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I.A.S. Yusuf: Pursuit of Peace Among Religions from the Perspective of Religious Studies
Written by Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed S. Yusuf, Graduate School of Philosophy and Religion, Assumption University, Hua Mak, Bangkok, Thailand
Monday, June 16, 2008
Paper presented to Assembly 2002, “Establishing a Culture of Peace: Worldviews, Institutions, Leadership, and Practice; The Search for Solutions to Critical Global Problems," February 14-18, Seoul, Korea.
The current state of world affairs indicates that religious communities representing the messages of peace, love, liberation, enlightenment, wisdom, natural way, and nonviolence have remained morality tales. World history abounds with never ending tales of religious prejudice, hatred and wars. It is time to reflect upon the causes behind this tragedy.
Why does peace between and within religious traditions remains elusive? Or is it present within the teachings of all religions or their hermeneutics or ontologies of existence? Is this due to the way religious institutions teach and preach their message to their own folk in relation how to view themselves in relation to others? The contemporary world situation on the question of peace between religions and religions as carriers of the message of peace offers a poor representative picture. The universal intent religious messages have acquired ethnocentric profiles particularizing or localized conflict oriented profiles.
Religions have forfeited the right to preach peace by rejecting peace among themselves. This has happened mainly on the account of losing the ability to live with differences. Religions are unique. So they necessarily differ from each other, especially in terms of outward customs and practices. It is in the nature of love to acknowledge and transcend differences. Religions preach love, but they seldom practice this kind of love. Instead, they have conditioned their followers in the art of hating, even as they preach love.
The most obvious case of such developments are the politicization of religion from both within and without nearly all religions, a phenomenon described by a prominent commentator as, “Manufacturing Enemies: The Age of Media Wars,” especially in the case of Islam. The cause of such disinformed understanding of religions lies is the result of invented self images and lack of critical self-understanding.
Muhammad Iqbal, the poet philosopher of Islam, called upon the geopolitical patterned images of religions today where West is identified as Judeo-Christian and East with Islam and other Asian religious traditions to engage in introspection. For Iqbal this meant criticizing the West as well as the Muslim world. He found that the “heartless European civilization”... betraying the love of Christ” had produced wars, oppressions and colonialism, while Muslims had degenerated into “living corpses” who renounce freedom of thought and get lost in intellectual inertia, either aping the West as the middle classes do, or resorting to empty rhetoric and hate messages like the fundamentalist do. He found that both civilizations had lost their identities and were in need of critical soul searching.
Peace Among Religions: A Needed Perspective in Religious Studies
Religious Studies programs can either be harbingers of peace or the mediums of spreading of hate and wars. This potential for executing this dual role is found in every religion, archaic or contemporary. Thus, religious education, the main medium of religious culturalization carries upon itself the decisive task of instilling the values of peace as part of religious life and living, a tall and urgent order indeed in light of the present fragmented state of religious education.
This demands of scholars and ecclesiastical leaders of religion is to promote a broad understanding of one’s own religion and respect for other and adopt a civilizational viewpoint toward the cumulative religious experience of humanity. The aim is the achievement of peace at both the intra- and inter-religious levels enabling the human to attain the state of homo religiosus—religious man, an unalienated being rooted in religious experience. Unfortunately, the human temperament, blighted by industrialization and technology, has been affected by the emergence of a de-sacralized worldview.
It is the task of leaders along with religious scholars to make their religions vehicles of peace, reject religious hypocrisy and to direct attention to the development of their communities. This has to be undertaken as a pedagogical and social mission, aimed at removing illiteracy, poverty, and injustices and directed toward attainment of peace, a main objective and goal of all religious messages. Peace for all through religion cannot be achieved by fundamentalist/extremist types of thinking. It needs boldness on the part of religious leaders to initiate religious reform at the level of education so that education becomes a tool of "processive" thinking and not the tool of cut, paste, and repeated old prejudices, biases and hatred toward other religious communities. All religions talk of mutual cooperation but their track record in this venture has not been impressive.
Religious Studies as an Avenue for Building Peace Among Religions
Religious education is a part of all religious establishments and all of them pay serious attention to this undertaking. Reforming religious education by turning it into an instrument for the promotion of peace requires instituting fundamental change in the rationale, purpose and goal of religious education. This is easier said than done as it requires a consensus on part of religious scholars and leaders. It is the task of each religious tradition and its leadership. I will comment on the ideational aspect of the religious studies venture in the promotion of peace.
- Instilling fundamental respect for all religions; this will require a critical review of the self-understanding of religion. The aim of this is to establish peace between human beings, leaving the task of salvation or condemnation to the mercy/grace of God or the Other.
- Recognizing the fundamental unity of all religions directed towards building religious fellowship between the adherents of religions and bringing about practical social tolerance.
- Cultivating a worldview of religious understanding and cooperation—reverence for all malice towards none. It is time to realize that no religion is an island. Educating in the values of friendship and cooperation between religions will lead to the securing of world peace. The unending hatred, ethnic conflicts under the pretext of religious claims, and now the scourge of religious extremism existing in different forms in all the religious traditions of the world are symptoms of something fundamentally gone wrong in our understanding the universal message contents of all religions.
- Learning and teaching about what it means to be human, Religious Studies programs should promote dialogue between religions from its own internal perspective directed toward achieving peace. This will require overlooking the particular or the historical record of atrocities committed in the name of each religion against members of other religions. This can be achieved by reflecting upon the whole picture of humanity instead of a partial picture based on selective memories or copy, cut and paste methods resulting in the invention of fragmented views of self and history of religions. This requires accepting religious diversity and human religiousness as a normal pattern of life in which we participate everyday, even more so in the global age of today. The key to such an achievement lies in approaching the study of religion as a live history of religious diversity within humanity in which all of us are a participants and not foes of each other.