21.01.2004
What Comes First? Inter-Faith Dialogue or Resolving Differences
Inter-Denominational Approaches to Conflict Discussed at World Social ForumMUMBAI, India/GENEVA, 21 January 2004 (LWI) - A member of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) delegation participating in the Fourth World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai welcomed an LWF initiative on inter-faith collaboration to resolve peace in Africa. But he wondered whether individual religious groups were ready to receive and work with such a model.
Rev. Jairo Suarez, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia, while commending the work begun in the context of the Inter-faith Action for Peace in Africa said he considered the inter-religious approach as rather complex for participating Christian networks. Should it not have started by first focusing on peace efforts by individual religious groups such as Christian churches before combining such efforts with those of other faith communities? he asked. "Many of the churches do not agree on their approach to conflict. Are they then ready and equipped for an inter-religious group approach?"
Suarez was responding to a presentation by the coordinator of the inter-faith initiative Sheikh Saliou Mbacké, who was the main speaker at the LWF-organized WSF seminar on inter-faith action for peace in Africa.
Roman Catholic priest Bernard Janicot from Algeria welcomed the inter-faith approach but was concerned about its role in his country where society is not only faced with an intra-state conflict but also conflict within Islam, the predominant religion. He concurred with Suarez that religious groups had serious internal problems that hindered their effective participation in such a well-meaning inter-faith process.
A number of WSF participants in the LWF seminar expressed concern that women should be part of the process at both the leadership and grassroots level. In his presentation, Mbacké had pointed out that women and women's peace networks were actively engaged in peace efforts in conflict situations, and their presence was notable in the first summit and sub-regional conferences. But an inter-faith delegation to Liberia in October 2003 included only one woman representative. Women and youth, he stressed, played an important role in peace making in Africa. The plan of action mandates their involvement and full participation in inter-faith peace efforts on the continent.
Ugandan Anglican Bishop Baker M. Ocholla II commented on the situation of women in conflict using the example of northern Uganda where he is actively involved in the peace efforts of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI). "Conflict has brutalized women so much that they have become weapons of war," he said. Not only are an increasing number of women becoming widows because their husbands have been killed at war, many of them have been raped by armed militant groups, often in front of their families. For Ocholla II, participating in the WSF as an ARLPI representative, the issue of violence against women during war is an urgent task for religious leaders in the inter-faith initiative for peace in Africa. Ocholla II represented ARLPI at the summit in Johannesburg.
Rev. Monika Matthias of the Martha Protestant congregation, Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg and the Silesian Oberlausitz, Germany, commented on the need to involve ordinary church-goers in dialogue and conversations on an inter-faith basis. The average person, she noted, asks very basic questions about the faith of the other, and this was a very critical level in an inter-religious process such as the one Mbacké had presented. In her pastoral duties, Matthias also works with groups that focus on inter-religious issues and women's empowerment.
Mr Jules Wahare from Togo, representing the International Movement of Catholic Students at the WSF, noted that from a local perspective, an inter-faith process can be viewed with suspicion by people whose religious opinions are limited to "my religion's world view." "I can't imagine a Christian entering a mosque in my own village," he observed.
Islamic scholar Prof. Farid Esack, director of the Center for Progressive Islam in Cape Town, South Africa, wondered whether the approach to involve religious leaders in the inter-faith process was not too elitist. Such a process should involve the grassroots at the very initial stages, he argued.
Concluding, Rev. Dr Péri Rasolondraibe, the seminar's moderator and head of the LWF delegation to the WSF, emphasized the need to work with religious communities at all levels if the trend of conflict in Africa was to be changed. (715 words)
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