It's been a great year for interfaith misunderstanding in America.
There was a U.S. senator's wild allegation about Islamic extremists infiltrating the American government.
There are the ridiculous -- and ongoing -- claims about a conspiracy to "impose sharia law in America," starting in Kansas and North Carolina, of all places!
And then there's the persistent myth -- like many other myths, strangely popular among Fox News viewers -- that Barack Obama is a Muslim, accompanied by the belief that being so, if it were true, would be a scandalous thing.
Then there were debunked claims -- purveyed by the website of a Christian organization ostensibly pursuing justice -- that the Muslim Brotherhood was crucifying their Christian opponents. The post is still up, with the words "Stop Christian Genocide in Egypt" prominently displayed.
And then there's the perpetual news about the latest hijinks of this or that crazed pastor, imam, rabbi or priest who -- despite their different traditions -- manage to mirror one another's stellar misunderstanding of "the other."
Muslims, of course, feel the heat of these misunderstandings. The Sikh community feels it as never before.
Whatever our faith tradition, we all should take the dangers of interfaith misunderstanding seriously because all of us -- Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, agnostics, everyone -- are affected.
Interfaith misunderstanding is a contagious disease. Misunderstanding among "us" begets hostility against "them," and hostility against "them" begets more hostility, which eventually circles back against "us." As the global fever of interfaith hostility rises, everybody potentially finds himself in somebody's crosshairs.
But beyond practical reasons for countering interfaith hostility with interfaith benevolence, there are powerful moral reasons for doing so.
For me, as a Christian, at the core of my faith is the call to love my neighbor as myself. Jesus makes clear that my neighbor is not merely my sister or brother -- someone like me who likes me. From his Sermon on the Mount to his parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus makes the audacious claim that my neighbor includes the stranger, alien, outsider, outcast and even enemy.
But I notice among many of my fellow Christians a strange and deep-seated resistance against this clear teaching of Jesus. It's as if we think he was a little overly idealistic on this one -- so we'd be better to stick with something more realistic: "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy."
I've been researching and writing on this subject for a long time now, and I have a new book this month that grapples with it in depth and detail: "Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? (Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World)." My conclusion is -- among my fellow Christians, and I imagine in other faith communities as well -- that interfaith misunderstanding flows from misunderstandings within our own faith. When we fail to understand the dark sides of our own history, the heart of our own doctrines, the purpose of our own liturgies and the thrust of our own mission, we will project our misunderstandings on our neighbors of other faiths.
In other words, hostility doesn't begin when we encounter the other. It begins when we're gathered together among us. It's an identity thing. The path to greater interfaith understanding begins in a fresh reformulation and deeper understanding of our own faiths. Those of us who have a voice in each of our faith communities can become agents, activists and examples of that better understanding.
Just sweep all the superstitious BS into the trash, and get on with your life.
We are to love our neighbor as ourself and do so by preaching the Truth. Where did Jesus promote 'interfaith understanding'?
Mark 16:15:
"And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."
The elders, chief priests and scribes (His own) rejected Jesus and His teaching.
Mark 8:31
"And He (Jesus) began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again."
If people in Christianity aren't in order, i.e. disobey His Word and teach false doctrine, what is your hope for 'interfaith understanding'? Do you use this as an opportunity to preach the Gospel?
And, if Christianity divides households, why should 'interfaith dialogue' be any different?
Micah 7:6
"For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house."
The Lord repeated this in Matthew 10:35-36:
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. 36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."
These families have found no solution other than to rent a room or erect a tent to shelter themselves during their forced exile.
Numbers of reports of kidnap, robbery, extortion and murder have been submitted to the police and no action was ever taken. In fact the gangs went as far as to steal the precinct computers to make sure any information about them disappear forever.
http://www.copticsolidarity.org/cs-releases/803-armed-terrorization-and-expulsion-of-copts
A report by Fady Talaat, for Al Akhbar News, published August 14, has the details. In Al Gallaweya Village, Sohag, Upper Egypt, Christians are being beaten, their stores destroyed, and their properties plundered. The attackers are declaring that “any Christian who dares to leave his house will be killed”; and the Copts are complaining that the police only arrive after the damage has been completely done.
http://www.copticsolidarity.org/cs-releases/784-copts-in-upper-egypt-attacked-beat-plundered
As Mark Durie points out in his book on dhimmitude, The Third Choice: "Even a breach by a single individual dhimmi could result in jihad being enacted against the whole community. Muslim jurists have made this principle explicit, for example, the Yemeni jurist al-Murtada wrote that 'The agreement will be canceled if all or some of them break it' and the Moroccan al-Maghili taught 'The fact that one individual (or one group) among them has broken the statute is enough to invalidate it for all of them.'"
http://www.raymondibrahim.com/12236/the-collective-punishment-of-egypt-christian-copts
One faith directs its main branches from trunk onward, second sub-branches, third twigs, leaves and flowers, fourth the fruit and so on. If one will know truly one will respect all faiths equally.
I respect all faiths equally, which is not at all.
There is no need for faith.
Silly me, I'll have to be more careful or I might become susceptible to the dreaded Islamophobia.
If the OIC have their way, soon EVERYWHERE will be Pakistan!
Every religion exists by claiming a monopoly on "spiritual truth," a monopoly on God. If it didn't it would no longer have a reason to exist. If all religions were true, it wouldn't matter what religion you believed in, and that would be the end of doctrinal religion.
The correllary is that every religion that claims a monopoly on truth must also claim that all other religions are wrong. If A is true, then B is false.
What we have is not a true "misunderstanding." we have countless religions all over the place each claiming a monopoly on "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," and each claiming that all other religions are wrong.
Can you imagine the Pope speaking, saying, "We believe the teachings of the Catholic church are true, and so are the teachings of the Buddhists, the Jews, the Protestants, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Sikhs and Zoroastrians, the Voodoons, the Mormons . . .?"
No. I am right. God is on my side. You are wrong. You'll go to hell.
The mistake is conflating two kinds of truth. The first kind is the truth of spiritual experience where one experiences meaning, purpose, inner peace, love, connection, a sense of transcendence and/or a sense of profound immanence of the ultimate in all things. The second kind is the truth of EXPLAINING all this. It is totally possible to believe one's explanatory truth is the correct way to understand the existential truth and yet still affirm that others with less accurate attempts at explanatory truth to still have the existential truth.
This way of doing religion has been around for a long time, but the modern version, called Liberalism, was best defined by Frederich Schliermacher in the early 19th Century. This way of thinking about faith, combined with a realization that one's own Tradition's explanatory truth is not absolute, is the well spring of "Deep Ecumenicism." Even the Vatican has embraced Deep Ecumenicism in the modern age.
Religion does NOT have to be done the way Fundamentalists of all Traditions do it, and a lot of religion is not done that way.