East and West. Maybe it is not easy to draw straight lines where these two are clearly separated, and yet everyone has a conceptualization of what is meant when this distinction is proposed. While some circles try to delineate the differences and polarize societies on the basis of “us vs. them,” there are others who prefer to highlight commonalities, shared pains and joys, the benefits of interaction, and an inevitable future of less separation and more coexistence.

One dynamic of our shared society that will shape such a future is migration. Migration is a reality of the human condition. Throughout history, migrations, be they mass or individual movements, have not only shaped our societies, national borders, languages, religious traditions, and of course, identities, but have also been a major catalyst for disputes and conflicts. Hence, for the last several years, the US has been debating whether a wall should be built across the Mexican border; we continue to watch the heart-breaking tragedy of thousands of refugees rowing across the Mediterranean; the ongoing plight of Syrians fleeing their country’s violence; and more recently, the forced migration of teachers, doctors, and civil servants affiliated with the Hizmet Movement from Turkey, their homeland, where they have suffered persecution for the last few years. Due to many reasons, including geographical, historical, and colonial ties, Europe has been one of the major destinations for those seeking freedom and a life of security, especially for many Muslims. Akbar Ahmed’s book Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration and Identity (2018) is one of the most comprehensive researches into this very complex social phenomenon. In this issue, Behzad Fatmi from India reviews Ahmed’s book and explains how the author dissects the fundamental character of European society vis-à-vis the place of Muslim communities in the continent.

Learning theoretically about diseases is surely important. But having a first-hand experience, or at least spending time with those who suffer from a disease, teaches much more than what one can learn from books. Ceyda Sablak shares her experience with some patients who told what they have been through with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). She writes how important it is to have an accurate and concrete diagnosis, even if it turns out to be a terminal illness. While it is painful to go through such an illness, it is no less of a burden on the shoulders of doctors and the family who have to be present next to their loved ones and do as much as they can to continue to care for them.

At the onset of the twenty-first century, a new relationship is being forged between my own Greek Orthodox Christian community and the Turkish Muslim community of the United States. That such a dialogue occurs at all surprises some within and beyond these communities, not understanding that such a dialogue has a long and complicated history in Turkey itself. Still, the stereotyped, traditional conflict between the Greeks and Turks has always been more complicated than what is portrayed outside of Greece and Turkey. The fact that the nascent American version of this dialogue between two communities has developed largely following the events of September 11, 2001, is therefore somewhat coincidental; that it has evolved in a society coming to terms with cultural and religious realities largely ignored by the majority prior to those events has only created an atmosphere where our work is increasingly perceived as necessary within both communities.

When coming “face to face” in dialogue, it is always an honor to be with so many people of like mind, who, for the sake of peace and justice and the higher ideals of their individual professions of faith and spiritual law, seek what St. Paul calls “a more excellent way.” Surely we “religious types” and others whose intellectual currency is the exchange of ideas between cultures, are in our day and age (a tense time of fear and resentment) unique stewards of a special and exceptional place in history. As representatives of our respective cultures and faiths, as representatives of what our individual culture’s legacy has shaped each of us to be, we are the inheritors of a vast wealth of knowledge, beauty, and pain. Surely, even though we are inheritors of history’s conflicts-which admittedly, sometimes color our more noble attempts to turn mere tolerance into understanding-we should be able to find some purpose and encouragement in that same history. This is not an easy thing in our time, in this age of constant media noise and lack of historical context.

The Greek Orthodox Christian and Turkish Muslim communities share a unique past; hence, our dialogue emerges from a complex, and, at times, painful history that Orthodox Christianity and Islam, Greece and Turkey have suffered and shared.

Yet we have come a long way. We have traveled a difficult road filled with many obstacles, physical violence, and the metaphorical obstacles of our intellectual insecurities that have perhaps hampered our higher aspirations even more than the former darkness of our historical conflicts. The influential and intellectually challenging Muslim thinker Fethullah Gülen puts it in another way, in broader terms, when he writes:

Negative feelings and attributes often defeat people, pulling them under their domination to such an extent that even the religions that guide people to goodness and kindness are abused, as well as the feelings and attributes that are sources of absolute good.

How truly these words reflect the experience for so many of us and for our ancestors. And struggling with religion’s truths-perhaps too weighty for us to comprehend fully and therefore abused by all of us, each of us misapplying our own ideals to baser human endeavors-we have suffered. What we did not understand was that we were suffering together. In retrospect, our shared history contains hope for our shared destiny.

Allow me to depict an image from our shared past, to recount an event shared by Greek Orthodox Christians and Turkish Muslims that is often overlooked. However, it has silently brought a message to us through the ages. In Istanbul, there are two images in the Patriarchate at the Phanar, two mosaics. They grace the foyer at the entrance of the main office building. On the one side is a depiction of St. Andrew, the First Called of Jesus’ Apostles and the first Bishop of Byzantium. With him is Stachys, Andrew’s successor (from 38-54 CE) in a long line of bishops who have made Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul their home to the present. On the other side of that foyer at the Phanar is a mosaic that depicts the Patriarch Gennadios. He stands with his hand open, receiving a document being handed to him by Sultan Mehmet II in 1453. It is the Firman, the legal document guaranteeing that the Orthodox Church would continue its traditions and mission among its people during Muslim Ottoman rule.

The first image depicts the beginning of one of our peoples’ faith traditions. The next image depicts the inherent understanding of tradition that the progenitors of the Turkish nation had and would continue to keep. Our shared history is, obviously, something less than perfect. It is a human story about human people. Nevertheless, time and the tides of numerous historical fortunes have brought us to this moment in the United States. And we are together at this moment, in yet another time, in ways that could have only occurred because of this culture’s strengths. Imagine what this dialogue might mean to our ancestors if they were to see us now-Turks and Greeks together, sharing freedom, sharing meals at banquets, working together in a common cause and, most importantly, hoping for a still better future.

I, a Greek Orthodox bishop, one born in the United States, whose spiritual ties are to that great city on the shores of the Bosphorus, have stood before Turkish audiences and the people of America’s multi-cultural, multi-ethnic faith traditions, as an honored guest. We have been together at a table laden with the true food of human being-of human existence: understanding, mutual respect and hope.

Our future is contingent upon our acknowledgment of the past. History is always the greatest teacher. And after the long, difficult history of our interactions, we have something else that can and must help us become even greater witnesses: each of our own cultures and of the shared experiences we still remember. It is perhaps a difficult truth to embrace, but those who have been enemies quite often understand each other better than those who have never been part of their conflict. In the film, The Matrix Reloaded, one character says to another, whom he has just fought: “You never really know who someone is until you fight him.”

At this point in our history, when the need to fight has long passed, we have an opportunity to look at each other in a unique and intense way, and seeing one another in truth and love, we may yet see ourselves in the other. And this then may become the key to our common future and works of righteousness done in shared hope for a better world.

So, perhaps we have even managed to give goodness to the world together, to save what was the best of our respective histories, and allow the future to be a mirror, worthy of the deepest truths of our faiths, in which to see the truest reflection of our humanity. Turan Oflazoðlu says, “What we need is to enrich ourselves with those aspects of foreign culture which are not congenial to our nature.” We must seek the “other” amongst us and invite them into our lives. We must share our hopes our fears, our joys, and our sorrows. We must find ways of transcending our conflicts, both historical and intellectual, and create a new future together. My reflection on this dialogue is that, “We are the world in small.” May we may now truly praise the Creator’s gift of life in all its diversity, and walk together into the future in a new way. I hope that we will take the second step with the same sense of warmth and respect that we have experienced the first step. To quote the late, great prophet of reconciliation, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras- ἐλάτε νά κοιτταχOούμε – “come, let us look into one another’s eyes.”

The Example of Greek-Turkish Dialogue in Post-9/11 America
Bishop Demetrios of Mokissos
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America,
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

As the only Muslim woman in the room, outside their prayer circle, I was there to observe their prayer session by the invitation of my friend C. As they sighed and tried to find words to console and inspire one another, I could feel their despair about creating a more peaceful and understanding world. They were truly concerned about America’s position in maintaining peace in the world, but after the events of the last decade, they ran out of hope.

When they don’t have hope, what could they pray for?

Pitched into this darkness, I heard myself say, ‘Well, actually, I am feeling hope.’ There was an uneasy creak of folding chairs and tired faces. Their looks said, ‘Please, not another voice of denial…’ but they were kind enough to listen to what I had to say. ‘I think America has the greatest potential for peace,’ I continued. Glimmers of candlelight played across the eyes in the room. Having heard a Muslim woman say this was new for them.

‘Well, I think so because…’ I paused for a moment to search for the right words, and continued, ‘… because it all began with French fries.’ Once I saw their puzzled faces and the half smiles playing on their lips, I knew I had caught their attention to tell them my story. When I saw, for the first time, people calmly dipping individual fries into cups of ketchup with bare fingers, I had just arrived in America to go to the graduate school. I couldn’t believe that they used no forks, no toothpicks—just eating greasy fries with their bare hands. How crude, I thought. But then another foreign student from Morocco shared with me that in her country, people ate with their hands, too, and that eating with one’s hands enhances the flavor of the food. I saw her, also for the first time in my life, enjoy chicken biryani with her fingers. It was my first glimpse of just how wide the world was. It was the fragrance of my own budding tolerance.

After I saw how eager they were to hear about it, I continued my story. I told them I had come to the United States ten years before, on a college scholarship from Turkey. I’ll be honest. Before coming to America, I had never spoken to a person who was not Muslim, much less shared a meal with them. But here, in America, where I met fellow graduate students from India, China, Africa and Europe, I experienced first-hand that we could all live and eat in our own unique ways, learning side by side, and live in peace. My tolerance grew.

Then I walked in to the Islamic Center of the city I lived in. I saw different Muslims, from around the world, in different clothing, of different races, speaking different languages, bowing down in reverent prayer side by side. All those differences seemed like jewels and beads on an elegant dress, enriching and beautifying the fabric in harmony. It was a vision, and witnessing it, I felt such a profound peace. I thought, though they, my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters, dress or talk and eat differently, we all bow down in front of God the same way. We are all the same in the important stuff, and only different in the minor issues. What significance does it have if one eats with their hands, with a fork, or with a couple of chopsticks?

In later years, I was blown away when I witnessed how Christians worshipped at my friend B’s church. They sing, listen to the sermon, read passages from the Bible, which is considered a holy book in Islam and to be respected, and they get connected with the God. And when I noticed how the stories, values, and traditions we claim as ours were also shared by them, my first image of Americans collapsed completely. Before I came to this country, the only Americans I knew were from the movies and soap operas. Naturally, I thought all American women were blond, tall, and beautiful, and all the American men were tall, rich, and handsome. They didn’t have any financial problems, health problems, or any real-life problems; they had only relationship problems and cared about no one but themselves. This was the image in my head about Americans. How wrong I was! I was surprised and fascinated when I observed my friend B’s church worship, when I came together with other families from my son’s school for play dates, or when our neighbors invited us to their Thanksgiving dinner, and also when they came to ours for a Ramadan iftar. It came to me in a flash: Americans have similar family values, religious values, holiday traditions, and love and compassion for their neighbors, just as we do. They are not actors in a soap opera!

What is more, they welcome thousands of foreign students, scholars, refugees, and immigrants from many different countries around the globe each year. Every year Americans are exposed to many cultures, languages, and faith traditions, and hardly anyone is jumping down anybody’s throat for being different. Of course, there are occasional negative comments toward what is different, but even then, most people come together to neutralize that negativity with support and compassion. Different is viewed as richness, as variety, and as interesting. My own tolerance and appreciation of other cultures blossomed because of these experiences.

The United States can have a great ability to bring about peace, as I shared with the ladies that night, because American culture is already open, tolerant of religious freedom, and welcoming to people around the globe. These are the perfect ingredients for peace. America has the power to wage peace in other countries, not with war or fear, but with goodness, faith, acceptance, and aid, to build hospitals and schools, and create jobs and programs that acknowledge human rights and generate good will.

America has long been a mixed salad. Its unique blend of people from around the world, stirred together with mingling flavors, develops a taste for tolerance, for freedom, for the savory experience of diverse cultures living together. May our prayer in this post-9/11 world be this: that we move beyond the ineffectual and destructive politics of warfare and fear, and hold fast to the goodness and power of this nation’s moral tolerance, constitutional freedoms, and potential for peace. God has created us with this potential. More powerful than any military force, I hope my experiences of tolerance and good will in the United States offered a recipe for hope for my friends that night.

The day that my daughter and I were headed to the airport, my new Turkish friend, Abdurrahman, who has been visiting our church for the last two years as a gesture of peace and global tolerance, asked me about the word “tolerance.”

It had come to his attention that tolerance can mean something negative. “I want more than to have someone simply tolerate me!” a colleague told him.

The conversation stuck with me on my flight to Istanbul and for the next couple of days. Then somewhere near the ancient cities of Lystra, Derbe and Iconium, my thoughts took shape and I wrote this essay entitled “Tolerance.”

“What is tolerance?” It is not all good. At its basest level – Level 1 – it is putting up with another, sitting on clenched fist. It is not trust. It is not friendship. It is a truce. “If I let you be, will you let me be?” And this is what we call tolerance.

Sometimes, and these times are beautiful, tolerance reaches a second level – Level 2 – it is talking. It may not seem like tolerance. Sometimes it is loud. Sometimes it is awkward. Sometimes it is offensive. It is like learning how to dance, but it is growth.

“This is who I am. This is what I believe! This is what I eat! This is how I dress and worship!”

We learn a little about each other. And this is tolerance.

Quietness sets in, and then, almost as if on its own, tolerance grows – Level 3. It is listening. Trust has begun to replace suspicion. Question marks replace exclamation points. “Tell me about yourself: What is your family like? Your faith? Your home?”

Jaws relax. Hands open and sometimes are even clasped together rather than clenched. Smiles replace suspicion, and we learn. Most people see this as tolerance, but there are more stages, more beautiful, relational transformations.

As stone silence gives way to talking and talking yields to listening … as hands go from being clenched to opened to clasped, another level of tolerance emerges: Level 4. It is respect.

There is an appreciation for the other. You are just as much a person as I. Your family has fears and hopes even as mine does. You cry and laugh and worry and pray as I do. The balance has shifted to where we see eye to eye without condescension. This is tolerance.

Respect is a beautiful stage in the process of tolerance. As it grows and stories are shared, we reach another level of tolerance, almost by accident – Level 5 – it is our story. Somehow as I told you my story and you told me your story, we were writing our story. We shared watermelon on the rooftop. We sang songs in the night air. Remember, we started singing separately, but ended singing together.

Our story. Our memories. Community. Tolerance.

It has come so far, this concept of tolerance, from truce to trust, from respect to relationships, from sharing stories to shaping stories. And yet there is more: Level 6. It is friendship. Solidarity. I now like you and you like me. I think of you when you are absent. I smile when I see you, and you smile, too. Handshakes have given way to embraces; nods are replaced by pats on the back and the mussing of hair. Reunions are arranged, future contacts desired.

I am no longer curious; I care. I truly care for you my friend, for your family, for your country. And this is tolerance.

Seven is the perfect number. There are seven days of the week, seven seals in Revelation, and there are seven levels to tolerance. Level 7? It is love.

Walls are removed, suspicions are relaxed, reservations are repealed. Eyes sparkle with delight rather than peering for inconsistencies and flaws. Your pain causes me to hurt. Your joy causes me to laugh. Your pleasure brings me delight. Hands are held, not just shaken. Souls embrace as well as arms. We are brothers, sisters, siblings. We are certain that God loves us and that God expects us to love each other, and we are elated to comply.

Tolerance has been made complete in love and perfect love casts out all fear.

“What is tolerance?” I was once asked.

It is truce: Sitting on clenched fist.

It is talking: Claiming my rights, my story.

It is listening: Being open to your story.

It is respect: Clasping hands together in trust.

It is one story: Creating shared moments.

It is friendship: Genuine caring.

It is love: Expressing complete, mature, perfect love.

It is God’s desire for our world. It is our world’s only hope and it is my desire. Tolerance.

Originally published at www.theeagle.com. The Bryan-College Station Eagle.

Collective responsibility

But just acknowledging this shared responsibility is not enough. Frequently, the real problem is group inaction, for harm can be prevented if enough people form a group to prevent it. Collective responsibility often can be ascribed to those people who have the ability to form such groups but do not do so. To the extent that this is the case, they are collectively responsible for their collective inaction.

Members of the dominant Western culture may consider it overly severe to assert that all of us are collectively responsible for our failure to do something about the world’s many problems. While not saying that people who do not form groups are guilty due to their inaction, I do feel that our inaction should provoke a sense of shame within us.

Goodin describes his approach as putting consequences to the fore, meaning that consequences quickly take up the whole stage, not just its front and center. He preserves a central link between responsibility and causality, and claims to make better sense of our present practices of responsibility. Larry May sets out to expand significantly our sense of responsibility within groups. The keystone of moral responsibility here is that for who one chooses to be. Attitudes and habits, states of mind and character, roles and affiliations, and the professional, institutional, and social climates shaping our interests, perceptions, and values are reviewed even as we continue to shape them.

A welcome but difficult result is that we are responsible for failures of awareness and insensitivity, as well as unexamined habits, traits, allegiances, and identifications that predispose us to moral failure. Another result is that people should see themselves as responsible for certain harmful events occurring within their communities, even if they are not direct participants or cannot prevent them. We are”and should feel”accountable for tolerating our own morally flawed character, contributing to a morally irresponsible attitudinal climate, or failing to reckon adequately with our institutional roles. These enriched bases of responsibility are not intended as new bases for subjecting people to punishment. I suggest that shame and taint, not just guilt, are appropriate individual reactions to expanded responsibility.

My concern is the collectivities, attitudinal climates, and expectation of groups that shape what people think is up to them and what they become used to ignoring. This has implications for all people who function within institutions where the most significant outcomes are the work of many minds and hands. A group’s responsibility is a fundamental moral issue. Therefore, groups are responsible for events and should be held responsible for them.

Shared responsibility

People should see themselves as sharing responsibility for the harm experienced by their communities far more often than they do. There is a distinction between shared responsibility and collective responsibility. Collective responsibility applies to a group as such (not necessarily to individual members), whereas shared responsibility applies to individuals within groups because of their membership relation with the group. We live in a world of groups. Groups affect our daily life, attitudes, and character, and greatly increase our power to act. Individuals receive great benefits from group membership. Those increased benefits and power should come with increased responsibility. Yet, although groups cause more and greater harm than individuals and have a greater capacity to correct large-scale social problems, individuals typically identify less with harm caused by groups and less often assume responsibility for them.

People share responsibility for harm done by groups, including those that result from omission. More harm occurs collectively than individually, and yet people take less responsibility for it for two reasons: Groups break problems into pieces, responsibility gets diffused, and groups allow individuals to assume that someone else will”or at least could”act. An expanded notion of moral negligence, the idea that since individuals within groups and the group’s structure and policies influence one another, and since group membership structures its members’ values and tends to desensitize them, individual members should be aware of this and responsible for reducing the risk of harm perpetrated by their group. Since there is a duty to act, the failure to do so may constitute negligence. This makes group members responsible for group values and, derivatively, for whatever harm the group does.

Shared responsibility is particularly appropriate for the value transformations that occur within groups. Since people affect one another’s conduct more, and attitudes are more closely shared, people should feel a heightened sense of responsibility to offset any risks associated with misconduct, including negligent omission or inaction. Of course, there is always the problem of defining the scope of negligence. This problem can be handled by using a reasonable person standard to ascertain what our roles would commit us to. We are not negatively responsible for all of the world’s failures, but only what a reasonable group of fellow citizens would expect of someone in our circumstances. Recognizing negative responsibility, including responsibility for omis-sions that allow an unreasonable risk of group harm, helps people lead lives that are more integrated with their moral values, because that involves both acts and omissions. To be in harmony with ourselves, we need to integrate principles with behavior that promotes moral integrity.

Conclusion

Shared responsibility, by focusing the issues of responsibility in a different light, provides us with the beginning of an account of how people, as moral agents, are connected to and function within groups and institutions. This analysis also provides a picture of the nature of informal groups and social relations. Most human relations influence the daily life, attitudes, assumptions, aspirations, and acts of individuals everywhere, such as in voluntary associations. We should remember the team’s perception of the Challenger space shuttle disaster: It is time to take your engineer’s cap off and put on your manager’s cap.1 An aggregate approach or something like it is necessary here, making shared and vicarious responsibility particularly appropriate. 

Footnote

1. Amy Gutnam and Dennis Thompson, Ethics and Politics: Cases and Comments, 3d ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1997), 189.

References

• Goodin, Robert E. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Gutnam, Amy and Dennis Thompson. Ethics and Politics: Cases and Comments, 3d ed. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1997.
• May, Larry. Sharing Responsibility. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
• Thampson, Dennis E. Political Ethics and Public Office. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.