On July 16, a unique conclave of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus
and Sikhs was inaugurated in Madrid by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Its aim
is to bridge widening religious chasms that breed violence. The agenda was
relevant since religion has become one of the main sources of conflicts of
late.
The Madrid meeting was meant to reify "inter-faith dialogue", the nostrum of
our times for festering religious prejudices. King Abdullah termed the event
"historical" and, indeed, it had a few firsts to its credit. The fact that
Jewish thinkers were invited by a
Saudi monarch suggests that some ice has melted. Abdullah had earlier courted
Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in November 2007, the first-ever meeting
between a Christian pontiff and a reigning member of the House of Saud. The
idea of sustained inter-religious dialogue emerged from a convergence of minds
between Benedict and Abdullah.
In the wake of Osama bin Laden's declaration of a frontal war on
"Judeo-Christian civilization" and the tumult over cartoons insulting the
Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, the Saudi king's initiative in Madrid did counter
the trend of inter-religious recriminations and rancor. The custodian of
Islam's holiest sites took a step that might help assuage enraged persons who
see ongoing armed conflicts in different parts of the world as subsets of a
"clash of civilizations".
However, the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic taboos that plague Muslim and Jewish
societies could not be completely erased at the Madrid conference. Not a single
Israeli Jewish leader was on the invitees list of 288 religious and cultural
figures attending the event. The absolute horror which association with
Israelis evokes in conservative Muslim countries of the Middle East was thus
not dissolved.
It bears reminder that the recent candidature of Egyptian Minister of Culture,
Faruq Hosni, as the next head of the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) brought to the surface the worst forms of inter-religious
biases clouding the region. Tel Aviv lodged a formal protest that Hosni was
unacceptable because of his vow that "I'd burn Israeli books myself if I found
any in libraries in Egypt".
Hosni defended himself by contextualizing his controversial statement and
offering to pay a visit to the forbidden land itself, Israel. Dozens of
Islamist Egyptian intellectuals reacted by slamming Hosni for making a
"humiliating surrender to Israeli demands for the sake of personal gain".
Caught between the extremes, Hosni's strong candidature for the UN job hangs by
a thread.
Saudi Arabia's convening of an inter-faith parliament should raise eyebrows due
to its long tradition of lending moral, financial, diplomatic and military
support to extremist Islamist groups. The Saudi government's promotion of
hateful Wahhabi Islamic doctrines has done more damage to inter-religious
harmony than any other theological force. The other major source of intolerant
Islam is the Deobandi School, which inspires the Taliban and allied jihadis in
South Asia. Interestingly, in June this year, the Darul Uloom Deoband in
northern India issued a fatwa (binding religious ruling) that declared
terrorism and unjust violence as un-Islamic. King Abdullah's Madrid gathering
may have had a similar purpose of demonstrating that the citadel of Wahhabism
is turning a new leaf.
The worth of symbolic showpiece events like the Madrid conference should
ultimately be judged by whether Saudi Arabia has changed its actual foreign
policy of coddling extremists. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001, there was Western pressure on King Fahd, Abdullah's late father, to
democratize his kingdom and forswear fundamentalism. Fahd was considered a
master at outsourcing terrorism, wherein he convinced disgruntled Saudi
Islamists not to cause trouble at home but to feel free to carry out nefarious
activities outside the country's borders. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi
ambassador to the US at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center in
New York, gave out as much when he said, "We have never worried about the
effect of these organizations [like al-Qaeda] on our country."
The deep reverence and awe in which Saudi wealth is held in Sunni Muslim
communities from Morocco to Indonesia gave easy access to its missionary
Islamists to penetrate the farthest corners. They built mosques and trained
local imams but also seeded clandestine local militant movements. Gradually, a
virtual Saudi empire of jihad was constructed with predictable fallouts for
inter-religious harmony and political stability.
For the word "Islam" to have acquired negative connotations in many regions,
Saudi Arabia has to bear the blame. The Madrid conference is not enough
expiation unless King Abdullah also walks the talk and distances his regime and
its oil oligarchs from the schools and havens of Islamist extremism.
The geopolitical problem for Riyadh that stays its hand from complete
reformation is competition with Shi'ite Iran, whose own funding of radical
Islamist causes has been burgeoning. Iran's ability to break the sectarian
barrier and finance Sunni terrorist outfits like Hamas and the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad is a worrisome sight for the Saudis, as it implies loss of
traction over its former turf. Riyadh has not managed to reach out to Shi'ite
fundamentalists with the same revolutionary flexibility as Tehran.
During the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, the Saudi government displayed
frustration over its marginalization and blamed "elements inside Lebanon and
those behind them [Hezbollah and Iran]" for not "consulting and coordinating
with Arab nations". As long as the Saudi-Iran shadowboxing is a factor, it
would be suicidal from Riydah's point of view to give up patronage of Islamist
zealotry. It is therefore apt to conclude that the Madrid splash is much ado
about nothing.
The scale of dialogue of jamborees like the one that King Abdullah is presiding
over in Spain should also provoke skepticism. A few hundred religious leaders
and elites gathering in a mountainous royal palace west of Madrid can hardly
translate into genuine understanding at the level of communities and localities
in war zones and fraught societies.
For ordinary Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists to coexist, there
need to be grassroots-based mixed peace committees and citizen's volunteer
corps that can de-escalate tensions and reduce the intensity of clashes and
riots. Prevention or containment at the lowest possible level through
determined collective action is sorely lacking in many flashpoints.
Political scientist Ashutosh Varshney has proved that the presence of Gandhian
multi-faith voluntary institutions like unions, business associations, reading
clubs, professional bodies, non-governmental organizations, etc, saved some
Indian cities from Hindu-Muslim riots and pogroms. Those Indian cities which
lacked such civic institutions at the community level could not avoid iterated
bouts of horrible bloodshed in the name of God.
Modern-day communications and movements of people have ensured that practically
every society in the world is multicultural. Even classic European
nation-states that were originally carved out on the image of monocultures have
sizeable minorities of different faiths now.
Isolation being ruled out, the only solution to cohabitation of world religions
in such a fish bowl-like landscape is patient nurturing of syncretic
institutions at the bottom of the pyramid. The Saudis are quite adept at
building Islamic charities and religious institutions in the remotest
backwaters of many countries. Sadly, Madrid or no Madrid, these interventions
fuel divisions instead of healing them.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell
School of Citizenship at Syracuse University, New York.
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