The parable of the loving Father

Victor Edwin SJ

Both Christians and Muslims adhere to faith in One God and both strive to do the will of God in our lives. This theological affinity places both the group of believers on a common space, despite profound differences in how we understand One God and how we respond to his most holy will.

Sometimes, Muslim friends ask why God should become human to guide humanity reach heaven. I am aware that in this one question they express their Islamic conviction and raise a host of deep theological questions. Their Islamic conviction is that the human person has in his/her fitrah (nature) is directed to know One God and obliged to obey and worship the One God.

Human persons consistently rebelled against this nature and strayed away and worshiped gods. God sent prophets to instruct communities to return to worship and submit to the one true God. All prophets preached essentially the same message: worship God and obey His will. Revelation is thus effectively guidance.

Consequently, Muslims reject the doctrines of incarnation and redemption which are central to Christian faith.  Their questions range from ‘how can God suffer and die on the cross? Why do we need ‘sacrifice’ when God forgives when man and woman repent? They believe that repentance automatically wipes away sins of the repentant sinner. Some theologians would add sins are forgiven ‘if God wills’. Moreover, they also ask, how can a sinless person suffer for the other? Their belief is grounded on their holy book, the Qur’an. Qur’an admits that Adam’s sin has consequence for his descendants, but “No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another” [Qur’an 6:164; 7:28; 7:15; 35:18; and 39:7].

Some time ago, I found myself in the midst of similar questions. I suggested to a Muslim friend who asked the question that we read a little ‘story’ that speaks of the heart of Christian faith. The following story, a parable, if you like to call it, is taken from the writings of Christian W Troll, a Jesuit scholar on Islam and Christian Muslim relations. 

This is the story of a loving father…     

There lived a wealthy and widely respected banking director in Frankfurt. He was married and had several children. They resided in a magnificent villa in the lovely green and quiet outskirts of the city. They lacked nothing. 

But one day the youngest son disappeared. In fact, his busy father had not noticed that this son became friends with at group of youths in the neighborhood. These were youngsters who were given to drugs and dreamed of a life of arrant independence, for away from straight German society. Without informing his father, one day the son had disappeared, he left for the Goan coasts of western India. 

He lived off the money which his father had put into a special bank-account towards his university education.

This sudden and sly departure deeply saddened and hurt the father. It took some time for him to discover his son’s whereabouts. He wrote him letter after letter. But his letters never brought him any reply. This is what he wrote:

My dear son,
I think of you constantly. I do not know why you left me. Perhaps I have been too busy with my work and thus failed to be with you as much as you would have liked and deserved. Maybe it is precisely this that made you feel unwanted and lonely at home. But whatever may have happened, please do come back. And please be sure that I have pardoned you and desire to be close to you, to spend much time with you. All you have to do is come back home. I think of you all the time, every day, and I long for the day of your return home.

The son did not respond in any way to the father’s plea. But one day the father learned of some friends of the family who intended to spend their holiday in India. He immediately contacted them and informed and told them about his son in Goa. He mercifully implored them to visit his son while they were there. “Here is his address. Please go and personally tell him in my name how very much I yearn for his coming back home. Because of his absence and silence, I suffer deeply in mind-and-heart. Please try to persuade him to believe that in no way do I harbor any grudge against him. On the contrary …

The family’s friends went to India and met the son. Their unexpected visit surprised and profoundly moved him. At first he was inclined to return back to Germany with them. But as much as he tried he found it difficult to separate himself from his friends and their frivolous life-style. This is in spite of the fact that he was left with practically no money and so was compelled to beg for his survival.

When his friends back in Frankfurt informed the father about this, he said to himself: “I myself must go to Goa, India, to be reunited with my son. In any event, life without him has become meaningless for me... I will resign from my position and become a ‘hippie’ like him. Just to be with him will be my joy in life. When he sees and understands my concern and deep love for him first hand, his heart will surely not remain unmoved. As I see it, this is the only way, hopefully, that he will be able freely to decide to return home with me.

But his family, friends and associates in Frankfurt protested: “How can you abandon your important position in the company, which is crucial to the economy of the State? Just because you want to join your incorrigibly ungrateful son? Forget it! You are exaggerating! Have not you already done all that’s possible and expected of you as a righteous and merciful father? You discovered his whereabouts. You sent him letter after letter. Even messengers! Your way of acting now is outrageous, even scandalous, not worthy of your high standing. Furthermore, your son is intelligent enough to understand your many invitations and your generous offer to forgive him in spite of everything he had done. Now let him act like a responsible person: he knows quite well what to do.

Still, the father insisted: “Everything that I have done has had no effect on my beloved son. It is clear to me that he lacks the courage to return home alone. When he sees me, touches me, hears my voice, surely he will be moved. It is really up to me now to take the imitative. I will become like him and join him. He will surely repent. I know my son.

The father, affluent and renowned banker, resigned from his honorable position, put on back pack on his shoulders and so made the long journey to the shores of Goa in India. When he met his son, his son was completely overwhelmed, deeply ashamed. His first reaction was again to reject his father, but his father just stayed on, without uttering many words. Eventually the son’s resistance began to soften. But one day he went to his father who lovingly embraces him and so both returned home together. 

We remained in silence for a long time. As a relater I found a deep sense of peace and joy. My Muslim friends’ silence was also profound. We felt that our love for one another, I, a committed Christian and he a committed Muslim, have deepened. I continue to honor him and his faith convictions and he mine. My reflection is that in this approach both of us allow the truth to overwhelm us. We do not monopolize truth and adherers of one God we seek Truth. We feel that we are co-pilgrims.  

Iftar Party at St. Xavier's School, Delhi

Santosh Benedict SJ

"We have to bring up our young people to think and speak respectfully of other religions and their followers", said Pope Francis in a letter signed by him from the Holy See to greet our Muslim brothers and sisters at the end of Ramadan.

In the month of Ramadan, Muslims commemorate the revelation of the Quran. They thank Allah for the gift of the holy book that guides them to worship one God and obey his holy will. It is also a month of celebration and social solidarity. It is a happy month, so to say… not a glum month of fasting! Muslims indeed look forward to this month. Muslims experience nearness with God and with one another during the fasting days. Ramadan is the month of renewal and forgiveness. Islam teaches Muslims to forgive one another. The recitation of the Quran [tarawih] urges Muslims to ask for forgiveness. On Id al-Fitr, Muslims celebrate the forgiveness of God. In the practice of halal-bi-halal, Muslims visit their parents and friends to ask for forgiveness for any wrongs they committed against them.

Ramadan is also the month when they experience hunger. It is a time for intense awareness of the plight of the poor. During this month they take a special interest in feeding the poor. At the end of Ramadan they make a special offering called zakat al-fitrah so that poor too can celebrate the Id al-Fitr joyfully.

What better way to put this in action than to hold an Iftar Party on 4 August at St Xavier's, a Jesuit school in Delhi. Iftar party is the community meal, hosted every evening in the month of Ramadan, where the Muslims ritually end their fast with traditional food. Fr Tom Kunnunkal SJ, President, Islamic Studies Association, in collaboration with Indialogue Association organized this event. Fr Victor Edwin SJ assisted them. Indialogue Foundation is established by the members of Hizmet movement, inspired by Mr Fethullah Gulen to foster unity among Islam and other religions of the world through education. 

Indialogue is an action and research-oriented dialogue and peace foundation, founded in New Delhi in 2005, the imagination and fortune of a group of Turkish and Indian people inpired by Mevlana Jalal-ad-Din Rumi, ventured to promote and encourage local, national, international, inter-civilizational, intercultural, interfaith, inter-communal and inter-ethnic dialogue; Love, tolerance, understanding, reconciliation, harmony, co-existence, tranquility and peace; to encourage intellectuals and scholars and to provide opportunities for a comprehensive and deliberate thinking, brain-storming on humanitarian topics and issues; conduct proactive studies and activities on the causes of wars and violent conflicts, develop tools for early recognition of tensions, and formulate conflict mitigation and peace-building strategies. Now the association has cultural and educational centres all over the world.

At the event, Fr Tom Kunnunkal and Mr Bilal, President, Indialogue gave peace messages to the small gathering of representative of Indialogue, Muslim friends from the neighborhood, administrative staff of St. Xavier's school, staff and students of Vidya Jyoti College of Theology, Delhi and members of the Focolare Movement. Mr Masroor, who works as librarian at Vidya Jyoti said that it was a good occasion for people of the two faiths to come together and especially to celebrate an Islamic function in a Jesuit school. He also mentioned that Muslims believe that if a poor person is even offered a glass of water, Allah would bless them. Fr PR John said that he was impressed by the way the Muslims prayed, though the words were limited to a few verses from the Quran, the reverence captivated his attention.

In unveiling her new vision for relationship with Muslims, the Catholic Church in her Vatican II document Nostra Aetate declared: “Upon the Muslims too, the Church looks with esteem”. The document tells us the reason for this esteem. “They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, maker of heaven and earth and speaker to men. They strive to submit wholeheartedly even to His inscrutable decrees, just as did Abraham, with whom the Islamic faith is pleased to associate itself”. Islamic Studies Association is firmly grounded on Gospel spirituality as taught by the Council documents. 

In fact on 3 August, the Imam of the neighborhood Mosque played host to more than twenty members of the staff and students of Vidya Jyoti College at their place. It was a privilege to host them once again at our premises the very next day. Both the events, in a small way aimed at building relationships of respect and trust with Muslim brethren and vice versa. Carefully and sensitively nurtured relationships have the inbuilt spirituality to work for resolving conflicts, restoring justice, healing of memories, reconciliation and peace building. Let's hope that this 'expression of esteem and friendship' may spread all over, especially in the hearts of every person. 

Dear Readers:

Welcome to April 2013 issue of Salaam.

Thanks for your encouragement and support.

Pushpa Anbu SVD editor

Victor Edwin SJ managing editor

Editorial – Dialogue a new way of being human

Sophie Ryan – ‘Religious Cooperation and Harmony’ - from a youth perspective

Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ – Working with Muslims for a better INDONESIA

Paul Jackson SJ – Women in Islam

Jean-Marc Balhan SJ – A Jesuit Community in Ankara

Lucinda Mosher, Th.D. – Development of Virtuous Circles:
 the Building Bridges Seminar under Rowan Williams

Victor Edwin SJ – Emmanuel Crowther:  a little bird that announced a new spring in Christian-Muslim relations in India

Tom Kunnunkal SJ – Streams of Spirituality for Interfaith Thinking

M.A.Leo Anand SJ – Christian Muslim Dialogue: A Call for Greater Solidarity

Editorial

From the desk of the president of ISA Fr Tom Kunnunkal SJ

DIALOGUE A NEW WAY OF BEING HUMAN: 

We live in a multi-cultural and multi-religious world.

We live in a world that makes us feel good. We also live in a world that is not at ease. Many, in our world, experience a lot of tension and fear about what could happen that would cause them injury, even serious injury or death. We live in a modern world created through knowledge and technology and has a great deal of abundance. Side by side, we also find many, both the rich and the poor, experiencing lack or absence of inner peace and hence a scarcity mentality. Adding more items to the many items we already have will not help us to find a solution. We need a new mindset, a new relationship, a new connection, a new way of being human. God in his wisdom has created a beautiful world. One great reason that the world is so beautiful is it is so diverse. We see it well illustrated in Nature. We see it in every human being, so uniquely different from any other, with no duplicates. It does not take much imagination to realize how quickly we will get totally bored with a world and its peoples if everything and everyone looked the same. That will be an insufferable hell on earth. So we thank God for diversity. We thank God for the diverse, multi-religious and multi-cultural India we have. Each community and its peoples have made many significant contributions to create the beautiful India we have. This is the strength of India also. Therefore, inter-faith dialogue must remain a non-negotiable constituent of the new India we want to build together. See Dialogue as a planned effort to sustain and take forward this beautiful India. That is why we need to resist strongly any attempt to make India mono-cultural, mono-religious.

What are the stumbling blocks?

Religions were meant to promote togetherness and communion and not to divide people. I find a fundamental cause for division in the three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which share a common Abrahamic spiritual foundation. Each makes the claim that they have the truth and the whole truth and that God has made a special revelation to them alone.  God’s salvific presence in the world and the way God reveals Self to humans is a mystery. God is beyond any borders that we humans create. Can truth be proprietary to any one group or religious tradition? Obviously, only God can claim to be the sole and ultimate proprietor of all truth. But God shares His truth with all of us.  We are all pilgrims and seekers. The invitation is that we join hands and travel together as fellow pilgrims.   

Call to partner in restoring the integrity of God’s world

Christians believe that God, who has so uniquely fashioned each one of us and sent us into this world, has also a mission for us, both personal and collective. Over the centuries, the integrity and wholeness of creation has deteriorated greatly, mostly due to the rank abuse of freedom and human greed. In that process, the human race, the great and wonderful creation of God, has become less and less human and more and more hostile to one another, mirroring the behaviour we see in ‘Animal Planet’.

It is a joint venture, by persons of all religious traditions

In the divine plan, the restoration of creation and the building of an alternate universe can only be possible thorough a joint venture. How do we know this? Such a huge cosmic project cannot be successfully achieved, by any single group. ButChristians and Muslims, forming nearly 40 percent of the world population, have a major share of that responsibility.

Faith is the gift of Jesus, not a new religion

The Gospel tells us that the single point agenda of Jesus, namely His Mission, was precisely to re-build the world. He invites us to become partners and engage in this process of re-creation of a new human community. Living in a highly divided and stratified society of his time, Jesus found the courage to critique and cross the many borders and walls created by prejudices, stereotypes, ignorance and religious prescriptions. He called His mission, Kingdom building on earth. His gift to us was not another religion, but Faith. That faith has provided us with a new lens to see who God truly is; see ourselves as beloved of God; and all others as His precious sons and daughters; and has given us a personal and collective mission to re-build our world to its original integrity, through love, forgiveness and service. Jesus was very critical of those who tried to attain holiness of life by a strict observance of man-made rules and prescriptions. Instead, He enabled us to see life as a call, a mission, a great task of re-building the human community here on earth. Can this be done? Yes. Difficult? Surely. Impossible? No.

Dialogue is an effective strategy to recreate God’s beautiful world

The strategic instrument for this re-creation and the fashioning of an alternate universe is Dialogue. If we see dialogue as an opportunity to convince the other of our truth and show them their error, we will surely fail, as we have numerous records of such failures in the past.   

The Church recommends a four-fold dialogue strategy:

Dialogue of life, where people strive to live in an open and neighbourly spirit, sharing their joys and sorrows, the human problems and their preoccupations.

Dialogue of action where Christians collaborate and work with others for the integral development and liberation of peoples.

Dialogue of religious experience, where, persons rooted in their own religious traditions, share their spiritual riches, for instance, with regard to prayer and contemplation, faith and searching for God, the Absolute.

Dialogue of theological exchange, where specialists seek to share their understanding of their respective religious heritages and to appreciate each other’s spiritual values.

Can interreligious dialogue, under the above four, and in particular under the first three, become an effective instrument for personal change and for  enhancing our wellness of life and witness?

Read the vivid narratives of dialogue in action in this issue

Let us admit it.     We have not been very enthusiastic about engaging in dialogue for personal or societal change. What hinders us from pursuing this path? It is our decision to remain within the small personal comfort zones, within our small personal circle of life and within borders that are defined by our own country, by our own ethnic group, by our own religion, by our own  culture and by the social conditioning we have received. These, like strong RC walls,  have imprisoned us from early childhood.

Can we break free? Yes, when we dare to open a window to a new world, as Sophie Ryan did when she, an Australian, visited India and later Thailand and asked and found new answers for life and living. Or take the case of Franz Magnis-Suseno. His narrative of his readiness to go beyond borders and establish contact with the Muslims in Indonesia, which has 98 Muslim population, provides a good illustration of what ‘dialogue of life and action’ can achieve. Possessing the right kind of knowledge, mindset and attitudes enabled him to find pathways of appreciation and acceptability by his numerous Muslim friends, including those in the political establishment. Paul Jackson writing on ‘Women in Islam’, makes a telling comment: “Muslims are no longer living in a world of their own today” The sooner they realize this, the better for them. Reference to living within a cocoon is obviously applicable to others as well. Next, we meet and appreciate the efforts of a Jesuit community in Ankara, Turkey, with 99% Muslim population but where the Government has adopted a strong secular ethos, described by Jean-Marc Malhan. Though the idea was to find ways of promoting inter-faith dialogue they are now mostly engaged in social and pastoral work. Lucinda Mosher narrates the details of the project of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury  of “Building Bridges” in order to learn from the over 1000 years of Christian-Muslim interaction and the problems and opportunities that each community faces in a pluralistic world. Emmanuel Crowther, a Sri Lankan Jesuit’s entry into dialogue with Muslims provides insights into this relatively new initiative, where later Victor Courtois and others would follow. It heralds a new spring in Christian-Muslim relations in India, says Edwin Victor. Tom Kunnunkal commenting on an inter-faith meeting, titled “Streams of Spirituality” with scholarly inputs from the perspectives of different religions, says that dialogue must be founded on spirituality and hence the focus must shift from religion to spirituality, where we will find much that is common ground. Leo Anand sees Christian-Muslim dialogue as a call to greater solidarity.

‘Religious Cooperation and Harmony’ - from a youth perspective

Sophie Ryan

My name is Sophie Ryan and I am currently a Year 11 student at St Ursula’s College, here in Toowoomba. I have been asked here today to speak about ‘Religious Cooperation and Harmony’ - from a youth perspective. When I sat down to write this presentation, I had to ask myself, ‘What IS religious cooperation and harmony? And what on earth do YOU, a 17 year old school student, know about it?’

I decided that the best way to go about finding my opinion on this topic was to pinpoint what I do know about it. I asked myself to think about the role of religion in my life and what I have seen of it in other people’s lives.

I was born in Brisbane and for the first part of my life, I grew up and was raised in Brisbane. As the capital of Queensland, Brisbane is home to people of all different sorts of nationalities, cultures and religions. But for me, I might as well have been raised on Mars for all I knew about the diversity of this city. Because it didn’t have anything to do with me and my Barbie dolls, I thought the girl in my year 1 class who was a vegetarian didn’t eat meat because she thought it tasted funny.... not because she was a Buddhist. I thought the lady who shopped at the same fruit store as us kept her whole body covered except for her eyes because she was really sun sensitive, and I thought that everyone was Catholic just like me.

I guess you could say that I lived a bit of a sheltered life. When I was 7 years old, my family relocated to a cattle property just outside the small country town of Glen Innes, in New South Wales. Now, living on a cattle property didn’t quite expose me to the cultural diversity of Australia! The most culturally diverse aspect of my life there was probably when mum cooked us fried rice or a curry every now and then.

So now, I bet you’re asking yourself, what has this girl got to say about Religious Cooperation? This very sheltered life of mine changed when my family moved back to Queensland and I began high school at St Ursula’s College here in Toowoomba. At St Ursula’s, the College ethos is ‘Serviam’ which means, to serve. And from my very first day at St Ursula’s, I began to learn of a different type of service; one that didn’t involve money or recognition, but justice. I began to learn about the issues in this world - issues that shocked me to the core. I began to understand the harsh reality that this world isn’t fair. While I sleep tucked up in bed at night, there are countless girls and boys who don’t even have a bed, let alone a blanket to keep them snug. When I complain to mum and dad that I’m so hungry that I’m ‘starving’, there are millions of people in the world who actually are. And as I began to grasp this reality, I discovered a part of myself that could not just ‘understand it’, a part of me that completely refused to accept that this is how things are and how they will remain.

And so, I began to question it. I began to question why I stand here, with an education, clothes on my back and the knowledge that I will eat tonight, while so many would not dare to dream of such good fortune. What did I do to be so lucky? As I began to ask more and more questions about why things are the way they are, I grew closer and closer to my great Uncle, who has lived in India since before I was born. Uncle Paul, a Jesuit priest based in Patna, the capital of Bihar, quickly became my ‘go to guy’ - when I had a ‘question’ or a problem, I’d shoot Uncle Paul an email.

However, it still came as a huge surprise when last year my Grandma asked if I’d like to be her travelling companion to visit Uncle Paul in India. And so, it was in late November that I went on my first overseas trip and ventured into a place where English was not the spoken language.

Patna District is home to over 5.5 million people, with an average of 1802 people to each square kilometre. It was here that I stayed with Uncle Paul and his fellow Jesuits for 10 days. It was here that, for the first time in my life, I was stripped of the materialistic Aussie way of life and experienced a new perspective of the world. From living with a group of men whose most valuable possessions were their vows, including one of poverty, to speaking to the Enclosed Carmelite sisters through iron bars because they had freely embraced a life of prayer and work, secluded from the outside world, I was blessed with a handful of experiences that I never expected to have.

Being so wholly immersed in this strict, harsh lifestyle completely deprived of the indulgences I’ve grown up with – it was as though I’d been living with a pair of sunglasses on and now, I was taking them off for the first time. In taking off these glasses of mine, I could see that I’d lived my entire life under a completely false understanding. Despite our best intentions, we DO believe that happiness comes about through having lots of ‘stuff’ - the best electronics, the most money, the most lavish food. But without these glasses on, it dawned on me that rich is not a word that should be associated with money, but with people and with faith.

Here I was living without a phone, without a computer, without hot water - and it felt like Christmas. I was surrounded by people who ‘had nothing’, yet they were more hospitable than any wealthy ‘upper class’ person. These people did not rush about constantly thinking of something else yet never appreciating where they were. When they spoke to you, they were with you 100%. This realisation hit me in while sitting having a cup of tea with a man who has been battling with the effects of polio which had struck him when he was a boy. He pulled out his prize mug with pride. And guess what. It was a St Ursula’s College Toowoomba mug! In India, on the other side of the world - what are the chances? As we sat and chatted, he told me that Uncle Paul had given it to him after visiting St Ursula’s many years ago, deeming the mug too much of an indulgence for himself. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Ever since starting at St Ursula’s, I’d always thought of those mugs, which we give to guests, as incredibly tacky - a complete waste of money. But seeing the enjoyment this ‘tacky’ St Ursula’s mug brought him made me see that we don’t need the ‘best’ of everything - that less really can be more.

Being in India, I was exposed to religion like I had never seen it before. I saw religion as it is supposed to be, a source of light in places of darkness, a way to bring people together. I could see that, for people who live in extreme poverty, faith IS a possession, a possession that no one can take away and therefore it means more than any material object ever could. For people who know hardship, faith is a way to be happy.

This made me think. Here in Australia people generally place possessions above religion, above spirituality... and ironically, we’re never content! Our nation now looks at the highest rates of suicide that there’s ever been. Yet, in India, where faith seems to generally be placed higher than ‘things’, many people are happy. Have we made a serious mistake in our priorities and not even realised it? Coming back from India, I answered my own question. I think we’ve lost ourselves while we’ve been too busy pursuing the concept of wealth and of being ‘advanced’. We’ve forgotten what’s important. When did we start believing that wants are more important than needs?That looks are more important than what is on the inside? When did we fall into the trap of thinking it is safer to be more concerned about ourselves than others? When was it that we decided material objects are more important than faith?

 I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go on another life changing trip this year, but this time the trip was with a school group, to an ‘Ursuline Student Leadership Camp’ in the beach-front town of Hua Hin in Thailand. But what I was surprised to find was that this camp was not just a ‘how to be a good student representative’ camp. It was a camp in which we raised the questions I’d been asking after visiting India - a leadership camp that focused on encouraging the questions and finding answers that concentrated on leading our society to a better future.

We spoke about a life process, a process which if we can put into action our world will become a better place. First, we spoke about ‘learning to learn’, that in order to truly learn we have to focus, and then we have to THINK. After thinking, we have to research in order to understand. We discussed the idea of being able to see a problem, that seeing past our own views in life is a challenge and that we don’t realise it, but we see with our own experiences and within our own context. In order to see a problem, you have to step into someone else’s shoes and look beyond yourself. Then you MUST accept people within their situation. You MUST accept their views and way of thinking – and accept that they are people too! If you don’t accept a person and their point of view, you risk stopping them from ever giving their point of view again. After accepting a person, you can then agree or disagree. We sometimes forget that judging is completely different to accepting. After agreeing or disagreeing, we must reflect. We must understand why we think this and how can we do something about it. What will actually make a difference? Then, and only then, can we act.

At the camp, we learnt about the idea of interdependence. Essentially, we are all influenced by society, race, religion, media, school, family... but to be someone who can make a difference in this world, we must first be independent. We must be economically independent - have a source of income and be able to support ourselves. We must be politically independent – we must have the power to stand by ourselves, and not just do what the ‘more important’ people in this world say is right. For me and for other youth this means challenging the views of older generations and refusing to accept things just because more experienced people say it is right – you must have your own beliefs and not just believe in what everyone else does. Once we become independent we can work towards interdependence, the quality of a leader, the ability to work WITH others. In order to make a change in this world, you must be interdependent.

One of the highlights of this camp for me was the morning we were woken up and told it was time to put the process to work. We were divided into groups and given a ‘destination.’ For some this destination was the fisherman’s village; for others it was the railway station or the markets; but for me it was the beach. Then, we were given a list of ‘challenges’. Our first task was to see our surroundings and see the people. For me, I saw a beach crawling with wealthy tourists enjoying getting a tan. Meanwhile, the local Thai people were steadily ticking away at their everyday lives. For some, this was convincing tourists that their beach chairs were the best, even if they were rough and rotting. For others, it was trying to sell things to these tourists, who ignored them.

Our second task was to speak to these people, to understand and to listen to their stories. We quickly learnt that despite having jobs that us ‘tourists’ label as pointless and sad, like in India these people were happy to have what they had, to be where they were. Even if they had to walk miles to get to work they were happy so long as they could feed their children. Next, we were asked to do an act of service. For my group, our act of service stemmed from seeing a lady walking up and down the blistering hot beach trying to sell ice creams to the tourists from her old Esky. After speaking to her, we learnt that this was her livelihood. All day and every day she would walk up and down the beach and hope to sell just a few ice creams from her Esky. On a good day she could hope to sell maybe five ice creams. From this, she could hope to maybe make 100 Bart – just over three dollars.

We saw the fatigue on her face and we wondered what we could possibly do to make her day just a little bit better. We thought of the tourists, who were lying in the shade of beach umbrellas sipping at iced drinks, and we asked this lady if we could sell her ice creams for her. Just for an hour or so, while she sat down and relaxed. The obvious response was no. After all, the half melted ice creams kept safe in her tiny Esky were her livelihood. But, despite this, she said yes. Despite the chance that we would cheat her, she trusted us. I couldn’t believe it.

And so, we took her place. We strolled up and down the scorching hot beach, asking every tourist we could find if they would like an ice cream. Over and over again the answer was a blunt no. Over and over again they walked straight past us, completely ignoring everything we offered. As we ignored our blistering feet and sunburnt faces, all we had to show for it was a crushing silence – a silence that this woman endured every single day! I’d seen the way tourists treat people trying to sell things in India. I’d done it myself – I’d been told to do it. But you know what? It hurts. It hurts to be the person being ignored. But you know what makes the situation worse? This problem can easily be solved by just acknowledging the person, by just a simple, ‘No thank you’ – by cooperating.

Our final task was to somehow make money. Seeing how we had completely failed at making money by selling things, we decided to take a different approach for this task. We brainstormed ideas and we realized what our biggest strength was… our diversity. Within our group, we had girls from Toowoomba, from Sydney – Australians – but we also had girls from all different places in Thailand and from across Indonesia. With this diversity we had a source of talent that beat any ice cream – our cultures. And so, we drew on our cultures and sang to the tourists lounging on the beach. We sang our national anthems, songs of hope and, for us Aussies, Home Among the Gum Trees. Alone, we would have just been Aussies or Thai girls singing, but together, we were a group of passionate women all united in that little Serviam badge worn over their hearts.

And – we made money! While it was probably not our tone-deaf Aussie voices that won over the crowds, our sense of unity and of friendship did. Through drawing on our differences, we were able to create something beautiful. This made me think. Our world is constantly focusing on differences as a bad thing. Difference is belittled in society, even shunned. But at the end of the day, it is this difference that gives us the opportunity to create something beautiful.

Besides, I don’t think there is such a thing as complete difference. Look at us. We are all human, all part of this group we call humanity. Yet we insist on dividing this group into smaller ones; the poor, the lonely, the rich, the popular. Yes, difference brings with it uniqueness and individuality, but we must draw on our similarities before our differences. Like our Serviam badge connecting us all at the camp, there is a thread that connects us all. Without this thread, there is no point in harnessing our differences, because no one can see the differences. With us all here today, our thread is our spirituality, our beliefs, our passions. Within our various religions we all believe in something bigger than ourselves, in some form of transcendence.

Yes, within these beliefs are differences that separate us, but we forget that with these differences we also have the opportunity to create something beautiful. Another way that I like to think of the role religion plays in our lives is that our world is essentially just like a piece of cloth, a piece of fabric that is made up of hundreds of threads. Many of the threads are hidden from the naked eye, but are nevertheless essential to the makeup of the cloth - without them, the fabric would fray and fall apart. For many of us, religion is like one of these threads; a thread always present in our lives and essential to holding the fabric together, but sometimes its role is forgotten and taken for granted because, for some of us, it can’t always be seen.

When you look at a piece of fabric you’ll notice that any damaged areas or frayed edges are due to individual threads that have become weak and let down the threads around them. Religious cooperation acts in the same way. It is essential for peace and harmony. Without it the thread becomes weak and may lead to faults in the fabric. When you think of the strongest fabrics, the most durable, you won’t be surprised to hear that these are the fabrics in which the threads are the closest. Fabrics with a wider weave are weaker and do not last. In order to have a strong, durable fabric the threads must be as close as they possibly can. In order to achieve a world of justice and harmony we must bring the people within it as close together as we possibly can. But how? What is the one mutual characteristic of each and every human being on this planet? It is the fact that we all have our beliefs.

And so, how is it that we can work towards a future of justice and equality? Through religious cooperation, by finding what we have in common and by using our differences to beautify this world – to create harmony.

Working with Muslims for a better INDONESIA

Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ

When I came to Indonesia almost 52 years ago as a young German Jesuit scholastic I had no real idea about Indonesian Islam. I knew that most of the Indonesian Christians came from regions of the country that had not been Islamized. But I knew also that the Jesuits – at that time many of them were still Dutch missionaries – worked among Javanese Catholics, and the Javanese where regarded as Muslim. In fact, Javanese, presently about one million, are the biggest ethnically homogenous group among the Indonesian Catholics. Most of my Indonesian confreres are themselves Javanese. They were second or third generation Catholics, some of them even first generation Catholics, coming from formally Muslim families.

           

In fact, to my knowledge, the Javanese are the only Islamized ethnic group from where significant Christian Churches came into existence. The Javanese who became Christians came from what Clifford Geertz in his magisterial The Religion of Java (Glencoe 1961) had described as abangan and priyai, namely the Javanese peasant and aristocratic upper classes that had only superficially been Islamized. Against all new cultural and religious trends, they maintained their “Javanese religious” whose central experience is that the person will find the Divine at the bottom of his or her heart, that the faculty to be developed in order to be able to become aware of this divine ground of the soul was feeling (rasa). Hence people must feel attracted to God. That God guides a person is a cherished idea. Javanese culture gives high value to religious tolerance since a person feels herself in which direction she is drawn by God. Outer forms of religion were only ladders to discover the essence of religion, union with the Divine as one’s origin and final end.

            Put into a more political context this meant that the Javanese, even Indonesians in general, distinguished between “nationalists” and “Islamists”. The former were, of course, also mostly Muslim, but they did not allow Islam to colour their political allegiances while the “Islamists” engaged in politics on the basis of their Islamic belief. Christians naturally kept to the “nationalists” who up to this day are the political majority in Indonesia. With the “real” Muslims we had almost no contact. An exception was where Catholic politicians always had very close personal relations with the big Muslim Masyumi Party. What united them was support for democracy and distrust of the communists.

            This situation began to change under Indonesia’s second president, General Suharto. On the one hand, ongoing human rights violations made support for his regime more and more problematic. On the other hand some of the Catholics began to realize that as a minority, this would only have a securely accepted position in Indonesia if they succeeded in building up trusting relations with “real” Muslims. This called for a change from the old ‘win – lose’ relationship with “real” Islam to a ‘win – win’ relationship. This was a significant development in the Indonesian Catholic Church, where was later followed by the mainstream Protestant Churches also. We now have quite good relations with mainstream Islam which have proved themselves to be of invaluable help in the many smaller conflicts that arose.

            My personal contacts with Muslims came through my profession as a political philosopher with specialization in ethics. Working with Indonesians meant working with Muslims, sunce 98% of Indonesia is Muslim. In 1977 I became an Indonesian citizen, contacts with Muslims became something normal happening everyday. I also got involved with Muslim organizations and Muslim personalities.

            My first such encounter happened in 1971. A former pupil of mine at the Canisius high school in Jakarta, Akbar Tanjung who later became state minister under Suharto, and leader of  Suharto’s Golkar party after Suharto’s fall. He is still very influential. He as a politician, in my eyes, has preserved his basic integrity. I am proud of him.  He had become head of the mighty Islamic Student Association (HMI). He invited me to a meeting of the leaders of HMI to talk about democracy. Since then I had always close relationship to HMI, I was often invited to talk about democracy, human rights, social justice at their national caderization courses. I remember, somewhere during the 80s, under Suharto (where Marxism and communism were strictly forbidden) that HMI students invited me to talk about Marx and Lenin (where I am regarded as a specialist). We agreed to meet in front of the big Ciputat mosque. I came on my vespa. And indeed, there was a student waiting. He mounted the seat behind me and directed me into the kampung, through narrow lanes until we came to a house where about 40 male and women students, the latter with their head scarves, waited for me and we discussed Marx and Lenin for two hours. For a similar purpose I was invited by students to Lembang, a mountain resort outside the West Javanese city of Bandung, to the Kinderdorf, actually a place where children were helped. There we met in a big hall which made eavesdropping by government agents impossible. I had many unusual experiences. At another caderization course of HMI, somewhere behind the huge Islamic State University, I had, again to talk about democracy, when a student from Aceh asked me why Christians taught that Isa was the Son of God actually I was always prepared to these kind of questions. But the student moderator did not allow the question and afterwards they apologized, saying, that “some our students are still a bit fanatical”. Once during Ramadan I was invited at about 2’clock in the afternoon to talk to HMI students and they placed water and snacks on my table saying, Father (they use the Javanese word Romo), please do drink and eat, no problem with us (in the fasting season). I liked this (of course but I did not drink or eat something). Even at my advanced age of 76 years I am invited by Muslim students.

            But my most important doors into Islam came from two of the most impressive intellectual Muslim leaders of Indonesia with whom I had the good fortune to become friendly. They were actually two of the most impressive persons I met in my life. The first one was Nurcholish Madjid. He had been leader of  the HMI before Akbar Tanjung. He had already a name as a young daring Muslim leader because of his thesis that secularization is demanded by Islam, and especially because of his saying: "Islam yes, Islamic (political) parties no". I met him in 1973 at a meeting of Catholic student chaplains in the mountains South of Jakarta where Nucholish had been invited to talk to us. I used the opportunity to ask him to teach "Islamology" at my Driyarkara School of Philosophy which he accepted. After one year he found a replacement, young Djohan Effendi, who taught for twenty years at our place. Djohan Effendi later became, and up to now is, one of the leading figures in the Indonesian movement for pluralism, a co-founder of  ICRP (Indonesian Conference of Religion and Peace) and under Abdurrachman Wahid secretary of the state.

            Coming back to Nurcholish, he then went to study under Fazlur Rahman in Chicago. In the early 80s he returned and became the leading, if controversial Indonesian Muslim theologian. He was sharply attacked because of his inclusivistic views on salvation. According to him "Islam" means surrender, thus whoever surrenders to the Absolute is a Muslim and as such can go to heaven. He was the one chosen on May 20 1998 to tell President Suharto that it was time for him to step down. In the 80s he founded Paramadina where open lectures on Islam and other subjects were given. I also gave some lectures there, which later evolved into Paramadina University, where many female Muslim students go without covering their heads; Paramadina also used to offer an Islamic a marriage ceremony for mixed couples where the non-Muslim part was not obliged to embrace Islam. Among Muslims I was always regarded as his Catholic friend and a counterpart. I visited Nurcholish a few days before he died due to failure of a heart transplant. We were very close which did not mean that we had no differences. I once protested publicly some quite unqualified things he had said about Jesus. I am still close to Nurcholish's group.

            The second was Abdurrachman Wahid, or as he was popularly called "Gus Dur". Gus Dur was of highest Muslim aristocracy. His grandfather was the founder of Nadlatul Ulama, with 40 million members the biggest Muslim organization in the world. His Father was one of the founding fathers of Indonesia and several times, a government minister. He did studies according to him, mostly by going to the cinema, in Iraq and Cairo. I learned first of him from his excellent articles on national and religious questions in the (Catholic) daily Kompas. Since the end of the 70s I met him often, he sometime came to Driyarkara. I remember in 1983 when incidentally I was put into the same hotel room with him in connection with a seminar, when he explained to me for two hours why the Indonesian Bishops Conference should accept Suharto's guideline that every organization in Indonesia had to be based on the five state principles of Pancasila and not on religion. He told me, NU (Nadlatul Ulama) would do so also. After three months young Gus Dur was, to my surprise, chosen to become head of NU (which position he held for 15 years, against all attempts by Suharto to dethrone him). In 1992 Gus Dur founded a Democracy Forum with intellectuals of all religious affiliations. I belonged to the inner circle of about seven core members. The forum angered Suharto while what we did was just meeting every two weeks, eating Chinese noodles and gossiping. In 1999 Gus Dur became president of Indonesia although at that time he was practically blind. After less than two years he was constitutionally deposed, because of this reason, but he stayed extremely popular in Indonesia. After he had to step down I bought him from Germany all nine beloved symphonies of Beethoven - he, being blind, had lost his CD's with Beethoven when leaving the palace. He was the most important voice for a pluralistic Islam. He always defended minorities. As President he gave official recognition to Confucianism as the sixth officially recognized religion in Indonesia. He died in 2008. His grave in East Java is now a place of pilgrimage  were more than thousand people visit his grave everyday. He is now nothing less than a Muslim saint.

            From Gus Dur I learned what kind of people Muslims were. I learned how they thought, how they laughed, what worried them and what more. He introduced me to the kiais, the traditional charismatic leaders of the pesantrens, Islamic boarding schools, mostly run by NU (there are now about 20.000 pesantrens in Indonesia). There I met Muslim leaders that had this big typically Javanese self-confidence that makes it easy for them to communicate. I learned how they joked (even the holy Qur'an was not off limits). Under Gus Dur young intellectuals of NU became the leading edge of intellectuals in Indonesia, open minded, pluralistic, democratic and communicative. Because of Gus Dur the formally strange world of the pesantrens opened up to Christians. Now young Jesuits and other seminarians usually, during their formation, would have a one-week live-in in a pesantren.

            Gus Dur was, no doubt, a figure of national stature. In spite of his easy going ways - his best known, and always used expression was "how can you make a fuss over such a small problem" (in Indonesian: gitu aje repot) especially when more fundamentalist Muslims complained about things. Gus Dur loved to make them angry and he could do it because nobody could doubt his Islamic credentials. He himself liked to stress that one of his ancestors was one of the legendary nine walis that brought Islam to Indonesia, namely Syech Siti Jenar who was actually a kind al-Hallaj figure who claimed to have reached such a high state of Sufism that he did not have to pray at certain hours and even could eat pork meat. He was burned on the stake, according to Javanese tradition not because of these claims (they still are widely, though silently, held by Javanese), but because he made it known to others who had not reached his mystical stage. When in 1996 a progrom happened in the East Javanese city of Situbondo and all 21 Christian churches were burned to the ground, Gus Dur initiated the recovery. He introduced the young Catholic parish priest Benny Susetyo to the kiais that lived in the many pesantrens around Situbondo. Father Benny was received with open arms. The kiais expressed their horror at what had happened and pledged their help in rebuilding the churches. I have seen a photograph of a recollection in the Catholic church of Situbondo, the walls still blackened from the fire, still without a roof, where among the parishioners were 50 Muslim santris.

            The title I gave this account of my experience with Muslims is "working with Muslims for a better Indonesia". Actually, working for a better Indonesia is what unites Christians and Muslims in Indonesia. We usually do not dialogue about our religious differences and beliefs, but how to solve Indonesia's problems, both on the national and on the local level. I meet Muslims, of course, as my students at our Driyarkara School of Philosophy where not only the seminarians of the archdiocese of Jakarta and five religious orders, among them my Jesuit fellows, do the first part of their studies for the priesthood. Since the School is open for every person qualifying for academic studies we have also Muslim students. At the master- and doctoral program 30 percent of the students are Muslim. They, as the others, are introduced into an attitude of enlightenment and are actually helped to dare to think for themselves. For religiously oriented students, Muslims and also seminarians, the experience that you do not have to leave critical thinking behind if you are a religious person can be exhilarating. I also teach occasionally at other academic institutions where the great majority of the students are of course Muslims. Since I have every year about 100 extra-curricular events where I have to speak, I have come to know a big number of the best known Muslim intellectuals of Indonesia, the leaders of Islamic organizations like NU or Muhammadiyah, and Muslim and other politicians. There I am involved in reflecting, sometime criticizing, what happens and what does not, but should happen, in Indonesia. The things I now talk most often about are democracy, human rights, social justice, but I also talk about religious pluralism, our state philosophy of Pancasila, Indonesian nationalism and the problems Indonesia faces in all these dimensions. I speak more often to majority Muslim audiences to a specifically Catholic or Christian audiences.  Although I do not have any official position in the Indonesian Catholic Church, when Muslims need a Catholic for a seminar or discussion, or TV session, they very often ask me.

            As regards Indonesia I am convinced that the still enormous problems of the country will be solved if Christians and Muslims can work together in a mutually trusting way. This is what I want to support. We still have problems, among them a kind of  crumbling of traditional religious tolerance and a growing activity of Wahabi and Salafi aligned hard-line groups, I am still optimistic that Indonesia will stay a democracy where religious freedom is a reality and relations between us Christians and our Muslim sisters and brothers will remain positive.