Muslim majority 'hijacked' by radical groups

Fri, 06/27/2008 10:06 AM  |  Headlines

The three-day second World Peace Forum, aimed at finding solutions to combat violence at international and national levels, wraps up here Thursday. New York-based Religions for Peace, the largest international coalition of representatives from the world's great religions dedicated to promoting peace, took an active role in this conference. The Jakarta Post's Abdul Khalik talked with Religions for Peace secretary-general William F. Vendley on the role of religion in helping to eradicate violence.

Question: How do you see the results of this forum? Is there any consensus among participants on how to combat violence?
Answer: We can say there is a consensus that religions today, all of them, are extremely vulnerable to being hijacked by three major forces.

First, religions can be hijacked by the extremists that exist within every single tradition. These extremist groups will speak in the name of mainstream groups when they conduct violence.

Religion can also be taken over by opportunistic political forces, which use religion to achieve their political goals.

The press itself can be perhaps unintentionally hijacking religion because the press reports the most sensationalist dimension of human experience and those are often minorities who are claiming the platform of religion itself.

There's further a second consensus to joint condemnations of the shape of violence and injustice as we experience it together within society.

Participants of the forum agree that we can't confront violence adequately if we don't also look at the systematic shapes of violence. And we have to use an institutional imagination to try to harness our collective commitment.

What about efforts to protect minority groups?

There is also a consensus that religion itself is not the source of violence. But that religion can all too easily, and has in fact, contribute to violence.

And so there is this humility in each of the representatives of their own religious community. We're not pointing fingers at each other, but pointing fingers back at our own community's experience, and saying, that in fact, we as human beings have failed.

From inside the community flows very powerful concerns that we need to protect the most vulnerable among us, which are the minority groups. That's true for all countries.

Major powers are accused of being the main source of global violence as they have invested in arms production and wars. What's your comment?

There is a simple universal standard. The more capacity you have the more responsibility you have. If you have the capacity to stop people's suffering then you have the responsibility to use it.

It is easy to look for the sources of violence. Just look where great economic and political strength have accumulated. The U.S., for instance, has responsibility to build a system of fair and just transactions among nations and responsibility to build peace.

The world faces a very serious problem of misallocation of resources for defenses, armaments and investment in wars, compared to investment in the millennium goals. We need a global movement of solidarity and religious community of shared concerns that transcend national borders to demand accountability of organizations and major powers to stop the violence.

How do we deal with radical groups?

This is a forum for cooperation. Those who are willing to cooperate should be welcomed. I think anyone or groups willing to cooperate but with different views should be welcomed, including the radicals.

This is the criteria: I may disagree, but do I believe that you have the right to believe what you have believed? This is the condition. When people are not willing to accept the condition, it's not that they're not welcomed, they don't come to the table. So, let them come, but let them come with a willingness to say I'm prepared to disagree, and let's work together. This is the formula.

Could you give concrete examples on how this approach can work?

Based on my experience around the world, people with differences are usually willing to talk. Only a few people won't talk. And once we begin to talk we can see that we are human beings, and that we can agree on 90 percent of the issues.

Let's make a decision and work together on the 90 percent, but be patient on the 10 percent.

In the middle of the most difficult time of the war in Iraq, when there was very painful sectarian fighting going on, the Iraqi religious leaders were willing to come together, and to meet each other face-to-face, and to say what we can agree on, and how we shall work.

But once they agreed on what they could do together, it's amazing how quick they could solve many problems.

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