Current Challenges to Monotheistic Religions in the Middle East



CRDC welcomed Dr. Bernard Sabella from Jerusalem on September 1, 2005, who spoke at this lunchtime seminar on religion in the Middle East. Dr. Sabella is Professor of Sociology at Bethlehem University and Director of Services for Palestinian Refugees for the Middle East Council of Churches. He brought an important perspective from one of the most important Christian organizations in the region.

Following is the text of Dr. Sabella's presentation:

Realities and Challenges: Worldly and Religious With Discussion of the Palestinian-Israeli Case

Introduction

Migratory movements, September 11th and the Challenge of Religion to the Worldly

What was thought to be mostly a Middle Eastern phenomenon became after September 11th a global phenomenon in the sense that the interlink between religion and the state was reflected in the relations between the Moslem minorities that reside and have citizenship in Europe and the United States and the respective governments. The notion that a Moslem can only feel good if he/she is living in a Moslem society governed by Moslems was an underlying one in the relations of the Moslem communities to their new environments. The marginalization of the Moslem minorities, whether by choice or by the realities of power structures, left a gap of exclusion. September 11th, the work of a fanatic group bent on terror, brought to light the problematics of the relationships between Moslem groups living in this country and in Europe and the larger society. The migratory movements that saw increasing numbers of Middle Easterners and others moving westward, primarily to pursue economic and educational opportunities, was not accompanied by efforts to integrate into the systems of power in the host societies. Even when these societies, such as in Germany, encouraged the Moslem groups to unite in order to benefit from government funds for a variety of activities, there was failure to do so especially when the stipulation was to agree on one head or one structure for the Moslem community. But the challenge of religion to the worldly or vice versa is not restricted to the Moslem groups since also the Christian Middle Eastern groups are themselves marginalized as well as they too have not developed a system of empowerment through which they could become active in community, state and national politics. Some would attribute the fact that Arab Americans of Christian background do not have “identity” problems similar to their Moslem compatriots as due to their religious background. But this attribution or argument could prove quite fallacious since Christian Arab Americans are as marginalized in terms of power structures as their Moslem counterparts. Yes, they do not crystallize their marginalization around religion but their ethnic background as Arabs, Middle Easterners, etc...is enough strong factor that feeds into marginalization.

Dialogue and Exchange: Opening Up to the Other?

The structural realities of power would take decades to bring themselves to equilibrium. Meanwhile something needs to be done. The urgency is not one of convincing any one party of the goodness of the other but of that of creating some common grounds for rational thinking and action that would draw on the strengths of religion and I would add culture. While some of us would tend to glorify our respective religions and to find in them solutions to all problems, the question that we should ask ourselves is whether we have done our homework in discovering how our own religion could respond similarly to other religions on certain issues? One other important question is whether our religions, in their essence, could agree on more or less similar agendas on questions related to poverty, human rights, inequalities, discrimination, etc...

In other words, the real challenge is not to show off what is good in each of our own religions but to strive towards developing common agendas that could be adopted irrespective of religion whether here in the West or there in the Middle East and elsewhere? Some brilliant intellectuals and academics look condescendingly on religious sentiments or phenomena but these sentiments are at the forefront of our world today and accordingly we need to pay attention and we need to come out with working plans on how to use these sentiments constructively.

One elementary step that we need to undertake is to devise ways of educating each other on our respective religions: As a Christian living in a Palestinian society overwhelmingly Moslem, I never studied Islam until I came to college in the USA. While some may blame Moslems for not opening up to Christians or to Jews, we should remember that this is a two-way, rather three-way, enterprise. Hence, we need to think of ways in which to educate each other on each other.

Opening up to Others and the Difficult Questions

Opening up to others is not a cosmetic undertaking since it involves mutual acknowledgement of historical accounts, often differing, and also of pressing issues that need urgent attention. Some of the difficult questions are:

We can have many more difficult questions to answer to. This is why opening up to others is not a cosmetic undertaking since the willingness to open up signals a readiness to engage in a whole manner in understanding the other, working with him, dispelling stereotypes and creating new common visions. This is not a lip-service commitment and its challenge can be restraining, to say the least.

The Palestinian-Israeli Example of Opening Up or Separating   The challenges and both promises and difficulties in opening up can be illustrated by the Palestinian-Israeli case and by how the three monotheistic religions deal with it or do not deal with it.

Monotheistic religions each claims the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is a difficult thing to beat but it does provide us, followers of these religions, with world outlooks that interpret happenings the way we think our religion prescribes, explains or justifies them. Hence whatever we do unto others becomes rationalized into or by religious prescriptions. Some would argue that this is too simplistic and it may as well be. But the reality that religion is a basis for the reading and understanding of history, and as such a strong defining parameter for self, family and community, could bring with it the danger of exclusivist self justifying view of history and of relations with others and their possessions. Some of us, especially those engaged in interfaith relations, would want to draw on common things that could bring us together. Hence, the often repeated phrase of Abrahamic religions where Abraham becomes the starting founding father and hence the basis for unity. But this is cosmetic, in my opinion, since we can also argue that both Arabs and Jews are semites and hence they have common roots and grounds. Because of this then they should be able to resolve outstanding issues easily and overcome the situation of conflict.

But this is not how it works and if one reads the Old Testament and knows anything about tribal wars in the Middle East, one can understand how family and kin can also be cause for some most intense conflict. Religion also, especially monotheistic religion, can be another real cause for justifying conflict. One real illustration is the view of the Land by both Islam and Judaism; both claim the Land as eternally holly and while it was promised by God to the Jewish people, on the Moslem side it is the Ummah’s trust and hence inalienable. This mirroring of positions is not restrictive to religion as it expands into the reading and interpreting of events more recent. What is seen as the War of Independence for Israelis is seen as Nakbah, Disaster, for the Palestinians. What is considered heroic on the Palestinian side is seen as terroristic on the Israeli side. What is glorified on the Israeli side is vilified by the Palestinian side. So the gulf in positions is so great that understanding or opening up to the other becomes a marginal activity only for those who dare to consider the other’s position and who are  naive enough to think that the other is changeable. This majority position argues that the other will never change and hence there is no need to open up to him or to engage in serious talk or dialogue with him. Only by unilateral actions, that basically promote our group’s interest, would the other come to understand that he would have to live with us.

The problem, however, with this argument is that it does not go deep enough into resolving the conflict and overcoming its effects. While one group could be powerful enough to have its way, in the end the normal thing would be to accommodate and live in neighborly relations with the other group. But in order for this to happen you need to work out the conflict and to arrive at common grounds for tackling it and its effects. Hence one functional role for dialogue groups is to do precisely this: to explore the common grounds that could be out there. Such an exploration needs not remain on the theoretical level but could progress towards adopting a plan of action or an agenda for common work. The strategy for working together could be well focused but it could also be potentially expandable.

The Case of Middle East Children’s Association (MECA)

While there are a variety of groups out there working on joint activities and interfaith dialogue, one group whose work I know relatively well is that of MECA. The Association started out as a Palestinian Israeli teachers’ group that has parallel structures, working groups with parallel programs of action. The goal was how to make the teachers on both sides better prepared to deal with the experiences of their students outside the classroom and how to keep the human touch of the other while dealing with most threatening and shocking situations. The joint group of teachers remains relatively small of around 240 or so teachers on both sides.

In better days, the teachers would meet together in Israel or in Palestine to discuss issues, agree on agendas and set out to work. The kind of relations that exist in the group is really sustaining humanly and emotionally. I have seen the group meet a week after the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem and I was personally amazed at the extent of emotional closeness that Israeli and Palestinian teachers felt towards each other.

What made MECA a successful organization was the fact that their focus was the student in the classroom. Hence a common objective. While heated political discussions used to take place in meetings in and out of the country, the primary attention was always given to the pupils and hence the meetings were goal-oriented rather than propaganda oriented. The heated political expositions used to clear the air as they presented to the other side the horrible experiences that teachers and pupils on either side experienced. I remember that in one meeting, one Palestinian teacher spoke of a friend of her 16-year old son that was shot through the head by an Israeli sniper in Ramallah as he was talking to her son. At the same meeting, an Israeli teacher said that she had withdrawn from MECA’s meetings for a year or so because her neighbor soldier was lynched by Palestinians. She went on to speak of the humane character of her neighbor. This made me think, because I am a skeptical person by nature, what makes these people come back to such a group in spite, or perhaps because, of what they their children or their neighbors experienced?

I feel that the lesson from MECA is that you have to have a clear purpose if you are going to do joint groups. The purpose should not be to win hearts, it does not hurt if you would win hearts at the end. But the purpose should be specific, clear to all involved and should include ongoing work in each group. As such, I feel that the more specific groups we have the better the possibility for effective joint work. I can cite here the examples of medical joint groups, educational joint groups, human rights joint groups and most active women’s’ joint groups. They all exist out there and some are more active than the others. The current situation, nevertheless, poses different challenges for joint work.

Separation Wall and Joint Groups

We have not explored fully the effects of the Separation Wall on the work of joint groups. I have written a piece on “reconciliation with separation” in which I argued that there is an urgency to examine how the separation wall impacts joint work. I also argued that the way we have been doing joint work so far needs to change. Clearly the separation wall is forcing a number of challenges on all of us:

A myriad of questions and challenges that will not be answered. But by posing them, I am inviting myself and other people to grow out of simplistic and naive prescriptions for winning hearts. In light of the real challenges on so many fronts back home, we need to work together to build strategies for those areas in which our lives interact and mesh together, even when there is a separation barrier or ideology. So the challenge is there for real praxis of dialogue and action but it takes courageous and pioneering people to doing it. And as a believer in the One Almighty I would pray that I be given courage to continue on this most difficult path in order to make a difference for myself, my family, my community and my nation in the years ahead.

Dr. Bernard Sabella
Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Social Sciences Bethlehem University Executive Director Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees Middle East Council of Churches, Jerusalem Israel