At first I wasn't expecting to attend this forum due to my internship, but then I realised that 2nd January was a public holiday, which meant I would be free to attend. Though more importantly, it meant one less working day.
There was a representative each from Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. As usual, secular humanism was unrepresented.
Opening remarks by Associate Professor Syed Farid Alatas, National University of Singapore
Opening addresses are usually not very informative and are just a de rigueur way to set the tone of the event, but I did learn than more than 80% of those polled in Britain thought religion a divisive force that did more harm than good.
Naturally, there was the oft-repeated PC (Politically Correct) view that the greatest murders in the 20th century were committed by secular states: Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. To which my response is:
I'd characterise the lesson of Hitler [, Pol Pot] and Stalin as being that when there is an unthinking adherence to ideology, convenient rationalisation of heinous deeds, the creation of an us vs them mentality and the unquestioning acceptance of what infallible, omnibenevolent authority/father figures dictate, evil can reign unchecked. Not coincidentally, this is what you find in Fundamentalist Christianity with, for example, its justification of the Midanite Holocaust (the logic for which can similarly justify the Jewish one).
He followed by saying that the real problem was not religion or secularism but evil and immorality. This characterisation disappointed me, for besides being simplistic and very subjective (what is evil and immoral to one person can be good and moral to another), it was also wrong (good, moral people are capable of causing harm - the road to hell is paved with good intentions).
He related 2 examples of inter-faith cooperation. One was St Francis of Assisi and the Sultan of Egypt during the 5th Crusade, and another was Jews and Muslims in Bosnia banding together to fight a common enemy. Abrahamic religions co-existing is one thing, but a more value-added example, due to their peculiar nature, would have been 2 non-Abrahamic religions or better yet, one Abrahamic and one non-Abrahamic religion. This is because Abrahamic religions, by their nature, are exclusive, and to portray them as inclusive necessitates drawing upon apologetic skills.
Opening address by Guest-of-Honour
This was Wong Kan Seng, so I was prepared for a torrent of platitudes about how Singapore's corporatist management of religion has been successful. Of course, I was amply rewarded.
The spectre of Sunni/Shiite and LTTE/Buddhist conflict was raised, but no mention was made of the politico-socio-economic forces driving them. Naturally, there was also a call for a frank and open dialogue. Naturally, no mention of the Sedition Act or defamation suits was made.
The claim that religions were not mutually exclusive was raised, but while academics and politicians repeat this fiction, increasing religiosity means that the common believer is less and less willing to swallow it, or even its lesser cousin in the form of syncretism.
Though there was the usual recounting of Singapore's corporatist management of religion through religious leaders - when they "steer the responses of ethnic and religious organisations", have a National Steering Community and guided dialogue you know that we only have the coerced appearance of inter-religious understanding rather than it existing on its own right - and the symbolic measures that have been undertaken, the talk about the move to ground-up efforts was welcome.
Christian speaker - The Role of Religions in Building Peace, Fr. Thomas Michel, Secretary of the Jesuit Secretariat for Inter-Religious Dialogue
The speaker started by giving 2 examples of how religions have helped build peace.
The first was in Sierra Leone, where religious institutions were the only ones not involved in the problems the war brought, which was why they were the only institutions with the respect and credibility to facilitate the peace agreement. The second was in Mindanao, where the root of the problem is that Christians migrated into a Muslim area. The 1996 peace accord was not popular there, but religious leaders on both sides got together in the form of the Bishops-Ulema forum to try to convince the people.
He concluded that religious agencies can be agents of peace since they were close to the grassroots and therefore sensitive to them and able to react to and convince them; respected, trusted, uncorrupt and possessed of credibility; presumed to have no personal agenda and having the people's interests at heart; and religious leaders also had to know each other. Of course, he admitted that in many examples religious leaders are part of the problem, not the solution.
I do not deny that religious institutions can be an agency for peace, as in the above examples, but this is not an exclusive role for religion. Depending on the context of the problem, relying on religious institutions may or may not be a good instrument to pursue peace. For example, faith may result in altruism to work for the common good, but this depends on the spin you give faith, and anyhow faith can make one go either way.
The speaker then talked about where hereditary mistrust resulted in simmering tensions hidden beneath daily proprieties. I wondered if he was talking about Singapore.
He then talked about harnessing the feeling of universal consciousness and fraternity to battle stereotypes, prejudices and hatred, comparing preventive education to preventive health policies. It seemed to me that he was calling for secular humanism. E pluribus unum may sound great in theory, but accentuating people's religious consciousness and sense of the Other (which is what religiously-based education does) is going to have the opposite effect. What we need is less divisiveness, not more. Heightening religious consciousness is only helpful if you are sure that you can mastermind a grand plan to use religion to
Outlining the reasons why he called for preventive education as a strategy to combat sectarian strife, he said that "unless the civil authorities want to have a restrictive police state they are limited in what they can decree". Again, it seemed he was talking about Singapore.
He called for various sectors of society and NGOs to work together to get religious communities to cooperate to support peace. That might work fine in other parts of the world, but over here they're skeptical of special interest groups and nefarious foreign influences, so I guess we are conveniently reduced to relying on the Government again.
The speaker outlined the role religious institutions can play in fostering peace: rehabilitation; reconstruction, eg for schools and hospitals; return and reintegration (he skipped this for lack of time); and reconciliation. I disagree with the second point. I am not in favour of schools and especially hospitals being religiously-based, for they will just increase separation, and as Brown vs Board of Education ruled, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal". There is also the problem of evangelism, as in the case of ACS and friends in Singapore.
More broadly, whether or not religious institutions should be used to build peace depends on the context, but I would think that they would be suitable if all other institutions were broken or discredited, and the conflict had no religious aspect. However, since religion tends to become conflated in conflicts, finding a religiously-neutral conflict is hard.
The first question was about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bashing the American Right, and was more or less irrelevant. I don't know why people like to use Q&A sessions to pursue their pet causes. The second asked about the role of the press in quelling or exacerbating conflict and wasn't very interesting either.
The third question was about the Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq and if a secular or religious approach should be used to solved it. The answer was that Iraq was a good example of an identity conflict, since affiliation led to identity and an Us vs Them mentality. However, such things tended not to be about religion or doctrine. For example in Lebanon people defended their religious group, but the teachings of that particular religious group was not so important, so people needed to move beyond affiliation. He said it was superficial to see it as a Sunni-Shiite conflict and proclaimed that the USA needed to leave the Iraq to reduce the divisions.
The fourth question was about identity conflicts in South East Asia and the role international organisations played in exacerbating them (presumably referring to international terrorist syndicates), and if governments could solve cross-border problems. The answer was that the government had a role by doing things like adjusting the education system, but religious groups and NGOs were also important since they were not aligned with any group and would thus be honest (so much for "You can criticize us and we would treat you as though you had entered the political arena. If you do not wish to do so; you want to hide in sanctuaries, we'd say even
though you don't want to join a party, we would treat you as though you had entered the political arena. I think that is fair because you can't just criticise without
expecting us to reply to you in the same manner which you have attacked us. If you land a blow on our jaw, you must expect a counter-blow on your solar-plexus"). He was also skeptical about the extent of these international linkups, and wanted to see more evidence.
I wanted to ask a question but there was no time.
Buddhist speaker - Uniting Religions and Propagating Moral Education. Reconciling Conflict and Promoting World Harmony and Stability, Venerable Master Chin Kung, Pure Land Learning College of Australia
This speaker could only speak in Chinese, so he had someone translate his paragraphs for him. There was also a handout of his speech, but the Chinese portion was in Traditional Chinese, so I was even less able to read it than I would normally be.
This speaker lectures on the internet and satellite TV. Wah, so high tech.
This lecture was high on rhetoric about learning from the sages, imparting morals and teaching values. Unfortunately there were almost no examples of what we were supposed to learn from the sages, only traditional Chinese platitudes about teaching people to be good (ie Chinese Philosophical Fundamentalism). Bland assertion does not an argument make. It was like being in Nanyang Primary School again for 20 minutes.
Simplistically, 'evil', 'morality' and 'ethics' were bandied about. All evils were blamed on 'immorality' and 'evil', and education was lauded as the answer. The idea propounded was that educating people with the right values would lead to peace and harmony. This was very naive, for a multitude of reasons. How do you know what is 'right', with the multiple conceptions of the good? (What the sages say is good. Why? Because they're sages. And because practising their idea of the good gave China peace and harmony [haha - more on this later) How do you get people to be receptive to you? Even if you solve these problems, knowing what is 'right', being convinced that what is 'right' is right and doing what is 'right' are very different.
Once again, the PC view that religions have many things in common was propounded. The Mona Lisa and Picasso's Le picador may be the same in that both are oil on wood and include a depiction of a female, but their differences are more important, namely that the former is a great work of art and the latter is a piece of shit. I may have eyes, nose, ears and a mouth, but that does not mean that I am the same as the Great Leader (or even the Dear Leader). Even if all religions include some formulation of the Golden Rule, grasping for commonalities between them all is tedious and difficult (for example, the Golden Rule may not be meant to apply to unbelievers, and apologetic aerobics is needed for the PC ends to be fulfilled), so relying on secular humanism to propound a religiously-neutral middle ground that all can (potentially) accept is a more sensible way to go about things; some may argue that increasing religious fervor means that secular humanism is unacceptable to various adherents, but at least adopting elements of it would be more palatable than interfacing with another religion.
Since I have the benefit of the transcript, I will transcribe select parts and annotate them with my comments:
"In my view, reconciling all conflicts and contradictions in today's world should start with uniting religions, which in turn will enhance the harmony and cooperation among countries, political parties, and ethnic groups and reconcile conflict. These country leaders and scholars all agreed to my humble view"
This assumes that there is one Truth to work to. Even if one pretends that this is true, people are not going to accept it in view of their own vested interests.
"In November, 2005, we started a Cultural Education Centre in the township of Tangchi in Lujiang, Anhui Province, China, to train teachers and to promote moral education to local residents. We had hoped to see positive results in three years. However, within half a year of teaching, the centre achieved the result of awakening people's conscience and innate goodness. The results were beyond our expectations as good social values were restored significantly. This experiment was so surprisingly successful that it exceeded our hopes and strenghtened our confidence."
??? What values? How do we know that they were indeed restored? Did the women start binding their feet? Was an altar set up to the last Emperor of China? Did people enter into arranged marriages at their parents' behest and endure a lifetime of misery as a result? Did men take multiple wives as was their divine right? Did some disillusioned Communist Party official lie on his bed and lick a snake's gall bladder, and then jump into a river in dismay at how the Party has betrayed the founding principles laid down by Mao Zedong? Did anyone tattoo "精忠報國" [Ed: 精忠报国 in Simplified Chinese - jing4 zhong1 bao4 guo2; 'Serve the country loyally', a Yue Fei reference] on his back?
"I deeply felt that, although today European scholars are enthusiastic about Chinese studies, they only get as far as academic discussion and have not received true benefit. Thus, I emphasises in my lecture that the concept of ''studies of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism'' and the concept of ''learning from Confucious, the Buddha, and Tao'' are completely different. Only when we learn from Confucius, the Buddha, and Tao in daily life are we able to alleviate afflictions, gain wisdom, and attain the ultimate happiness of life - Dharma bliss."
He's asking them to become Buddhist? There's a reason there's a distinction between study and practice.
"Looking around the world today, we see that many religious followers are not truly studying and practising their religious tenets. Instead, they are instigated and used by people with evil purposes to cause conflicts and confrontations as well as social turmoil. This is quite sad. People generally not only have misunderstandings about religions, but they also disdain ethics and morality. As a consequence, the whole world is in disorder, with accelerating rates of crimes and suicides committed by younger and younger people. These phenomena have caused deep concerns and distress."
I don't even know where to start. Who decides what's 'true' or what 'ideal' to follow? What about the many other causes of suicide? etc etc etc. Is he saying that people with no religion are less evil? And the moral panic about young people commiting crimes is a nice touch. It's been done so many times before.
"When we look at the leaders in every country throughout time, we discover that if a leader skilfully uses religious teaching and the teaching of morality to purify people's minds and improve social moral standards, then the country will enjoy an honest government, a harmonious society, and ever-lasting peace and stability."
When? Who? Where? Wth.
The more the speaker went on, the more I was convinced that Chinese philosophy is just a way to justify and perpetuate the pre-existing oppressive Chinese social order (since I don't usually use such language, you can be sure that it applies this time). Happiness and social harmony is achieved through being oppressed and playing your pre-determined role in society, and efforts to overturn the existing social order are labelled evil and immoral.
This is apparent from the best bit (confirm plus guarantee plus chop):
"Take China, a country with five thousand years of history, as an example. The three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism have melded together and are deeply ingrained in people. At a very young age, children learned to do housework and interact with people, which is education in life. This laid the foundation for their moral integrity. The classics they studied in school and the art performances they attended after they entered society all taught the intrinsic values of filial piety, fraternal love, loyalty, trustworthiness, courtesy, justice, honesty, honour, kindess, love, harmony, and fairness. This way, people would be pure in mind and honourable. This is the reason why China has enjoyed ever-lasting peace and stability for five thousand years."
HAHAHAHAHA. War, rebellion, the Emperor profiting off peasants' hard labour - all are trivial. Chauvinism and oppression of women - not significant. China has had no crime, social problems, peasant uprisings, corruption, oppression, palace intrigue in 5000 years. The Opium War embodied peace and stability. Tiannamen was just a technical problem. Really, China is like an ant colony. It appears harmonious but is just a framework for oppression, and anyhow a secret war goes on behind the scenes. Oh, and the earliest of the 3 philosophers, Lao zi, appeared in either the 4th or 6th century BC, so it's hardly 5000 years.
Someone: errr... no. this is why confucian officials have been one of the consistent factors implicated in the fall of EVERY dynasty in chinese history because they are the Palace Bureaucracy Party. they'd never really admit that things are going on a downturn, and afaik, no confucian official managed to push for reforms in any of the waning periods of the dynasties. they were almost always pushed out of the establishment first
buddhism didn't come in until the northern and southern dynasties period, and it was imported by the turkish/hunnish kingdom of Northern Wei
there's no such thing as traditional chinese moral values. most of the time, "traditional values" is always a recent invention or amalgamation in modern political discourse. regardless of whatever happened in the past, it is those who live in the present who take unconnected details, link them together in a web of morality/tradition/the good old days, and call it "Tradition"
The first question was by a PRC who asked him a question in Chinese, translating for our benefit. She quoted the sages: 'One needs self-cultivation before managing the family. Managing the family, one can lead the country and people properly'. She asked how this related to harmony in a family with different religions. The answer was that a family might have different religions but the commonality was love, and this was something different religions shared [Ed: This is why I think religious marital apartheid in Christianity and Islam is stupid. People marry others of different dispositions, characters and political views.]. He then quoted 'Love is God. Love is Buddha'.
The second question was also delivered in Chinese and was how to study and understand religious texts, which interpretations to follow and how to know what you followed was correct and not manipulated. The answer was that this was a very good question. All religions believed in one true god (Rubbish. Monotheism may be fashionable but this doesn't change the fact that not all religions are monotheistic). God manifested itself in different forms. He had a discussion with other religious leaders and all of them agreed to the PC view that because technology was not advanced last time, God manifested itself in different forms depending on different areas' ethnic groups or races, and that religions all had the same aim - to teach one to be good. I snorted at this view, morally, intellectually and religiously bankrupt as it was. Maybe I should set up my own religion, which will be a True one too.
The third question was asked by the same person who'd brought up the point about the press with the previous speaker. The press was not truthful and complete in reporting the truth. The response was that he was in Hongkong and talked to the Chairman of Phoenix TV. He said there were 2 types of people who could save or destroy this world of pure chaos [Ed: ...] - world leaders and people in broadcasting/mass communications. If the mass media reported about violence and sex, it would destroy the world. The Singapore government was efficient, and Singapore was small so it was easy to manage. He recommended that Singapore take the lead in broadcasting moral education so fortune and bliss would reign in the country. Err, if I understood it correctly, he was promoting censorship, self or otherwise. Goodness. We're lucky the Chinese weren't the ones taking over the world last millennium.
Muslim speaker - Interfaith Dialogue in a Highly Globalized World, Prof. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi‘, Hartford Seminary
Much of this lecture was talking about Islam which, while very interesting and informative, was not relevant to the topic at hand.
The speaker started by talking about the idea of authenticity. Authenticity harkened back to an envisioned (and presumably imagined) past, and had several criteria.
The major criterion for authenticity was sacred texts, which were essential to understand in order to understand religion. The texts were the basis of authenticity and religious behavior. However, he did not talk about the differing interpretations, differing formulations or even authenticity of the sacred texts, but I suppose this is because in Islam if you question the authenticity of the Koran you're automatically a heretic.
Other criteria were: revelation, especially in the Abrahamic religions; sacred geography, eg the Haj and Christian pilgrimage; and specific historical events.
He said that in Islam understanding intellectual history and tradition are important, especially with modernity. I think this applies to all religions.
The Koran was the heart of Islamic tradition, but there was also exegesis, a sub-tradition of Islam, and the Hadith - the prophet was just human, but he was a perfect man. The problems of having an infallible prophet who could do no wrong and the complications of the Koran being infallible and literally true were, unfortunately, not expounded upon.
Mohammad and the Koran were the final but not the only prophets of god, and the validity of previous religions were thus not nullified. What the implications of this had for the validity of religions post-dating Islam were not explored.
The major ideas/concepts of Islam were then expounded upon. They were Oneness - the unity of divine; Oneness of revelation, ie Previous prophets not being false [Ed: The historical reason for this was that Muhammad was trying to entice as many people to convert as possible, especially Jews and Christians, since Islam had been crafted in their image. Unfortunately they weren't interested]; Oneness of prophecy; and Oneness of humanity, since humanity worshipped the divine [Ed: I'm not sure whether it's meant to be universal brotherhood or universal Muslim brotherhood. And where does this leave non-theists or non-religious people, eg Deists?!]
Once again the PC view was propounded, with lots of examples of tolerance shown to Jews and Christians talked about. But then the traditional Islamic intolerance of idolatory and false gods was largely ignored.
The Muslim world was not homogeneous but divided into several cultural zones. The first was the Arabs, the founders of Islam. But then not all Arabs were Muslim - many were Jewish and Christian. I noted he didn't talk about the pagans and idolators who'd been wiped out after Mohammad's return to Mecca in 630. Really, you can't produce a picture of Jews, Christiand and Muslims living in harmony, have them hold hands and sing and then say yay - there are more than 3 religions in the world.
The second cultural zone was the Persians, with a different set of religious and cultural ideas. For example, Zoroastrianism was embraced and appropriated by Islam, not destroyed. The third was Africa, with North Africa versus Black Africa, with Sufi Islam. There, Islam had been influenced by animistic traditions, eg in South Sudan, but it together with Christianity was seen as foreign to Africa (what happened to Prester John?!).
The fourth cultural zone was South Asia, and not just due to the Mughal Empire. There was influence from Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. The fifth was the Melayu-Javanese one which was always forgotten, especially by academics (hahahaha). Lastly, the sixth was the Turkic (as opposed to Turkish, including Central Asia, West China and the Balkans).
Islam could not be envisioned theologically in one plane, but its multiplicity had to be taken account of. For the first 500 years, Islamic civilization had to be built up, specifically in Islamic religious science. For example Sharia, which he said was not only a manifestation of political Islam. For some reason though, he didn't talk about the 4 schools of Sunni Islam.
He also talked about Islamic philosophy, and how Kalaam had 3 schools: Islamic, Jewish and Christian. Non-Abrahamic religions were conspicuous by their absence. In any event, he said Kalaam was similar to systematic theology. At this point I realised that Kalaam was aka apologetics (hoho), and he described it as "using human reason to defend Koranic / Biblical truths" (heh heh).
Until 400 years ago most Jews lived in the Muslim world, not in Europe, so to understand Jews before the 17th century one needed to understand the Islamic context.
He then talked about himself. He was a Palestinian born in Nazareth in a British hospital established by Scottish missionaries in Ottoman Palestine in 1833. In the 19th century there were Protestant proselytization attempts in the Ottoman Empire directed at Jews and Muslims. However they were a 'hard nut to crack' so they focused on the Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
He then asked why a conservative Muslim woman (his mother) would go to a Christian hospital. He said her doctor spoke fluent Arabic which was 'music to her ear (sic)'. I'm not sure what that was supposed to mean. He said his mother said she'd whispered the thing in his ear about 'There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet' so even though the doctor later talked about the Messiah, he ignored it, because she'd already indoctrinated him.
Since this review/report is already 4452 words long at this point I'll try to leave out some of the less important bits about the speaker's childhood and how god suffocating in a bottle illuminated some theological point.
He accused the political elite of preferring war to healing (specifically a Jewish word referring to fixing a wounded world), and he said some religious leaders lacked this conviction also to follow in the prophets' footsteps. He ended by reading a prayer and praying for blessings. Wah lao.
This time, I managed to get in one question, about Islamic intolerance to peoples not of the Book. He said it was a good question and brought up some historical examples of Islamic syncretism in cultural zones. He said when he went to Kashmir he was told Buddhism was founded there 500 years ago. He also brought up Indonesian syncretism. I objected that swallowing and assimilation was not what was meant by co-existence - although Islam had been influenced by other religions, peaceful co-existence was not about swallowing up other religions like the Borg, even if you did borrow some of their ideas, and he brought up the example of Indonesia, which has the largest Hindu community outside India.
The moderator added on that for political reasons, Muslims had invaded other areas but they usually allowed them to remain as they were, for example Armenian Catholics and Christians. Of course, this was precisely my point - non-Peoples of the Book (Jews and Christians) were not permitted to be idolatrous. And it's oh-so-convenient to blame wars of conquest on politico-military factors.
The second guy said he was born in a French hospital and his mother was unconcious when he was born and didn't get to him first. However he was 'lucky' (presumably in still being Muslim). He asked if peaceful co-existence was possibly. The reply was that religion cannot be separated from socio-economic factors, eg in the Middle East, Palestine-Israel and Cyrpus. He said in essence these were not religious conflicts. I agree, but then the good that religions are said to do are not caused in essence by religion either; it is logically inconsistent to let religion take all the credit for good results but blame humans and politico-socio-economic factors when religion results in evil, harm and misery, especially when there are religious bases for these eventualities.
The third person asked about intra-faith dialogue. He said there was a need for this and talked about some efforts in this arena. A lot of Brits and Americans associated Islam with Saudi Arabia and Arabs only.
A fourth complained that the Koran promoted peace and religious harmony but this was not mentioned in the press. He then quoted from it. I disagree. The press talks a lot about how Islam is a peaceful religion and even quotes from it sometimes, but never cites the contrary verses. Maybe he's been reading Jewish newspapers (hurr hurr). In any event, the mass media is not a vehicle for proselytization - it presents (or should present, at any rate) the world as it is, not as it should be. The answer was that Edward Said complained about press coverage of Islam and the Iranian Revolution. Most journalists covering the Arab world and Islam did not speak Arabic, and neither did most experts on Islam and terrorisim in the US, and they could not read Arabic works of theology and philosophy. He claimed the US media was ignorant about the Muslim world though it reported about it everyday. I wonder what would count as non-ignorance to him, and if the Muslim world was not similarly ignorant of the US.
The fifth person said it was important to read religious texts. Although he was Presbyterian, the speaker might've read more of the Bible than him. He then quoted from the Bible [Ed: Wah lao. Why was everyone quoting today?] and asked how he could read religious [presumably Christian] texts without the help of the Holy Spirit, since Christ said you needed the Holy Spirit to understand the Bible. So how did he understanding the teachings if he didn't accept Christ and the Holy Spirit? The speaker was obviously stumped, at first giving a short and witty answer and then adding that his Catholic teacher said no one could understand it and that it had to be felt.
My objection was more simple. It takes a true follower of Chairman Mao to understand why the death of tens of millions of Chinese peasants during the Great Leap Forward was Necessary, Justified and adhered to the principles of filial piety, fraternal love, loyalty, trustworthiness, courtesy, justice, honesty, honour, kindess, love, harmony, and fairness. Only someone who truly loves Germany will understand why the Jews had to be exterminated like the scum that they were (are). And only someone who has neutralized the Body Thetans in his body will know why he has to donate all his money to the Church of Scientology.
The sixth asked something about Indonesia, but basically the response was that Indonesia was not known internationally. Someone's (or his) grandmother had been on the Haj 6 times and met Indonesians but only knew they smiled all the time. Some Middle Eastern scholars accused Indonesian cultural/religious tolerance as being evidence of shallow Islam, but he thought authentic Islam was not only found in the Arab world, and that religion could be authentic anywhere. I agree, but then the condemnation of idolatry and false religions is a very basic tenet (Shahadah).
Closing remarks
We were urged to go beyond tolerance and develop interest and understanding, even if we had theological disagreements. We should be able to totally disagree and not have to compromise our religious beliefs, but understand the genuineness, sincerity and honesty of each other's beliefs to lead harmonious lives. He said many common people live like this (presumably they don't start rioting once someone says something controversial), and we should learn from them. I totally agreed, which is why PC BS and the Sedition Act both piss me off.
He said the Ottomans, after conquering Constantinople, actively preserved Christian monuments and still do so today (well, tourism money is very valuable). But then the Turks drink Raki, so. He also said he was hosted by 3 Baptist families when he was a student in the US, and never felt pressure to convert (oh, how times have changed!) On the contrary they were very interested in Islam and he was very comfortable with them.
He also related an anecdote: after an Islamic study tour, he had a closing event with live Arabian music which was a form of worship. People of other religions came in and started taking part. He thought that was good and asked why religious leaders could not do likewise. On this I disagree: taking part in a form of worship of another religion blasphemes both your religion (if you are religious) and theirs. And this coming from a non-religious person.
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