Interfaith Transitioning From Dialogue To Action

Today is not like yesterday. And tomorrow shall be different. Time is galloping forward bypassing most of us. For God owns time, enjoining us to own ourselves. The Quran says: “Surely God does not change the condition of a people unless they change what is in themselves.” (Chapter 13, verse 11). The best popular song I heard in Cairo 10 days ago was titled: “I Am the Ruler of a Republic Called Nafsi (Myself).”

Herein lies the essence of sovereignty. The sovereignty of the individual under the mercy of the Creator. The essence of the need to change, to improve, to abandon the ways of yesterday for the sake of today. To realize that faith is one; faith is non-negotiable; faith is not a fad; faith is an inner quality seeking to burst out to commune and to communicate. With whom?

With others with faith, without trying to change their faith. Your faith becomes stronger when it reaches out to others through their faiths. That is when you recognize that your God-given sovereignty is separable but interdependent on allowing the other to pursue peacefully their path to their own faith.

That is interfaith, which needs to transition from dialogue to action. Here I am expressing an abandonment of the method of “conference” of mere words. In favor of an espousal of “interfaith in action.” Action at the level of the individual, the repository of God’s grace, God’s implanted sovereignty, the invisible power to move us to the celestial sphere of goodness and compassion. Each chapter of the Quran, and each action by a Muslim begins with “In the Name of God, The Merciful, the Compassionate.”

The holocaust did not occur by itself. ISIS did not start by itself. The wars, both just and unjust, do not start by themselves. The butchering by ISIS of others of every faith does not occur in a vacuum. Millions, now running away from the lands of Islam to the welcoming arms of western communities, do not simply get up and flee. In all of these situations, the hand of darkness is casting the shadow of annihilation over them.

Now interfaith has a decided role. A role of action. Thus faith must first begin by evolving into conceptional directions.

Through new concepts, through ijtihad - the application of the mind to the non-changing text. Creating new institutions, new media, new leadership, new civility. Civility which, for example, would frown on insulting a sitting president of the US, by calling him “a closet Muslim.” As if Islam and Ebola are one and the same.
The sins of the bad few should not be transferred to millions upon millions whose hands are free from shedding the blood of others.

And if we are serious about putting interfaith in action, let us forget about the need for an intergovernmental organization, like the UN to do it for us. Why? Because the Charter of the UN, which was celebrated on October 24, adores only national sovereignty. It celebrates the sovereignty of the State, leaving the sovereignty of the individual behind. It makes of the veto a tool for obstruction, not a medium for good change.

Just think about it!!  Non-governmental organizations, like Catholic Charities, or Doctors Without Borders, or the thousands of Jewish and Islamic charitable organizations, are more effective than the UN. They, through putting interfaith into action, are eclipsing the UN Economic and Social Council and the World Health Organization combined. Non-Governmental Organizations are what the UN Charter, in its preamble, calls “We the People.”

Today, the weakest human organization is government. In fact, America’s neoconservatives today call for the destruction of federal government. Let us face it: Today’s effective actor is the individual. Functioning through the great marble halls of interfaith festooned by the chandeliers of collective action.

As we seek that interfaith action, we need new vehicles. New vehicles are motored by a new vocabulary to express them, to carry them out. We need to know, for example, that in Islam “Allahu Akbar” is not a battle cry. Terrorism must be forced to disgorge that manipulation of religious vocabulary. Its real meaning is: “We are all equal before God.”

And “Tawheed” (meaning the Oneness of God) is the glue that binds our God-given sovereignties to one another. Elohim and Allah are holy names of the same Creator.

And for vehicles, we need to launch or refurbish or support institutions which systematically put interfaith into practice. The Sophia Center of the Huntington Seminary of the Immaculate Conception was a beacon for interfaith in action. I served there. But with the passing of its founder, Father Bob Smith, it died with him. What a loss!!

For 40 years, Temple Emanuel has been one of my fora. Its banner, held aloft, became the vehicle for events like this one. And the iconic Al-Azhar of Cairo, the citadel of moderate Islam, since the year 975 AD, is now leading “the Religious Revolution” to counter jihadism.

From vocabulary to vocation. In secular Egypt which I visited earlier this month, I saw a progression. From the horrible year of Islamic rule by the Muslim Brotherhood (2012-2013) to action through interfaith. Represented by millions of Muslims cheering on the Coptic church.

And in 2011, Al-Azhar has been calling for a huge change of concepts. It advocated that “Islam does not recognize a State based solely on religion.” The world outside of Egypt did not hear that historic call. Reason: it was in Arabic.

The Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia intone the myth of a Sunni Islam vs. Shii Islam. But Pope Francesco, the Jesuit in white robes, the Pope of the Poor, is a better defender of Islam than the Wahhabis in their keffiyehs and white robes. For a long time, the Jesuits have immersed themselves in the study of the Quran and Islam.

The second successor of the prophet Muhammad was Omar. Omar gave specific orders to the Muslim armies upon their arrival at Jerusalem in the middle of the 8th centuries. I teach his legal decrees at Fordham Law. He prohibited the sequestration of churches and temples. That was interfaith in action.

Four centuries later, St. Francis of Asisi put his interfaith into practice. That was nine centuries before the Wahhabis co-ruled Saudi Arabia. He tried to mediate the conflict between the Crusaders and Saladin -a Kurd.

In the New Egypt, the secular Constitution of 2014 provides for the official recognition of the Torah and the Bible. All Jewish temples in Egypt are now being refurbished.

This is the new age of the individual -sovereign, rebellions, suspect of authority, has the social media at his or her fingertips.

But that individual does not know what to do -except scream. Let us heed the call of that sovereign and work toward changing that scream into a symphony of putting interfaith into action.