chosen leader, but this was a mere formality. Each millet’s leader represented his people, and these matters were dealt with through the Foreign Ministry. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch had the rank of vizier and was provided with a guard of Janissaries (soldiers).

The Christian Millet. Most Orthodox Christian Balkan territories had been included in the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s jurisdiction. But by the time of Ottoman conquest, the Slavonic branch in the Sultan’s dominion had split into three patriarchates: Ochrida, Trnovo, and Ipek. These divisions were racial, dynastic, and nationalistic, and not doctrinal. Thus the Conqueror placed all Orthodox Christians under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople and let him decide how to apportion the tax among them.

The sixteenth-century conquests in the Islamic lands and the capture of Cyprus and Crete brought many Orthodox Christians and the ancient patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria under Muslim control. As the patriarch was influential with the sultan, the Porte made arrangements through which the Greek elements became dominant.(10)

The Jewish Millet. The Conqueror allowed the Jews, recognized as another millet, to settle in Istanbul. He appointed a haham basi (Chief Rabbi) with powers similar to those enjoyed by the patriarch. The haham basi was given precedence over the patriarch next to the head of ulema, and after the conquest, the Jews’ position improved. Although outcasts under the Byzantines, they now started holding various public offices.(11) Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and elsewhere were welcomed into Ottoman lands.

Each minority community was treated according to how it had been incorporated into the Ottoman State. Under Bayezid II and Mehmed the Conqueror, Muslims seem to have favored Jews over Christians, since Christians were suspected of being too sympathetic to Christian Europe. The Jews had no central authority to follow and be instigated by, save that of the office of haham basi, which the Porte could check easily. Almost all Jews were immigrants and brought their distinctive rituals, habits, and customs with them, Therefore, different regions inhabited by homogeneous groups were represented by different synagogues.

The Armenian Millet. In 1462, the Armenians became the last community recognized as a separate millet until the period of decline. Whereas the Patriarch was the most prominent ecclesiastical figure in the Orthodox Church and the Jews had no spiritual universal director, the head of Armenian Church did not reside within the Empire.

The Orthodox Church considered the Armenian church (Gregorian) heretical. Earlier, it had been as powerful as Orthodoxy. When the Armenians became a separate millet, neither little Armenia nor the Armenian provinces of the East, two important seats, were ruled by the Ottomans. Therefore, Mehmed II chose Horaghim, Gregorian bishop of Bursa, as the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul and gave him powers similar to those of the Orthodox patriarch and the haham basi.

Also belonging to this millet were all unclassified subjects, such as the Bogomils and the Paulicans, two heretical sects that originated from the Armenian church. Most Balkan Armenians accepted Islam after the area was overrun by the Ottoman armies. Remaining subjects have retained their particular faith until today. Other members included various Catholic and other Christian groups that the Orthodox Church considered heretical.

The devshirme and ghulam systems

This devshirme system was based on traditional views of dealing with prisoners of war. In the classical Islamic period, jurists advised immediate execution, allowing some or all to be ransomed or freed, exchanges for Muslim prisoners, or enslavement.(12)

Islam allowed slaves to be emancipated; the Ottomans did not. One-fifth of all captives entered the ghulam system (the sultan’s slave family), and were trained and allowed to rise within the system. Such slaves were recruited from Christians aged 10 to 20 years. The preferred ages were probably between 14 and 18, and boys younger than 12 or older than 20 were considered only in exceptional cases.(13)

Recruits were obtained through capture, purchase, gift, or tribute. Slaves not bought for the sultan or given to him were usually either captives or levied with the tribute boys. There was hardly any other way, since slaves passed too rapidly into the Muslim fold to have their children available for the system. The sons of the recruits (though already themselves Muslim) were eligible, but not their grandsons, because by then the grandchildren would most likely be Muslims. Reliable statistical data is rare, but based on contemporary ac-counts, in the sixteenth century probably 3,000 children were recruited annually. Those within the system might have reached as high as 80,000, and the total number recruited throughout the centuries might have been close to 2 million.

This exclusion of all other Muslims’ children and grandchildren lasted until Suleyman the Magnificent broke them. He allowed the Janissaries’ children to join their ranks or other parts of the system. This proved to be a fatal move, for it became the only hereditary institution after the sultanate.

At first, parents were anxious to keep their children out of the system. But later on, even Muslim families tried to get their children into it because of the prestige it conferred. Originally restricted to the sons of villagers and poor families, it eventually spread to the townsmen’s children. The earlier practice resulted in great social upward mobility; the later practice opened up a new way of accumulating wealth and prestige, and thus undermined the State.

This tribute system brought children from Austria, the Caucasus, the Crimea, and the Balkans. Those captured by raiders and corsairs were presented to the sultan as gifts. Otherwise, recruiting officers visited some villages every 4 years to fill their quota. The officer summoned the priest and got a list of children, visited the houses, and took the most suitable children. If he received more than required, the surplus was sold elsewhere.(14) Contemporary accounts say that it produced the ablest and most talented children.

These children became known as ghilman. The sultan had the absolute sovereignty over them. However, they felt honored by this title and tried to show their loyalty to him. The Ottoman system raised slaves to ministers of state, courtiers, husbands of princesses, rulers of the Islamic state, soldiers and generals, bureaucrats and prime ministers. Race was irrelevant, for only potential talent was considered.(15)

They were taught Turkish, Arabic, Persian, physical training, war affairs, administration, the Ottoman governing institutions, and so on. The successful and meritorious could expect to serve in some of the Empire’s highest positions. Its graduates became fully Muslim, as did those who served in the Ottoman armed forces. However, many non-Muslims served in respectable positions during the reigns of Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror, and Salim I. Muslims and non-Muslims held provincial administration positions and were members of court slave families (e.g., the grand vizier, governors, princes, military officers, and so on).

Taxation

Dhimmis paid two special taxes: jizya (a tribute or a poll tax) and kharaj (land tax). Ottoman ulema ruled that this rule still was in use, but since all agricultural land belonged to the State, it applied to private holdings. Another tax was taken from all peasants. Many other dues levied on peasants and traders were heavier for dhimmis than for Muslims. Though the land tax was discontinued during the early days of Islam, the Ottomans continued to levy the poll tax in lieu of military service.(16) Interestingly enough, it was confused with land tax and the dhimmis were confused with the masses. The masses’ payment of the land tax thus was actually the dhimmis’ payment of the poll tax.(17)

Originally it was levied only on free men who could earn and afford to pay it. But later on, ministers, rabbinical representatives, the chief rabbi, teachers, slaughterers, and a few Jewish families in Istanbul were excluded. Many Christian families obtained a decree from the sultan that made them exempt. Gibb and Bowen estimate that probably only one-third of all eligible dhimmis paid this tax during the State’s later period.(18)

During the nineteenth century, the land tax was abolished (in principle) and yet retained as a compensation for military duty. Shortly thereafter, Istanbul’s people were exempted from it in toto, although it was still collected in the provinces. Until the republican era, all non-Muslims (except for Istanbul residents) paid only a military and a road tax.

Conclusion

The Ottoman State acted according to Islam and its own interests. It recognized each community’s rights and frequently protected them at the expense of its own citizens. It opened up state offices to non-Muslims as an incentive to become Muslim. Such a policy was unknown to the Europe of that time. However, the Ottomans did not spread the Islamic educational system among the non-Muslims to encourage their conversion, which constituted the state’s very raison d’etre.

Footnotes

1. Abu Jaber, book title/pub. info needed, 213.
2. H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1950-), 1:43.
3. H.A.R. Gibb et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, Dhimma (Leiden: Brill, 1960-).
4. M. Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), 176-77.
5. Ibid., 173.
6. Abu Jaber, 212.
7. Carel Bertram, book title/pub. info needed, 127.
8. Ibid.
9. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976-77), 1:151.
10. Ibid., 153.
11. Cyrus Adler et al., eds., The Jewish Encyclopedia, Turkey (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901-06).
12. A. H. Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913).
13. Ibid., 54.
14. Ibid., 46.
15. Vernon Parry, Elite Elements in the Ottoman Empire, in Governing Elites: Studies in Training and Selection, ed. Rupert Wilkinson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 50-73.
16. Gibb and Bowen, Islamic Society, 253.
17. The Jewish Encyclopedia, Turkey.
18. Gibb and Bowen, Islamic Society, 255.

No institution is better suited to preach clean air, water, and land than the institutions that profess a love of God and God’s Creation, Bingham says. There’s no place in the New Testament where it says we should use energy-efficient appliances. But everything we know about Jesus says that he identified with the poor and the marginalized and that he loved his neighbor. Global warming is hurting creation at a rapid rate and will soon cause great harm to the developing nations, who are as usual hit harder and sooner than the rest of us. Already we are seeing more severe storms, disease, drought and floods leading to famine and malnutrition.

Along with Steve MacAusland, a video producer from Dedham, Mass., Bingham founded the Episcopal Power and Light ministry, and later spin-off interfaith programs in states ranging from power-strapped California to oil-rich Texas. In California alone, the group persuaded 27 churches to install solar panels and 61 churches to switch to a renewable power company called Green Mountain Energy. By consolidating the purchasing power of the state’s churches, EP&L was able to secure green energy at a great price.

Unfortunately, the chain of events surrounding deregulation of the state’s power industry forced Green Mountain Energy to pull the plug on their California customers. In turn, churches had no choice but to again power their sacred spaces with fossil fuels. We carry tremendous guilt knowing that we are polluting out neighbor’s air every time we turn on the lights. We have been forced into sinful behavior that frightens us. We may end up in a place so hot it will make global warming seem like a cold shower.

Bingham: I am a member of the Episcopal Environmental Network, a national group of people that come together once a year to talk about the issues that the church wants to get involved in. I’ve been a member of it when the national church first formed this organization It’s also kind of a support group for those of us around the country who are feeling pain over the degradation of the environment. We kind of lament and pray and support each other. If you feel like you’re the lone person crying in the wilderness, it’s important to have a group come together and talk about these things.

A man from Massachusetts, Steve Causland, came on the committee in about 1996. We were on a long hike one day and talking about our committee, and we decided we really wanted to do something to make a difference. So we had to figure out what we saw as the most important issue facing the world today and it was climate change.

So over the next year, he and I founded Episcopal Power and Light (EP&L). I had already founded a 501 (c)(3) called the Regeneration Project, an interfaith ministry to link people of faith with their ecology. I hadn’t done anything with this yet I’d been in seminaryso it was just waiting there for a project.

Thompson: What denominations have been working on this?

Bingham: Well, here in California, the California Council of Churches is all the Protestant churches across the board. And then we have a member of the board of rabbis and a member of COEJL, which is Coalition for Environmental Jewish Life, and a fellow down in Los Angeles who is Muslim. So it truly is interfaith. And each one of us has a responsibility to get our constituency on board. We have a congregational covenant which you can download from the Internet. There are all these different areas where you can check off the things your congregation are willing to do. It’s targeted at the leadership of the church, whether it be the director of a Presbyterian church or a rabbi of a synagogue, because it asks them to educate their congregation on global warming. I’m in the process now of putting together materials that they’ll be able to use to take this education into their congregation.

Thompson: How does your message differ from that of environmentalists who address the issue from a secular point of view?

Bingham: We bring the moral component. We see energy conservation and efficiency as a responsibility for people of faith, as loving one’s neighbor. So it comes from the heart rather than the pocketbook. Conserving energy with the consciousness that what you say, someone else might be able to use is putting your faith into action.

Thompson: I like your update of a familiar parable: Harder for a wasteful consumer to get into heaven than an SUV to pass through the eye of a needle. You’re preaching some messages that are pretty uncomfortable for people to hear, messages people have heard many times in many forums but not necessarily taken to heart. What do you think it will take to shift thinking away from overconsumption and consumerism?

Bingham: It’s true. I think they need to hear the message more than once, but with our ministry we plant those seeds. With our train the trainer program, more people will be able to articulate the message, and I think we’ll have a huge impact. The more people out there preaching this kind of thing, the more effect it can have.

Last Sunday was the first time I’d given an environmental sermon at the 11 o’clock service. There was such a positive responseeveryone was clapping at the end that doesn’t happen here very often. That told me that people are ready to hear this message. It was affirming to folks who are already beginning to think that way because of what they’re reading in the newspaper about energy and global warming. Now they hear this and think Oh my God, the church is with me on this.

We’re still on the cutting edge of the ministry. I don’t know if there were 400 or 800 people in that congregation on Sunday, but I know that probably half of them are hearing this message for the first time. But they’ll hear it again.

And it is such a perfect thing for the church to do. Often what we read in the paper about religious organizations is the bad newssome clergy member who broke his or her vows in one way or another. This is good news about the church. Here we are at the forefront, doing a positive thing that’s going to hopefully save the planet.

Thompson: It’s one thing to preach to a liberal, environmentally-minded congregation in San Francisco, but how do you see your ministry winning conservative Christians who support Bush’s energy policies? Have you done any work in the Bible Belt?

Bingham: One of the interfaith programs is in Texasit isn’t founded yet, because we’ve just started our work, but I have been an advisor to the dioceses of West Texas on renewable energy, and we are planning a launching event there in October. In June I flew into Corpus Christi, Texas, which is the heart of the oil country, and talked to the bishop there about powering their council meeting in February with wind. They haven’t agreed to do that yet, but I think they’re going to. Green Mountain has already agreed to buy the wind and resell it back to the dioceses council.

The Episcopal Church powered its 15,000-person convention in Denver last July with wind purchased from the border of Wyoming and Colorado. It was the first convention in this country to be powered by renewable energy. Then we challenged the Democratic and Republican conventions to do it; the Democrats did. At the Episcopal convention, the National Renewable Energy lab, which is in Boulder, Colorado, set up a display right next to the EP&L booth. We also a little bucket on our booth and asked everybody to contribute one dollar to the extra cost of wind (it was literally 10 cents per day per person to have wind for the ten-day conference).

The idea blew the general convention. When we got back to our offices, we started getting calls from people all over the country. A woman in Tennessee was so eager to switch to renewable power that she did the research herself and made it happen. Now we’re going to Tennessee to do an event there in November, and we’re going to Detroit to do the same thing. The reason I was in Texas was that the women down there decided they wanted to power their convention with wind. So it really started something. In Nashville, the first big cathedral there (get name) is buying green power from the Tennessee Valley Association.

Thompson: What has inspired you personally to do this work?

Bingham: I grew up down in Woodside, Calif., which is a pretty rural communityor used to be, before Silicon Valley started building all these huge houses down there. I spent so much time alone in nature that I developed a very strong sense of divine companionship in the wilderness. Then way later in lifeabout 1985, and I was living in New York, and I was a trustee for the Environmental Defense Fund. Every one of board meetings has a presentation by a staff scientist. For 10 years I listened to the threat of global warming, overfishing, dying coral reefs, and deforestation. I just at one point began to think: Where is the religious community in this problem? Why don’t we hear the religious voice? These are the people who sit in the pews on Sunday and say they love God and probably deep inside them love what God loves, and therefore love Creation, but they just haven’t paid attention.

Thompson: You’ve preached about the effects of global warming severe storms, disease, drought, floods, famine…Sounds like the Apocalypse.

Bingham: It’s interesting that you say that. My 21-year-old son answered the door yesterday, and some Bible-toting folks were out front. He said: You don’t have to talk to us because my mother’s a priest and she preaches about the environment. Right away the woman started quoting Revelations and the end of the world.

I don’t know. I don’t pretend to have knowledge of God’s intentions. But I’m more hopeful than thinking about the end of the world. Because I think that human hearts can and will change, and that we will stop this destructive way and bring things back together.

Thompson: What obstacles have you faced in this work, and how have you overcome them?

Bingham: The internal ones are relatively minor today. Ten years ago, it was great turmoil, because I felt alone in this work. There were not other clergy who would agree with me on any of this. They thought that I was mixing politics with religionit wasn’t seen as something that involved human souls, which was what the church all about. People would say isn’t the church about people? Those first few years were very difficult, and this is why I believe that there is so much hope. The change between a few years ago and today is just phenomenal. People are there; they understand the connection between faith and the environment and religion.

I stillbut not anywhere near as oftensometimes meet people who say that global warming isn’t real. In fact, yesterday I got an e-mail from someone who heard my Sunday sermon saying that I was wrong in saying that human behavior was causing global warming. He said it was actually being caused by a volcano in Hawaii.

Thompson: How do you respond to that?

Bingham: I haven’t, and I’ll tell you why. I used to get all wrapped up in one person’s view. If there were a hundred people in a room and 99 of them stood up and clapped, and one person said, you’re demented, I would go and spend hours with that one person. I just don’t do that anymore. I’m sorry they’re not better educated, but it isn’t worth my time. I may in fact recommend a couple books for this fellow to read, like The Heat is On, by Ross Gelbspanit’s a wonderful, very readable book about global warmingor something by Michael Oppenheimer, a scientist and climatologist, who has a lot of good work and a book by Steven Schneider, who’s at Stanford. I could put this person in touch with some of this literature and ask them to read about it and then come back and tell me that global warming is happening because of the volcano in Hawaii. If that was the case, I’d probably say, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.

Thompson: How do you personally experience God in nature?

Bingham: I ask them to be mindful, really conscious, of every single one of their behaviors. The cups we use, the cars we drive the clothes we buy. I don’t condemn people who have the means to buy what they need. But when you buy ten times more than what you need. I live in a neighborhood where the recycling bins are sometimes just shockingin one week the amount of packaging that comes from Saks Fifth Avenue and Wilkes Bashford? You think how can these people possibly wear all these clothes? That’s where I draw the line. Now I know there are folks who will say, well if we didn’t go in there and buy all these clothes, think of the jobs these people who are selling the clothes wouldn’t have, and the people who are making the clothes and on and on and on down the chain. But I think there’s plenty to go around in this world for all of our needs. I think wealthy communities have to change their ways.

Thompson: What does the Bible have to say about protecting the environment?

Bingham: As you know, the Bible has lots and lots and lots of stories. I tend to take a metaphorical, not literal, interpretation of the Bible. Throughout Scripture, there are various teachings of restraintnot taking more than you need, loving your neighbor, giving to other people. People often ask me Was Jesus an environmentalist? Jesus identified with marginal people. And probably today he would identify with endangered species and coral reefs and forests, because he identified with pain and suffering, and right now creation is in pain and suffering. So I would go so far to say that if Jesus were here, he would not drive an SUV. He’d be on the White House steps with you. Do you see a relationship between America’s spiritual and environmental crises?

In Al Gore’s book, The Earth in Balance, he said just thatthe environmental crisis is a spiritual oneand I think it’s absolutely true. We’ve forgotten where we came from. We’ve forgotten our connection to all Creation. Children walk through the supermarkets and think that the bananas grow right out of the shelves there. Working with my compost, and planting the garden and eating food that comes out of itit’s a spiritual experience. It connects you to the land and teaches you the whole cycle of life. We’ve lost that.

Can we get reconnected to it? I hope so. I think that when we were an agricultural world, it was a lot easier, but being in cities, it’s hard to do. I think that some of those summer programs that take teenagers out into the wilderness are probably amazingly life-changing. And I think our parks and national recreational areascity parks and street treesall those things are really important. Everybody should have a backyard. It’s very deep inside of us, that connection to the land. But it needs to be awakened. We’ve gotten so far from the land that something has to reach out and stimulate us.

There are some wonderful teachers now that are starting to teach ecology in schools, and I think the church can play a magnificent role in this. Imagine if Sunday school classes started teaching about the different ways that God made birds’ beaks, that they eat the different kinds of seeds because the way their beaks are shapedI think all those kinds of things will help children get the sense that God is bigger than they aresomething that we have to live in awe of.

Thompson: Where do you see this ministry in 10 years?

Bingham: We’re getting ready to launch a program out of the Cathedral that’s going to be magnificent. Five years from now it will be, I hope, one of the best faith-based programs in the country. We want to have a curriculum that will link theology and ecology for all faith groups and train facilitators from different regions. If we can raise the money and that actually happens, you can imagine we need a bigger budget, we need more people. If it all happens, ten years from now, I see it as a viable ministry coming out of the Cathedral or perhaps the Regeneration Project, which is the home for Episcopal Power and Light will be its own 501 (c)(3) and we’ll be teaching this all over the world.

It’s hard to say. We’ve only been in business so to speak for three years. We’ve tripled our budget. A year ago, nobody was on staffmy partner and I were working for freebut this last year, we’ve been able to pay ourselves a salary and hire an assistant. We’re also looking for an office manager and a development director. So I see this getting huge.

Thompson: Can you leave us with a good quote from the Bible that relates to your work?

Bingham: It’s so simple. It’s the one I talk about all the time. The first and great commandment is to Love God. The second is like onto it, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. Therein lies this ministryif you love your neighbor, don’t pollute your neighbor’s air and water. You don’t trash something that your neighbor could use. That’s really it.

The Need for Balance

Human beings are social creatures with a complicated network of relations. No one can be completely independent of this network, for each person’s survival depends upon it. Given this, a constant search for balance between these relations is necessary to avoid conflict. Classical Greek philosophers considered humanity a zo-on politikon-a political mammal, thus emphasizing the fact that every person is, in some way, a political actor.

For believers and Muslims, belief is an essential component of human existence. Even some agnostic humanists accept the possibility of a spiritual life and recognize its ethical merits. Given this, political and spiritual activities cannot be separated from human life or from each other. In other words, they have a holistic link. This concept also is found in a more specific Christian perspective and in the Islamic tradition. Among its European exponents have been Dag Hammarskjold, Thomas Masaryk, and Vaclav Havel.¹ Ms. Salima Ghezali and Prof. Abu Zaid are fine examples of active Muslim as meta-politicians.²

Before delving into this subject further, it is necessary to make the following points clear. First, a distinction must be made between policy and politics, between power plays and party strategy on the one hand and policy as a long-time approach to social problems on the other. As policy conforms better with the classical Greek concept of politeia (the government of the city/society or polis), I shall concentrate upon it.

Second, I use Islam not in the political context of Arabism, political rituals, or self-proclaimed Islamic states, but in its literal meaning of monotheism and belief in Divine Unicity and a coherent creation as explained in the Qur’an. In this spiritual context, every man and woman who reaches a certain age and is mentally competent is entirely and directly responsible for each of his or her acts.

Islam, in the context of this reality, means accepting this responsibility and using one’s God-given intellect and dignity to keep on the “just path” (the Shari‘a). There is no room for any human-made religious hierarchy (e.g., imam, ayatolla, caliph, amir³), or for fatalism or passivity, for personal responsibility means that one has to choose instead of be led by others.

Spirituality and Society

The well-known phrase al-Islam din wa dunya (Islam is spirituality and society) can serve as a starting point in the search for harmony between Muslim identity and political action. Din refers to Islam as a whole. Its most important points are Islam’s pillars, belief, duties, external principles (the Shari‘a), inner experience (Sufism), and striving against the ego (jihad). All of this, taken together, forms Islam-in-society. In this authentic Islam, no religious or secular hierarchy serves as an intermediary between believers and God. This fact, unfortunately, is often overlooked or ignored. Various people and groups have linked it to state structure, national community, political nationalism, tribal society, and even political party. All such attempts are abuses of Islam.

Dunya refers to human society as a whole. It is not a mono-religious community, but rather a society in which several religious and philosophical communities use their status as citizens to contribute to the well-being of all. An example of such a concept is found in European humanist organizations, whose members can be atheists, agnostics, or spiritual-without-specification.

There is no reason for Muslims to be prejudiced against such groups, for their adherents are neither anti-Islamic nor partisans of ignorance. Not being religious does not mean being against religion. These groups work for human dignity and responsibility just as Muslims do, although they approach it from a different perspective. Dunya is holistic, and its aspects (e.g., psychology, politics, art, science, sexuality, and history) interact intensively. Abuses have been just as numerous as corrections throughout the Muslim world’s 1,400-plus years of existence. Authentic Islam has not always been triumphant in the past, but it still carries the promise of a splendid future. It is in the hands of inspired, contemporary Muslims to decide.

Church and State

Europe remains suspicious about any attempt to unify religion and politics. This is quite understandable when one considers the traumatic history that such attempts caused in Europe. The first one involved the Muslim world directly: the Crusades.⁴ The “liberation of the Holy Land,” according to Roman Catholic scholars, was a nightmare for the Greek and Eastern Christian communities. Given the facts that the independent Crusader kingdoms fought each other and that Muslims lived in Jerusalem for 4 centuries before the Crusades, the official history of the Crusades turns out to be false. All of the involved communities were traumatized and left with feelings of mutual suspicion and hostility. Whatever good relations remained between Muslims and Christians were confined to mercantile elites, for the general populations remained hostile to each other.

Four centuries later, starting with Luther’s declaration in 1517 against the Catholic Church, Europe became a battlefield for Catholic and Protestant armies.⁵ The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, which raged during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and was a period of incredible cruelty and massacre, lasted until the end of the Thirty Years War (1648). Millions of people were killed by warfare, famine, and disease-and yet nobody “won.” Out of this violence came the emergency measure to separate church and state. Gradually modified, this concept would become known as laicity during the French Revolution (1789-99).

Before laicity took hold, however, the concept of individual freedom of religion was negated by allocating different Christian denominations to different states. At that moment, the Ottoman State applied a more advanced form of multi-religious coexistence in a single state. The church hierarchy weakened throughout the nineteenth century, while the European states become more democratic. There was another chance to harmonize the link between religion and policy, this time in a democratic way.

The twentieth century witnessed the worst crimes against humanity in recorded history. These were carried out by systems and states that rejected all previously influential religious concepts. And so the perception of religion changed again, this time in a positive way. In this new trauma, people complained about the absence of religion as a moderating and peacemaking force. (O God, why were You absent in Auschwitz?) After WWII, laic states could keep their structure and renew their content. Nearly all European nations have adopted some form of laicity. But this does not mean that they are anti-religious or anti-Islam. If laicity and democracy are not yet perfect, they only need to be improved. There is no reason to criticize laicity as such. These governments are the expressions of their own imperfect democracy.

This process is determined by economic as well as cultural factors. Religious communities can contribute to the perfection of democracy if their own intra-religious dynamic is not usurped by any clerical power group. Only such a status will allow them to have democratic ties with other religious and philosophical groups and with society as a whole.

Muslim Communities in Europe

European Muslims live as dispersed minority communities in many European countries, be they constitutional monarchies, republics, or otherwise. Ballot systems differ, as does the size of the Parliament, terms of elections, and so on. Essentially, there is consultancy between the state and the population, as well as between the citizens themselves.

This concept of mutual consultancy (shura) is found in the Qur’an: The believers conduct their affairs in mutual consent (42:39). The Qur’an recommends a method for policy, not a political organization. The Prophet was not told to establish a state or name a successor. From the Traditions, we learn that he knew that his function was only to guide and protect his community. The title of caliph, based upon Qur’an 33:72, applies to all people as spiritual representatives and followers of God. It has no political function in authentic Islam, and this and all other titles are no more than human inventions.

Within the context of European society, shura can-and should-take the form of democratic commitment. European citizens and the Muslim community can reinforce each other during these years of broad general disgust with local and even national political institutions. As such people consider democracy corrupt, inefficient, or obsolete, Muslims can oppose this defection from democracy by pointing out that such a development might acutally make the situation even worse.

According to the Qur’an, Prophethood contains identical elements regardless of the Prophet. So, what was significant for Prophet Muhammad was significant for all other Prophets. Consider the case of Moses who, according to both the Bible and the Qur’an, was sent to guide and inspire his enslaved people. He went to Pharaoh and, accepting the risk of royal anger, called for moderation and justice. Indeed, Pharaoh rejected his demand and became even more cruel. After Divine intervention, Moses led his people on their long and dangerous journey toward the land where, according to God’s Promise, they would find freedom and justice.

The Jewish identity was formed during this journey. Moses did not offer a well-defined territory or become the head of a state. In fact, his authority was even challenged at times. The dynamism of Prophetic action was the main element in this journey, as it was in Prophet Muhammad’s emigration to Madina to establish the Muslim community in a welcoming atmosphere.

From a moral point of view, Vaclav Havel might be one of Europe’s most significant contemporary politicians.6 He represents a religious view in a discrete way, without stating membership in a particular religious community and certainly not claiming leadership. He is democratic in his methods, and considers religion only as a motivation to act. However, it really counts. He resembles his predecessor Masaryk, who was a philosopher and a litterateur before assuming political responsibilities. Although underestimated as a politician when compared with Churchill or de Gaulle, his life has been just as adventurous as theirs despite the much smaller size of his country.

European Muslim intellectuals and would-be politicians would be well advised to study the lives and decisions of Masaryk and Havel, for both escaped from the narrow-minded nationalism that has trapped so many Muslim Arab politicians. To them, nationalism meant preserving the local cultural heritage in order to strengthen the popular identity in face of oppression. This is a valuable gift to humanity, rather than a treasure to be guarded jealously. Havel began his political activity by writing a letter to President Gustav Husak to protest the injustice of the Soviet military occupation of Czechoslovakia. Husak, just like Pharaoh, rejected it. And so we ask: Is there a parallel between the actions of Moses and Havel? How significant is the fact that these two men, one a Prophet and the other a politician-philosopher, had no desire for power? Such questions might inspire Christians and Muslims. Also, didn’t Muslims consider the downfall of communism, to which Havel contributed greatly, a symbolic and even religious fact?

Conclusion

As European Muslims face problems that are usually identical to those of the entire population, isolation is a completely inappropriate solution. Maintaining cultural and linguistic heritages should be done by cultural, as opposed to political, associations. The current trend of Muslim involvement in several political tendencies without forming a Muslim political party needs to be reinforced. The emergence of a self-proclaimed Muslim party is not desirable, for its impact would be negative-other such parties would be formed by those who, for whatever reason, would view that party as not “Muslim” enough. This would engender isolation, quarrels, and maybe even violence. A far better solution would be to increase communication between existing parties and between politicians and citizens. Such an approach is Qur’anic in nature.

Whenever democracy is threatened by a politician or political ideology that pays no respect to internal democracy or promotes discrimination or racism, the best antidote is a good civic policy. Such a negative scenario is now developing in Belgium. Our local Muslim politicians should be the first ones to insist that a policy of justice and honesty be carried out by all democratic parties. This is far more efficient than legal action, ballot reforms or thresholds, alarmist attitudes, or pretending that the problem is not so bad. This does not exclude the possibility of lawsuits against politicians who try to win votes by racist appeals. In addition, exit polls on election day should be forbidden so that false information cannot lead to questionable results

Footnotes

1. Dag Hammarskjold (1905-61): Swedish economist, statesman, and secretary-general of the UN (1953-61) He is generally thought to have combined great moral force with subtlety in meeting international challenges; Tomaš Masaryk (1850-1937): Chief founder and first president (1918-35) of Czechoslovakia; Vaclav Havel (1936- ): Prominent Czech playwright, poet, and political dissident, who, after the fall of communism, was president of Czechoslovakia (1989-92) and president of the Czech Republic (1993- ).
2. Ms. Salima Ghezali: Algerian publisher of Al-Watan (The Nation) newspaper, courageous critic of both the Algerian military governnment and the anti-government armed Islamist groups, and recipient of the Sakharov Prize; Prof. Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid: Qur’anic scholar from Cairo whose interpretation of the Qur’an caused him to be prosecuted by Egyptian Islamists. Labelling him an apostate, they divorced him from his wife, Ibtihal Younes. The couple now lives in The Netherlands.
3. Imam: One who leads Muslims in prayer. Ayatolla: Sign of God, a religious title given to only the most exemplary Shi‘a theologians and religious scholars. Caliph: Successor (to the Prophet). As the Prophet’s spiritual/religious mantle is unique and therefore cannot be inherited, this title has come to mean a ruler. Amir: Leader, mainly in the political and moral sense.
4. The Crusades: A series of wars undertaken by European Christians between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.
5. Martin Luther (1483-1546): German priest and scholar whose questioning of certain Catholic practices led to the Protestant Reformation. He is a pivotal figure in both Western civilization and Christianity.

Bibliography

• Tariq Ramadan: To Be a European Muslim. The Islamic Foundation: 1999.
• John Esposito. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 3d. ed. Oxford Univ. Press: 1999.
• Fatima Mernissi. Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry. South Asia Books: 1998.
• Tomaš G. Masaryk: The Ideals of Humanity and How To Work. Ayer: 1970.

The Drive for Ecumenical Unity

First, when speaking of unity, Jesus never specified a date or time period. Most probably he did this in an attempt to limit human weakness and shortsightedness in this field. However, separation and scattering happened anyway. Rather than considering this something undesirable, we should recognize it as a normal result of human diversity and a source of richness for humanity. Human diversity starts with diversity in the white, black, red, and yellow races, followed by new-color races arising from interracial sexual relations between the original races.

According to Teilhard de Chardin,1 the human race is undergoing a process of permanent change, continuous development, and an unstoppable growth toward an ever-higher level of spiritualization in its quest to achieve a clearer and better understanding of the Divine Reality, the Divine Truth. All faith communities can accept that the perennial Reality from which all existing matter originated is also the final Omega-destination of all beings. Only then, after a long period of growth, will humanity and all religions be united in the All of the spiritual Reality.

After centuries of war and conflict, collaboration and unity among nations progressed with the creation of the United Nations (UN), its affiliated institutes, and the International Court at The Hague in The Netherlands. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, we hope that the dream of Baha’ullah2-the creation of a world parliament, a world government, a world currency unit, and a universal language-will be realized. Is it not time for the world’s diverse faith communities to realize a similar union in collaboration?

Second, people are talking of a small ecumenism between Christian faith communities and a great ecumenism between the world’s faith communities. The ecumenism appellation undoubtedly will be greeted with suspicion by non-Christian faith communities due to its Western origin. In line with the growing trend of including non-Christian faith communities in Christian ecumenist encounters, it might be advisable to replace ecumenism with dialogue. Interfaith dialogue then can be used for all interfaith dialogue encounters.

Third, our world is faced with the problems of an escalating gap between rich and poor and the ever-increasing poverty of 20 percent of the world’s population. Although the world’s political, financial, and industrial leaders acknowledge that something should be done, they have not reached any consensus on how to tackle these problems. Faith communities, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), could speed up this process by fulfilling the necessary role of pressing and pushing these leaders to reach some kind of agreement. However, to be effective and have a lasting influence they must be able to collaborate with each other.

After many years of meetings, it is becoming clear to more and more people that drives for unity between the Christian Protestant communities, as well as drives for unity between the Catholic Church and other Christian communities, are not making any real progress. A growing number of people now believe that such unity should be considered as a very long-term goal.

What should be sought now is not unity, but rather a union in collaboration. This seems to be happening due to advances in telecommunication technology, an acquisition of better knowledge and estimation of other cultures, and also the immigration of non-Christian faith communities to traditionally Christian countries. For example, this latter factor has made Islam the second largest faith community in the European Union.

Fourth, to realize such a union in collaboration, the following four attitudes must be present:

A True Interest in the World’s Problems. All interfaith meetings should deal with the suffering of so many of our brothers and sisters on this planet from a position of real concern and compassion. But more than that, they should formulate the sincere desire within themselves to do something about it. Such a global consciousness should be the basic mental attitude from which all faith communities start when working on interfaith dialogue.

The problems of poverty in South America and India, as well as many other countries, cannot be solved in a reasonably short time period by local and even nationally combined efforts. A change for the better in the socioeconomic infrastructures, many of which remain under the control of a small minority of landowners and industrialists who derive great financial benefits from the status quo, will be possible only through political and moral pressure from the outside. This represents a challenge for a United Religions Organization in collaboration with local politicians.3

A Clearly Defined Purpose so That Efficient Solutions Can Be Reached and Implemented. Efficient solutions will be produced only when all faith communities become a “One Voice Forum” having behind it the power of all their adherents. This could become a reality by creating a world religious organization, such as has been proposed by Episcopal Bishop William Swing’s United Religions Initiative (URI), launched in 1995. This body does not seek to unite all religions into one, but to bring them together at the same table so that their voice will be heard and taken seriously by the UN. An important step in this direction was the creation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, Switzerland.4 The WCC could become a basis for a world organization if non-Christian faith communities and the Catholic Church were to become members.

In the case of Europe, a more unified European collaboration should be studied to promote communication between European interfaith dialogue organizations. An umbrella organization, something like a European Interfaith Council, is urgently needed, as is a European interfaith magazine, to combine all efforts on a European-wide level.

Giving Priority to the Common Welfare. This involves subordinating personal interests to the interests of the whole, a problem often encountered on the political level. For example, the UN’s activities will remain very limited as long as America gives priority to its own interests. This is also applicable to NGOs and faith communities, for concentrating on their own organizational agendas, instead of on the common welfare of humanity, makes real dialogue and real collaboration difficult. As far as I know, only Japan places the welfare of the whole community above that of the individual in all aspects of life. This is perhaps due to its centuries-old Buddhist and Confucian background. Whatever the reason, this remains a unique world phenomenon that is not recognized or understood sufficiently by the world community.

Adopting a “Go and Learn” Attitude. In other words, we have to move beyond the typical Western attitude of “Go and Teach.” This attitude is characteristic of Christianity and Islam, for adherents of both religions believe in their religion’s superiority and that they have exclusive possession of the whole truth. Unfortunately, such attitudes have resulted in colonization, negating and even persecuting other cultures and religions. What is required today is the attitude of “Go and Learn,” of being interested in and learning about others, of coming to respect their identity and values.

Due to this new attitude, we might integrate some of these values in our own way of life and be enriched as a result. As long as the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations, as well as Islam, do not renounce their claim of exclusive possession of the Truth, the above-mentioned union in collaboration will remain an almost-impossible undertaking. The only way forward is one of accepting and recognizing other faith communities and working to go beyond the differences and similarities to arrive at a union in collaboration. Overall unity should not be the goal

Footnotes

1. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955): Teilhard aimed at a metaphysic of evolution, holding that it was a process converging toward a final unity that he called the Omega point. He attempted to show that what is of permanent value in traditional philosophical thought can be maintained and even integrated with a modern scientific outlook if one accepts that the tendencies of material things are directed, either wholly or in part, beyond the things themselves toward the production of higher, more complex, more perfectly unified beings…. Teilhard argued that the appearance of man brought an added dimension into the world. This he defines as the birth of reflection: animals know, but man knows that he knows; he has “knowledge to the square.” Another great advance in Teilhard’s scheme of evolution is the socialization of mankind. This is not the triumph of herd instinct but a cultural convergence of humanity toward a single society. Evolution has gone about as far as it can to perfect human beings physically: its next step will be social and spiritual. Teilhard saw such evolution already in progress; through technology, urbanization, and modern communications, more and more links being established between different peoples’ politics, economics, and habits of thought in an apparently geometric progression. (www.britannica.com)
2. Baha’ullah (1817-92): Founder of the Baha’i faith upon his claim to be the manifestation of the unknowable God. He propounded a comprehensive teaching that advocated the unity of all religions and the universal brotherhood of man. Emphasizing social ethics, he eschewed ritual worship and devoted himself to the abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices. (www.britannica.com)
3. For more information, check out: www.united-religions. org/newsite/index.htm, or contact: United Religions Initiative, PO Box 29242, San Francisco, CA 94129-0242 USA; e-mail: office@uri.org.
4. The World Council of Churches (WCC) is an ecumenical organization founded in 1948 in Amsterdam as “a fellowship of Churches which accept Jesus Christ our Lord as God and Saviour.” The WCC is not a church, nor does it issue orders or directions to the churches. It works for the unity and renewal of the Christian denominations and offers them a forum in which they may work together in the spirit of tolerance and mutual understanding (www.britannica. com). It now has 337 Christian churches as members, mainly Protestant and Eastern Orthodox. The Catholic Church and Southern Baptists are not members.

As religion cannot be the source of happiness and misery at the same time, we examine these two perspectives. Among the examples typically cited to support the misery argument are Islam’s expansion (seventh to sixteenth centuries), the Crusades, and Europe’s ‘religious’ wars. While seemingly plausible at first glance, further analysis reveals that this argument overlooks key historical information and misrepresents others. In the following article, we examine this argument from a theological and historical perspective.

The Holy Scriptures

First we look at the religious sources: the holy Scriptures. The Qur’an condones war only in self-defense and preventing injustice and aggression, and equates killing one person unjustly with killing humanity (5:32). Examining early Islam’s so-called ‘religious wars’ reveals that each one was fought in self-defense or to prevent injustice. The total number of people killed in any battle of Prophet Muhammad never exceeded several hundred.(1)

The phrase holy war, the common translation for jihad, is a misnomer. Jihad essentially means struggling in God’s cause, of which war is only one form and allowed only under clearly defined circumstances. The New Testament tells victims to embrace aggressors with love or restore justice in the most appropriate manner (Matthew 5; Luke 17:1-5), while the Old Testament says: ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17) and ‘He that kills any man shall surely be put to death (Leviticus 21:17).

Any aggression not conducted for self-defense or preventing injustice is not based on true religion. A good treatment of this in the context of Islam can be found in Prophet Muhammad as Commander.(2)

The Twentieth Century

The claim that religion is responsible for much of the bloodshed and death from a historical and statistical perspective is incorrect. The majority of deaths throughout history occurred during the twentieth century, and the majority of those happened during wars stemming from nonreligious motives.(3) World War II tops this list: 15 million soldiers and 25.5 million civilians. World War I is a close second: 9 million soldiers and 9.7 million civilians. Other examples include the Russian civil and the Russo-Polish wars (1917-21: 2 million soldiers, 7 million civilians), the Korean War (1950-53: 2 million soldiers and .9 million civilians), the Franco-Vietnam and US-Vietnam wars (1945-73: 1.3 million soldiers and 1.4 million civilians), the Sino-Japanese War (1937-41: 1 million soldiers and 1.2 million civilians), and the Soviet-Afghanistan War (1979-89: 500,000 soldiers and 1 million civilians).(4) These wars, which are responsible for the great majority of human loss through history, cannot be attributed to religious zeal.

The Soviet Union

While the motives of certain wars and other acts of aggression can be debated, certain self-proclaimed atheist, fascist, or otherwise nonreligious regimes, such as pre-World War II Germany and the Soviet Union, committed unprecedented crimes against their neighbors and citizens. According to Laqueur: ‘One of the cardinal features of the totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century was internal terror, the huge number of ‘enemies”and potential enemies’interned and executed. A striking example of this phenomenon is the era of Lenin and Stalin in Soviet Union. The atrocities committed during the time of Stalin are well documented.'(5)

According to the most conservative figures, allegedly based on secret KGB archives, between 510,307 and 1,727,970 Soviets were in labor camps between 1934 and 1950. A further 457,000 to 1,145,000 people were sentenced to labor colonies during roughly the same period. According to numbers released by Major General Anatoli Krayushkin, head of the Ministry of State Security’s archives, 3,853,000 arrests and 827,995 death sentences were made between 1917 and 1990. According to official KGB sources, 681,692 persons were killed between 1937 and 1938. In addition, 1,053,829 persons died in the Gulag between 1934 and 1953. To these numbers, one should add such figures as the Polish officers killed in 1940 in Katyn and other camps (15,000 to 20,000), and the Kazakhs who disappeared during the 1930s (1.5 to 2 million).

These are conservative estimates, given their source. Some researchers put the total number of deaths under the Soviets at between 10 and 20 million. According to Alec Nove, there were some 11 million ‘excess’ deaths between 1927 and 1937. Steven Wheatcroft, another Soviet-era researcher, says between 4 and 5 million people died.(6)

While Stalin remains notorious for internal terror, Lenin has been viewed differently’as a visionary whose ideals were betrayed by his followers. Is this correct? Recently declassified Soviet documents tell a different story. The following is a letter from Lenin to his comrades in which, appallingly, he mentions a specific number of people to be hanged: ‘Comrades! The uprising of the five kulak districts should be mercilessly suppressed… Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks.'(7)

In 1922, Moscow sought to confiscate all valuables of the Russian Orthodox Church and its monasteries to secure badly needed assets and to break the Church’s power over the peasants. Lenin hoped that the terrible famine sweeping Soviet Russia and Ukraine in 1921-22 would turn the peasantry against the Church. In the industrial city of Shuia, soldiers fired and killed several civilians (devout Christians) trying to protect their church. This event prompted the Politburo to delay further confiscation. When Lenin learned of this, he urged Politburo members to continue the campaign ‘mercilessly,’ as the time was ripe for such an action:

It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy… to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles.

One wise writer on matters of statecraft (8) rightly said that if it is necessary to resort to certain brutalities for the sake of realizing a certain political goal, they must be carried out in the most energetic fashion and in the briefest possible time because the masses will not tolerate prolonged application brutality…. the struggle against us will be made more difficult if right at this moment, precisely in connection with the famine, we suppress the reactionary clergy with maximal speed and ruthlessness.

Therefore I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come.(9)

In another letter, Lenin openly instructs his comrades to terrorize the state’s enemies:

To Comrade Krestinsky:

I propose to form a commission immediately (initially this can be done secretly) to work out emergency measures (in the spirit of Larin: Larin is right). Let us say you+Larin+Vladimirsky (or Dzerzhinsky)+Rykov? Or Miliutin.

It is necessary secretly’and urgently’to prepare the terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through SNK (the Council of People Commissars) or otherwise.(10)

These letters demonstrate that Stalin’s internal ‘cleansing’ campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s only continued Lenin’s policy and practice, and were not, as some claim, a betrayal of his high ideals.

While love and respect for fellow human beings is an essential principal of all major religions, in practice this has not always been the case. Aggression in the name of religion has long been exploited to show that religion brings tyranny and misery. Certain individuals, organizations, states, and regimes have used religion to justify the suffering they have caused, but this does not prove that religion by itself is to blame. As a matter of fact, nationalism, ideological extremism, or simple greed for power and material gain have caused incomparably larger suffering, as shown by documented statistics of wars and internal terror.

Conclusion

We looked briefly at the former Soviet Union, an atheist regime that committed some of the worst crimes against its own people in the name of communist ideology.

The twentieth century saw unprecedented advances in science and technology and, unfortunately, unprecedented human misery and suffering. Most crimes against humanity, as documented by statistics and recently revealed secret archives, were committed by totalitarian regimes during the twentieth century. Thus it is to claim that religion is responsible for most of history’s bloodshed and death. This responsibility lies with modern racist, atheist, or simply greedy regimes and not with religion, which was revealed to guide people to true happiness in this world and in the next through their own will.

Footnotes

1. Ali Unal, ‘Killing for Religion?’ The Fountain, no. 2 (Apr.’June 1996), 14.
2. M. Fethullah Gulen, Prophet Muhammad as a Comman der (Truestar: 1998).
3. Richard F. Mollica, ‘Invisible Wounds,’ Scientific American (June 2000).
4. Ibid.
5. Walter Laqueur, The Dream That Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union (Oxford University Press: 1994).
6. Ibid.
7. Letter to V. V. Kuraev, Ye. B. Bosh and A. E. Minkin, August 1918. Located in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin (Yale University Press: 1996).
8. Editor Note: Lenin is referring to Machiavelli (1469-1527), an Italian political philosopher and statesman synonymous with placing politics above everthing else.
9. Ibid., Letter to the Politburo, March 1922.
10. Ibid., Memorandum to N. N. Krestinsky, Sept. 1918.