World Social Forum: Overcoming Violence
January 15th, 2004 by sfuqua
“India is going through enormous insecurity because religion is being
used for violence,” Siddhartha, a member of an inter-religious group
working for peace and justice in Bangalore, told participants at a
seminar at the World Social Forum in Mumbai.
From the Worldwide Faith News archives
22 January 2004 (WCC) —
“India is going through enormous insecurity because religion is being
used for violence,” Siddhartha, a member of an inter-religious group
working for peace and justice in Bangalore, told participants at a
seminar at the World Social Forum in Mumbai.
At the 20 January seminar on “Religious resources to overcome violence”
organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC), Siddhartha gave some
examples of religious-instigated violence in India. Recently in Mumbai, a
bomb reportedly placed by Muslims exploded, killing scores of people; in
2003 over 2,000 Muslims were “literally massacred in Gujarat in the name
of religion”.
For Siddhartha, the ruling majority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is
propagating a fundamentalist brand of Hinduism and relegating Muslims and
Christians to second-class status. “What will happen if the BJP wins the
election [scheduled for April this year] or is in a coalition where it
has more representation? How can a religion as inclusive as Hinduism
become so exclusive?” he asked.
On a more positive note, Siddhartha highlighted India's potential for
peace. He said that religious communities in the multi-religious nation
of over one billion people are challenged to work towards a “hermeneutic
of hope”, that is, to reinterpret their different religious traditions to
lift up the values of peace and justice in their core messages.
Reviewing the Middle East situation from a Muslim perspective, Mohamed
Mosaad from the Egyptian chapter of the United Religions Initiative (URI)
emphasized the need for religious leaders to give a spiritual dimension
to concrete situations like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and provide
spiritual resources that could help resolve it.
Referring to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, he said
that there is an “apologetic Islamic discourse” which seeks to define
“who is right and who is wrong” and to respond to questions being raised
in the West about violence and Islam.
He cautioned against misrepresentation of the Koran in order to respond
to a secular situation. Mosaad suggested that Muslims should reflect on
how a concept like Jihad (holy war) used to work in the past, and how
it could work now. In his provocative view, while Islam is not a religion
of peace and love, it is a religion of fairness and justice.
The director of the Jerusalem-based Inter-faith Encounter Association
(IEA), Yehuda Stolov, said that like Islam, Judaism is sometimes misused
to suit a political situation. Inter-religious dialogue allows people to
co-exist without hiding their differences, but putting political issues
aside. Formed in 2001 by peace activists, the IEA is dedicated to
promoting real co-existence and peace in the Holy Land and the Middle
East through cross-cultural study and inter-religious dialogue.
On the topic of violence against women, LFW executive secretary for Women
in Church and Society, Priscilla Singh from India, presented an LFW
contribution to the WCC Decade to Overcome Violence. The document,
entitled “Churches say no to violence against women”, presents the
results of a world-wide survey on the issue; it affirms that violence
against women is a global reality even within the church.
Religion, noted Singh, usually treats women as victims, often offering
only a “charitable response” on an individual basis. Instead, churches
should tackle the issue as a whole; to do so effectively, they need to
see the image of God beyond gender, promote masculine models that are
nurturing and caring, and revision and rewrite theology with a feminist
perspective.
Singh also called for efforts to go beyond dialogue towards concrete
experiences that allow a new kind of relationship between men and women
to develop.
Rejecting modern political 'messianisms', Rev. Jairo Suarez from the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia called for strong witness from
churches in the social and political sphere. The fact that fifty years of
civil war in his country have brought the churches together is a paradox,
he reflected.
Ordep Trindade, a Brazilian Candombli priest, stressed the message of
peace as well as the ecumenical dimension of this religion, brought to
Brazil by African slaves.
The seminar was moderated by Dr Guillermo Kerber from the WCC
International Relations team. In his opening remarks, Kerber suggested
that religion has played an ambiguous role in conflicts at the national
and international levels; while it has often fuelled conflicts, at other
times, it has made important contributions to overcoming violence.
Ms. Pauline Mumia, English editor of Lutheran World Information, the news service of the Lutheran World Federation, contributed to this article.
