Newsletter No. 975
News-Analysis
April 13, 2008

 

UPDATE ON KING ABDALLAH’S DIALOGUE AMONG FAITHS INITIATIVE

Keely Fahoum (Shingetsu Member No. 112) has directed our attention toward an article written by Caryle Murphy for the Religion News Service, which was picked up yesterday by the Washington Post. The article provides us with more information about the “dialogue among faiths” initiative proposed by Saudi King Abdallah to his Japanese guests on March 24th.

King Abdallah has apparently been mulling over these ideas for a couple of years. It is said that the elderly king has grown deeply concerned about what he perceives as being the breakdown of family values and personal ethics, as well as the rise of atheism.

In the face of this challenge, King Abdallah has come to believe that “the three main religions” of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism must begin to come together to restore ethics, reason, and humanity. He wants “all religions to sit together with their brothers faithfully and sincerely as we all believe in the same God.”

Both the breadth and the limitations of the Saudi king’s proposal are becoming rather clearer. What he really seems to be talking about is the perceived need for greater unity among the three “Abrahamic” faiths with their shared belief in monotheism and a certain line of West Asian prophets. In this age when political violence is thought by many to have its origin in religious divisions among these three faiths, this initiative could be helpful in lowering tensions.

Personally, however, my own analysis is that the real problems are rooted in a fierce competition for political and economic power -- not about religion per se -- but it also easy to see that the widespread perception that it is about religion complicates matters and makes them much more difficult to resolve. In this sense, I welcome the king’s initiative as an important and positive step.

On the other hand, we do get the sense that the Saudi king doesn’t think much about atheism, agnosticism, or non-monotheistic faiths. His view is natural for a believing Muslim, as the Prophet Muhammad himself was abused by the pagan Meccans and the early Muslim community’s very first struggle was against their polytheistic fellows. Still, we are left wondering if the Saudi king is really pining for a genuinely more tolerant 21st century, or rather the “purer” world of the 7th century.

At any rate, we might conclude by posing two questions whose answers may help to define the scope and limitations of what is now emerging from Riyadh:

Who are the Saudis going to invite as the representatives of the Jewish faith?

What will be the role, if any, of the non-monotheistic Japanese who played a key part in provoking this Saudi initiative?

COMMENTARY

1) From Elmostafa Rezrazi of Mohammad V University and the Maghreb Arab Press Agency on April 13, 2008:

The article of Caryle Murphy pointed out by Keely Fahoum is interesting, but it requires some clarifications to reveal the confusion of the author in their analysis and their unawareness about the history of the Japanese-Islamic dialogue process, if not their attempt to mislead readers on the Saudi initiative.

First of all, let me clarify here that for Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries to meet with Jewish leaders does not necessarily require them to meet people from Israel. Jewish religious authorities could be invited from the US, France, Morocco, Egypt, or elsewhere, in addition to the possibility of Israel. Furthermore, even inside Israel there are several religious authorities who oppose the policy of connecting the Jewish faith with state policy towards Palestinians.

The author need not worry about this issue, since Saudi diplomacy is intelligent enough to avoid mistakes, and since in the Arab world we can differentiate between Judaism as a noble faith and Judaism as a state ideology of Israel.

King Abdallah's decision to request all religions 'to sit together with their brothers faithfully and sincerely,' was a not an offhand pronouncement, as the author tries to suggest. The decision came after he:

1) Presented the idea of holding such an interfaith meeting to Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia and they approved it

2) Discussed the idea of dialogue among religions with Pope Benedict XVI at their November 2007 meeting at the Vatican

3) Planned to hold conferences to consult with Muslim brothers all over the world to obtain their viewpoints (This might include Egypt as a partner in the Japanese-Islamic dialogue, and with its strong Azhar circle, Morocco as the president of the Quds Committee, and Turkey and perhaps Iran as two influential non-Arab countries)

The king will also consult with the United Nations in order to make his initiative possible.

I figure that the terrorism issue is not the only motivation for this dialogue, as some suggest. The Saudi government is among the most active in campaigning against the phenomenon of terrorism. The real motivation is this degradation of mutual respect between religions. In fact, King Abdullah's call for dialogue comes at a time when religious tensions have been aggravated by the recent reigniting of the Danish cartoons issue. Danish newspapers reprinted the controversial cartoon of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, and the other similar actions such as the case of the Fitna film.

As for the question of what will be the role, if any, of the non-monotheistic Japanese in this Saudi initiative?

I guess that the author is uninformed about Japanese dealings with Islamic issues. In fact, most Japanese specialists in the area of Islamic affairs are moderate, tolerant, and trying to keep distance between their own views and the 'Bernard Louis-ist' political agenda. I refer here to Doshisha University's Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions, which launched a five-year project, and held dozens of dialogues between the leaders of different faiths (see http://www.cismor.jp).

Japanese involvement in this dialogue is not strange since the Japanese-Islamic dialogue began before the 9/11 under the well-known Kono Initiative headed by the eminent Japanese philosopher Yuzo Itagaki.